071 Conspiracy in the Works - Part 4 - Greg’s POV

  I screamed at the top of my lungs, “Mark, you fucking third-rate, stop being so useless and stab the damn thing at its core! It’s bluffing! It doesn’t control the entire forest!”

  My vines slithered from under my sleeve, snapping to life and coiling into a rough shield. Splinters and shards of wood clattered against it like bullets. The air stank of rot and wet moss. I couldn’t see Mark, because of course I couldn’t, the idiot was invisible again… but his voice came from somewhere above.

  “Fuck off, mosshead! If you’re so smart, go look at it yourself!”

  Great. We were arguing in the middle of an undead forest warzone. Real professional. A good portion of the forest had turned into these twisted, ent-like things… massive, creaking bastards with limbs like warped branches and faces carved out by hatred. They were slow, sure, but what they lacked in speed, they made up in numbers.

  And teeth. Why did trees have teeth?

  I didn’t really get it. Nerun… fucking skinhead necromancer turned laughing forest ghost…claimed his power moved the dead. But trees weren’t dead. At least not like corpses. What, did he spray pesticide everywhere and necro-hack the biomass? What were the rules here?

  Nerun’s laughter kept echoing through the trees like some demonic windchime. The fucker had upgraded from a meat sack to being the world’s worst Spotify loop. A giant branch, thick and bulbous at the end, came crashing toward me like a pissed-off wrecking ball.

  I threw myself out of the way, my vines thwipping out like grappling hooks, yanking me across a clearing. The impact behind me sent a shockwave of leaves and dust into the air. I hit the dirt, rolled, and clenched my fist.

  “Alright, time to get serious.”

  The seed I’d planted in my own heart, I mean that literally, stirred. Its roots spread through my chest cavity, coiling into my arms and legs. Pain flared as the transformation kicked in, but I welcomed it. My ESP, Green Thumb, wasn’t just for making bonsai trees dance. It gave me absolute control over plant life I’d nurtured. Even cryptid flora, once I studied them long enough.

  The bio-exoskeleton flared to life around me, blooming like armor from my skin. Wood, bark, thorns, living vines… my own custom suit of eco-tech. Years of experimentation paid off. This baby gave me strength, agility, reflexes. Enough to keep up with physique-type ESPers in a brawl.

  Too bad I didn’t have a face to punch.

  “Coward!” I yelled into the woods, dodging another wave of spiny projectiles. “You gonna keep hiding like a ghost, or are you actually gonna show that ugly mug of yours?”

  Nerun’s voice snapped back, “And you are an idiot!”

  Our current strategy was painfully simple. Mark claimed he could hack ESP now, and he was contributing by staying hidden and trying to interfere with Nerun’s power. In the same breath, I was ‘hacking’ too… by leaving seeds on trees, on the ground, on anything that looked remotely alive. I hoped the roots would dig deep enough, spread far enough, and eventually find what we were looking for: Nerun’s core. That bastard had turned himself into some kind of sentient, forest-possessing parasite. So unless we yanked him out by the root, this would never end.

  I let the seed in my heart grow more. My clothes ripped apart as bark, thorns, leaves, and vines bloomed from my body like I was birthing a forest. I could taste the metallic tang in my mouth from pushing too hard, but I didn’t care. I might be a cruel classmate who doesn’t give a fuck about not holding back, but I was the same on the battlefield. No mercy. No bullshit.

  "I’ve always been a fan of Power Rangers," I muttered as my cryptid pet wrapped itself around me, forming armor.

  The trees began to adapt, their roots rushing at me with barbed tips, like spikes growing out of rage. "But in reality," I added, cracking my neck, "I prefer Kamen Rider."

  My transformation completed. Armor gleamed over my skin, an aesthetic mix of knight and plant… a thorned crusader. This was my Green Knight Mode.

  "Childish!" Nerun shouted.

  I didn’t argue. I leapt.

  Dodged left. Dodged right. Moved like hell was chasing me. The roots tangled themselves up trying to track me. One of the trees suddenly tore itself out of the ground, and then… fuck me… it grew eyes. Real eyes. Purple. Shimmering with a sick light. Then it shot beams.

  "What the fuck?!"

  I stomped, raising a wall of solid wood in front of me. The beam blasted right through, wilting the defense like it was soaked in acid. But I didn’t stop. Already, I had conjured a javelin made of dense, hardened bark, and I hurled it straight through the freak’s eye.

  More trees uprooted. They grew limbs. Clawed branches. Bark-skin faces twisted in pain and rage.

  "Huh? So it’s an all-out fight then?" I smirked. My fingers tightened. My body burned with the energy from the seed inside my heart. Toxic green fumes that looked like flames leaked out of my armor, swirling around me like a storm.

