The moment it touched me, mana rushed out through our contact. Despite doing my best to fight for control of the mana, it continued to rush out and would get sucked in by the weed.
The weed didn't even bother to hide it. Its thin, wiry stem quivered with greed; its tiny leaves shivered as if in anticipation. The other plants around us went still like they were all watching, waiting to see whether I'd be drained dry or fight back.
I gritted down on the instinctive panic and wrapped my own aerial roots to stretch and strangle its roots that were touching me. The thin roots broke immediately, and mana stopped being sucked out of me.
The weed was surprised, but more and more of its roots slithered across the cave floor, reaching for me like hungry fingers. In a moment of panic right before they reached me, an idea flashed through my mind.
The weed's roots began grasping onto me and rolling around my branches and leaves as more and more mana began being sucked.
Instead of fighting back or escaping, my roots stretched towards the weed itself while my roots in the ground coiled around the mana stone more tightly.
The vine-like roots coiled, constricted, and began to crush. The weed's thin stem crumpled under the pressure, its soft tissues collapsing as I squeezed harder.
More and more mana seeped out, to the point where I began to feel a bit empty and my mana levels dropped significantly. But I wrapped more tightly around the shriveling weed. But even half-crushed it refused to give up. Its desperate little roots clawed up my surface, trying to coil tighter, trying to drink whatever mana it could reach to kill me or get enough for its next evolution. They dug in, scraping, tearing—but my roots were stronger, thicker.
All the weed managed to do was wrap itself around me like a dying parasite, sucking in frantic gulps of mana as I crushed the life out of it.
In a matter of a minute, all that was left was a crumpled, half-mashed husk tangled in my roots.
The mana inside it was absorbed back inside me as its corpse sank into the soil.
A voice spoke in my head, informing me I had met the set quota necessary for the next evolution.
"The requirement for two evolutions had been met. Would you like to inherit the weed's characteristics? ****'s interferes. Will proceed by absorbing the weed to inherit its characteristics."
Before I could think of anything, a flash of light struck, and when it faded away, the weed had disappeared completely. Instead, my roots and aerial roots had grown longer and moved easily.
That ****. I can't hear what the name is. But to be able to interfere in an evolution and the announcing voice itself, it might be something like god.
That's not important right now, though.
I'd grown immensely stronger and the damages I took from the weed had disappeared as well. I could suck out the mana of anyone now, and I didn't have the weed's weakness of having fragile roots. Moreover, I can also move my roots, and they now grew as fast as the weed's.
But it wasn't enough, a little but far from me was the plant with the longest root in this cave. By now, my roots had grown and evolved long enough to reach the plant. But it wasn't time yet.
The feeling of being stared at had grown stronger. Although, they don't know that you can get your prey's evolution specializations, they'd seen the scene of me draining the mana dry from the weed after it died. Yet, they were all sitting quietly instead of fighting each other to get each other's mana.
That was because they didn't know each other's abilities. The same was true for me. There were too many abilities, and one of them could end up killing me. The plants gathered here were too diverse, there were many of them that I couldn't identify the race of or even imagine existed.
From beautiful and elegant flowers to pitch black ones that only seemed to grow more darker with each evolution, there were even some that emitted a soft light.
Everyone was already wary of me after the kill. I'm not confident I can face all of them.
For several days I decided to keep quiet and keep an eye on the others to figure out their abilities. The others also seemed to have chosen the same course of actions.
During that time Long Root grew into an even more delictable treat. Its branches extended to reach more and more magic stones. At the same time I had also evolved several more times and also got into contact with 2 more magic stones.
Judging by the thickness and strength of my roots, they could probably snap him in half within seconds. But I had to be patient.
It was when Long Root got into contact with 12 magic stones that fire fizzled somewhere inside the cave and began spreading. But it was quite far from me.
There was no need to think, it was time for me to get the big feast using this chaos. My aerial roots shot towards Long Root. At the same time, some other plants also sent their roots flying to catch the feast.
But my roots were faster and reached Long Roots and snapped him. It didn't have anything going on except having long roots, so it died without much resistance.
In the next second, before the other plants could touch the remains of Long Root, light flashed around me.
Without waiting for the light to fade away and the evolution to complete I grabbed several of the other plants that were previously extending their roots towards Long Root and activated parasitism. Immediately, all those plants stopped moving. Slowly when I crushed them they all died.
A boost of evolution followed.
From the place where the fire had erupted a flash of light appeared.
My thoughts wandered for a moment, can I withstand the fire? But, I didn't think much and extended my roots without hesitation. For some reason, I had a feeling that if I didn't take this chance to make a surprise attack something terrible would happen to me.
I remembered that around the original place where the fire started there was a plant that had an ominous red glow in its leaf. That plant was also the one who was evolving at the moment too. It succeeded in its hunt, but couldn't attack Long Root or me because we were too far away.
Through a blend of fire my roots blasted through and grasped him roughly and began crushing him.
The fire began spreading towards me through my roots. I coiled my roots around him and squeezed one last time.
His flames burst outward in a last violent bloom, trying to sear through me, but the stolen mana flowing through my veins drowned the heat. He snapped with a dry pop, the fire died.
But right at that moment the vines from the plants I'd just killed came alive and coiled around me, holding me in place. Then an ice icicle came flying towards me amidst the dying flame. It hit me, but didn't pierce through my thick bark.
The attacks didn't stop though, a rain of attacks began raining.
A voice spoke.
"The requirement for four evolutions had been met. Would you like to inherit the Flarevine's characteristics? ****'s interferes. Will proceed by absorbing the plant to inherit its characteristics."
This time the voice didn't just end there. It continued, "You've gotten fire attribute."
A flash of light engulfed me.