Gar wasn’t sure exactly how far he had gone before he reached the edge of the forest but it must have been over a kilometre he guessed he had misjudged the size of the thing. He turned towards where he knew the river to be, between the rise and fall of the land and the end of the forest not being a perfectly straight line the river was out of sight, it was a quiet and peaceful day no sound but the wind in the trees and the rustle of small animals in the bushes. Where the trees had ended wasn’t just open space it was covered in bushes, ferns and nettles. The sight of the nettles made him unreasonably happy he had found another source of food, he’d had nettle soup before even made his own once, and he knew the stems fibres could be used to make cord or thread, but wasn’t so sure about how you did that. Either way he decided it was worth taking some with him. Using his spear as a gardening tool he was able to quickly cut a number of long nettles until he had a good bundle, they were then gingerly stuffed into a sack before going into the backpack.

  Gar found it easier to walk across to the river just under the tree line as there was a lot less growth in the way than the bushes, ferns and nettles and other foliage he couldn’t identify growing out from under the trees canopy, there were still areas where he had to push through but he preferred to go round if it wouldn’t take him too far of course, as he still only had a pair of trousers on and they were already tatty and ripped at that, so wherever he could he preferred not to get scratched and whipped trying to push through plants in his way. He made his way across to the river, and then turned aligning himself towards the cliff but slightly back towards base as well and set off.

  He had repeated this a couple of times before he found anything of interest to him, it was as he was walking past a few trees that were closer together and he put his hand out against one of them, it gave way to his hand swinging. What he had thought was a twisted trunk or ivy round a tree, where actually a number of flexible vines hanging down from the tree on his other side. He didn’t know what they were but decided to take a closer look at them, he pulled the knife out of the bag on his back then reached for one of the vines. It was about three centimetres thick, he started pulling it up to find the end only to realise it trailed along the floor a ways, finding the end he cut a section off the tip, only for a thick sticky liquid to run out, it smelled sweet and Gar was almost instantly tempted to lick it up fortunately caution won out and he resisted. Looking at the vine section itself it was essentially a tube made of lots of long fibres, just running his thumb over the outside and the fibres started to come away and he could peel them off, he was already having ideas about things he could do with that. It was enough for him to want to take some with him.

  He took hold of a bundle of vines and gave a hard pull, intending to pull them down, there was no movement they did not fall. Thinking he might be able to snap it off if he did less at a time Gar took hold of one vine and pulled hard, still nothing. He could just cut down the bits that he could reach but Gar wanted as long a piece as he could get. Thinking it was worth it he decided he was going to have to climb up. He put his bag down at the base of the tree and just took his knife with him, it was one of the large knives he had and he ended up tucking it into his waistband, he needed to sort some sort of sheath and carrying strap for it. Sticking toes and fingers into the wood of the trunk he started to climb, as he got higher he noticed more of the vines stretching across branches to hang down in other places and from other trees, but it all lead back to one big cluster that was hanging high up suspended between several large trees. It had found one of the few gaps in the canopy so it could hang in the sun. Gar made his way closer to it, he could see it had a green fleshy lump with a sack hanging under it the top open, it was giving of a sweet smell similar to the stuff in the vines but not quite the same there was something different about it. He was still tempted to try and taste it though, it also had a number of thicker vines with long thorns on them some being used to hold it up from the surrounding trees some curled up near the lump almost looking to hide or defend it. Whatever this thing was Gar wanted a closer look at it and he couldn’t do that while it was hanging there, in realising that he turned his mind to how to get it down.

  There were fourteen of the thicker vines attaching the plant to three of the surrounding trees at varying different heights. Gar mapped out what he needed to do in his head, to get it down he wouldn’t have to cut all of the vines holding it up if he could just find enough of the right ones gravity would do the rest of the work for him. Gar found nine of the fourteen vines that he believed if cut would drop the plant to the floor, three on the tree he was in then two and four on the other two trees respectively, the vines he wouldn’t be cutting were all thinner or attached to smaller branches of the trees and he hoped by leaving them they would all snap together when they had to take the weight but would stop the plant swinging and getting tangled before he was ready to drop it.

