Cannibal Vines

Towering trees stretched nearly a hundred meters into the air, their dense canopies blotting out the sky. Occasional beams of sunlight filtered through the gaps, casting delicate patches of light below. The vast space was humid and dark.

Vines clinging to the towering trees hung down from above, each one as thick as Tu Ran's thigh.

Every breath carried the fresh scent of earth—a smell the Federation's tech-polluted cities simply didn't possess.

Tu Ran surveyed her surroundings cautiously.

The pioneers who had entered before her were already gone.

They had been sent to different locations.

This place, resembling a tropical rainforest, had never appeared in the original body's memories.

It was an entirely unfamiliar territory.

On the Federation's publicly released holographic map of the Threshold, no tropical rainforest had ever been recorded.

She might be the first human to set foot here.

Tu Ran's mood grew heavy. This meant she couldn't draw on prior experience or use the original body's memories.

Everything she faced would be new, untouched by anyone else.

Tu Ran turned to look back at where she'd come from.

It was a massive sequoia tree.

Even with her arms spread wide, she doubted she could wrap around even a tenth of it.

The Threshold had opened its exit onto this tree trunk, and she had stepped out from within it.

Tu Ran reached out to touch the bark.

The rough texture of the trunk was solid and real under her fingers.

Her hand didn't pass through.

The transfer point had closed.

She couldn't go back the way she came.

If she wanted to leave, she'd have to find the exit during those few hours when the next portal opened.

Take things as they come.

She needed to complete her mission.

Tu Ran began moving forward cautiously.

The ground beneath her feet was soft.

Walking on it felt comfortable.

She made her way ahead carefully, observing her surroundings as she went.

Everything here was enormous.

Standing in this place, she felt like an ant at the feet of a giant.

The ant wound its way forward beneath the giant's gaze.

Curious about everything, the ant would pause to inspect anything it encountered, then continue on its way.

Sometimes a thin branch would block the path, and the ant would scramble over it, using both hands and feet to climb across the twig-thin obstacle.

Other times, it would simply avoid the branch and crawl around from another direction.

And sometimes, the ant would try to squeeze underneath.

Tu Ran was that little ant.

She'd lost count of how many giant fallen trees she'd encountered.

One or two might be explained by old age—trees too weak to support their dense canopies snapping under the weight—but finding a broken giant every few steps didn't seem like a natural phenomenon.

Tu Ran approached the broken end of one giant tree and examined it. The fracture was jagged and uneven, as if something massive had slammed into it and snapped it.

A massive impact?

Not out of the question.

In a tropical forest like this, the odds of gigantic mutant creatures existing were high.

Tu Ran continued forward, studying the scene.

She noticed the trees had fallen in different directions.

Some of the sequoias still standing bore cracks in their trunks, and a few even showed visible dents from impacts.

It looked very much like two enormous mutants had fought here.

They'd trashed the place and then left.

As she walked, the ground suddenly gave way beneath her feet.

Before she could react, she tumbled into a huge pit.

Fortunately, the pit, though large, wasn't deep—barely reaching her waist.

It had been covered by thick layers of fallen leaves, blending seamlessly with the surrounding ground, which was why Tu Ran hadn't noticed it.

She braced her hands on the edge and climbed out.

Turning back to look at the pit.

Its shape resembled the imprint of a foot pressing down, especially like a horse's hoofprint.

From the feeling when she'd fallen in, the ground at the bottom was solid, unlike the soft surface above.

It was as if the ground had been pressed in.

If these were footprints, there wouldn't be just one.

Tu Ran scanned the area.

She could see two dark holes at a distance, clearly visible because they weren't covered by the large fallen leaves.

There were probably many more of these pits around, but like the one she'd fallen into, they were hidden beneath leaves—natural traps.

Tu Ran advanced cautiously for about twenty paces, studying the ground carefully. Sure enough, she spotted a few patches of leaves that sagged slightly. She picked up a thick branch from the ground and tossed it into one.

The leaves sank, revealing a pit over a meter deep.

This confirmed Tu Ran's suspicion—giant mutants had indeed been here.

Their sheer size and weight would cause severe sinking when they stepped on the soft, leaf-layered ground.

As for whether two mutants had fought, judging from the scattered footprints, Tu Ran guessed that was likely.

She didn't linger here.

Her mission was to film as much as possible.

That meant she needed to cover enough ground.

She'd already spent enough time in this area and had gathered plenty of footage.

With no map, Tu Ran could only pick a direction by instinct and keep going.

At first, the scenery was nothing but trees after trees.

Not even low shrubs.

Gradually, Tu Ran noticed the trees weren't as thick or dense as before. Blue sky showed through gaps in the canopy, and low shrubs began to appear on the ground.

After nearly another hour of walking, splashes of vivid color entered her field of vision.

Mushrooms shifting hues, changing with the light—pink, purple, blue. A gust of wind sent their spores drifting, like clouds about to lift into the sky.

"Probably toxic mushrooms," Tu Ran murmured.

All along the way, she'd seen many such colorful mushrooms, and the deeper she went, the more there were.

Besides mushrooms, there were iridescent flowers, some taller than Tu Ran.

Their petals shifted colors too.

The leaves framing them had turned a fluorescent green at some point.

Tiny insects began to appear, flitting about like fireflies, but the lights they carried weren't all green.

They came in every color.

They started circling Tu Ran, as if inspecting this uninvited guest and wondering why she was dressed all in black.

Tu Ran felt like she'd stepped into a fairy's world.

Everything around her glowed, shifting through dazzling colors.

