“But L’Lan’e’frea, there’s no point in us fighting them! Let’s find a way around without alerting any of them instead so that we can hurry to the-”

 

=Til, you don’t understand. There are orcs over there!=

 

“What? But we don’t have the time to deal with them at the moment! We need to-”

 

=No, Til. No. There’s always time for both orcs and thieves. Always time.=

 

Til’s exasperated look at me grew by about tenfold. I’m sure he couldn’t understand me, but my grudge against orcs was much too strong to let him talk me out of this right now. Besides, there was something telling me that I had to do it! Maybe it was the itching in my head? I sort of felt like if I could just take down this pack of mobs, then my itching might finally stop!

 

Til’s right, though, he definitely did need to make it home and report about that windy avatar guy and all the other stuff to his elders…

 

=Alright, then if you tell me the way to where you elves live, I’ll meet you there after I’m done! That sound good to you?=

 

Judging from the look on his face and the way he heaved a big sigh a moment later, it certainly wasn’t fine with him. Guess his mental math must've somehow went in my favor though, because eventually he rolled his eyes, pulled his sword out from his belt, and nodded at me.

 

“Fine. If I help you finish this faster then do you promise me you’ll leave soon?”

 

=YES!=

 

It doesn’t matter to me how the orcs die so long as I know they die and I get to eat the leftovers, so I’m totally okay with Til lending a hand!

Ahh, I’m truly such a lucky lucky plant today!

I get a full feast with only a half of the work!

 

=I call going for the hobgoblins first!=

 

It'd be a super big shame if I focused too much on the orcs and missed out on the shiny new hobgoblins, right?

 

“Whatever you'd like, L’Lan’e’frea…”

 

Hey, you should sound a little happier!

There are orcs to kill!

