Mannat and Pandit stopped beside the hunter and looked at the valley.

It wasn’t a barren patch of land like the cave where the demonic rabbits lived.

They were still in the forest. Yes, the grass wasn’t exactly green, but there was soil under their feet, brown and hard; it hadn’t turned into sand. Perhaps, it would over time, which made Mannat wonder if the rabbits had been living at the cave for years.

By that, it didn’t mean Mannat didn’t sense anything amiss there. His sense that had been picking up signs of life all around the forest couldn’t sense anything in the area covered by the yellow patch of grass. The air also smelled different there; it was not exactly rotten or pungent but like the smell of ice. Mannat wasn’t sure how to describe it as anything else. It surely was cold there.

Mannat saw Pandit was about to enter the area and hurriedly stopped him. “Don’t come in here unless you want a treatment.” He gravely looked at everyone.

Everyone stopped at the edge other than Pandit, who ignored the warning and stepped into the yellow region without remorse.

Mannat glared at him questionably. “Did you bump your head on a branch or something on the way?”

“I won’t touch anything, I promise,” Pandit said.

Mannat shook his head in dismay. What a fool. “It’s in the air.”

Pandit’s brows rose along with his hands, which hurriedly covered his mouth and nose.

Mannat smiled. “For how long can you hold your breath?” He ignored Pandit when the boy tried to gesture his time limit. “But then again you are already infected. So it’s not like holding your breath is going to accomplish anything... It might kill you though.” Mannat passed Pandit a smile. “That’s the only advantage I see.”

Pandit exhaled in relief, not a vein bulging in anger.

“Congratulations,” Mannat said. “Now you can raise a pet inside your body. Just don’t blame me if I don’t take it out once it gets too big to stay in your body.”

Pandit didn’t find that humorous.

Mannat did, and that was all that mattered. Finally, he got one up against Pandit.

“I think I won this one.”

Pandit raised his chin and shook his head. “The day is long and the situation grave. There is still hope for a reversal.”

Anyways, he was already infected, right? So be it. He wouldn’t have left Mannat alone in that place for anything. What was a little infection that Mannat could cure by holding his wrist?

Mannat shrugged his shoulders and started staring seemingly at the death-covered forestland as Pandit stood beside him.

Pandit couldn’t stand still for too long. He wanted to poke around but ended up deciding to tap his feet instead. It was the only non-dangerous option available. Who knew what kinds of monsters hid underground?

“Now what do you want to do?” Pandit said.

“We are here, so we might as well look around. Who knows? We might find something that doesn’t belong in this place.”

Pandit looked into Mannat’s eyes and smirked. “Looks to me like you already have,”

“What should we do?” One of the hunters asked from behind them.

Mannat didn’t hold it against the men for not following them. They were afraid of getting infected again. He could understand that. Everyone is afraid of pain, especially of the kind that can kill.

“Did you find anything unusual here while gathering herbs?”

“There was a flower, a very big flower.” One of the hunters answered. “Go straight and keep your head up, I’m sure you will find it.”

The two friends looked at eachother. The help might have been ambiguous at best but they took it seriously.

“A flower?” Pandit sounded dejected.

Mannat shrugged his shoulders and started marching. Pandit clicked his tongue and followed gloomily.

Straight they went and weird they saw. Mannat sensed it all right. The miasma signature was massive, though hidden by the cold. The deeper they went the horrible the cold grew, and the scenery. Ten minutes later, they found themselves in a graveyard of trees. There were tens of dead trees with deep, dark pits at their feet. There was nothing alive there, not a blade of grass on the ground or an insect buzzing in the air. Silence all around them. And amid all the death and the grayness was the source of the plague, the flower of death.

“Fuck!” That was Pandit’s genuine reaction upon seeing the thing because the thing that the hunter had called a flower was a ten feet tall giant sunflower wound around a dying tree like a python.

It had enormous red petals that looked like snake fangs, and a center that reminded Pandit of the mouth of the worms that grow on rotten meat.

“Is it not afraid of the sun?” Mannat whispered lightly putting to Pandit’s attention that the flower was growing in plain sight, without any cover, and actively looking at the sky like a regular sunflower.

Mannat sensed the tiny pollen grains it was constantly emitting into the air. They were in the air, on the ground on the trees, in their hair and clothes. They were everywhere! Mannat sensed a minuscule amount of miasma from them and was sure they were the eggs that birth the parasite.

He couldn’t help wondering why there was only one flower. What happened to the animals? Were they dead? Did they run away? Most importantly, did they carry the parasite with them?

Well, he could think about it later, after dealing with the giant problem at hand.

The flower itself was very large, almost six feet across, and its barbed stem was thick as Mannat’s waist.

