Episode-924
Chapter : 1847
One goblin-like creature was wrapped in a smaller vine. The creature screamed, clawing at the plant. But the vine didn't crush him. It didn't break his bones. Instead, the thorns dug into his skin, and the vine began to pulse with a rhythmic light.
Suck. Suck. Suck.
Lloyd watched through his sensor display as the goblin’s life force was drained. The demon’s body withered rapidly, turning grey and dry like a mummy. In seconds, the demon collapsed into a pile of dust. The vine, having fed, grew thicker and brighter. It turned toward the center of the square, hungry for more.
"It is a battery system," Lloyd realized, his voice dropping to a cold monotone. "Rubel isn't just trying to crush us. He is trying to harvest us. This entire garden is a biological fuel cell, and we are the premium gasoline."
The air in the square began to change. The pressure dropped rapidly. The massive array of vines was creating a magical vacuum, sucking the oxygen and the mana out of the atmosphere. It became hard to breathe. The humidity rose, thick with the smell of acid and rot.
Hundreds of the purple, snake-like vines turned their heads toward the center of the plaza. They sensed the immense power radiating from Lloyd and Ben. To these hungry plants, the two warriors shone like beacons in the dark.
"Ben," Lloyd said, taking a step back as the circle of vines tightened. "Check your seals. We are about to be processed."
"Let them try," Ben growled, his body beginning to radiate a grey, heavy aura. "I'm not on the menu."
The tactical situation collapsed from "manageable" to "catastrophic" in the blink of an eye.
The wall of purple vines closed in. There was no space to maneuver anymore. The sky above was blocked out by a canopy of writhing, thorny branches. Lloyd and Ben were trapped in a cage of hungry vegetation.
"Back! Stay back!" Ben roared.
The Ironwood Knight was fighting for his life. He abandoned precision for raw power. He spun his lance in a whirlwind of steel, hacking at the encroaching wall. Chop. Slash. Smash. Purple limbs flew through the air, but the garden didn't care.
A thick vine, acting with intelligent malice, waited for Ben to commit to a swing. As Ben lunged forward, a second vine shot out from the ground beneath him. It wrapped around his ankle.
"Got you," a voice seemed to whisper in the wind, though it was just the sound of the leaves rustling.
Ben was yanked off his feet. He hit the ground hard, his armor clanging against the broken stones. Before he could recover, three more vines lashed out. One wrapped around his waist, another around his chest, and a third seized his lance arm.
"Lloyd!" Ben gasped, struggling against the grip. "The thorns... they are piercing the armor! It feels like... draining!"
Ben’s first instinct was violence. He didn't panic; he got angry. He tried to summon his brute strength, to channel the raw density of his Steel Blood to crush the plants.
"Steel Blood: Kiloton Press!" Ben shouted.
His armor glowed with a heavy, dark light. He tried to increase his mass, to become heavy enough to shatter the vines holding him.
But the weight never came.
As Ben pushed his mana out of his core to fuel the weight, the vines didn't break. They pulsed. The thorns digging into Ben’s armor acted like conduits. They absorbed the kinetic mana instantly. The dark glow on Ben’s armor faded, sucked away into the purple flesh of the plants. The vines grew larger, swollen with Ben’s stolen power.
"What?" Ben snarled, his eye widening. "They ate the gravity? That's impossible!"
"Do not use mana!" Lloyd shouted, his voice cutting through the chaos. "Ben, stop! You are feeding the circuit! They are designed to absorb energy, not resist it! It's a mana-sink!"
Lloyd needed to act. He couldn't let his friend be turned into a dried husk. He calculated the distance to Ben—fifteen feet. He could bridge that gap instantly with his [Void Step] teleportation.
"Initiating spatial jump," Lloyd muttered. He focused his mind on the coordinates next to Ben. He reached for the fabric of space, intending to fold it.
Error.
The spell fizzled in his brain. It felt like trying to run through water that had suddenly turned into ice. Lloyd staggered, a sharp pain shooting through his temples.