  "I’d love to welcome you all, freaks!" I roared. "My power level is off the charts, and I might just be the strongest guy in the ESPer Academy!"

  I conjured a mace the size of a damn motorcycle. Couldn’t do much more… it was already taxing enough to hold this form and shape weapons on the fly. But one hit was all I needed.

  I leapt again. The mace arced.

  Crack!

  A tree shattered into splinters, leaves, and gore.

  I laughed.

  "Come on, Nerun! Is this all your forest's got?!"

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  But deep down, I knew it wasn’t. We still hadn’t found the core. The clock was ticking.

  And I was running out of breath.

  A few minutes later…

  For the nth time, I swung my giant mace and cracked another cursed tree in half. It split down the middle like a soggy pretzel, sap splattering across the twisted underbrush. My breathing was ragged, my muscles twitching from the sheer output of my ESP, and my armor was starting to flake and crumble from overuse.

  And finally, everything stopped.

  The forest, once alive with groaning wood and whispering roots, fell still. Not silent, just still. The kind of silence where the air still buzzed but no one dared to move. I stood in the middle of that wreckage, surrounded by felled monster-trees and thorn-covered debris, and I laughed.

  “Hahahaha!” I doubled over, wheezing between cackles. “Tired already, you piece of shit? That’s right! It’s my victory! And you didn’t help at all, Mark!”

  “I couldn’t say that,” came a voice behind me.

  I turned to see Mark stepping out of the shadows like some magician doing a low-effort reveal. And in his hand…

  “What the hell is that?” I asked.

  He held up what looked like a weirdly human-shaped root. It had limbs. Tiny limbs. Its skin was beige, a little wrinkly. And then… it talked.

  “FUCK ALL OF YOU MOTHERFUCKERS! LET ME GO OR I’LL FUCK YOUR MOTHER, I’LL FUCK YOUR FATHER!”

  I blinked. “...Is that Nerun?”

  The talking ginseng flailed its stubby arms and legs like an enraged toddler about to throw a tantrum in the middle of a supermarket. Mark just looked at it like he wished he’d brought tongs.

  I sighed and let my Green Knight armor dissolve. Bark and vines fell from my skin like a shedding cocoon, revealing my tattered pants and bare chest underneath. My ESP receded into the root inside my heart, and I felt the exhaustion crash over me like a wave.

  Mark flinched when he looked at me. “Are you… okay?”

  “Huh?” I looked down at myself. “Oh. Yeah, I must look like something out of a zombie movie.” I scratched my head, flaking some dried bark off my scalp. “Hey, you know The Last of Us?”

  Mark frowned. “What?”

  “Uuuuugh…” I groaned. “Boring. How am I supposed to make my cordyceps joke now if you don’t know the source material?”

  Mark looked like he wanted to die.

  I pointed to the angry root squirming in his hand. “So, that’s the core?”

  He nodded, clearly unsure what to do with it. “Yes. What do you think we should… you know, do with it?”

  I scratched my chin, thought for a second, then smirked. “I don’t know. Cook it? I heard ginseng works well with chicken, some soup, and greens, you know?”

  The Nerun-root paled.

  No, seriously, it actually paled. I didn’t even know how that was possible with a vegetable, but there it was… its stubby little arms drooping, its legs stiff like a shocked chihuahua.

  “Y-you wouldn’t…” it whispered, voice cracking.

  I leaned in and smiled. “Oh, I would.”

  Mark stared at me. “Greg. That’s… kind of fucked up.”

  “And awesome,” I corrected. “Now hurry up and bag the spicy tuber before it starts quoting more porn dialogue.”

  “No, no, I will cooperate!” Nerun squeaked, flailing his tiny root-limbs like a deflated balloon animal in a wind tunnel.

  That was a far cry from the foul-mouthed banshee tantrum he was throwing earlier, but hey, being turned into a sentient ginseng really seemed to put things into perspective.

  I crossed my arms and took a knee in front of the little vegetable bastard. “Good. Then tell us about the pill. You know exactly which one I’m talking about… the one you popped like candy just before turning into... this.”

  I gestured to his current state.

  “You suddenly became all-powerful, turned the forest into a cryptid nightmare, and then evolved into... a root. That pill wasn’t just a dope-up to your ESP, right? What the hell was it?”

  Nerun’s tone changed immediately, panic simmering into dread. “Anything but that,” he muttered. “Don’t make me talk about that.”

  Mark stepped up, flicking his butterfly knife open with a practiced spin. “We’re not in the mood for secrets,” he said coldly.

  “You can’t make me—!”

