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Energy Eater - Chapter 147 - Underground Greenhouse
🕑 Added 2025-07-21 03:01:24 +0000 UTC#### Author's Note ####
Hey everyone. Sorry for the erratic schedule of the past few days. I got a cold. Yay x.x
Now I'm all better (or mostly at least) so starting on monday(tomorrow) things should get back on track. I'm also working on the rewerite of MAZE book 1 finally and will keep you all posted when I have news to share.
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Walking downstairs through the rusted staircase, we did our best not to make any noise. But it was near impossible considering our location. Every step seemed to cause a creak. And in hindsight, maybe all of us going to the staircase at the same time wasn't the best idea.
We climbed down and reached another hallway. This one gave way to a very wide room. It had a more earthy smell. As if we were walking through a forest or a garden. It was strange to think that we couldn't smell these things upstairs, but we were also in a dungeon, so it was hard to know what we could really expect.
A soft sound gave us some pause before we continued moving forward. It was too low to properly understand what noise that was.
The area here was strangely more clear than anything we had seen above. The little to no light that was coming from the small light shaft was bouncing around the area. But somehow, that small amount of light was enough to illuminate a good amount of the environment. Almost as if light was more effective down here somehow. But that really didn't make any sense.
After all, how was light supposed to be stronger in the middle of this darkness? Maybe the System was messing with the particles of the area. Making them more reflective, which in turn created this effect. It was hard to tell how this kind of thing worked when talking about the System.
Moving deeper into the area, we started to see exactly what we were dealing with. My initial thought was that we were about to reach a greenhouse, but in reality, that really wasn't the case. Or at least not initially. We were facing a large storage area.
Something that was full of broken boxes and open cans of various types of food. Strangely enough, not a single one of the cans was properly opened. They all had holes on its side. It was almost as if whoever opened this didn't know how to use a can opener. Or didn't care about using one.
Moving deeper into this area, we started to hear strange scraping sounds coming from a dark room at the end of this hallway. With the torch in hand, I stepped forward, taking the lead in case we were about to fight something. The scraping sound became louder and louder the closer I approached the dark room at the end of this hallway.
No one tried to stop me. Not even Michael, who was clearly terrified about the situation. We pushed forward, stepping carefully to avoid any traps or any ambushes from whatever was waiting here. Only to be met with nothing once we crossed the threshold of the door.
Although nothing wasn't exactly the right way to describe it. We were looking at a greenhouse. In there, were various plants that had completely taken over the structure. Vines grew from various directions and spread out everywhere. As a matter of fact, we couldn't even see the ceiling of this place. Or the walls, for that matter.
Everything was just absorbed by the vegetation that had grown rampant in here. We took another step inside and, just as the last one of us entered the greenhouse, the door behind us slammed shut.
Everybody jumped, but we were ready to face whatever was coming, yet nothing came. We were all still completely sure that there was a monster around. Or at least something that was doing this. But nothing seemed to be happening. No creature was appearing out of the blue to attack us, no monster was making noise.
Whatever was responsible for slamming the door was being very direct in its intention of not being seen. And that was starting to worry me very much. If a creature was smart enough to trap us like this, it would be smart enough to attack us once it got the upper hand. And if it didn't do it now, it meant that the creature was still planning something. Or at least, that's what I thought at first.
There was a strange feeling of something brushing against my leg. As if it were a small animal trying to get my attention. Whatever the creature or whatever it was trying to do, I decided not to react right away. Maybe this could allow me to catch it off guard. Or maybe the monster, or whatever it was, would take me as easy prey and attack me first instead of going for the others. Even more than that, it was possible that this wasn't really an attack. It was just a way for this creature to understand its surroundings.
I felt whatever it was slowly going around my leg, and only when it was almost around me in a complete loop that I snapped out of my thoughts. Pulling my leg backwards and kicking the creature away.
"What the hell is this?" I said while looking down, using the torch to give some light.
Below me was a vine. A thick vine that was trying to wrap around my leg.
Why was I trying to think so much about this? I was fighting against a monster. Something that should be somewhat intelligent but not enough to create traps on top of traps. Even if it was, thinking about it wouldn't do anything.
I hurt the vine, which recoiled once the flames touched it. As my attack connected, we all heard a strange growl coming from the room itself. Small glowing lights appeared around us, and we quickly became aware that they were not simply floating lights. But instead, flowers that seemed to be able to glow in the dark. Those flowers were all connected to the main body. A massive structure on the other end of this wall that seemed to be an amalgamation of various types of plants and flowers. With vegetables, fruits, the trunk of a tree, all connected and growing together in this strange symbiotic mass.
In the middle of all that vegetation, was a skeleton. A small skeleton, likely that of a child, that was wrapped in vines. As if they were not satisfied with their prey, the vines seemed to be pulling the skeleton, elongating it in strange ways that didn't match the body of a person, which this was supposed to be. The skull had a few cracks above the eyes, surrounded by more vines. A red flower was blooming from its mouth, forcing it to be permanently opened almost as if in the middle of a scream.
"What the fuck?" Michael gasped.
