Wolf in Sheep's Wool

I turned to leave the room to try to find some place to do something.

'Honestly, I don't even know what to do at this point. Like, was the dumb speech shit supposed to last the whole day? The first classes are tomorrow, so what in the world do they want us to do?'

I stopped and turned back around, only to find that the woman I had just fought had disappeared, only leaving the marks on the walls and floor as evidence of the fight.

I suppose I'll just socialise. I guess. No point in trying to spend every waking moment working on my skills, I still have even 3 years until the military would even think of training me. Plenty of time to abuse my Corruption and Mutation skills.

On some whim, I looked out the window, expecting something magical, as usually happens in shows when the main character does things on a whim, although all that awaited my peering was an open field, brimming with grasses that, now that I take a closer look, are not the usual grasses from my own world.

I leapt out the window, acting on this weird yearning for the grass, and ran at a breakneck speed out to the meadow, the wind flowing by in the opposite direction, as the shape of the grass slowly revealed itself to be less and less like that which I was familiar with. I started noticing the extra small details; seeing the contour of the blades, the structure of the grass compared to the other plants.

I carefully extracted a single blade of grass, attempting the preserve even the thinnest root, despite the pitiful level of success.

The basic structure of it was quite similar to the common grass in my old world, but I could feel in the core of my being that there was something different. Something off about this grass.

I examined the sample once more, squinting at every section of it, trying to quench the thirst I felt when I thought about what I was missing.

Then, after about 12 minute of agonising examination, a thin strand of root caught my eye. I must've overlooked it as a consequence of my poor gardening skills. My thumb was as green as the coins in this world are, which is to say, not at all. One never has to learn to garden when living in the lap of luxury since one was 25.

I followed the strand of root from the bulb of the grass all the way down to where it disappeared underneath the moist soil.

I had discovered something new, but it didn't seem like that was all there was to it. I figured that I wouldn't be able to discern anything new about the grass by just crouching in a meadow for a stupid amount of time, so I decided that I would keep the sample I had and mull over why that root would be so long in the rest of the time I had.

I slipped the grass into a pocket on the inside of my jacket, a large yet breathable garment that my mother had given to me the eve before I left for the academy. It was pretty amusing to learn that pockets are not a common occurrence in this world at all. Luckily for me, I had vaguely understood how to sew in my previous life, really only doing so to spend time with my grandparents. It took a few days, but I was able to work out how to sew the pocket on without piercing through the fabric entirely.

I went to stand up and walk away, starting to think about something to pass the time, maybe finding out where I'm going to be sleeping tonight. Unexpectedly however, I felt a slight resistance, and felt the grass blade be tugged out of my pocket. It plopped to the ground as I slowly rotated backwards with quite the quizzical look on my face.

'What?'

I traced the root I had found earlier all the way towards the soil, but this time I punched my finger through the dirt until it encountered something quite squishy.

I quickly dug through up to the squish thing, which turned out to be a large ball of grass roots all tangled together.

As I tugged on different roots in the ball, I discovered that they were all connected to different blades of grass, and when I interacted with one of the blades, the ball would have a faint green glow.

Poking around a bit more led me to several more small root balls, and even then when I interacted with a grass blade from the first root, all the balls would light up with the very same green glow.

Brrooop!

A panel similar to the one that people's statistics are displayed upon appeared in my vision.

Name: Webroot

Classification: Plant, Subclass: Weed

Alchemical Properties: Unknown

Magical Properties: Unknown

Special Features: Hive Mind, Mimic

Market Value: 2 Akharii

The webroot is a common household weed, growing nearly everywhere it can. It is native to Efluevia, and is most commonly found there as well. Webroot is also colloquially known as 'Fool's Gold', primarily a result of young children who dream of becoming alchemists or enchanters may come across a webroot colony mimicking a very expensive herb or flower. The weed is especially a nuisance to eradicate due to it's other feature, Hive Mind. Interactions with any part of the webroot colony are broadcasted near instantly to the rest of the colony, and measures are immediately taken to deal with a threat, or to lure in prey. Webroot usually takes on the diet of the plant it's mimicking, however when fresh meat willingly strides into its lair, there's no telling what will and will not come out of that debacle.

'What in the world? This isn't grass whatsoever! It's crabgrass from hell! How much vegetation in this world is just webroot in disguise? *Inhales* Oookay. Might as well just take as much as is mildly reasonable, and just start doing shit to it. Hopefully I'll be able to see if it has any alchemical or magical properties. Now let me go back to my… oh. I don't know where I will sleep tonight. Thaaaat's a bit of an issue.'

I walked back toward the building that I had rushed out of in my mad dash for the webroot, only to find that the webroot had tangled itself around my legs, and I couldn't move even a centimetre. A deafening groan echoed across the meadow, as I was pulled further and further in, falling on the ground and being essentially defenceless.

James tried ripping the webroot off his legs, but the tricky weed simply latched onto his arms instead, covering his hands in moisture and trapping his arms underneath a huge mass of plant.

The farther away James was from the academy, the more the webroot started to morph into its true form, a wet, wiggling mass of vines, each and every one coated with a translucent slime.

The vines, behaving as if capturing a lamb for slaughter, flung around James' face, drowning out any attempt to scream for whatever help could possibly be in this huge domain of webroot, or as was it's true name, The World Parasite.

After a few minutes of intense struggle, James fell unconscious, the world fading out of view as the only image in his mind was a slithering mass of sticky, slimy, disgusting plants.