  Shhhkkk.

  Mark shaved a thin slice off Nerun’s back with surgical precision.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?” Nerun shrieked. “NO, STOP! I WON’T TELL—!”

  And then Mark… ate it.

  He popped the thin curl of ginseng root into his mouth like a chef taste-testing garnish.

  I stood there, completely floored. “Mark. What the fuck?”

  Even Nerun went silent. He just stared in stunned horror as Mark slowly chewed, thoughtful and calm like this was his Tuesday snack.

  After a few seconds, Mark nodded and said, “Huh. It’s really ginseng. Had a few of them when I was sick. It’s the real deal.”

  Then he turned to me with a blank face. “Hey Greg, you don’t mind me having this after you’re done interrogating it, right?”

  I blinked. “What the actual fuck, dude?”

  Nerun started bawling. Like, actual tears. I didn’t know ginseng could cry but there it was—sap dripping from its eyes like it had been cut from both ends.

  “GET ME AWAY FROM THIS PSYCHO, PLEASE! I’LL TELL YOU ANYTHING!”

  Mark smiled like a polite waiter who just got a tip. I just rubbed my temples and sighed.

  Sometimes, I wonder if I’m the sane one in this team. Then something like this happens, and I’m sure of it.

  "Spill," I said, not blinking.

  Nerun, still trembling in his ginseng-body glory, let out a long, leafy sigh. “Alright, alright. There’s a hidden faction in the ESPer Association. Not the public-facing bureaucrats or the glorified security departments… they’re buried deep. Those guys were the ones who first recruited me.”

  My eyes narrowed. “The Association? The same people who train and license ESPers? I keep hearing there name lately…”

  “Yeah,” he said, tiny voice rasping like dried leaves in the wind. “They’re the ones who sent me to Arcana.”

  I frowned. “Arcana what-now?”

  “Arcana. That’s what they call themselves. Don’t ask me why. Bunch of freaks obsessed with ancient symbols, secrecy, and dungeons. You’ve never heard of them because you weren’t supposed to.” Nerun gave a twitchy shrug. “Nobody is. Most of them operate inside the rifts or off-grid. Places where they can experiment freely.”

  "And you were going to what? Join them?"

  “Not join… infiltrate.” Nerun sounded bitter now, like this wasn’t how he thought his life would turn out. “I was supposed to get close. Get intel. Someone high up in the Association had their eye on Arcana for a long time. They wanted to know who they were, what they were doing, and more importantly… if they could be used.”

  I didn’t like where this was going. “So what was the deal? What did you get out of it?”

  “My freedom,” he said immediately. “Or a part of it. I rot in prison anyway, so what’s the difference? Out there, I had purpose. Power. Food. Fresh air. You don’t get those things inside a cell.”

  “And the pill?”

  His stubby arms drooped. “That pill was a prototype. A weapon. Designed to create the perfect soldier… an artificial hybrid of Cryptid and ESPer. Permanent mutation. No going back. I might not be the first, but I will definitely not be the last.”

  I felt something churn inside me. My gut went cold.

  He kept going. “I didn’t mind taking it. Honestly, it was better than waiting to die in a forgotten facility. The side effects were… annoying, but manageable. I mean, come on, I’m still talking, aren’t I?”

  Mark’s voice came in sharp. “How does this tie back to Lady Enoch?”

  Nerun stiffened. “She… she was one of the first contributors. In the beginning, when the idea of ESP-genetic integration with cryptid physiology was just theory, she helped with the equations. With the ethical frameworks. She was one of the few minds brilliant enough to make it possible.”

  My jaw clenched. “And then she backed out.” I guessed.

  “Probably for moral reasons,” Nerun said, with a sour twist in his voice. “Or maybe she saw where it was going. Doesn’t matter. The people who hired me? They want her gone. Dead. Because once she dies, she reincarnates, right? That’s the pattern.”

  Mark nodded silently, already catching on.

  “They plan to capture her next body,” Nerun continued. “While she’s still young. Moldable. Reeducate her. Use her genius for their own plans. Train her from scratch and make her forget whatever principles stopped her before.”

  I stared at the little bastard in silence.

  This wasn’t just some rogue hit. This was planned. Engineered. An operation with layers, with players embedded in the highest levels of ESPer society. It wasn’t about some nutjob cryptid-worshipping freaks anymore. It was in-house.

  Memories of my time before I met dad flashed in my head. Ugh… Calm down, Greg, this wasn’t the same cultists that made your life miserable.

  Mark glanced at me and muttered, “Man, this is one crazy-ass conspiracy.”

  I nodded slowly, my thoughts still churning. “Yeah. And we’re neck deep in it now.”