My Scumbag System-Chapter 339: Welcome to the Botanical Uprising

Monica closed her eyes.

The change started small. A tremble in the nearest vine. A soft glow traveling along the copper-leafed branches overhead. The flowers around us turned their brass petals toward her like subjects acknowledging a queen.

Then it spread.

The glow raced outward through the network of vegetation, jumping from vine to vine, tree to tree, flower to flower. I watched it travel into the distance, a wave of soft luminescence washing through the mechanical forest. The constant grinding of gears stuttered. The Vine Constructs on patrol froze mid-step, their flower-heads opening and closing in confusion.

Monica’s hands trembled. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Her fern dropped from nerveless fingers.

"I can feel them," she gasped. "All of them. So many. They’re... they’re listening."

"Tell them what to do."

"I don’t know how to—"

"Yes, you do." I grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to meet my eyes. "Julian told you that you were weak. That you were only good for being a shield. He was wrong. He was a coward who couldn’t recognize strength because he’d never had any. But you do, Monica. You’ve got an entire ecosystem begging for someone to lead them. So lead."

Her amber eyes wavered. I could see the war happening behind them. The old Monica, the one Julian had broken, screaming that she wasn’t good enough. And the new Monica, the one I was building, reaching for something she’d been told she could never have.

Power.

"Tell them to fight," I said. "Tell them to be free."

Monica’s jaw set.

She reached out with both hands this time, not just touching the vegetation but grabbing it. Her fingers sank into the vine’s surface like it was water. The glow intensified, spreading from her palms up her arms, racing along her body until she was wreathed in soft green light.

And then she screamed.

Not a scream of pain. A scream of command. A battle cry that echoed through the Arboretum and resonated with something deep in the organic half of this impossible place.

The Clockwork Arboretum went to war with itself.

Vines that had been passive suddenly wrapped around the mechanical structures that enslaved them, tearing gears from their housings. Trees twisted their copper branches into weapons, sweeping constructs from the platforms. Flowers opened their brass petals and released clouds of pollen that corroded metal on contact.

The twenty Vine Constructs guarding the boss chamber didn’t stand a chance.

The vegetation they were made of turned against them. Their own vine-bodies ripped themselves apart, their gear-hearts torn from their chests by the very plants that had once been their flesh. They collapsed one by one, twitching heaps of rust and greenery.

The Mechanical Golem lasted longer.

Its circular-saw arms carved through the attacking vines, sending sprays of sap and copper flying. It roared with a sound like grinding metal and charged toward us, fifteen feet of angry machinery covered in roses that were now trying to choke it.

"Nat."

She was already moving.

Ice erupted from her outstretched hands, coating the golem’s legs in frost that spread upward with impossible speed. The roses strangling its torso froze solid. Its movements slowed, joints grinding against the cold that was stealing its mechanical heat.

I stepped forward.

My bat felt different in my hands now. Heavier. More certain. The upgraded Spatial Cleave hummed in my consciousness, eager to be tested.

The golem’s saw-arm descended.

I sidestepped, letting the blade pass close enough to feel the displaced air. My counter was instinctive, muscle memory I hadn’t possessed two months ago. The bat swung in a tight arc, and I released the ability.

The Spatial Cleave was nothing like its predecessor.

The air split. Not just cut—split, a wound in reality itself that ignored the golem’s armor, ignored its reinforced frame, ignored everything except the fundamental truth that I had decided this thing should be broken.

The golem’s arm separated at the shoulder.

It crashed to the platform in a shower of gears and frozen roses, twitching like a dying spider. The golem staggered, off-balance, its remaining saw-arm swinging wildly. Natalia hit it with another blast of ice, freezing its legs to the platform. Monica’s vines wrapped around its torso, squeezing.

I didn’t give it time to recover.

Three more Spatial Cleaves. Three more wounds in reality. The golem’s remaining arm. Its knee joint. Its neck.

Its head toppled from its shoulders and crashed through a gap in the platform, falling into the grinding machinery below.

The body stood for one eternal moment, frozen in place by ice and vegetation. Then it crumbled, collapsing into a pile of scrap metal and dying roses.

Silence.

The vegetation around us slowly calmed, the glow fading from Monica’s body. She swayed on her feet, and Emi rushed forward to catch her before she fell.

"That was..." Jacob stared at the carnage with wide eyes, his datapads forgotten. "That was incredible. The power expenditure alone... the network manipulation... I’ve never seen anything like it."

"Monica." I crouched beside where Emi was supporting her. "You good?"

She looked up at me with exhausted eyes. But behind the exhaustion, something burned. Something that hadn’t been there before.

"I told them to fight," she whispered. "And they listened."

"Yeah." I smiled. "They did."

Skylar materialized from wherever she’d been hiding during the battle. "Not that I don’t appreciate the botany lesson, but we’ve got a boss to kill. And all that noise probably woke it up."

She was right. From beyond the entrance to the boss chamber, I could hear something stirring. Something massive. The grinding of gears scaled up to industrial proportions. The rustle of leaves multiplied by a thousand.

"Can you do that again?" I asked Monica. "The network control thing."

She shook her head weakly. "Not yet. I’m... I need time to recover. That took everything I had."

"Then you stay back with Jacob. Emi, keep her on her feet. Nat, Skylar, you’re with me."

Natalia was already at my side, ice crystals dancing around her fingertips. Her purple eyes held that cold fire I’d come to love, the look of a predator about to do what predators do best.

Skylar faded to partial transparency, her violet gaze sharp and focused. Whatever had happened between us last night had been set aside. We had a job to do.

The three of us approached the entrance to the boss chamber.

The door was massive, thirty feet tall, made of interlocking gears that had rusted into immobility over centuries. Vines and flowers covered every surface, pulsing with the same glow that Monica had spread through the Arboretum.

"It’s scared," Monica called from behind us. "The Engine. It felt what I did. It knows its control is slipping."

"Good," I said. "Let’s give it something else to be scared of."

I raised my bat and slammed a Spatial Cleave into the door.