Chapter 2147: Monster Root #2

Althea more or less had an idea about who ’people like them’ was referring to. However, she did not want to feed words to others.

"Do you mean humans?" she asked, staring at the turtle.

He nodded. "Many of them were nothing special, but some were of a special aura, like you," he said, confirming Althea’s theory.

He was likely referring to fellow quasi elves.

As for why Sol sunbathing triggered the memory, it was quite a coincidence.

In the turtle’s memory, the humans and their pseudo elf companions also fought a similar flowering wild root at the time, though it was definitely a wild root.

"There are a hundred of them, a handful of which are special," he said. "And some are violent. Fortunately, our tribe is also not weak, and they have been weakened and preoccupied by the monster mobs around them."

As for what would’ve happened if there were no monsters around, they didn’t know, and they never did have a chance to find out.

"I witnessed one summon a great fire that burnt a wild root to the ground, killing an orc as well."

"Fortunately, we all hated that orc. He was too annoying!"

"..."

Pseudo elves were generally much more powerful elementalists than normal humans. For now, it seemed like they hadn’t done much harm to orcs except for a few known victims and went straight to the Hollow Forest.

Were they able to get back from there? So far, there were no signs of them. Then again, this region was huge, and it was perfectly normal not to encounter someone even if they were not too far away.

Althea shook her head. For now, it was none of her business.

...

Riding Sol, Althea and Garan proceeded to scour the Hollow Forest for any anomalies that they could investigate. The three (with Sol) rushed deeper into the forest, though they were not very clear which direction it was since nobody knew. It was an old story, so the directions couldn’t be accurate.

The Urfrukt was the tree and fruit from the legendary tree called Ur, and this was technically what they were looking for.

The rumor was that it was the origin fruit of orcs, but Orcs had been a transfer from another world and dimension; why would they have an origin fruit?

Somehow, Althea strongly suspected it had more to do with the existence of monster plants than orcs themselves. After all, if it were truly an origin fruit, why was it set so far away from the actual orcs? Why wouldn’t anyone remember it?

Because they were travelling without a clear direction, they could only go deeper. That was to say, farther away from the granite mountains at a distance, hoping to find a clue somewhere.

Still, they ended up taking a few wrong turns and encountered a lot of monsters and wild roots in between. Fortunately, they had Sol as backup, which significantly lightened the burden. There was also a portable house, so they could rest as they needed.

It was just that it had gained quite a number of cracks over the next few days, and Althea couldn’t repair them fully because she was so tired from the fights and the run through the day.

They would also take this time to absorb an aether crystal every once in a while, though not too often since it would damage his foundations. At the same time, Althea took this chance to practice controlling the wild roots as well, little by little.

As they went deeper, the number of monsters was reduced. Instead, the majority of the threats were in the form of wild roots.

They faced a variety: There were branches, branches with thorns, vines, flowering carnivores, and so on.

Althea only managed to catch up somehow because of her affinity to plants. If anyone else at their level was there, even if it were a big group, it was estimated only a small portion would’ve survived this far.

After all, the deeper they went, the more troublesome the plants became because there were so many of them. It was difficult to categorize them by level, but basically, they had strength in numbers, and had they not had a monster root and several defense equipment, they might’ve been sucked to death by now.

Plant versus her cactus plant resulted in the enemy winning. Wild roots could move on their own, while her cactus shield was literally just perishable equipment for her.

As she increased her strength, Althea could feel herself closer and closer to ’taking the reins’ against these wild roots. She wasn’t there yet, but she definitely took a step forward.

If she were to describe the feeling, it felt like she already had most of the formulas; she just needed to figure out how to use and apply them.

One night after traveling for a few more days, Sol suddenly reacted, stopping so abruptly the couple fell down. One had to remember they were running above the canopies, so the fall wasn’t exactly shallow.

Fortunately, neither were weaklings, and they managed to regain their bearings, landing on a nearby branch.

They looked up at Sol, who was unmoving. "What’s wrong?" she asked, sending the message in the plant’s consciousness.

Instead of answering, it descended to the ground and crawled in a direction. They ended up in a part of the forest with particularly moist soil. It was a large area, about a few hectares, and there were plants there that were not found elsewhere.

Althea picked some samples from these plants, with Garan following closely behind her. Sol, on the other hand, circled around an area.

The couple watched its antics, wondering if it was telling them something. Althea realized that it actually was trying to express something. However, before she could go closer to it, something literally popped out from the ground!

"Another monster root!!" she yelled, looking at the ground and jumping to a tree by instinct. Althea reached her ’eye’ and confirmed that it was definitely a monster plant.

There were also wild roots that served as its followers or something, jumping around and hitting things with force akin to a weapon striking. If the trees here weren’t so sturdy, there would definitely be dents appearing where they hit.

Sol started slapping the biggest figure the size of a small car, while it also fought back by pummeling with its body.

It was here that Althea got a clearer view of the Monster Root. It was a mushroom! Specifically, it looked like a truffle mushroom, but its rind was less dark in color.

Like Terran truffles, it also had tiny mycelium that weren’t as pronounced as many other mushrooms. However, they looked sturdy enough considering the force it was hitting, but those strings were still attached.

Rather, they were root-like tendrils that may or may not attach to their target. Case in point, one of the mushroom wild roots tried to attach to Althea and Garan, though they failed to grip onto them because of Garan’s ice; for other people, they’d probably be very sticky.

Althea, now with control over wild roots, waved her hand and every mushroom bouncing around settled down. Even the Monster Plant became well-behaved and allowed her to study it.

Since they were well-behaved, communication was relatively clear, so she managed to glean quite a bit of info.

This truffle was really interesting. It had claw-like bundles of hardened hyphae for digging. When it did so, the tunnels formed would reinforce mycelium that had already detached from its body.

Truffles were very delicious. They were expensive delicacies in Terran; how could she miss them?

However, because they felt endless, it was not practical to fight for the sake of fighting. Even if they exhausted themselves handling a few, then the trip moving forward would be even more difficult.

Fortunately, the couple did not let down their guard despite the relative smoothness of the first half of the trip.

After several grueling days of travel through various terrain—rocky mountains, steep slopes, swamps, and eerie forests—they finally arrived at their destination.

By this time, the couple was obviously exhausted, even Garan. In fact, most would’ve taken at least a few weeks to go through the same path, at best, even if they got more people.

The couple didn’t have skin intact; all had scabs, and their appearances were still beautiful, but definitely haggard and tired. They had been battling nearly nonstop. The house could only protect them for so long. In prolonged battles, they might be no match for the plants.

Soon, they got past the dimness of the Hollow Forest. They finally saw the clear sky above them. However, before they could enjoy the change in atmosphere, their eyes landed on the sight after that.

A forest of sharp, bloodsucking thorny plants. They moved very slowly, like snails, but the slowed-down crawling motions made his stomach tumble.

The area was so vast it almost looked like a black sea—except the ’water’ was the kind that’d eat you whenever you approached it.