Chapter 30: The night before the rot

Words : 1064 Updated : Sep 16th, 2025

Chapter 30 - The night before the rotI have been proactive. I have infiltrated, learned about the enemy, fought them, limped back home and started preparations to defend my territory. Preparations to survive. And now, I was done with my preparations. I have created roots of resistance. And so, now, I waited. ... It was almost quiet. Almost. But not really. Beneath the surface, my territory thrummed. The aphids murmured in clicks and pulses, roots shifting. Bonewire flexed in the soil like muscle under skin. The counterfungus, Penance hummed in a low, bitter harmony. Something was always moving now. I stood at the center of it all, eyes closed, bark split and worn, energy stretched thin like old leather. Every part of me hurt; not in the human way, but in the plant way. Down to the marrow of every root, I was still frayed. Spent. Fractured. But that's the one truth when living in this world, Echoterra. The irony of Echoterra; complications, pain, danger, but thrill, all mashed together to form the cruel crucible of this world. In Echotera, no one is ever fully rested. No one is ever fully combat ready when death comes knocking; no one is ever truly at their best. In Echoterra, it's not the strongest that survive. Rather, it's the most adaptable, the most flexible. Yes, I was frayed, spent, and fractured. But... I was still alive. Still fighting. That's the difference between me and all the other trial candidates that were sent to this treacherous world. I waited. I kept on waiting. I never stopped waiting. ... Hours later... The sky wasn't a sky here. Just a churning ceiling of fungal haze and dim bioluminescent pulses, like a heartbeat behind a decaying ribcage. I could see it now, far on the horizon, those same pulses growing sharper. Closer. The Spore Choir... they were coming. Not tonight, but soon. Soon enough that I can't sleep. Soon enough that if I fail tomorrow, I won't get another next. I walked the edge of my land, my roots trailing behind me like blueprints of the world, dragging against the soil like an old soldier's coat. I pass the totem, what's left of a Choir spawn. Warped, twisted into an icon of resistance. Its face doesn't look human. Or plant, or anything. It was just wrong. I didn't flinch though. I made it that way, not to scare my subjects. But rather to remind them. Of what they tried to do to us, the Spore Choir. Of what they will do if they breach the perimeter. Searᴄh the NôvelFire.nёt website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality. And then, I pass my kin. Apart from my sporelink, the others, some were rooted, some crawling, all silent. Watching. They're not really soldiers. They're survivors. But tonight, they stood still like statues, motionless in the fog, and I swear that for a second, they did look like warriors. I sent them a pulse. ["Don't break. Not tomorrow. Not ever."] It was not a command. Not really. More of a promise. If I fall, I want them to remember they belonged to something more than rot. Even if it was just a whisper of rebellion in a world that feeds on death. By the time I returned to my core, I was sagging. There's a hollow patch I dug for rest; lined with the softest moss, shielded from view. With the exo-organic bloom that I grew, I could now navigate this world better, not just confined to one spot as a towering plant anymore. With it, I lowered myself into the moss like a man stepping into his grave and laughed quietly. Because maybe it is. But I've died before. When the world came to an end, the Genesis Protocols pulling me away, I died. And so, death doesn't scare me anymore. But failure does. Before I slept, I opened the aphid link one last time. My reach spread far now, across all 64 square meters and then some. They see what I can't; the fungal scouts, the spores drifting like dust, the choir creeping closer in the distance like a visage of death. It's not a march. Rather, it's an infiltration. A siege of silence. And yet... I was calm. Since awakening as a seed, I've faced too many dangers, too many deadly encounters that even in the face of death, I'm no longer flustered. In the face of death, all I feel now is clarity and brutal killing intent, unshakable will and most importantly, defiance. Defiance not to succumb to the embrace of death, spite to keep on living. Tomorrow, I know what I'll become. Tomorrow, I won't just be Clayton the Verdant King, not just a plant that refused to rot, but a wall. A thorned wall with eyes in every leaf, blades in every bloom, and hatred buried in every fiber. I would become my idea of the Ancient Wall of China. The Spore Choir will try to overwrite me. Corrupt me. Infect my will. Let them try. I've already been broken too many times to count in this world, what's one more that I can't handle? Besides, each time, I grew back meaner. Surely, I would come out of this even more terrifying than before. Far more dreadful than I ever was. And then, finally, sleep took me. Not gently. But all at once. Like falling into a deep grave lined with thorns. Falling asleep, it felt like a death sentence, a finality of sorts. It was either going to be the prelude to the last sleep I was ever going to have, or the prelude to a far greater me, the full blossoming of the Clayton, the Verdant King. ... The next day, I was woken up. It already started. They were here. They came at dusk. Not like a swarm. No, I'd have preferred that. Rather, they came singing. A long, ululating chant that pulsed in the air like moldy silk. I didn't hear it with my ears, I didn't have ears. I felt it. In my xylem. In my roots. In my thoughts. DING! ~----~ [System Notification!] >Territorial Alert... ~----~

Chapter 30: The night before the rot

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