Beast Tide

The fight is of no use. As long as they could collect traps, they will have more and more beasts. So, it's better to procure temporary labor than saboteurs. So, Sera intervened before Eileen could respond. 

"If you help me with the traps, you can take half the beasts of the next tide. " Eileen offered. 

" Deal. ! " The leader of the other team agreed before the members could even say a single word. 

' Betty will remain here to protect me, rest of you go.'  Sera told Eileen over Intercom. 

Eileen felt thankful. She is not very good at letting people down gently. Betty is the ultimate nuisance when moving in tough terrain, and she panics like a ferret, tripping over everything dragging down everyone. On the contrary, standing there with her weapon aloft, she looked extremely tough, given she had one of the clunky warrior mechas. 

Betty also agreed, thus, Eileen left to reset and collect traps. The beasts caught were more than enough to pass both teams. Betty and Eileen recorded their extra kills. Eileen put a few under Sera's name, giving her just enough grades to pass the graduation. 

When Eileen reset the traps. One of the other team's agile mecha's offered to lure the beasts to them. They played slowly, gathering beasts and killing them slowly. 

◆◇◆

At the same time, on the other side of the planet, an unimaginable riot was going on. 

An entire forest worth of banyans with far too many aerial roots are going wild, beating around their vines, grabbing any animal they could grab to squeeze. 

Some of the bigger animals took this opportunity to root out gigantic tree trunks, to trample them into nothing. 

As the gigantic tree trunks were lifted, so did the roots on the surface ,which drilled desperately into the ground. 

At this moment, Sera did not know that while her guess about mutant plant's being an offshoot is correct, she is entirely wrong about the scale of this mutant plant. 

The mutant plant this particular sprout is from is on the other hemisphere of the planet, with an unbroken root network connecting two hemispheres. 

She was all too lucky, for she had chosen the one location where none of the roots, trees, and leaves could arrive within time to kill her.  Perhaps if the plant gives up all of its other shoots, and one single strongest root takes all this energy to drill towards sera, it might have made it. Luckily for sera, the plant did not have that sort of tactical intelligence yet. 

Thus, when two teams finished hunting three rounds of Ribbits, Sera was still stuck inside her mecha, albeit, with her window closed and blinds drawn ( She needed privacy to go to the loo. ) 

She was still absorbing energy from the plant as a whole. 

[ Level up … ] 

[ Your innate ability has now reached level 100. ] 

[ it changed from Energy transfer ( Plants ) to Energy transfer ( Flora ) ] 

Sera watched the information in shock. 

It's not a small thing to reach level 100. 

But is there a difference between 'Plants ' and flora ? she mused. 

[ Plants refer to trees, shrubs etc. Flora includes any organism that can synthesize its own food I.e. algae, leaf frogs, etc.] 

Her system had responded. 

At exactly nine O'clock on the third day, when everything looked just fine, the gigantic agricultural starship arrived at the other hemisphere of the planet. They launched giant space pods towards the other side of the planet in a concentrated circle. 

These pods are rockets containing a great deal of mushroom pods within themselves. The outer shell of these pods burns away just as the pod reaches the cloudy layer. When the pod enters the clouds, the pressure builds up, bursting the built in pressure bomb inside the pod. The bomb causes a horizontal explosion, spreading the little mushroom pods, encased with diamond ice to enter the atmosphere. The heat caused by the friction is offset by coolness emanated from the pressured ice. 

Thus, these extremely light mushroom spore pods reach the surface pretty much intact, falling on the plant Gigantea, where they will feed on the dead wood, eventually acclimatize to the plant and kill it. 

It was a great theory in words, but in reality, fell short of every last expectation anyone had on it. 

All the mushroom and fungi species used are of good and gentle variety, while Gigantea is a known plant with the strongest vitality in the entire world. How strong must it have been to occupy half of a planet all by itself in mere hundred years ? 

