NOVEL WEB Chapter Twenty Three
I made sure the two capybaras made it home nice and safe before I went back to the scene of the crime.
The poor chopped up pieces of the capybara who didn’t make it deserved to be taken care of in the best way that I could manage to. And even though I didn’t really have any concept of how burials in this world worked, I knew what I would have to do to put this whole incident to rest for me. After all, funerals are really for the living, right? It was my capybara, so it’s my choice in what I do.
This poor capybara was already dead, and if anything, including mother nature, was going to eat its corpse, then it was going to be me.
…The problem is that it’s in too big of pieces for me to eat without… modifying them a little.
I'm sorry, capybara.
I sang any funeral tune or sad enough song that I could think of in my head, as I solemnly tore the pieces into more manageable sizes. I can always see everything around me, for the record, because that’s just how my senses work; I don’t have any eyes to close, and even if I just decide to not pay attention to what my ‘sight’ is telling me, that doesn’t mean that it’s actually blocked as well as simply shutting one’s eyelids could do. And sometimes, just like right now, I wished that I really did have closable eyes, so I wouldn’t have to see everything like this.
I thanked and apologized to each piece of the capybara before I let my inner tendrils slowly and ceremoniously take hold of them and bring them into my stomach. I took the time to hug each one into my acid and feel each of them fully melt before I steadily went back to get the next.
I wish I could really sing. Just singing in my head doesn’t feel like it has the same impact as actually making the sounds. Once again I find myself thinking that I should learn how to talk. From now on, as I photosynthesize and grow, I’ll do my best on figuring out what I need to do to make it happen.
~~~
When I was finally done with my little funeral, I turned my attention to the other corpse that had been left behind. This fat, green, pig-like thing must be an orc, right? I’m sure I’ve played a few games that had piggy-orcs like this, although I must say I’m surprised I didn’t end up with the more common type you find more often in media. Eh, at least they’re still green, and not some other weird color, although green pigs sounds kind of gross, actually. Ya know, I’m finally seeing another fantasy creature just like I wanted, and yet I don’t think I can be happy or excited about finding this one...
I think… I think I want to kill all the orcs I find from now on.
Yeah, orcs and thieves, they’ll have to go.
In a way, the orc I killed was also a thief, since he was trying to take my capybaras from me. He’s the worst of the worst. The absolute. I made sure to kick and slap his body a few times before I started eating him. It’s at times like these that I wish I had something even more vicious to do to him, besides just my average devouring. Maybe being able to swear would help? I’m not that big on torture, so I think that one’s out of the question.
I guess I’ll just have to settle for eating everyone who lives in whatever stupid little orc village or wherever that he came from.
Also, I hate to say it, but he tasted totally great. Don’t get me wrong, humans are still the number one most nutritious food, but yeah, orcs have made it to a close number two. It pisses me off a little bit, since I hate this one so much, but in a way it’s definitely a good thing, since it’s all the more reason for me to massacre his kind.
There are a few good humans out there, so I’d be sad if I ate the wrong ones.
But now there won’t be any good orcs, so there’s nothing to feel guilty about.
So yeah, I guess it’s time to go eat some pork, right?
...Right.
~~~
It took me a day and a half of constantly angrily searching (with a few stops for snack breaks in between), before I found where the orc had come from. Seems they all lived in a cute little bunch of crudely built houses, in a narrow and steep valley. There were a bunch of holes pockmarking the sides of their valley too, which looked to be mines from what I could make out. And from the tools that they had, it seemed like they had actually taken the mines over from some legitimate human miners? Either that, or orcs were more advanced than I was thinking that they’d be, but I’m not willing to give them even a modicum of respect, sooo~ They’re dirty rotten thieves who stole everything, for sure!
It was getting close to night-time, and it didn’t seem like the pigs liked roaming around in the dark any more than people did, so many of them were heading into their little huts after returning from whatever the hell it is that orcs do during the day. Being the strategic little plant that I am, I waited until a majority of them were already inside, and then swooped in and extra quietly stole away the stragglers!
Hey, if they didn’t want to get eaten first, then they should have known better than to be out so late, right?
