Not that it was ever a home in the traditional sense.
Just a patch of death-laced earth, thick with predators I'd planted myself, tendrils wrapped around bones, thorns hidden beneath moss, and a pulsing hive of aphids buzzing with my will.
Every inch of me ached. My bark was blistered, some of it still smoldering.
I'd barely survived Thryss, let alone the Nexus Guardian. I should've been unconscious for another week, the rest I had was just a drop in an ocean of tiredness, but instinct doesn't care about rest.
The moment I opened my eyes, I felt them.
Yes, I grew an exo-organic bloom and scouted them.
Yes, I did learn about them but that did not reduce their lethality in any way. They were still a fearsome enemy for a territory ruler like me, the most fearsome enemy I've ever faced, even more than Thryss or the Archon.
And now, they were coming. Not fast. Not loud, but creeping. A slow, fungal tide that never stopped moving forward.
Yes, I was the one who refused the supposed goodwill of the Thorn Assembly and accepted the war declaration of the Spore Choir. I was proactive, going out to scout them but all that did was help me learn about them.
Defeating them? That, I didn't know yet and so I was not ready.
But it didn't matter.
Because the world was not kind enough to wait till I was ready. And also because I wasn't going to die cowering, either.
'When have I ever been ready?' I grinned.
I took command. I reached out through the aphid network.
A sharp pulse down the spine. A scent-signal encoded in bitterness. A humming rhythm that said: assemble.
My kin. The first and only one I'd ever found in this world; no longer just a survivor, but a disciple. He was coiled at the eastern edge of my territory, roots entwined with mine like a soldier standing at attention.
Others joined. Not other trial candidates, but living, sentient and intelligent plant life just like me and my kin.
Unlike me and my kin, they were natives of Echoterra.
As I experimented with my powers after evolution and fending off the Nexus Guardians, I discovered them and subjugated them.
A dozen of them at least. Some rooted, some skittering on legs that didn't belong to plants. All of them awakened. All of them mine.
I didn't bark orders. I bled them through the network.
["Fortify the center."]
["Hollow the southern ridge."]
["Reclaim the abandoned well near the fungal scar."]
Not because I was the strongest, but because I was the one still alive after everything, things they had zero confidence of surviving against.
And to them, that was enough.
Besides, I didn't limp home after infiltrating the Spore Choir only to sleep. I've been working. I turned my land into a weapon.
This wasn't just territory anymore. It was a death trap.
I started with the borderline. What had once been 44 square meters, 50+, and then 61 at some point now pulsed at just over 64 square meters, thanks to the last evolution and growth. Every inch of land radiated my will.
I twisted vines into bonewire traps, sharp as razors. I dug snares beneath leaves that could snap tight like steel jaws, laid explosive Boneblooms beneath moss that looked deceptively lush.
Aphids. My eyes. My scouts; clinging to hollow stalks like sentries, seeing what I couldn't. Whispering back through our network.
Anyone stepped inside my ring?
They wouldn't even know they were dead until after it happened.
And then, the true enemy, the real threat... the infection.
I wasn't just worried about teeth and spores. I was worried about subversion.
The Choir's greatest trick wasn't their strength. It was conversion. They'd affect the roots of your allies, rewrite your kin's mind, turn a trusted comrade into a vector of rot. They were the worst enemy.
And so, to counter it, I made something worse.
I used what was left of Thryss's corrupted mycelium, spliced it with my own rootblood, and cultivated a counterfungus.
A parasite that fed on Choir signals.
I don't know if that was for them... or for me.
The Spore Choir was a truly insidious enemy to face in battle. This was why I didn't go for a conventional spite-fueled battle strategy against them.
Instead, against an enemy , I leaned towards psychological warfare.
I remembered what it felt like to be a street kid with nothing.
I knew what fear could do.
But the Choir doesn't fear death. So I didn't bother with fear.
Instead, I went for doubt.
I took one of their corpses; still fresh, still twitching, and I turned it into a totem. I laced it with my counterfungus, made it bloom wrong. I made it sing backwards through the network, a soft, maddening hymn of betrayal.
Like they say, when in Rome, speak like the Romans do.
And that was what I did.
I wanted them to ask. I wanted them to doubt.
'We have a new king?'
'What if it turns on us?
'What if this new king spreads his own rot?'
'Which king should we serve?'
Doubt kills faster than any thorn.
That night, I stood at the heart of my trap garden, roots deep in my soil, listening to the murmur of my territory like a pulse in the earth.
I wasn't just some plantoid freak scrambling for survival anymore.
I was something else now.
Not a king. Not yet. A ruler, maybe.
But I was something they'd have to kill if they wanted this ground. And killing me, these days, was not an easy task.
Killing me was an uphill task.
I grinned, my usual spite that have been shackled for days now bubbling back and overflowing through me like a potent drug. 'Hehe... Let them come'.
'Let the Choir sing'.