I Am A Carnivorous Plant

Didn’t this happen last time I used my flower power, too? I got a boar so I had to stop? Well now there’s five boars charging at me. Is this another sign to hold my horses? Should I give up the ghost and focus on subduing these little piggies instead of attracting possibly more danger?

 

Hell no!

 

I’m not the same weak plant from before! I’ve taken down bears; Who’s going to tell me to stop my plans just for some weak charging pigs? It’s not like they’re charging after me, they just want to eat my flower. Even if I somehow got targeted afterwards, I don’t think they’d want to tangle in my poison for too long, right? And besides, I have a new ace up my sleeve! I just have to wait until they get in range of my roots, and…

 

Grow, my root vines!

Grab hold of those charging pigs!

Wrap them niiice and tight.

Mmmm, you smell that?

That’s the smell of the bacon I'm about to eat!

Mwahaha~!

 

...Sorry for that.

 

Anyways yeah, it’s super easy to kill off some pigs like this. And just like all the others, these things are going right into my mouth! Or at least, they will once I finish breaking them into small enough pieces. While my tendrils are busy with that, I’ll just have to keep these vines going for safety’s sake. It’s amazing that this much magic still isn’t enough to keep up with all the nutrients I’m getting. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s only costing me half the amount of what I’m getting from all this prey. What does that say about how many nutrients I was going through each day while I was still trying to grow? Nah, maybe that’s not a fair comparison. After all, that was over the course of almost half a day, whereas I’ve only been running this little murder trap of mine for about half an hour. One day I’ll do a more fair test. Maybe next time I sunbathe I’ll keep a couple of vines running and see how much it costs me? That sounds like it would be an interesting experiment! Better keep a bit of food next to me just in case. And maybe-

 

No, no, I shouldn’t get distracted!

There’s more eating to be done!

Focus, plant, focus!

 

The pigs got me over halfway full, which is great considering I started this whole thing out closer to empty. Still, I’d like to get at least a bit closer to full before I decide to stop this infernal setup of mine, and it’s getting close to night… The animals will stop wandering around for the most part once it’s dark, and it’ll be harder for the prey to traipse into my mist then. Hmmm… Should I just stop this and go looking for some hearty carnivores to eat? But this is such a good trap, and it feels like such a waste…

 

Hold on a minute!

Maybe…

Maybe if I…

 

Let’s see if putting a bit more magic into the flower does anything? I mean nothing says that I can’t do that, right? So far I’ve just been letting the magic run at the default setting, but what if I actually try to up the output? Let’s just uh, let’s just focus on the flower a bit harder? Would that do it?

 

Focus~

Fooocuuusss~

Fo-

Oh hey, it’s working!

 

If I’m being honest, it might be working a little too well, judging by how fast I’m starting to get hungry. If this thing doesn’t start producing results, I might just have to cut my losses and go on an emergency search! I’ll just give it a few more minutes to work, and if there’s still no progress, then I’ll-

 

Oh, no, wait, here they come!

 

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! No no, there’s no lions or tigers here, but there are definitely some mountain lions rushing my way! Maybe it’s only one mountain lion, but beggars can’t be choosers, now can they? Besides, this is a pretty muscley looking mountain lion, almost like it really wanted to grow up to be a tiger one day, so I mean I definitely don’t feel disappointed by the thing. Good thing my myriad of vines and the lion’s own disregard for its safety means it was easy to trap down, or else maybe I really would have had a tough fight on my hands! At the very least it seems like it would be more dexterous than your ordinary bear. Wow, and it can really put up a good fight even while it breathes in my poison! If it wasn’t out of its mind trying to reach my flower, maybe its claws would have broken through all of my vines and tentacles by now. Well, since this thing is pretending to be so resistant to my poison, perhaps I should try and give it a bit of encouragement to soften it up?

 

My tentacles will give it a few niiiice hard pats on its head!

Pat pat smmmack!

Go the hell to sleep already~!

Die more quickly please~!

 

Ugh I’m so hungry...

