The moment the Verdant Archon vanished, so did my strength. I felt weak and faint, almost fleeting, like a dehydrated man running a marathon through a desert. I felt like I was one step away from death.
All the adrenaline and spite that kept me going disappeared with it.
There was no grand collapse. No dramatic last stand like I expected.
My vines slackened. My awareness dimmed. The aching throb of shattered bark and seared roots dulled into distant whispers. The last thing I heard was the gentle chitter of aphids curling around my broken core like children tucking their father into bed.
No time. No pain. Just the long, endless darkness beneath the soil of my mind as it slipped into unconsciousness.
I don't know how long I slept.
When I woke, it wasn't with a gasp. It was slow. Gentle. Like a sapling unfurling beneath first sunlight.
And gods, was the world quiet.
No danger. No predator. No poison in the wind. Just peace.
For a moment, I panicked.
'What happened? Has the world gone mad?!'
And yet, nothing happened.
I stirred, sluggish and heavy, but whole. My wounds were sealed with hardened resin. New petals had bloomed along my fractured stalks, smaller, paler, like scars in living form.
My roots had regrown, not wildly, but deliberately. Controlled. Commanded.
Something was... different.
And then I remembered.
It hit me like an avalanche of memory, cascading through my mind in pulses and flickers. Each moment I'd lived not just as instinct, but as will was engraved into me now. Not metaphorically. Physically.
The Green Code had taken hold.
I wasn't just remembering. I was recalling what I had become.
For a moment, I couldn't believe what happened.
'I actually survived'.
I recalled, and it was crazy, like it was some feverish dream.
The first battle alone was a tall mountain to climb. The Cinderrend Jackal was the worst enemy for a monster plant like me; it's incinerating flames the perfect weapon to burn me to ashes.
And yet, I did the impossible. I prevailed against it.
But little did I know then that the feat of killing the Cinderrend Jackal was going to be the least significant in a 3-peat of impossible feats.
The Cinderrend Jackal left me heavily damaged, having burnt a large swathe of my vines and roots. And yet, I had to fight a Nexus Guardian immediately, an even more terrifying existence.
Thryss, the Root Reclaimer was not my mortal enemy like the fire-affinity Cinderrend Jackal, and yet, the encounter with it was even more terrifying.
I would have died, valiantly, filled with spite.
And yet, that was when desperation and necessity gave birth to invention again; I learned to access the true potential of my new evolution... the Aphid Network.
Gaining access to those guys for the first time, the feeling, I couldn't explain it. It was surreal, crazy, too fantastic to forget.
I felt like an overlord. Well, technically, I was an overlord now.
With them, I did the impossible again, defeating Thryss, the Root Reclaimer. After that, I felt drained and totally exhausted.
I just wanted to sleep but Echoterra said, not yet.
The Verdant Archon appeared.
Just remembering how much despair, anger, and rage that I felt at the sight of a new enemy, not just any enemy but another Nexus Guardian, just after killing one, I chuckled to myself.
'Echoterra... what a mad world'.
'What a mad world we live in'.
Yet, despite all that, encounters that should have killed me 10 times over, here I was, still alive, breathing with new knowledge, stronger due to it.
The Trial Nexus, the Nexus Guardians, the Nexus Law..., for some reason I felt that these were ancient secrets that I was not supposed to know yet.
'All I want is to survive first. After, I can seek knowledge'.
If I didn't know before, now, I was sure that it was because I finally breached 50 square meters that triggered the emergence of the Nexus Guardians.
'Maybe that's the Nexus Law. A law to stifle unwanted growth. And me, the Verdant Lord, I'm the one who's grown past my bounds'.
I grinned. 'Well, I survived'.
'You'll have to try harder to stifle my growth'.
My new abilities; the Aphid Network itself was broader now, far more fleshed out. As for my Hive-Sight? It gave me the ability to truly see for the first time since I woke up as a plant.
I could see through the eyes of my minions.
The Symbiotic Command enabled me to command them like a General. As for the Royal Sporemark, it enabled me to designate kin, making him my sporelink and equipping him with combat buffs to increase his/her survival chances.
My kin, he was my one and only sporelink. For now.
I changed so much within just a single day.
I accessed the network by instinct alone.
And immediately, I noticed thousands, no, tens of thousands of tiny threads lit up across the undergrowth.
My territory pulsed at 61.3 square meters.
And in my territory, I could feel it all; every leaf, every insect, every fungal nerve. Not as foreign entities... but as parts of me.
The aphids were everywhere.
I could see through their eyes.
A hawk's nest on the far branch. A burrowing worm below my roots. Two scavenger rodents fighting over a fruit husk near the west fringe.
The rodents weren't resisting. They were obeying.
Not with fear, but reverence.
That was when I realized; they'd been dreaming of me while I slept.
A pulse moved through the Network. Not words. Not sound. But a primal signal, a declaration. Something my body sent out without asking me first.
'The King has risen'.
And they had heard it.
I didn't even know I could feel emotion anymore, but I laughed. Not audibly, not with mouth, but with roots that shook in joy. With leaves that curled in pride.
I wasn't a wildling anymore.
I wasn't just fighting to live.
I had become a sovereign.
And the world had begun to listen.