[NR] Chapter 168 - Its a Flower, Its a Slug (Patreon)

Courtney exits the game and appears inside her waiting room. Though if others were to see it, they would more likely call it an operations headquarters. She had spent a lot of both hers and Rosha’s father’s money on it. While you can make almost any cosmetic change to the room within some limits, the sheer size of the room alone has gone beyond those limits.

She floats in the center, having paid to remove the limits on using earth-like physics. All around her is a giant web of research and intrigue. To the left is the newest area. She had devoted one large section to her research into Jason and James. Jason’s section now taking up most of the space as Courtney had offloaded her efforts on James to other helpers.

For now, though, this isn’t her goal. Instead, she pushes it to the side allowing access to her research on the forest the group is currently traveling through. There is a lot of information on the undead threat in the area, which she stares at for a moment before sighing. “Of course we need information on low level plant monsters. System, activate multi command and note taking functions.”

A soft ping follows to alert her that everything she says will be taken as a command. Another sigh and she fires off a string of orders. “New message to monster research group C with a request for information on low level plants in the outer circle of the forest I am in. Have a focus on those that a level nine rabbit could fight and an extra focus on such monsters that would also count as a boss. Send early results after half an hour and spend only a minor task worth of work on the topic. End message and send. Open a new note section next to the undead in the forest note and title it plant monsters for Lily at level nine. Create sub-note titled bosses for Lily to break the second bottleneck. Set a temporary nickname for the new note to plant notes and the sub-note to boss notes. End multi command and note taking functions.”

With each sentence, the area in front of her changes. Her message writes itself in front of her and flies off into the ether. Then a new bubble expands next to the undead notes and another bubble appears inside of it. With her commands finished, the System pings again and Courtney sits back to wait.

While Courtney could have opened up a browser and done some research herself but she knows her limits. Her training was focused more on being a bodyguard and head of Rosha’s people, especially the ones she didn’t know about. Group C will be able to find out more in the next half hour than she could find in half a day and with a lot more accuracy.

Instead, Courtney leans back and yawns. Another look around the area confirms that she really needs to clean up the space. Because of all her time in game she hasn’t been organizing her collected notes as well as she used to. Not much else to do at the moment, though she after a couple stretches she gets down to it. Cleaning up not only physical messes but digital ones as well has been drilled into her since young.

Half an hour later, right on the dot, the System alerts her to a new message. Courtney opens it up and nods. The body is a quick overview with two attachments at the bottom containing a majority of the information. She grabs them both and drags them into the bubbles. Once the attachments enter the bubbles, information populates the space.

As the notes grow too big for the bubbles, the shape stretches and expands outward into sheets of data like the undead notes next to it. Courtney nods again, though frowns at what she sees. There is too little known about the plant monsters in the area. Though the notes about there being a bonus to their stealth in the area confirms that suspicion.

Over the next fifteen or so minutes she pours over what the research team had provided her. Courtney has spread everything out like a cork board with articles thumb tacked to it and strings connecting them. To the left are the useless monsters. Things like a phytofae enclave known to be in the area. Their stealth is heads and tails above anything else in the area, and their ability to fly makes them a bad matchup for a rabbit.

On the right is a much smaller selection of useful monsters with one circled. Things like carnivorous stumps and leaf walkers populate the list. That circled monster though is a jackpot and a lucky break all in one. The research team had unearthed a potential boss monster for Lily to fight, and it was probably near the group. The redeath rose slug however is listed on the left side as well, and so Courtney pulls up the specific information on it.

What she finds is annoying, to say the least. The plant starts its life as a rose plant, which will only grow near sites where the undead frequent. After the roses bloom, each of the flowers will curl up again as if blooming in reverse and fall off. These fallen flowers are the adult form of the monster, named a slug as their form now mimics the animal.

Freshly fallen, the flowers are weak and don’t even count as monsters. However they can rapidly grow more powerful if there are enough undead in the area. The flower will crawl onto undead and slowly suck the death energy that powers them out. This is where the “redeath” in the monster’s name comes from.

Each time the rose slug devours an undead, they will leave behind a seed and extend their life. Most important though is that they grow in size and power. When large enough the rose slug will require more than a single undead to leave a seed as more of the death energy is needed to support itself.

For Lily, they only need to find one about her own size. With how many undead there in the area, this shouldn’t be too hard to find. That is the problem. There are too many undead in the area, so chances of them finding one that small isn’t very high. At the early stages they tend to die, but after they grow to about the size of a fist natural selection is finished with them. The few that make it to that size will rapidly grow bigger unless there is a concerted effort by the local undead to wipe them out.

This is enough for now though, so Courtney logs back into NeoRealm.