Suddenly, the flower's head turned in the boy’s direction, as if it was looking at them, watching them. Goosebumps went down the boy's necks. Even Mannat felt its attention. Then came the sound of wind blowing through leaves, of pebbles rattling in an empty tray, but there was no wind.

“Where’s the sound coming from?” Pandit asked in a daze.

Mannat pointed at the flower. Its petals were moving, vibrating, and producing the rattling sound, a warning to stay away.

They no longer had any doubts about it. That thing was not an ordinary flower. It had intelligence, and it was dangerous. Although no one from the valley group had been attacked, that didn’t mean it wasn’t capable of killing others; It had already killed a whole part of the forest. As for how dangerous it was, Mannat decided to check it out.

“Examine” Mannat followed through. The result was not good.

[Flower Centipede][Budding][Tier-2][Lv-3][Parasite]

[These parasitic flowers are a bane of nature and life. They start their cycle as eggs that parasitize a living being. They grow as worms inside the heart of their victim, growing from their pain and suffering, drinking the life and blood until their subjects die. At which point they burst out from their victim’s chest and start roaming and killing to absorb the life force of living things until they flower. At that point, they attach to a tree and start germinating, continuing the cycle.]

[S-23, W- 7, I-14, A- 36, C- 60]

[Skills: Slumber, Earth sense, Leech, Statis, Parasitic spores, hive mind, Acidic bullet, petal thrasher, Poison touch, death rattle, burrow.]

[Note: It will not attack until provoked.]

Mannat examined its skills one by one until one of them stood out to him.

[Death rattle: A warning sound the Flower centipede makes by vibrating its petals together when it’s awake and vigilant. The skill induces fear in its listener’s hearts, which reduces their intelligence and constitution by half and makes them vulnerable to infection.]

Mannat did a quick examination and found nothing wrong with himself or Pandit. His Wisdom could block the skill's effect, but Pandit was an idiot. Then why was Pandit safe? Well, Mannat examined his friend and learned the hunter had very high Construction and skill that gave him basic resistance to all kinds of status effects. Pandit brute-forced it.

Anyways, it was the highest leveled monster they had ever faced. It was level thirteen. No wonder, its miasma had crystallized. No wonder he couldn’t sense it from too far.

“Let’s just light it up. Wait–” Pandit noticed all the dead and dry wood in their surroundings and changed his mind. “We are in the middle of the forest so we can’t do that.”

Mannat gave him a complimentary nod and added a thumb up on top of it, which made Pandit very happy.

Reprimanded them for a mess-up and praise them for a good job. That’s how you train a child.

“And it has burrow skill. It will simply hide underground if we made it feel endangered.”

“There is no other way, I guess.” Although Pandit groaned, he pulled the shining, almost new scimitar with a heavy curling bottom out of the scabbard and swung it around before taking a step toward the flower. “You better make me something good if I lose another weapon.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Mannat grabbed Pandit’s shoulder.

It was all Mannat could say before the flower acted. Mannat noticed it first, but Pandit acted faster. Pandit pushed Mannat away as a yellow streak whistled through the gap between them. The ground smoked and sizzled where it struck, sending shivers down the boy's back. If Pandit hadn’t pushed Mannat…

Pandit was the first one up. He was empty-handed. His scimitar lay a good distance from him, very close to the acid-covered ground. He had to get it back.

Mannat sensed the flower's attention.

Earth sense allowed the flower to sense everything around it in a way that was more proficient than Mannat’s mana sense. It was more interested in killing him than Pandit. As for the reason-- they could slowly figure it out later; although Mannat already had a thought in his mind. The flower had a hive mind skill that allowed it to communicate with the parasites. They were like children to it and Mannat had killed them in cold blood. No wonder the flower hated him.

“Hide behind a tree while I distract it,” Pandit yelled at Mannat.

Mannat thought Pandit had a plan until the stupid boy started cursing at the flower. And then he had the gall to stand dumbfounded when the Flower ignored him and turned toward Mannat.

Mannat looked around and saw a tree a few feet away. He wasted no time, got up, and dashed for it. A thick scent of cold miasma rose from the flower when it sensed movement. Angrily, the flower targeted him, spraying jets of acid in his direction, fast and accurate each one fell just short of him.

The acid corroded anything it touched in seconds be it something organic or not, leaving behind a watery, black, tar-like substance.

Mannat somehow made it to the shade of the trees only for another one of the acid bullets to burn right through it. The tree broke at the site of the impact with a thundering crackle and started falling toward Mannat like a giant stake.

He remained calm and let the active effect of Meditation take the burden off his mind.

Someone else would have died there, but Mannat knew panicking was not the solution. He needed to keep a calm head, see his choices, pick the best one available, and act on it. If he could do this enough times without losing too much meat from his bones, then he just might come out the winner in the end. Or as Pandit liked saying… have the last laugh.

