“Hey, this is just what everyone was freaking out about lately!” the panda exclaimed. “What the hell did you guys do? Somethin’ about a rapid expansion of plants way out this way—so it was you?”
Father frowned. “I didn’t know it was going to turn into this.” He turned to me. “Motoyasu, what do we do now?”
“This is no problem at all,” I said. “We came at just the right time to do some logging, I say. I, Motoyasu Kitamura, can handle it myself!”
It had certainly been the right decision to not grow it in Melromarc, where the land was fertile to begin with. Even in the Siltvelt wasteland, it had grown this fast. Fortunately, I had been careful to choose an area that was known as restricted, uninhabited territory.
And if anyone dared to come near, they’d receive their just reward, I say! Plus, the plot was too narrow for there to be any real risk of malignant variant plants getting out.
Now I had to take out the monstrous plants to get the useful seeds at their core. There appeared to be flowers as big as trees wandering around.
I remembered that Filo-tan and Big Sis and Father had told me about their adventures with bioplants, but they didn’t say anything about them looking like this. The kind of plants they grow into must depend on the environment.
“Let’s get started, Yuki!” I called and leapt onto her back. As we rode out to the forest, I could see that the PlantRiwe was like a giant pea plant. There were other monsters as well.
But the PlantRiwe was our core concern. I would have to destroy it first.
It was like a giant tree that grew nasty, sharp-toothed flowers. They whipped long tendrils armed with gnashing teeth in our direction.
“Too easy!” Yuki cried, somersaulting out of the way and on to one of the long vines. She scrambled up the vine toward the PlantRiwe.
I pointed my spear at the sharp-toothed flowers. “Gungnir!”
A loud crack and tear sounded, and I saw that while I had blown all of the flowers away, the vines were still moving.
That was troublesome. Maybe I had to find some specific part in the plant that was controlling them. Since Father had used bioplants in the first go-around, he must have fought them at least once. How did he take care of them?
If it meant destroying the plants altogether, that would be easy. I could just burn the whole wasteland to the ground. But we needed to harvest the seeds from these plants, and I couldn’t destroy them altogether. Even if I did, they might just regenerate.
“Motoyasu!” Father called. “Try a strong herbicide!”
Father and the others had also come closer to the forest of bioplants. Father took out a bottle from his shield and tossed it to me.
“I would’ve never expected studying herbs to come in handy now,” Father said to himself.
It was a good idea. They were plants, after all.
“Impressive,” the panda shouted, “but I’m gonna show you what I’m capable of!” For some reason, the panda was treating it like a competition.
She crossed her arms and concentrated.
“As the source of your power, I command you! You monstrous plants, listen and understand reason! Protect us fools! Spite Bamboo Spike!”
The panda pressed her hands to the earth and massive poles of bamboo blasted out of the ground, skewering nearby monsters.
“No way! You are cool!” Keel barked excitedly. “I’m gonna fight too!”
“Keel, wait!” Father cried. “It’s dangerous here—don’t go far from me!”
Sakura yawned, drawing her short sword. “I’m in.” She danced with her sword like a whirlwind, slicing through any monsters that approached. But she was sure to never stay separated from Father for more than a few seconds.
As always, Sakura was doing a flawless job protecting Father, I say!
I was starting to get a good idea of just how far the bioplants had spread their roots. I just had to apply the herbicide and let it do its trick.
“Keel, Sakura, take this herbicide and spread it all over this area,” Father called, pointing.
“Got it, Big Bro!”
Keel leapt on to Sakura’s back, took the herbicide, and rode around scattering it. Meanwhile, I used my spear to shoot the herbicide all over.
The plant let out a ghastly shriek.
The damage seemed to be racking up. But even though parts of the PlantRiwe had started to wither, other vines and flowers were quickly regenerating.
“This plant appears to have developed herbicide resistance,” I called. “I’m not sure if it will be enough!”
“What the hell kind of plant is this!”
The panda had returned back to the rest of her mercenaries to protect them, beating down any of the approaching monsters or vines. I must say, she had some strong arms.
“Motoyasu!” Father called. “You said this was originally wasteland, right? I’m guessing the bioplants need to dig their roots deep into the earth. The real heart of the plant is down—deep underground! Can you get there?”
“Leave it to me!” I declared.