 

~~~

 

My fight with the hobgoblins was fun, but I wouldn’t say it was very challenging. They were a lot bigger than regular goblins, maybe just around the size of a human male, and some of them even knew how to use magic, which was a first for me. Still though, they were essentially just goblins inside, so they weren’t exceedingly smart, and they were only made dumber by the mushrooms controlling them, so it was basically a walk in the park! I’d been a little bit worried about the mage ones and their magic at first, but the splashes of water they sent at me just made me feel really nice actually, and I easily uprooted any bits of plant-magic they tried to grow. I even found out that I could hijack whatever plants they made simply by attaching my roots to them and channeling magic from my seed, which gave me loads of ideas for the future, let me tell you!

 

Oh, and for the record, they did try to use fire and wind magic on me too, but after panicking for a moment I realized that the fire was actually very small and I could easily whip it out, and the wind… Well, okay, let me be honest with you, the wind magic hurt, but they used it so infrequently that it didn’t really matter too much, you know? I ended up learning that I could just whip one of my tentacles through the incoming air to disrupt it if I did it quick and hard enough, so really it wasn’t very different to the fire attacks in a way.

 

Good learning, all around!

 

Eventually learning and playing with the hobgoblins got a little dull sadly enough, so I decided to put an end to it. Til was a pretty decent distance away since he’d been running the pigs around kiting them while they fought, so I got to use my toxic gas for the first time in a while. Don’t worry, I made completely sure to keep an eye out for Til and saw that he wasn’t going to wander into it, so it was completely safe! Well, safe for us; The hobgoblins dropped dead pretty easily. I’m not surprised, I’ve grown pretty darn strong lately if I do say so myself, and something that’s only the size of a human couldn’t possibly stand up to my gas for more than half a minute! They never stood a chance!

 

Look at me, the almighty plant!

Look at me and despair, you silly little monsters wandering through my forests!!!

 

…Ahem.

 

I ripped a few arms and legs off of the hobgoblins for a few quick snacks, and then I flung myself over (gracefully) to join Til against the pigs. He’d already managed to kill a few of them while he was running them around, but there were at least a good 10 of them still chasing him, so luckily I had plenty of work left for me to do!

 

Let’s see now… This little piggy-!

 

The first pig got a few tentacles speared through his head. The second one had its legs grabbed and whipped headfirst into the nearest mushroom stalk with a loud cracking sound. The third got a thick clubbing in the neck with a superfast tendril, and the fourth one got launched into the sky dangerously high and had quite the deadly fall. The next 5 I surrounded in bunches of thick, thorn covered vines so they could no longer move, and left them for Til to quickly dispatch them with his sword. And as for the very last piggy… Well, he got the most fatalist hugging of his life!

 

I was humming, I was so happy! I even decided to splurge since I was about to have a feast of pork for the first time in a while, and used the leftover vines I grew to snake around and gather all the carcasses of my prey into one place for me!

 

Fun fun fun how fun~!

Let’s start with one of their heads, shall we?

Hmmm hmm hmmm, let’s-

Oh, wait just a minute...

 

=...Hey, Til? How come the orcs are green? Are they a part of the forest, too?=

 

That can’t be it though, since I want to eat them so bad… right?

 

“Of course they’re not. Can’t you see how dark and muddy of a color they are?”

 

Huh? So the shade of green really matters or something? Oh, yeah, I guess Til did specify that they had to be a ‘vibrant’ green, didn’t he? Okay then, I'll accept it! I’m learning, I’m learning~!

 

Anyways, down the hatch!

 

A head, an arm, a leg~! The torso will be a little bit tougher to manage, but if I treat it like eating ribs and then maybe go for a bit of the (yucky looking honestly, but I'll still totally eat them) intestines, then-

 

Ah wait, I think it’s finally happening!

 

=Oh, oh Til!=

 

“...What is it now, L’Lan’e’frea?”

 

=Look, look at my head! Do you see it?!=

 

Til had been facing away from me, scanning the area as he let me eat. I guess he wasn’t a big fan of how I was dismembering these corpses to eat them, but like how else did he expect me to do it?! Anyways, he finally looked over at me (although very begrudgingly), and his eyebrows drew together a bit as he tried to figure out what was now different about me.

 

“...Did something new grow on you?”

 

=YES!!!=

 

I wriggled my way closer to him, wrapping him up in a big tentacle-filled hug as I picked him up off the ground and brought him closer to the top of my head.

 

=Look, I grew some mushrooms!=

 

On top of my head, growing at the front and back of my camellia flower and lilies of the valley, were 4 (on each side!) little button mushrooms, all about the size of a toe. They looked magical, like they would be the ingredients a witch might use in some kind of cozy cottage while making a cute little potion. Some were red, some were brown, and some were black, but they were all equally gorgeous looking to me!

 

No wonder I was getting so itchy!

Of course the mushrooms growing in my head would have reacted to this place!

Or well, at least I hope they were supposed to be mushrooms, and it wasn’t just because we came here that it ended up like this…

 

Aw, who cares? Even if that is the case, I’ll love ‘em all the same!

 

Alright then, my little mushrooms! Tell me what secrets you hold! Could it be that these things are mind controllers, just like the mushrooms in this place?! Ah, but that wouldn’t actually be all that good, considering I have my camellia flower that basically already produces that effect… Maybe it’s actually that they each have a different power, since they’re differently colored? Wow, it’d be crazy to try to learn the right words to trigger each of them then if that’s the case! I like getting a bunch of new stuff all at once, but that really kind of feels like a big pain! Do I look like I have the time to learn all of that, seed?! I appreciate the effort, but really!

 

Okay no, I’m being a big stupid idiot about this and forgetting how this plant body of mine works, aren’t I? Let’s just calm down and give this a proper think, shall we? Whenever I grow something, it’s usually to help me with a problem that I have or something that I want, right? Right! So then what could the answer to that be? I don’t have a territory, but I don’t think these tiny little mushrooms are supposed to be meant for that... I doubt they’ll help me convince Til to keep me around, although I suppose if they were truly mind control shrooms like I first guessed then they might just do that, although I wouldn’t particularly like it. And then there’s…

 

Oh…

Is it really that simple?