Fruits of all shapes hung from the trees, also in a riot of colors.

Everything here resembled the neon lights of the Federal Government's cities at night.

Tu Ran was captivated, unable to tear herself away.

Suddenly, she tripped over a root.

She fell face-first to the ground.

Tu Ran felt no pain.

She rolled onto her back, stared up at the sky, and her eyelids grew heavy.

So comfortable. Even more comfortable than in a nutrient pod.

In the last second before her consciousness faded, an image flashed in her mind.

A person wrapped tightly in vines.

They tightened more and more.

Tighter and tighter.

Blood began to seep from all seven orifices.

As the blood dripped onto the vines, they constricted with even more frenzied force.

Bones snapped inch by inch.

Flesh was squeezed and twisted out of shape, turning to pulp that oozed through the gaps between the vines.

The whole scene was like squeezing fresh orange juice with bare hands.

"Fresh orange juice, hahaha..."

At the thought of that image, Tu Ran laughed groggily.

Then.

"!!!"

That orange juice was her!!

Tu Ran snapped awake instantly.

She tried to spring up like a fish, but vines coiled around her waist several times over yanked her back down and dragged her across the ground.

The earth rushed past before her eyes, then fell away as she was hoisted into the air and hung from a tree.

The vines, sensing she was awake, began wrapping around her faster.

Tu Ran's hands were already bound tightly together, and her breathing grew labored.

Gritting her teeth, she controlled her mechanical arm, straining outward with a sudden burst of force.

Two vines snapped instantly.

But before Tu Ran could celebrate, more vines surged in to envelop her.

Still, she'd seized the chance to free one arm.

She pulled out a dagger and stabbed wildly at the vines around her waist.

They recoiled in pain, retracting quickly.

Tu Ran's suspended body plummeted from four meters up.

She was ready for it, landing in a half-crouch without getting hurt.

Her eyes swept across the area.

Gone was the dazzling fairy garden she'd seen at first. In its place was a grim, deathly wasteland—vines everywhere, bones scattered across the ground.

She'd been poisoned the moment she saw that first colorful mushroom.

Everything she'd seen after that had been an illusion.

Looking at the bones scattered all around—animals, human-like creatures, and even a mechanical exoskeleton leg—Tu Ran realized this place wasn't without pioneers. It was that those who entered never walked out alive!

The cannibal vines refused to give up, lunging at Tu Ran with flailing tendrils.

She raised her machine gun and opened fire.

The vines didn't have strong defenses; they were forced back by the barrage.

Tu Ran didn't want to stay here.

Because she spotted another colorful mushroom.

At some point, the vines had released more of the toxin that clouded her mind.

If she lingered, she'd definitely fall for it again.

She pulled a bomb from her back.

She yanked the safety pin, hurled it, and retreated to a safe distance, ducking behind a large tree.

The instant the bomb detonated, Tu Ran thought she heard a shriek.

She shook her head, forcing herself to stay alert.

Illusions. All of it was illusions.

Don't trust anything.

When no sound came from behind, she stepped out from behind the tree and looked back.

That area had been scorched black, charred vines scattered across the ground.

These vines only excelled at illusions; in every other regard, they were trash.

She'd meant to hurry away, but after a few steps, she stopped.

Were these cannibal vines considered mutants?

If so, would they have inner cores?

Tu Ran quickly headed back.

The ground was burnt, with a few small flames still spreading.

She stamped out the fire first.

She worried that if she set the whole forest ablaze before finding her way out, she'd be in serious trouble.

She began searching for the roots of these cannibal vines.

In a tangle of shrubs and trees, Tu Ran found a vine burnt down to just a stub.

She didn't ask directly. Instead, she first reached her right hand into a dense clump of grass.

Because her right hand wore a holographic recording ring that would capture everything she did.

Her next move couldn't be known to the Federation.

Keeping her right hand still, she pressed her left hand gently against the vine's green body.

"Do you have an inner core?" she whispered.

At the same time, her right hand moved rapidly back and forth, rubbing the grass to create noise.

This way, the holographic sound-recording ring wouldn't catch her voice.

If anyone happened to be watching—seeing her talk to a plant while flailing her other hand—they'd laugh their heads off at the absurd sight, perhaps even think she'd gone mad.

The moment she asked, the vine's remaining body writhed a few times.

It understood her words.

It was trying to escape, to pull back.

But its roots were right there—how could it retreat?

Tu Ran had seen what she needed to see.

She drew her dagger and drove it into the soil covering the roots.

This cannibal vine had an inner core.

An unexpected bonus.

Tu Ran quickly dug through the soil, following the roots downward.

At about thirty centimeters deep, a glimmering bead appeared.

She pried it out with the tip of her blade.

The vine's thick root gave a violent twitch, then went limp against the ground, still.

Tu Ran wiped the bead clean on her clothes and swallowed it.

It dissolved instantly into a cool stream, disappearing.

Tu Ran didn't test the ability right away.

She hadn't forgotten the camera on her chest.

It had recorded everything.

She hadn't deliberately avoided it, because she'd already planned to dispose of it long ago.

Hiding things from the ring on her wrist was trouble enough; she didn't want to waste more energy on the chest camera.

Taking this chance, she unclipped the camera from her chest and buried it in the soil.

Only then did she pull her right hand out of the grass.

She pretended to rub her knee, brushing off the dust.

As if she'd simply tripped.

Her little act finished, she stood up and left the place.

Walking along, Tu Ran tried to activate this new ability.

From her experience with the previous two abilities, the powers she gained from eating mutant inner cores were always linked to the original abilities of the creatures themselves.