That sort of wisdom went far beyond any simple knowledge of the game, I say. Father’s guess was likely spot on.
I targeted several of the surrounding roots and attacked with Aiming Lancer. Clumps of dirt and chunks of bioplant exploded into the air. I supposed it may have been smarter to determine where exactly the heart of the bioplant was before attacking.
In the meantime, our attacks were finally starting to slow the bioplant down. I just had to aim underground and launch a final attack.
“Just one thing left to do, I say!”
I plunged my spear into the earth and attacked.
“Fissure Strike!”
The ground shook and rumbled, swelled up, and shot up earth and roots like a volcano. In the game, Fissure Strike was typically used to fire magma out of the ground, but you could also use it to force out anything that was deep underground. A massive budding sprout shot out of the earth, exposing what appeared to be the core of the bioplant.
“Brionac X!” I cried, aiming my lance at the large root and instantly disintegrating it.
Almost immediately, the rest of the bioplant started to wither away.
Then tiny sparkling seeds appeared to rain down from the area where I had shot the large sprout. So a single bioplant seed had multiplied into many.
“Quickly, get the seeds! Don’t let them sprout!”
We ran around picking up the fist-sized seeds before breathing a sigh of relief.
The panda came over to us with a bunch of seeds in one massive palm. “Now that was something.”
Father nodded. “For us, it’s really not too out of the ordinary.”
“So you’re always up to weird stuff like this?”
“More or less. Don’t worry about it too much.”
“Is making me wear those weird clothes another one of your little adventures?” The panda looked at Father. “You said you come from Melromarc, right? They say that the Shield Hero was over there . . .” She trailed off.
“Uhh . . .” Father muttered. Had she guessed who we really were? Since we did go hunting together, I supposed she would be able to figure it out from his sturdiness.
“That’s right!” Keel barked. “Big Bro is the—”
“Keel, that’s enough,” Father said.
“I’m a soldier too, ya know. I don’t like getting into dangerous situations that I don’t have to. I guess it was an experience though.”
The panda’s mercenaries nodded in agreement. They were a stoic bunch, like Ren’s companions.
“Well, we did it,” Father said, adding the bioplant seeds to his shield. We were really stocking up our inventory nowadays. “We need to modify these seeds somehow,” Father muttered to himself. Father picked up his shield and used an ability. It must’ve been a power that would improve the plants that the seeds would produce.
In the meantime, I took the rest of the seeds and stored them in my spear. So these seeds would produce PlantRiwe, huh? Since we had gotten them from that plant-type monster, they seemed to have a power-up effect as well.
Regardless, I’d leave it to Father to figure out exactly what to do with the seeds. They were no different from drop items from monsters, so we could just add them to our weapons and take them out later. Father confirmed this by taking some of the seeds back out of his shield. I didn’t really understand why that mattered, but whatever, I say.
“So what are you gonna do now?” the panda asked.
“Well, we took care of this, so we could go monster hunting with you guys now,” Father said. “Or we could go to a store somewhere.”
“Either is fine with me.” The panda appeared to have gotten used to Father and wasn’t on guard as much.
Father turned to me. “Lars and I are going to head out then, Motoyasu,” he said.
“Understood! We’ll meet up again when the time comes!”
Father nodded. “Let’s go then.”
Taking the panda by the arm, Father led the way, followed by Keel and Sakura.
Yuki and I went to explain to the bureaucrat who administered the wasteland what had happened. I thought about trying to learn some plant modification abilities myself, so I would be able to make something out of the bioplants without Father’s help, but it sounded like a real pain, so I decided against it.
And at that moment, the egg in my breast pocket suddenly hatched. I heard a chirp and quickly withdrew it.
It was a navy-blue filolial, I say! A female, if I wasn’t mistaken.
Which meant that, unfortunately, it wasn’t Filo-tan.
What should I name her?
She sure was a cheerful little chick. Hmm, what to name her? I decided to let Father choose her name later.
I passed her over to Yuki. “Yuki, please go ahead and get her some food and level her up.”
“At once, Motoyasu!”
“Let’s race to the nearest mountain, I say!”
“It would be my pleasure! My heart is racing with excitement!”
Yuki seemed to really love racing. With that, we spent the rest of the day hard at work leveling up the new chick.