Chapter 56: Ferocious Moss

The Seven Steele House shared a gable wall with its neighbor. The main structures were tightly connected, looking like a single entity from the side. However, each household had its own independent front yard enclosed by a wall, ensuring they didn’t interfere with one another.

This structure meant that if the neighbor’s interior was breached, the Mutant Rats would likely invade the Seven Steele House directly through that seemingly thick shared wall. Since the neighbor’s house had already fallen, it meant they would soon be besieged by Mutant Rats breaking through the back wall.

This neighbor was none other than the family of Marcus Wyatt—the same man who had plotted to rape and kill the original owner of Sev’s body right after Sev Steele had crossed over into this world.

Marcus and his older cousin, Miles Wyatt, had depended on each other since childhood, and they had jointly applied for this house back in the day. Later on, Miles hooked up with a lover. The woman would drop by every now and then to fool around with him, and whenever Miles had a good haul, he would share some of the spoils with her. Marcus had plenty of complaints about this arrangement, always feeling like he was getting the short end of the stick.

Swayed by his lover’s pillow talk, Miles grew increasingly contemptuous of his incompetent and petty cousin. As a result, when Marcus died in the jaws of a Mutant Pine Marten the other day and his watch showed no vital signs, Miles received the official death notice but didn’t even bother to look for his body. Instead, he simply treated the remaining five thousand or so points in Marcus’s account as his inheritance and transferred them into his own name.

The original owner of the body had always kept this family at arm’s length. After Marcus died and Sev crossed over, she had never interacted with them either. She never expected to be dragged down by them today. Sev cursed inwardly, "What terrible luck!"

Looking at the dwindling amount of the mixed liquid, everyone’s expression turned grim. Without the help of the toxic spray, they couldn’t hold the line at all. If a hole was broken through the back wall now, defending the house would be completely impossible.

Little Rose also knew that they didn’t have enough lemon juice left. But the Mutated Lemon Fruit tree was completely bare; there wasn’t a single fruit left on it. Using her Ability to accelerate its growth now was obviously too late, as the process required going from flowering to fruiting, and finally to ripening. After that, the ripe fruits still had to be picked, crushed, and filtered to extract the lemon juice.

What could she do? Rose was so anxious that her small hands began to sweat.

Suddenly, she spotted Curly burying its head in the box and couldn’t help but complain. "Curly, you always bully Coco Holden, but now that the big rats are here, you act like a coward hiding in your shell! You’re only tough at home!"

The despised Curly suddenly raised its head. Its branches transformed into vines that wrapped directly around her wrist. At the tips of the vines, several sharp thorns abruptly sprouted and pierced fiercely into her skin.

"Ouch—that hurts! You big meanie, what are you doing?" Rose gasped, crying out in pain.

Four or five Blood Beads welled up from her wrist, and Curly instantly sucked them dry. Everything happened in a flash. Before Rose could even react, a cute little girl’s voice rang out in her mind.

"Master, Curly is super strong! As long as you share your Ability with me, I can wipe out those stinky rats in minutes!"

No one else noticed the scene of Moss actively forming a contract with Rose, but it didn’t escape Doctor Jenkins’s senses. His face lit up with pleasant surprise, and he muttered to himself, "As expected of a Wood Element genius. She actually made a Mutated plant willingly acknowledge her as its master!"

Wild Mutated plants were much harder to tame than Mutant Beasts. After all, communication between humans and plants was significantly more difficult than between humans and animals.

However, what he didn’t know was the real reason Curly had willingly followed Sev Steele in the first place. Firstly, she and Hayden Hanson had helped wipe out the Army Ant nest, preventing its mother plant’s roots from being entirely devoured by the giant ants. Secondly, the mother plant had detected the faint residual traces of Wood Ability on Sev. From this, it could be deduced that there was definitely a Wood Ability User by her side, someone she shared a close relationship with.

Curly was a seedling separated from the mother Mutated Quillwort, and it was also the strongest among the several seedlings. The mother plant had sent it away, in truth, for the sake of propagating their species.

A plant’s instinct was to reproduce; this was deeply ingrained in their genetics. Once Mutated plants gained Spiritual Wisdom, they better understood the benefits of scattering their offspring into different environments to grow. For one, it reduced the competition for territory and nutrients among the descendants. For another, it provided a chance for their offspring to reign supreme in new territories.

The mother Mutated Quillwort had finally encountered someone connected to a Wood Ability User and naturally wanted to seize the opportunity. That was what led to the deliberate gifting of its seedling.