Chapter 41: The Blood Vines
The garden stretched on like a wound in the fabric of Ur—beautiful, unnatural, and wrong in ways Frank couldn't yet name. Its mana was abundant but quiet, threaded deep into roots and streams, not screaming out like wild zones. It felt… ancient. Dormant, perhaps. Watching.
Frank moved carefully, his boots barely making a sound on the shimmering grass. The dual suns overhead had begun to drift apart, casting twin shadows that twisted strangely when he turned his head too quickly. His breath was calm, but his instincts remained sharp. This place might look serene, but everything in Ur had teeth.
It was during this cautious exploration that he found it.
Vines.
Not the shimmering blue tendrils common in high-mana zones. Not the thick green cords the coiled around everything. A deep, arterial red.
They wound around a fallen crystal pillar, pulsing slightly, as though with breath or heartbeat. Frank crouched beside one, his eyes narrowing. It wasn't leaking mana. Instead, it radiated vitality. Life-force. That was unusual ever plant here was infused in mana that was what made the garden great. Vitality was far rarer
He drew a small blade from his belt and cut a piece of the vine, curious. It resisted the edge more than expected, but finally gave way with a soft snap. The moment the piece came loose, he brought it close to his face, examining its inner structure. No visible mana channels… yet his body responded.
Not like it did with normal herbs or fruit, but something deeper. A faint, involuntary shiver passed through his limbs, like his cells had recognized something they needed.
Normally, he would've tasted it. Not here.
His caution paid off.
The moment the blade pulled away, the vine twitched. Then, in a sudden blur of motion, it lashed out—wrapping around his forearm and flinging him backward like a ragdoll. He slammed into the trunk of a tree with bone-rattling force, rolling hard onto the grass. His ears rang.
Frank was on his feet in seconds, sword drawn.
The crescent blade sang as it left its sheath, vibrating with eager tension. He aimed for the root of the vine, stepping in with precision—only to feel his blade bounce off.
The cut he'd made earlier had hardened, the tissue calcifying into something between stone and bark. More vines slithered from beneath the grass and nearby trunks, writhing like snakes converging on prey.
They were coordinated.
Hunting.
Frank darted backward, slicing through the air, redirecting the fastest tendrils. His blade managed to carve shallow gashes, but the vines kept regenerating—splitting at the wounds, becoming two instead of one. Every time he cut, they multiplied.
He gritted his teeth, sweat streaming down his temple.
This wasn't a battle—it was a survival test.
For twenty brutal minutes, he danced between strikes, each movement tighter, cleaner, driven by instinct and desperation. The vines began learning too—attacking in tandem, some low, some high, some feinting to draw out his swing.
He was losing ground.
Then his senses flared.
A new presence—low to the ground, powerful, fast. Not vine. Something else. Something worse.
A Rank 3 beast.
He didn't need to look to know it was closing in. He could feel it in the shift of the wind, the scent of metal-rich saliva on the air. The beast wasn't drawn by noise.
It was drawn by blood.
His blood.
Frank didn't wait. He let go of the physical and reached into space itself—folding a corner of it, stepping between planes. Spatial walk.
He vanished—and reappeared twenty meters away, crouched behind a low rise of stones.
The timing was perfect.
The predator—a thick-chitin carapaced insect with long scythe limbs—charged through where Frank had been, only to meet the vines head-on. The red tendrils reacted immediately. They didn't resist this time.
They welcomed.
Within seconds, the vines were inside the beast. They pierced through its carapace, finding joints, arteries, soft gaps. The predator shrieked once, then collapsed. The vines wrapped tighter.
And began to drink.
Frank watched, breath caught in his throat.
The beast shriveled. Not slowly, but instantly—its entire body sucked dry in less than a second. What remained was a dry husk, hollow-eyed, limbs twitching once, then still.
And the vines...
They stopped moving.
Retreated.
Satisfied.
Frank didn't move immediately. He studied the mass from afar. The vines hadn't attacked the beast—they'd let it impale itself. Opportunistic. Adaptive. They weren't just reacting to threats. They fed on violence. Blood. Possibly mana. Possibly him.
He stayed in hiding, breathing slow. His muscles ached. His coat was torn. One rib was probably cracked. But he was alive.
From his new vantage point, he noticed something.
Above the largest central mass of vine—a bulbous knot around the original crystal pillar—several fruit-like pods had bloomed. They were pale red, almost translucent, each glowing softly like bottled heartlight.
Frank's body ached toward them.
Not hunger. Not greed.
Need.
It wasn't like the spiritual pull of restricted herbs or forbidden mana zones. It was quieter. Subtler. A magnetic alignment from within. His cells were telling him that the fruit was right. Not safe. But right.
He didn't move closer.
Not yet.
He needed a plan.
Because whatever those vines were sentient and those fruits look like they were good for him