Chapter : 1848
"Space is locked," Lloyd realized, looking at the glowing red runes on the ground. "The mana density in the air is too high. The 'noise' from the Blood Array is jamming the frequency. I can't teleport."
He was grounded. And now, he was targeted.
With Ben immobilized, the garden turned its full attention to Lloyd. A massive vine, the alpha of the pack, reared up in front of him. It was thick as a column, covered in spikes that dripped with neurotoxin.
It struck.
Lloyd dodged the first blow, sliding underneath the massive trunk. He rolled to his feet, checking his HUD.
[Warning: Enemy Target Locked.]
[Direction: All sides.]
Two more vines attacked from his blind spots. He blocked one with his armored forearm, the metal sparking. But the third one caught him. It whipped around his waist, lifting him ten feet into the air.
The constriction was immediate and crushing. The thorns ground against the plates of his Aegis Suit, screeching like nails on a chalkboard.
[Alert: External Pressure Critical.]
[Alert: Shield Integrity Falling. 80%... 70%...]
[Warning: Mana Siphon Detected.]
Lloyd felt the drain. It was a cold, sickening sensation in the pit of his stomach. The city was bypassing his physical armor and pulling directly at his Golem Heart. His energy reserves were plummeting.
"I need to cut it," Lloyd thought. His instinct—the warrior reflex trained into him by the Ferrum bloodline—screamed at him to fight back with steel.
Summon the blades. Cut the vine. Use the Steel Blood.
He started to manifest the power. He visualized the iron in his blood hardening, ready to erupt from his skin in a storm of razor-sharp spikes.
But then, his engineer’s mind saw the schematic.
He looked at the vine wrapping around him. He saw the wet, conductive sap inside it. He saw the connection running down the vine, into the ground, and plugging directly into the massive Blood Array battery.
And he saw himself. If he summoned metal, he would become a conductive rod.
"If I turn into steel now," Lloyd realized with horror, "I am connecting myself to the main power grid."
Metal conducts electricity. Metal conducts mana. If he used [Steel Blood], he wouldn't be cutting the vine; he would be completing the circuit. The massive suction of the city would have a direct, resistance-free path into his soul. He would be drained dry in a microsecond.
"Rubel..." Lloyd whispered, the realization hitting him harder than the vine. "You clever, twisted old man."
Rubel knew Lloyd. He knew the Ferrum family. He knew their pride and their power lay in metal. So he built a trap where metal was the trigger for suicide. He had weaponized Lloyd’s own greatest strength against him.
Lloyd forced his body to relax. He suppressed the Steel Blood, leaving himself defenseless in the grip of the plant. He hung there, suspended in the air, his suit alarms blaring.
He looked down. Ben was almost completely buried under a writhing pile of purple vegetation. Only the glow of his fading red eye was visible. Ben was trying to activate his Spirit: Sloth to freeze the vines, but the drain was faster than his activation time.
He looked up. High above, on the palace balcony, a small figure was watching. Lloyd couldn't see the face, but he knew Rubel was smiling. The trap was perfect. It neutralized physical strength, it ate magical energy, and it turned the Ferrum bloodline’s signature art into a death sentence.
Lloyd dangled in the air, the pressure on his ribs increasing. He was running out of options. He was running out of mana.
"Okay," Lloyd whispered to himself, his breath fogging the visor. "The physics of this trap are solid. I cannot fight the hunger with force."
He closed his eyes, shutting out the red sky and the screaming alarms. He needed to stop thinking like a soldier who wanted to break the wall. He needed to think like an engineer who wanted to redirect the flow.
"You want to eat me?" Lloyd thought, a cold, dangerous idea forming in the back of his mind. "You want to drain my energy? Fine. But you should be careful what you swallow."
He reached deep into his inventory, past the steel, past the fire.
Lloyd opened his eyes. The fear was gone. The panic was gone. He looked at the vine squeezing him not as a monster, but as a pipe.