“Mannat!” Pandit yelled as the tree fell and spread a cloud of dirt around, Mannat’s condition unknown. His heart was in the throat. He couldn’t believe he had let that happen. They both knew the danger of hunting the monsters, but this was the first time that they were completely neutralized from the very start.

“I’m fine.” Pandit heard and then saw Mannat rising from behind the tree and getting up.

Their eyes met for a second.

Mannat nodded and Pandit got emotional. He bit his lip and wanted to tell Mannat to take care of himself when the flower started rattling its petals again. They were louder, another warning for them to stay away.

The flower was angry.

“Follow me,” Mannat told Pandit and started running away from the flower in a straight line without trying to hide behind trees to block the bullets.

Pandit didn’t understand the reason behind Mannat’s action, but he knew Mannat had a plan. He faithfully followed Mannat, staying behind him to cover his back in case the flower grew emotional again. Soon he realized that not only did the flower stop rattling its petals, but it also didn’t attack them either.

By the time they stopped, the flower had raised its head back to the sun and started slumbering. Mannat knew it could no longer sense them, but he still regrouped with Pandit behind the brittle safety of a tree just in case he was wrong.

Pandit pounced on Mannat when they met. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? It didn’t get you somewhere, did it?”

Pandit checked Mannat’s arms and legs. He frowned when he saw the rugged dark splotches on Mannat’s leather armor.

“You need to thank your father when we return. He saved your ass.” Pandit said. He couldn’t hide his emotions and hugged Mannat. The thought of losing Mannat had scared him to death. He found that he didn’t dare to go on after that. He couldn’t imagine what he would have done if Mannat hadn’t gotten up.

“Can you stop touching my back?” Mannat joked because he could sense Pandit’s trepidation from his mana, feel his rapid breaths on his neck, hear his trembling heart in his ears. It was something he had to do to make sure his friend wouldn’t return to the shell in which he had gone after losing his brother, and then again after losing Soman. To tell him that Pandit was alive and he didn’t need to worry about him.

Death didn’t faze Mannat but seeing his friends crumble into pieces devastated him.

Pandit snorted and pushed Mannat away. He took a good look at his friend before nodding. He dusted himself and then turned back to the flower. It was now back to ignoring them as if the small scruples between them had never happened.

“What’s it doing now?”

“Eating sunlight. Praying for rain. Daydreaming. Who cares?” Mannat said. “What I want to know is the distance between us.”

Pandit could accurately mark distances. It wasn’t a skill per se, but an ability that came bundled together with his senses. A hunter, he needed to know how far his prey was. Guessing distance was hunter’s bread and butter. His father was accurate to the centimeter. He--

“More than sixty meters,” Pandit said. How far exactly was that? That was out of his limits for now.

Mannat sighed. “You need to improve your senses.”

“I’m working on it,” Pandit said. “Meanwhile, let’s just burn it down. We’ll cut the trees around it to make sure the fire doesn’t spread--”

Mannat stared at him with deadpan eyes. “You want to be stuck here for a week? I don’t know about you but I have plenty of things to do.”

Pandit crossed his arms and spread his lips thin, not impressed with Mannat’s rebuke. It was too harsh. He also had things to do all right! He had people to meet, girls to chase, and a thick-skulled master to impress. He was not free either.

“Then what do you say?” Pandit asked instead, swallowing the anger. He needed to be patient; Mannat just had a trauma.

Mannat looked past him and stared at the flower “Since it doesn’t want us to get close to the tree it's occupying, let’s do that.” Suddenly he looked at Pandit, an idea rotating inside his head like a dynamo and charging his eyes with a bright light.

“You want to cut the tree? Then cut that one.” Mannat said pointing at the flower centipede.

Pandit seriously thought about it. For a second the memory of the fear he had felt not too long ago resurfaced in his mind. It whispered a lot of What If’s in his ears, some of which did make him want to pick Mannat on his shoulders and take him away from the forest. A logical part of his heart told him, he might save Mannat that way, but he would lose his friend. Mannat was not hunting monsters for fun. He was in it for life. Now he could help him in his quest or steer clear of his way. But he could not force Mannat to quit his path because that was one thing Mannat would never do.

Pandit made up his mind. “What’s the plan?”

“I’ll distract it,” Mannat started only for Pandit to interrupt him right away.

“Not happening.”

They were going to fight over it when they heard footsteps behind them. Mannat had long noticed the cause of the footsteps, but Pandit was surprised to see Kaju approaching them, with the rest of the party following right behind him with their head low. They looked like kids caught stealing money from their father.

As for Kaju, Pandit had never seen him so angry before. He looked like a general on his way to the battlefield. He was blazing serious.