Chapter 43: The Parasite
Frank's eyes widened in horror.
His plan… had gone wrong.
Very wrong.
He thought the vine would hold its own. He thought it would absorb the ants' fury and emerge stronger—fruitful.
Instead, the Rank 4 ants tore it to pieces.
Like wolves ripping apart a stag, they swarmed the vine's core, bypassing its defenses with eerie coordination. Bladed mandibles gleamed in the dusky light. Root tendrils were severed, flung like ribbons of gore across the clearing. Blood—if that's what the vine had—ran in thick, violet rivers.
Frank watched from the shadows, breath held.
He couldn't move.
Two chunks of the vine, still twitching with dying energy, landed near him with a sickening splat. Before the ants could notice, he silently swept them into his spatial storage, sealing them away with a thought.
It was carnage.
And it was over quickly.
The Ant Queen gave a final, screeching signal—her bodyguards confirmed the threat was neutralized—and the swarm retreated with chilling discipline, dragging their dead and wounded back into the ground like a receding tide.
The jungle fell into a grim silence.
Only then did Frank dare to breathe.
He didn't waste time. He ran forward, dodging twisted branches and burnt corpses, collecting as many fallen fruits as he could. The once-precious red-and-purple orbs now lay scattered like pearls in blood-soaked mud. But the beasts of the jungle had smelled the battle. The air shimmered with their anticipation.
He could hear those— predators of all kinds— drawing closer.
He had seconds.
As he turned to leave, something caught his eye.
The vine's root—not all of it had been destroyed.
A tiny shoot, still pulsing weakly, was coiled into the base of a broken pillar. It reached out like a hand—fragile, desperate.
Frank hesitated… then reached out and touched it.
And the world changed.
The root latched onto his arm with blinding speed, burrowing into his wrist like a worm of fire. He gasped, stumbling back, as pain lanced through his veins.
It didn't just cling.
It connected.
Bonded.
Frank fell to his knees as a surge of vitality shot through his body like lightning. His muscles bulged, bones cracked and reforged, veins glowed red beneath his skin. The fruit he had picked pulsed with heat in his satchel—almost screaming.
He tried to throw them away. Too late.
The vine wanted them.
Desperately.
He hurled one into his mouth, biting down. The flavor was electric—spicy, bitter, alive.
Boom.
The second wave of vitality hit him like a meteor. He screamed as strength flooded every cell in his body—but just as quickly, it vanished.
Drained.
The vine had siphoned it straight from him.
Frank staggered to his feet, hurling the rest of the fruit behind him as he ran. More beasts were coming—massive panthers with six eyes, birds with molten feathers, horned crocodiles slithering through trees.
Too many.
And he had a parasite.
The vine pulsed with his heartbeat, coiling tighter around his arm like a second skin, now glistening with red veins. He tried to tear it off—it didn't budge.
It was now Rank 4. And it had latched on to him
Not as a partner.
As a host.
He stumbled into a cave, panting, barely evading a creature that smelled like sulfur. The vine didn't attack him. It just sat there.
Feeding.
Frank sat against the wall, his chest heaving.
"…You're not going anywhere, are you?"
The vine pulsed once.