Enemies Are All Nourishment for My Fungi..

Chapter 51: Chapter 51 Second Mission (6)

The movement speed of Ye Nai’s trio had slowed down considerably by this point. It was equivalent to long periods of variable-speed running, compounded by the unpredictable changes in pace, which doubled the fatigue.

Only Ye Nai remained energetically hopping around, even learning to use a grenade gun in the process. Those two warriors only needed to run back and forth with empty hands, saving as much energy as possible to preserve their strength to survive.

Because, in the worst-case scenario, of course, two people were needed to clear the battlefield. Otherwise, would they really expect her, a civilian, to take point?

“There’s someone over there!”

Ye Nai was squatting in the underbrush loading her gun when a gust of wind stirred the weeds. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she caught a glimpse of a piece of military fabric.

The two vigilant warriors carefully crawled over to check.

...

“It’s from Squad Four!”

“He’s still alive!”

“No good, the lower half is all blood. We need a hemostatic bandage!”

Ye Nai, dragging the loaded gun, fished out a storage box from Space. It contained items such as gauze, bandages, and hemostatic bandages of the buckle type—a personal purchase she had made in advance. She hadn’t expected to use it so soon, but fortunately, it wasn’t for her own injury.

The two warriors unpacked two hemostatic bandages and securely tied both around the wounded man’s legs to stop the bleeding.

“He can’t be moved. You two stay with him and call for help while I go fire off a few shots.”

Ye Nai deployed a radio and an outdoor power source, leaving the two men some high-calorie snacks, beverages, gauze, saline solution, plus two long guns and a box of ammo. She then took the grenade gun and disappeared into the deep, people-less underbrush.

Just as she was looking for an angle to fire, a vine whipped onto the ground with a snap, and when it swung up again, Ye Nai saw it had coiled around a person.

There was no sign of life from that person; it was unclear whether they were unconscious or dead, but she couldn’t allow them to become a blood pack for the Bloodthirsty Vine.

Decisively aiming her gun, as her sight lined up in the scope, she suddenly felt a subtle pull from some spiritual power. This pull slightly adjusted the height of her gun barrel, and then she firmly pulled the trigger.

With a bang, the grenade hit precisely at the front end of the vine, blowing apart the slender section and freeing the blood-sucked warrior, who fell to the ground with a thud.

The severed vine swung furiously in mid-air, creating a few sonic booms before violently lashing towards Ye Nai’s direction.

“YES!”

Ye Nai cheered just as the vine lashed down. She quickly dodged out of the way.

With a smack, the vine hit nothing but stirred up weeds and dust from the ground.

Covered in dust, Ye Nai spat a couple of times while hurriedly running away, simultaneously pulling a new grenade from Space to load into her gun, intending to first check whether the warrior was alive or dead.

But before she could reach him, she stumbled over a horribly maimed casualty.

With no visible rise and fall of the chest, Ye Nai couldn’t help but kneel and reach out to check for his breath.

At that moment, she noticed that the person was covered in fungus, which was discolored by blood, making it seem fused with the body.

A buzz rang in Ye Nai’s head.

“…Have the fungus drained all his blood?!”

The blood-red fuzzy fungus trembled slightly in the breeze. Under Ye Nai’s gaze, the blood color faded, and the fungus slowly receded as well.

Only then did Ye Nai clearly see that the thickest part of the fungus was ravaged by wounds, but by that time, the bleeding had stopped. She reached out again to check for breath, and although faint, it was indeed present.

“Damn it!”

Ye Nai cursed subconsciously, her days of online classes for Awakeners weren’t without merit, as she had managed to establish at least some fundamental knowledge.

On the battlefield, the only Awakeners who could compare to medics were those of the Healing System, scarce in number and difficult to cultivate, but once trained, they were lifesaving miracles.

They really could stop bleeding quickly and pull back those on the brink of death.

However, the injured person before her wasn’t in such a situation.

He was covered in Fungus, which had nothing to do with a Healer.

At that moment, Ye Nai only felt a tingling in her scalp as if struck by lightning that traveled down her spine to the soles of her feet.

Thrilling.

Her Fungus could not only kill but also save people!

Yet, she didn’t know the principle behind the Fungus saving a life.

Killing was easy, especially for creatures that breathed through their lungs, as the Fungus would grow and reproduce inside the body, block the airways, and suffocate them to death.

The principle of saving lives must be more complex; her spores were superpower spores, so the Fungus that grew from them was naturally an energy body. The energy body must produce some special reaction within the human body, thus being able to stop bleeding and save lives.

Ye Nai shook her head, casting aside the jumble of thoughts in her mind, took out a buckle-type hemostatic bandage, and tied it around each of the large wounds on the injured person.

It looked like the bleeding had stopped on the surface, but it was more reassuring to tie it up, in case an accidental movement later resulted in a fatal outcome.

After treating the wounds, she left the person where they were and rushed to find the warrior she had seen falling earlier.

The vines above her head were still thrashing about, snapping at any hint of movement.

As Ye Nai ran and dodged, she finally found the severely injured warrior.

Apart from his blood-covered face and body, she could see that his right hand and right leg were at an obvious angle of fracture.

But, just like the previous person, where there were bloody wounds on his body, there were Fungus strands, dyed blood-red. When Ye Nai arrived, the strands faded and disappeared, and the profusely bleeding wounds also stopped bleeding.

Ye Nai continued to tightly wrap his wounds with hemostatic bandages, then moved on to find others, all the while keeping an eye on the movement of the vines overhead. As soon as she noticed that someone had been caught, she immediately shot it down with her gun.

Her pistol shooting was always stable at around the seventh or eighth ring, but the grenade gun she was using now was hitting the target with every shot, not missing a single one.

The sparse, intermittent gunfire from elsewhere had also ceased by now, and it was unclear whether people had run out of targets or ammunition.

At the same time, the situation for the mutant plants wasn’t too good either; a large amount of Fungus was struggling mightily at its main root, the creature undergoing continuous weakening, desperately needing external energy supply. Its agile vine tips frantically rolled up the warriors on the ground to suck their blood for replenishment.

Then Ye Nai would shoot and break off that extended section of the vine that was coiling around someone.

It coiled one up, and she broke one off, again and again, and after several rounds, those originally long tendrils were noticeably shorter to the naked eye.

Ye Nai held her gun firmly, determined not to allow it any replenishment. Only depletion was allowed—if she could hold on, she could drag it out until it was finished.

Every so often, her shooting at the mutant plant’s vines provided a shred of comfort to the injured warriors laying amidst the weeds, conscious but downed.

There was still a comrade fighting and not fallen.

However, the sound of a gunshot only every few minutes also announced that the current combat power might be down to just one or two people.

Ye Nai fought as she searched for others.

Now, without others around, she boldly communicated with the Fungus to guide her, to see if her fellow warriors were dead or alive.