When one thinks of reincarnation, there are a lot of different versions a person could think of. There’s the Hindu reincarnation known as samsara. The more modern isekai which originates from japan. Whether that’s the version where you’re a human or a monster, it varies. There really are a lot of options when it comes to reincarnation. Not just with the type of reincarnation but the possible millions, maybe even hundreds of millions of things you could become.

And I ended up reborn as a flower. Bottom of the food chain. Primary producer. The thing that’s eaten by prey. I couldn’t even end up as something that could reliably stay alive like a tree. Was I really that bad in my previous life? I don’t have the answer to that. While I ended up reincarnating, I only reincarnated with the general knowledge of my world. My personal memories are missing. Gone.

Is this what it felt like to have amnesia? But all that’s not important now. At least not at the moment. I have far bigger worries right now. Namely, my survival in this new life. What was that thing every survival expert said was the most important things to have? Food, water, shelter? Being a flower takes care of the first two and the third I can’t do anything about… Well, I suppose that’s a decent start considering the cards life has dealt me. So checking out my surroundings should be the next step, I guess?

Thankfully, I do still have the gift of sight despite my new form. However my surroundings are lackluster. Typically, people in my situation end up in a lot of places. Caves, dungeons, forests, a small village. And it seems I’m in a forest. I couldn’t say what type exactly, but it doesn’t seem to be the particularly exciting kind. All around me are tall grasses, nearly as tall as I am, blocking out my view of my surroundings. Above those however towered thin trees draped in numerous small vines. The tops of the trees flared out in a shape reminiscent of an umbrella.

My surroundings have little to offer information wise, but it doesn’t seem like a very dangerous place. But time will only tell if that’s the case. Back to my checklist. Basic necessities? Mostly done. Get a lay of the land? Can’t really see all that much, but I did what I could. What should I do next? That’s right, a system! Unless I’m one of the less unfortunate people, I should have a system. At least if this is that type of world. It hasn’t announced itself, so I’ll just have to keep thinking keywords until something happens.

Menu! Um, skillboard! Err, how about status!

[Species- Brandlethorn Rose (Seedling)

Level- 0

Traits-

Rapid growth (Species trait)

Life leech (Species trait)

Thorns (Species trait)

Parasitic touch (Species trait)

Gene stealer (Species trait)

Skills-

Mana leech (Species skill)]

There we go! Let’s see what we have here… Brandlethorn rose…? Well, I guess I know what specific type of flower I am now. But traits? I have a lot of them, but they all seem rather simple, and some of them are a bit worrying. Life leech? Parasitic touch? Gene stealer? Those don’t seem like something a flower should have. For the most part they’re self-explanatory, but I’ll need to test them out to see everything they can do. But the real treat is my one skill. Mana leech. This confirms there’s magic, so I’m definitely in a fantasy world.

[Three Long-grass absorbed!]

[Level up! Brandlethorn Rose(seedling) is now level 1]

A chorus of notifications flickered to life on my screen as a dull throbbing pain in my head appeared out of nowhere. Slowly the edges of my vision opened up and reveal my surroundings, as if I had been squinting this entire time. And I could see myself. But from a very different perspective than before. If pressed to explain it the only way, I’d explain it as a third person POV. And not just from one perspective, but from several angles at once. All while looking through my original first person POV. Slowly my headache faded away, leaving me with my new strange situation.

I guess I figured out how to level up? A look at the source of my new viewpoint confirmed my suspicions. Somehow I absorbed some of the grass clumps around me, and now it was a part of me. Was this the work of the gene stealer trait? Or maybe it was the parasitic touch trait? By looking at the ends of my roots, I decided it was probably the work of the latter trait. The tips of my roots were entwined with the base of the long grass and fused with it. Looks like I might not be at the bottom of the food chain after all.

But now that I absorbed the grass, I noticed another interesting thing. There was a slight tingling in my roots at the base of several other clumps of grass. That same tingling was present in my other roots until I absorbed the grass they were attaching themselves to. It was like a noise in the air you never notice until it’s gone. Except in my case it was the feeling of absorbing a foreign plant? Isn’t that supposed to be a villain’s ability, like a certain sci-fi plague with giant killer space rings? Man, don’t tell me I’m going to have a weed killer hero after me now…

But with this, I finally had a way to do something about my future! Heck, with this even if I was eaten by a random herbivore I might not die! Which is a definite plus. Dying twice isn’t on my to do list after all. Crossing it off once was more than enough for me. Now I need to plan my next steps… Not that there’s not much to plan in the first place. I only really have one option, and that’s to grow and absorb more plants.

X237

Wow. Third time rebooting already. And most definetely the last whether I succeed or fail this time. I just hope I'll succeed so reading this wasn't a waste of time for everyone reading this. This was supposed to be out a week earlier but in the end I delayed it to try and tweak some things and get some opinions from friends of mine. I hope this chapter is good, and an improvement from my first two tries. I have been practicing to make an actual good story after all. I do have a few things to address before wrapping up this note.

First is the release rate. Its occured to me every time I tried to reboot I immedietely go for a high release rate. At least by my standards. In hindsight it was a bad idea with my poor planning and slow writing pace. Tgis time I'll try to remedy that by slowly easing myself back into writing. To give me time to get used to writing daily and not falter like usual. So I will be releasing one chapter a week every Friday. Probably around this time too. Make no mistake I don't intend for these chapters be as short or as poorly written as the ones I've made in the past. But I'll be getting to that in a bit.

Before going over chapter length and quality I do want to mention one thing first. Its probably already obvious if since you've already read the chapter. I'll be taking a different direction than the one this story concept origianlly had. It'll be more similiar to the ones my predecessors in plant novels had. So i hope you'll forgive me for that. I didn't feel like it was the right thing for the character or the concept. That it wouldn't do it justice. I suppose I've always felt that way. But onto the next subject.

Chapter quality and length. Before I wrote a lot of low quality short chapters. At least the first time with this story. I could write a 1,500-2,000 word chapter in a single afternoon if push came to shove. At the cost of quality in my own opinion. So thats why I've decided to do the longer release rate to try and give myself the time to make a good chapter. I want to one day be able to make a 3,000-5,000 word chapter with good pacing and quality. So with the exception of this chapter I'll be trying to aim for higher word counts, but only if it fits with the pacing.

So yeah thats all I wanted to say. If you have any comments or concerns you wanted to voice I'd be more than happy to hear them. Comments are probably one of my favorite things about writing. Thank you if you took the time to read this despite the hassle it might have been. Thank you for giving my story another shot. And thank you for taking the time to read my chapter.