I’m an Alraune, a plant monster girl who can’t walk.
The one running over there is a Treant—a walking tree monster


Once again, I had been abandoned by men.


I was betrayed and discarded by my fiancé, the Hero, and now even the Treant that had a one-sided crush on me had left me behind.


——Hah.

My life really has been nothing but this kind of stuff.

The only ones I could trust were my female friends in the Forest Club.
From now on, I want to live in a forest of lilies.

Or rather, I want to become a lily myself…………



Being abandoned by a Treant who should have been my fellow plant monster, my thoughts started racing.


Until a little while ago, I had accepted that I would burn and stopped thinking.
But being betrayed by the Treant, who should’ve been my ally, made me furious.


I can’t forgive that Treant for abandoning me and escaping the fire alone.

If he’s allowed to live, then I want to live too.
I’m not ready to die yet.

The smoldering flame of my will to live was reignited inside me.


It was too late now, but if I could have caught and eaten that Treant, maybe I would have become capable of walking myself. I really messed up.
I shouldn’t have let him escape.

As they say, there’s no use crying over spilt milk
What’s done is done. I should let it go and think about the future

Right now, all I need to think about is what I must do to survive.

The problem is figuring out how to overcome this crisis.


There are two problems I must solve to survive:


First, the forest fire.
All the trees around me are engulfed in flames. Even if there is a clearing around me, being surrounded by a massive fire like this means it is only a matter of time before a stray spark falls on me. I’m not safe here.

Second, the blue flame from the Fire Dragon.
This special flame, which he said can’t be put out even with water, is slowly consuming my body. Already, about half of my bulb is burned. Soon, my entire body will be engulfed in the blue flame, and I’ll die.
The Fire Dragon clearly said they would burn me, so there’s no way I’ll survive.


Unless I solve both of these problems in the short time I have left, I’ll have no future.



——Yeah.

This was impossible, wasn’t it?

Even solving just one of these problems was difficult, so having two at once—this was an unbeatable game.


There was nothing I could do. Guess I was just destined to die in this forest.


As an Alraune, I’ve only been alive for about a year.
But in the outside world, four years have passed since I was betrayed and killed by the Hero and that awful junior apprentice saint.

So maybe it was just that my death came four years later than it would have.
I was already dead on that day I was betrayed as a saint,

This one year I spent living as an Alraune was like a bonus stage.
And now, it was simply coming to an end, swallowed by the flames

Thinking about it like that might make me feel a little better.



——————No, it won’t.


I’m still alive.
Even if it was a bonus stage, the game isn’t over yet.

I might have died once as a former saint, but I was reborn and living like this now.


As a former saint who has died once, I know this for sure.
Dying is terrifying.
I never want to experience that again.

I don’t want to die!
I want to live on as an Alraune!

I want to live a quiet life while photosynthesizing, enjoying myself as a plant.
That’s my dream as an Alraune.

To make that dream come true, I can’t give up yet—Ow!


While thinking about my aspirations and dreams, something hit me in the face

It hurt a little.

What is this?
A plant seed?

It looks like a seed flew over from somewhere.
But why now?

I picked up the seed with my fingers and looked at it closely.

Then, in the distance, I noticed a tree.


That was the tree where I found that strange, corn-like thing, back when I was expanding the clearing after the fire broke out.

Right now, it was starting to catch on fire.


Looking closer, the corn tree had other strange things growing on it.

Not just yellow corn-like parts, but red ones too.
No, looking closer, that wasn’t corn. They were flowers.

Or rather, it was a strange, brush-shaped flower.

Near those flowers, there were also brown, rough, nut-like things.
They look like mysterious fruits, clustered together like little open shells.


I don’t know why, but they felt familiar somehow.

Suddenly, I shifted my gaze to the seed in my hands.


A seed carried by the fire.


I knew what those unusual flowers were.

Ah, this was a Banksia seed.

I remember now.
I had seen this flower in a plant encyclopedia I read back when I was a high school girl.