This venture was what kickstarted the destruction of the Dustwood corporation in the game. Her uncle Orion is a good man, but he is extremely stubborn. He is a good farmer, and an acceptable manager. That should have been more than sufficient to cruise through the world as a rich heir, if not for Sera's father, who instigated her uncle into expanding the business. Worst part is, Orion always did his due diligence. General Esgrot subtly influenced the government organizations to reduce bad reviews and exaggerate good traits. 

If this method is used in business, costs increase while profits dwindle. Over time, the business will become the grand tree eaten away by termites. 

Crown pearl of General's deception was this planet where Gigantea had grown. 

Orion put all the capital into exterminating the plant. Just after Dustwood ran out of money to put towards the last extermination effort, Maxmillans took over the project. The final kill was taken by Lance, right after the Dustwood corporation had gone bankrupt. With that, planet 144 belonged to Maxmillan corps, rather than Dustwoods.

Key point is, one extermination attempt was made every month till war started. That is at least thirty six more attempts by a full fledged army. Gigantea is that powerful. 

Only, like every giant monster, it has its inverse scale. It is helpless against the energy transfer that works on all plants. Other than killing Sera, or Sera letting go of the sprout, there's no way for this energy transfer to stop. 

Thus, the plant tried with every last ounce of its being to reach the other side of the planet. The scary part is, had the plant gathered all its vitality into a single root and sent it over to otherside, it could have definitely reached Sera and killed her. Only, most of the plant's roots tried to dig through the earth to reach Sera at the same time. 

At another time, this spraying of mushroom spores would have failed. Since the plant has the strongest vitality, there is no dead wood around where Gigantea grows. The deadwood from other plants has long since become soil with zero nutrients. The mushroom spores can't germinate at all. 

This time, with Sera taking away its life, and giants of the forest trampling away its vines, the freshly dead wood is all over the place. 

The bigger beasts ventured deeper into Gigantea's forest, while only Ribbits whose olfactory senses worked as good as sharks gathered around the mechas like a beast tide. The reckless and careless ones like Eileen's boyfriend went to hunt a nest, fell prey to their own arrogance. 

The rest recovered after the initial panic, when they realized Ribbits can not damage the mecha's themselves. 

Thus, even if it's a little tough, they started their trek towards the mother ship, bringing with them more and more Ribbits. 

From the second day onwards, their team started catching plenty of them in the traps, and with each day, their points increased. 

Thus, rather than doing a direct hunt, the first two teams, that is Eileen and the team she negotiated with, started acting like a cleaning crew, killing the Ribbits and collecting the bodies from traps every day. Even Betty killed two Ribbits with her clumsy fall. 

The only one who hadn't killed them is Sera. 

Amidst such worries, the fourth day dawned. 

The pile of vacuum packed waste packets increased in the side of Sera's spot, yet, the little sproutling was alive, and kicking. 

[ Congratulations !!! ] 

[ Innate ability changed status. ] 

[ your innate ability is Energy Transfer ( Biota ) ] 

The final team has turned up today, followed by a horde of Ribbits ! . 

It's Charlene and Lance's team. 

Sera looked outside just out of curiosity. 

Through the windshield, her eyes met that of Lance's. 

For a moment there, she thought his face gleamed with malicious pleasure - or that could have been her imagination ! 

Then, Lance started running straight at her Mecha. 

Dread filled Sera's heart. 

Urgency filled her energy absorption rate. 

[ Adrenaline induced energy transfer ! ] 

[ Energy transfer rate quadruples ! ] 

The vitality started leaving the sprout two orders higher than before. 

Only, there are far too many Ribbits around Lance. 

They are going to rip off her little wooden mecha into scrap metal, then they are going to rip her in to pieces too. 

As Sera's urgency increased, so did her energy transfer rate. 

At that time, she felt the resistance from the plant for the first time. 

Lance and Charlene reached her mecha at the same time, circled around her mecha, entering the safety of the mothership. 

The Ribbit's went straight for her mecha. 

[ Kachak } 

The sound of the wood being cracked sounded extraordinarily loud within the chamber.