And I honestly couldn't think of anything better to say. I could only feel sad for the poor soul that was captured by this thing and became part of it somehow. And now that we had shown that we were not going away, the plant creature, maybe in anger, maybe in excitement, shivered before launching a series of tentacle-like vines towards us.
I didn't have to say anything. All my companions jumped away from the grasp of the creature. We were in an enclosed space, meaning that we didn't have that much room to move, but for some of us that wasn't really a problem.
Riley fired a ball of silk towards the creature while Michael tried firing at the glowing flowers. But his projectiles didn't seem to do any damage as not only were they not able to pierce too deeply into the wood, but the ones that hit the flowers didn't seem to cause any pain to the creature. Even if he was making the arrows explode on contact with the target.
I asked the System for more information just in hopes of its name being able to tell us something, but it didn't.
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Forgotten Garden - Tier 2
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No shit, it was a Forgotten Garden. No one would leave something like this alone. The only useful information was the fact that this was also a tier two.
Astrid sprinted towards the main body of the creature, but several vines quickly sprouted from both below and above, hindering her motion. Instead, I went for a stab, trying to use {Elemental Imbuement} so my staff would be covered in flames. My attempt was more successful, but it was too far from being enough to kill the monster.
The creature just shook and pulled the vines closer to its main body, causing the scraping sounds that we kept hearing above to repeat itself. But much louder and more grating.
Following that, there were a couple of flowers that sprouted around the skeleton. And the skull shifted, opening its mouth even more, causing a strange moan-like sound to echo through the greenhouse. From the flowers, sharp projectiles were created, and they started firing towards us. Rex used the skills from his new tier main class and his subclass to create a barrier that stopped the projectiles. Even if this creature was something more powerful than we were expecting, it was still not enough for a plant to pierce through stones created by the Rodenti.
Using that opening, I jumped away from the vines and rushed towards the core of the creature, to the main body. Using what I knew about vegetation, I tried to attack the ground, hoping to hit the roots of this thing so that I could finally stop it. But my staff was not enough to pierce the thick trunk of this amalgamation of flora.
Astrid came on the other side and started attacking, aiming roughly at the same spots that I was trying to hit. Only on the other side of the creature. But none of us were being that successful. Even the strikes that were able to cause some damage with didn't seem to be hurting the monster.
"It's mimicry," Riley shouted. "Its roots are on the ceiling, not on the floor. It's only pretending to be connected to the floor."
Hearing that, I jumped onto a metal shelf that was nearby and tried to hit the vines that were on the ceiling. I wasn't entirely sure if Riley was right about this, but the witch was, literally, a botanist. It made sense to trust her when we were talking about plants. Even if those plants were heavily mutated.
My first attack ended up hitting just the rocks on the ceiling. But the second hit a specific vine that caused the entire creature to shudder. Seeing how that was working, Michael grabbed the torch that I had left behind and ignited a couple of arrows before firing at the actual roots of this creature.
"Be careful with that," I shouted. "If you start a fire here, we are all going to die."
"Those vines are too wet for that," Michael replied and continued firing his makeshift arrows with some silk strands on the tips to function as kindling for the flames.
Astrid didn't even need to jump to reach the ceiling as long as she stretched a bit and started hacking away at the trunk of this plant. She was the Frosted lumberjack, after all, and getting rid of vegetation was pretty much what her first class was good at doing.
Even if we never had to use it for that kind of thing. Yet, each {Frost Chop} that she used was clearly being more effective than anything else we were able to do. Almost as if the skill itself was increasing the damage that Astrid was able to deal. Which could be exactly what it was doing.
Riley sent out a wind spell that cut a few of the vines just at the top of the trunk. That revealed a strange thing. A vibrant jade leaf, much bigger than any other that we had seen in this creature. The monster tried to hide that again, but the vines near its trunk were nowhere near as fast as the ones that kept trying to lash out at us.
Jumping away from another attack, I launched myself at that part of the creature. {Elemental Imbuement} was still active and now {Formless Lunge} triggered. A moment later, I slammed the tip of my staff directly into that leaf. The monster shivered again, and that moaning sound echoed once more. But now it was softer, on a lower pitch. I felt my mind drifting mid-fall, thinking about the speed I achieved, and if there were any other way to use this move, but a vine slamming against the side of my body snapped me out of it.
I tumbled to the side, falling into a grass wall and felt hundreds, if not thousands of tiny roots trying to capture me. Doing my best to escape wasn't enough, as the more I pushed them away, the better their grasp became. Looking around, Astrid was in a similar situation, with many more vines trying to capture her. Michael was firing arrows at the monster, aimed at the same leaf, but the projectiles weren't strong enough to pierce the various layers of vegetation. Riley fired another wave of wind blades, opening a path to that leaf. Yet, we were all slowly being covered in vegetation. Roots and vines swallowing everything.
My face was half-covered, and even my staff, which still had the fire burning on the tip of it, wasn't able to push the monster away. We continued to struggle, and just as Riley opened a path, Rex, who had created a large stone tail with a jagged tip, launched his attack. The stone crashed through the barrier of vegetation and slammed against the leaf, shattering it like a piece of glass or bone.
A wave of particles rushed towards me, and all our companions, confirming that we had indeed killed this creature.
