Ch. 63 The Miranda Flower was still slowly being pulled from the ground.

It was now like a live octopus on an iron plate, continuously flailing its roots in a death struggle. But under the upheaved stone tiles, the soil was loose and wet, and the Miranda Flower couldn’t find any decent footing at all.

The only thing it could do was let its roots grip the Pumpkin Head Soldier’s legs tightly.

The barbed roots, like a meat grinder, embedded themselves into the Pumpkin Head Soldier’s legs, constantly twisting, locking, and mincing away layers of bloody flesh.

The rumors of the Miranda Flower being man-eating were not just hearsay; the Pumpkin Head Soldier’s blood flowed down and was greedily absorbed by the Miranda Flower’s roots.

In just a few dozen seconds, the Pumpkin Head Soldier’s lower legs had exposed white, grisly leg bones.

As the blood flowed toward the Miranda Flower, the Pumpkin Head Soldier’s skin, which had turned bright red from exertion, was turning gray-white at a speed visible to the naked eye.

And from inside his helmet, blood had already poured out like a waterfall, and that dark blood also contained some pink chunks of flesh.

The man-eating Miranda Flower was using its poisonous mist to dissolve the enemy’s internal organs.

This was also a method of hunting.

Would the Miranda Flower’s self-rescue succeed?

“Roar——————”

Yet the Pumpkin Head Soldier still let out a powerful, full-throated roar, and the strength in his hands suddenly surged to a new level.

With this surge of strength, the Pumpkin Head Soldier clutched the Miranda Flower’s stem even tighter.

Snap——The hard stem emitted such a crisp sound.

The Miranda Flower’s petals unfolded in a spasm, and a sharp screech pierced through the entire ruins.

The giant Miranda Flower—its stem was finally snapped by two opposing forces applied to it.

The Pumpkin Head Soldier had plucked this giant Miranda Flower.

He threw the giant flower onto the ground. From the already broken stem that had supplied nutrients to the flower, the nutrient-rich slime, just converted from the Pumpkin Head Soldier’s blood, flowed down like blood.

“Roar——”

The Pumpkin Head Soldier was victorious; he let out a roar that belonged only to the victor.

‘A maddened soldier is the final fate of a mentally broken gladiator.’

Halfway through his roar, it turned into the pfft sound of coughing up blood.

This was just another unremarkable victory obtained by him in his madness; it was not in an arena, nor on a battlefield, and no one cheered for him.

The snapped giant Miranda Flower writhed in its death throes.

Countless roots coiled toward the Pumpkin Head Soldier in a desperate attempt to take him down with it.

After all, it was a plant.

They have no moment of ‘death’.

As a plant, as a ‘lower animal’, the Miranda Flower does not have a brain like a vertebrate; the ganglia distributed throughout its body form its consciousness.

Even though its bud was crudely plucked and its stem snapped, the Miranda Flower was still alive, only its consciousness had been split in two.

The upper part, having no ability to resist, lay on the ground, having lost all strength like a fish thrown on the ground, and its petals twitched weakly like fish gills.

And the roots that were still on the ground, along with the lower half of the stem, were writhing frantically, wanting to perish together with the Pumpkin Head Soldier.

The roots coiled around the Pumpkin Head Soldier’s body.

The Pumpkin Head Soldier roared, trying to tear off the roots wrapped around him, but it was all in vain.

Root after root wrapped around the Pumpkin Head Soldier, resembling both a spider’s web ensnaring prey and giant pythons.

“Awoo————”

The tighter the roots bound him, the harder it was for the Pumpkin Head Soldier to break free.

The harder it was to break free, the tighter the roots bound him.

Perhaps this was the Miranda Flower’s ‘death rattle’; the roots enveloped the Pumpkin Head Soldier’s arms, neck, and helmet.

The tightening thorns turned him into a bloody mess, and that massive, heavy pumpkin-shaped helmet also emitted the sound of twisting.

“Roar-awoo——Roar-awoo——”

More blood flowed out from inside the pumpkin helmet, and the crazed soldier wearing it let out a death shriek.

The Miranda Flower’s roots greedily absorbed the Pumpkin Head Soldier’s blood at such a rapid speed that it no longer cared whether it could digest so many nutrients.

The Miranda Flower, already snapped in half, no longer had any use for those nutrients.

It had only one purpose—mutual destruction.

It was not just some tree or weed that couldn’t think and could only passively absorb nutrients. The Miranda Flower was one of the creations of the Crucible, capable of thinking, praying, and, at the same time, breaking through its own limits.

Blisters swelled up one after another on the roots gorged with blood; those blisters soon ruptured from the constant absorption, and the blood, having no time to be converted into nutrients, flowed out once again.

The Pumpkin Head Soldier’s roars gradually grew fainter.

His resistance also weakened, but the Miranda Flower’s roots still wrapped around him, relentlessly tightening.

Crack, crack.

Just like the snapped stem of the Miranda Flower, the Pumpkin Head Soldier’s bones emitted a continuous series of crisp cracks like popping beans.

A root probed into the already cracked pumpkin helmet and coiled around the Pumpkin Head Soldier’s skull.

Finally, accompanied by an inconspicuous ‘crack’ amidst the continuous snapping sounds.

The Pumpkin Head Soldier finally fell silent.

The moment the Pumpkin Head Soldier lost all signs of life, the tentacles of the Miranda Flower also dispersed.

It was just like another blooming.