  He worked his way to the closest vine on the tree he was in, crawling out along the branch it was holding on to, the vine was as thick as his wrist with thick barbed thorns sticking out of it. He pulled his knife out of his waistband raised it high and chopped down, this vine was much tougher than the one he had cut earlier, he had expected to go all the way through with the single swing but it took two more chops before the vine was severed, the sticky sweet sap spraying everywhere as it did so. He watched the central part swing a bit with the vine cut, his hands where sticky as he moved towards the next vine, he ignored it for now as he was likely to get covered in more before he was done. The other two vines on that tree went much the same several chops and the central mass was sent swinging and moving. A quick climb down and then Gar was climbing up the next tree with four vines to cut, he was up the tree and crawling along the branches to his targets in no time. With the extra swing from four more vines that anchored it in place being severed it started to look like the curled vines round the central lump where flailing, it was while watching the plant flail that he got his first clear view of the central growth and observe put a message over it.

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  “Slumbering vine level 4”

  This thing wasn’t just a plant it was a monster, those vines really were flailing about moving on their own. Watching them he could see they were moving it wasn’t fast but they were moving each independently in different directions and not with the swing of the plant. Gar felt both the excitement of a fight and risk pushing him forwards and the fear holding him back the moment he knew it was a monster. What was he going to do? He stood on a branch near the trunk. He felt relatively safe with the four he had planned to cut on this tree gone there was only one vine left attached to it that was much higher up on a thinner branch, there were some of the thinner vines without thorns draped across the tree but even those where a way away from him and he hadn’t seen any of them move yet, so much so that he suspected they couldn’t. He felt somewhat safe where he was, evaluating what he knew. The body of this monster could be useful to him, it seemed to be slow moving and also not able to see, all good things. It was however still a monster at double his level he did not know the extent of its ability’s and it was so different from anything on earth he couldn’t even guess, there would be the added benefit of the experience if he killed it, levelling up might not be his priority but it could only help his survival. Gar made up his mind to continue with his plan and decide what next once he had dropped the thing to the ground, he only had two more on the final tree to cut before he thought it should drop.

  He climbed down from his spot in the tree and cautiously took a wide circle round to the other tree, he didn’t think the plant could see or hear but didn’t know if it had any other way of sensing him, so figured caution was the best tactic. He made it to the tree with the plant showing no sign of sensing him it had taken some time as he avoided all vines, both hanging and trailing along the ground. Again the climb was the easy part and he slowly shuffled along the branch before getting to the vine, he moved extremely slowly waiting for any change or reaction from the slumbering vine, when nothing happened he brought the knife down once, twice, three times, hard in rapid succession. The vine fell and the body swung dropping lower as the remaining branches holding it up bent. It was only when he saw one of the flailing vines getting close to another tree did he realise what it was doing it was trying to find somewhere else to anchor itself, he did not want that or he could end up back where he started. Time was of the essence so he sped up a quick crawl back to the trunk, a short climb to another branch, a crawl across it no slow movements or hanging around, a few rapid chops with the knife and the vine severed, the plant dropped again before stopping and for a moment Gar thought he hadn’t done enough but then he heard a branch snap from the tree he was in and it fell past him vine still attached, he heard several more loud cracks seeming like gunshots in the quiet forest and the slumbering vine began to fall.

  It plummeted to the ground swinging slightly as the trailing thin vines snagged before pulling free, it hit with a slap and skidded a little before coming to a stop. It wasn’t dead Gar hadn’t received a kill notification, it had used a number of the curled thicker vines to cushion its fall breaking them under it. Gar didn’t know how smart this thing was and whether that was intended or just an accident, either way it had probably saved the things life, several of the thorny vines where even now starting to move about as he stood and watched it, with a number of the vines it could move broken and it now moving slower than before and it had never been moving particularly fast, Gar was confident he could defeat it without getting seriously injured. He climbed down from the tree then started approaching the central mass of the slumbering vine working his way round so he wasn’t facing the sack that sweet but different smell was coming from, he wanted to keep that whole if he could. Instead he faced the green growth of plant matter figuring that was the most obvious central area, as he approached there were two vines flailing about in the direction he was coming from but it seemed rather slow and laboured movement to Gar. He had picked up his spear on his way to this point and held it up in front of him looking for an opportunity to move forward and stab the central mass, then it came the two vines moved in opposite directions away from each other he waited a couple of seconds more for the gap to widen then darted in leading with the spear. He had waited too long as he moved in the vine on his left came back towards him, it hit his left arm with a lot more force than he thought it should, he was scratched by several thorns and a couple of the barbed ends snapped off in his arm. Already committed Gar stumbled and half lunged half fell at the central mass, the tip of his spear pierced the flesh just as the end of the vine that hit him came back and whipped across his side, already off balance he fell bringing his spear with him dragging a big cut through the plant as he went, he was feeling light headed and his left side was numb but as he lay on the ground he watched as the plants movements slowed and then stop, until he got a notification

  “You have killed a level 4 slumbering vine 21 experience awarded”