Normally, a forest fire was disastrous for plants.
But the Banksia uses the fire to scatter its seeds and germinate.

When a Banksia fruit is heated by flames, the air inside bursts, launching its seeds outward. The seeds then fall onto the unburnt ground.

After the fire, the Banksia is the first to sprout on the scorched earth, monopolizing sunlight and nutrients, growing alone where no other plants remain.

That’s why the Banksia can continue leaving seeds behind, even through a fire.

In the world I knew as a high school girl, it was native to Australia.
Australia seemed to have a lot of wildfires, right? I remembered seeing koalas being rescued from them on TV.


That tree burning over there must have the same properties as a Banksia in this world. Considering its rate of growth, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were a magical tree.
Even though the distance from that Banksia tree to me was over ten meters, it was unusual for it to have scattered seeds all the way here.


Anyway, it wouldn’t be wrong to call these Banksia seeds.

Seeds from a magical Banksia in this world are surely fire-resistant too.
And it seemed that the Banksia tree had been scattering seeds around the clearing near me.
If the seeds landed on the ground here, they probably wouldn’t burn in the fire.



—Ah, I see.


Yes. I realized something.
I’ve come up with a solution that could break through this seemingly hopeless situation.


I might not have to die here after all.



But this method requires some courage and comes with risks.

Still, if it works, I can definitely survive.

The forest fire that surrounded me and the Fire Dragon’s blue flame that won’t go out—both can be easily resolved by this method.

The seemingly impossible challenge might be easily overcome.


Truthfully, I had actually been curious about this for a while.


When pollen from another male flower sticks to me, I get pollinated and turn into a seed.
The offspring from that seed is, in a sense, like a child between me and the unknown male flower.

In other words, a baby inheriting the genes of both.
At that point, it wouldn’t really be me anymore.
My existence wouldn’t be there.


So what if the other flower wasn’t an unknown male flower?
And from which part of the male and female flowers does the seed actually form?

I stared closely at the Banksia seed.

If I could do the same as the Banksia, I could survive.

The forest fire and the Fire Dragon’s blue flame that gnaws at my body—neither could burn me if I do this.

But there’s no guarantee.
And it’ll take a lot of courage.


Still, it’s worth trying, right?
If I just stay here, I would be burned alive anyway.


So, I’ve decided.


To fulfill my dream of living a quiet life while photosynthesizing, I cannot be burned to ashes here.


I’ll do whatever it takes to survive.
Prepared to take a desperate gamble, I clutched the Banksia seed in my hand.



When I first met Ms. Bee, I hated it.
Being forced was, of course, unacceptable.
Getting pollinated from a stranger’s pollen was terrifying.
I’m still scared of it even now.


Even so, I readied myself.

Because this was the only future left for me.


I feed my lower mouth the Banksia seed.
Luckily, the blue flame hadn’t burned me completely yet.

But with this, I should be able to do it.
I’ve gained the ability of the Banksia now.

The partner wasn’t some unknown male flower.

I have the power to generate the plants I’ve eaten.
And I can crossbreed them through selective breeding.
The genes I use as a base aren’t limited to the plants I’ve consumed.
Even my own genes should be something I could make use of.


For a flower, this would be its first and last experience.

My first experience.
But for a plant, it was also something perfectly natural.

Yes. I’ve decided.


I’m going to pollinate.

***

Author’s Note:

Thank you for reading.

Next Time: I’m Pollinating


TL’s Note:

The Banksia integrifolia, or commonly known as coast banksia/coastal banksia grows in the east coast of Australia. Usually, the Banksia is covered in “flower spike,” or inflorescence (or in other words, the cluster of flowers that surround the stem), which was the state the Banksia was in when our MC first discovered them (ch37). The flowers are usually a light shade of yellow, giving them that corn-like appearance. Though, the flowers can also appear as a wide array of colors.

It’s only after the Banksia undergoes seed dispersal through a serotiny trigger (a plant survival strategy where seeds are held in closed cones until a trigger, most commonly wildfires) does it gain the open nut-like shapes on its woody follicles that’s in this chapter.