After the first two that I stole, I was actually feeling crazy stuffed already. I mean, they’re so big and so nutritious that I was already struggling just to eat the second half of the last one, and that’s really saying something! I’m quite the ravenous plant, I’ll have you know! I could eat at least 6 wolves in one sitting right now and simply say that it was only a little filling, so the fact that the conversion rate of orcs is so amazing is really… Well, I guess it’s just reinforcing the idea that I should definitely be eating these guys, don’t you agree?
Thank you mother nature!
I’ll definitely make good use of all these pigs you left for me!
~~~
So here’s what I did! Since I was already way too full to just keep quickly eating my pigs as I slaughtered them, I decided to set up shop somewhere and keep my food nice and safe! I cleared a reasonably sized house of a group of pigs and started using it as my meat locker! It was located near the edge of the town, and since we were in a valley, I would have a pretty good vantage point to watch for any cowardly fleeing pigs. There would be no escape from here for them, not on my watch!
Sorry pigs, you’re trapped in here with me!
Just to, you know, dissuade them from trying to leave from the opposite side of the valley, I killed a bunch of the ones who lived on that side first! I was hoping that when they realized a bunch of them were suddenly missing, they’d go ‘Oh wow! It happened on the west side! Clearly whatever monster got them must be over there!’, and their little piggy brains will never realize that the real monster was me all along, over on the opposite side of town! It’s the perfect crime, and they won’t realize it until it’s too late!
I’m a genius!
Feel free to clap for me!
…So all of that aside, I’m not actually silly enough to think I’d understand how the piggies think, so I gave myself a little bit of insurance, just to be sure! I didn’t put it so close that it would be obvious, but I knit a nice little net for them out of some extra thick vines that I grew! I put it at both exits just to be sure, and I made doubly sure they were all nice and secure where I grew them, so that even when my magic was cut off they wouldn’t become slack or anything. And for the extra bit of safety, just in case, you know, they made the smart decision to just chop through my nets, I also made a little barricade of trees (ripped up from the ground, since I haven't been able to grow one yet) behind it to back it up. I’ll make sure to periodically roam over there to check on it during my rampage, just to see if anyone’s trying to take that route. At the very least, with all the nutrients I spent on it, it should take them quite a while to get through.
Ah, I've been such a busy little plant, trapping a whole town in overnight.
It was hard work, but somehow it felt really rewarding!
I can't wait to see the looks on their stupid fat faces when they finally see what I did!
Anyways, once I had all the background stuff done, I descended upon the pigs like a leafy, tentacled terror in the night! I’m quite strong now, strong enough to rip out slightly smaller than basketball-width trees at least, and I have 10 thick whip-like tentacles on my side, so caving in the pig’s heads or necks was pretty easy. I decided to be smart about things though, and mostly did my slaughtering inside, like a proper lady. I would hate to spook the pigs too early, especially since there’s actually quite a good number of them. My plan was to work through about a third of them over the next few nights, store them in my designated houses, and then see how the pigs reacted from there. As much as I wanted to finish killing them all tonight... No, I actually didn’t want to!
Could I totally massacre them all tonight? Sure!
Would all the bodies keep well enough for me to eat them all right away? Hell no!
I needed to slow down my killing pace simply for the fact that I wanted to eat them all! I’m angry, and I want them all dead for sure, but after that, then what? How was I going to savor my victory if I could only really eat some of them before they rotted too much? Sure, I’m not a picky eater, but I definitely don’t think rotting corpses would give me as much nutrition as relatively still fresh ones! It just wasn’t optimal! How am I going to grow up into a big menacing monster of a plant if I just wasted all this free food being thrown in front of me?!
I won’t stand for it!
I’ll get my revenge and kill the pigs slowly.
You know, it’s kind of like killing two birds with one stone, in a way, because earlier I was lamenting the fact that I didn’t have anything better I could do to get revenge on the orcs. Now, if I play my cards right, I can take my time slowly eating them all, and I’ll make sure they’re acutely aware of it, too! Just thinking about it makes me want to tap my tentacles together like a villain would his fingers. Really, I’m so smart and evil! I’m glad I could think of such a super good revenge plan!