 

That damn cat took five minutes to finally pass out from my poison and die, and that’s with me beating the hell out of its head. Man, those things are kind of nasty, they’re even worse than freaking bears! I better do my best not to get surprised by one of those things. Or maybe it’s time I finally try and get a bit bigger and stronger? Yeah, I’m probably overdue for a bit more growth, huh? I’ll try and focus on that while I continue my trip. But for now let’s shred this tasty cat and eat it!

 

Ah, I’m so freaking hungry now!

Let’s just hurry up and shove this thing in my mouth, and-

Oh, here comes even more food.

Welp, no rest for the wicked!

Come feed me, then!

 

All in all I got a very good haul. I kept my enhanced flower power running for about an hour longer until it finally became night time. In that hour I managed to pull in about eleven wolves, a couple of rather large snakes, a few coyotes, and even a bear! Compared to the far too resistant cat, the bear was actually even more resistant to my poison! How crazy is that? I guess I never really tried to poison a bear before, I only ever took them down with my sacrificial barfing technique up ‘til now. Makes sense, since I would have had to have been rooted to have tried it, and no way in hell would I have just stayed put against a bear before. In the end, since the poisoning was taking a bit too long, I decided to just launch every one of my tentacles like spears into the softer bits on its face until it finally managed to die. I won’t lie, I really hated doing that. I’m going to have to figure out a better way to kill those things next time. I really don’t want to have to stick to the barfing tactic either; It just feels far too dangerous and gross.

 

Anyways, I had such a good haul after the bear that I decided to stop channeling magic into my vines and flower and just live in this spot until I managed to eat all the spoils of my efforts. I could probably stick around in this spot for a few days and focus on some much needed growth, so why not? Oh, and for the record, when I stopped putting magic into the vines they just flopped down and became regular uncontrollable vines, but when I stopped overflowing magic into the flower it immediately crumbled and turned into dust. I suppose that makes sense considering I probably overloaded it with too much magic? I’ll have to keep that in mind for the future, I guess. For now, it is time to eat and rest!

 

Ah, it’s a full moon out tonight.

Hello moon, please share some of those sun beams with me, too!

I have some growing to do!

 

~~~

 

It’s been a little over a week of me actively trying to grow. I wandered enough after I finally ate through all of my spoils of war that I managed to find a slightly swampy looking area filled with rather large fish and… Are they crocodiles? Are they alligators? Ugh, I was always so bad at telling them apart. Well anyways the swamp was full of them, and they were nothing to laugh at. Their teeth were huge like something prehistoric. They actually laced in between each other and stuck out wayyyy too far! I think I saw something similar in a documentary about aquatic dinosaurs or something before. Anyways, if you got bit by one of those there was no way you were coming loose from those teeth. And I-

 

Well... I look like something quite edible to them, don’t I?

 

Currently I must look like some pretty young teen that stumbled into their swamp, right? Those stupid lizard's eyes wouldn’t be able to tell that my limbs were all wrong. Plus my ‘eyes’ are perpetually closed, so these things must think they’re always sneaking up on me, huh? Stupid stupid lizards. Turns out, so long as I keep those deadly mouths and tails of theirs trapped, they don’t really have any options against me. They can try to death roll and break free, of course, but they can’t do that if I’m also holding their feet down, right? My tentacles and vines are a heck of a lot stronger than them right now, so there’s no way they’d escape me! -So long as I didn’t get gooned by too many of them at once, anyways.

 

Of course, just because I’m able to restrain the stupid lizards doesn’t mean I have a good way to kill them, right? When I caught my first one I was so excited that I was able to pin it down that I forgot that oh so important point! I didn’t want to have to keep resorting to barfing up digestive acid just to get through my tougher skinned enemies, after all, and this swamp was practically crawling with a bunch of them. Luckily, the first lizard was pretty much alone from what I could tell, so I had plenty of time to run a couple of tests on it, and I’m proud to say that I’ve finally found a breakthrough!

 

Ladies and gentleman, may I introduce to you, my ultimate killing move!

Dun da dunnn~!

 

Yeah I’m making a huge deal out of it but like hear me out. I figured out a way to hold on to my growing vines and super compress them like a spring! Then, when I let them go, they shoot up explosively! And if I put enough charge into them, they can even shoot right through the tough leather of these crocodiles/alligators!

 

Hehehe!

Who’s laughing now, you tasty leathery idiots?