In a sick way, Matt hoped the analysis wand wouldn`t work at this distance. If it didn`t, he could flee from something which was, as far as he had been able to confirm, just a normal monster plant that could turn off all his skills at a whim.

　　And that was okay. Because then, the monster plant wouldn`t grow much faster than any other average monster plant. It totally wouldn`t eat his entire farm, then the continent he was standing on, before setting off another world-wide apocalypse that, well, he wouldn`t be around to see.

　　Instead, it turned out the wand had pretty good range.

　　The Great Plant Scourge of Gaia, Consumer of The Globe, Devastator of All (Core, Nascent)

　　There once was a planet where plants meant life. While this was true of every planet that harbored life to at least some extent, it was especially true on that planet. The people, like all people, had made mistakes. In penance, they devoted themselves to growth. They dedicated themselves to a kind of planetary stewardship that eventually led to a time of plenty that, were it known outside their world, would have been regarded as an unlikely legend.

　　The Scourge ended that. Endlessly adaptable, it spread so widely before it was discovered that no single effort could uproot it. Undaunted, the people rose up against it, united. Every man, woman, and child contributed effort, time, and resources to fighting it. It adapted. They changed tactics and developed new realms of science. It adapted. They dug into the very forces that underlain the universe, robbed the plant of the sun itself, and set a force in the sky that would separate it from the system itself for centuries.

　　It could not be stopped. It changed. It grew. It spread.

　　Without ever thinking a single thought, knowing a single fact, or feeling any emotion, the scourge ripped apart hundreds of millions of loving relationships. It destroyed centuries of art and science. It eradicated beauty and hope. It killed hundreds of millions of children in their beds.

　　And then, without a single eye left to see it, it starved to death. Its death throes left Gaia a barren, denuded ball of dust. It had consumed everything. It left nothing.

　　Now unwise hands have reached back through time to bring it to you. It is small now. Weak, by the standards of what it was. But it is growing and growing.

　　May whatever god you pray to have mercy on you. The Scourge has no concept of it.

　　Nascent stage details:

　　In the Scourge`s nascent state, it is growing at a rate of one meter every ten minutes. It is highly mobile for a plant, capable of uprooting itself and moving at a speed similar to an animal of similar size. It is currently not capable of articulating individual parts of its body in physical attacks, but can drain mana of all forms from living beings, objects, and atmospheres within a certain limited range.

　　"Shit."

　　Matt was already running.

　　"Matt! Where are you going?"

　　"Away from that thing. That`s the Scourge, Lucy. It`s small, but it`s the real deal."

　　"And you aren`t going to fight it? You are just going to let it have the farm?"

　　Matt shook his head as he ran. "No choice. It nuked half my stats and both my primary fighting skills in less than a second, and put me in enough pain that I couldn`t think. Without moving. I don`t even know where to hit it. I`m not even sure if hitting it will do any good. It`s out of our league."

　　Lucy paused for a second to consider this. Matt wasn`t sure what it was, but something in his voice or words kept her from arguing for once. She nodded in a suddenly determined kind of way.

　　"Fine. But where are we going?"

　　"First, to stock up on honey at the furthest Ape-iary. I`m guessing we`ll need it."

　　"And then?"

　　"To the only people who might be able to help."

　　—

　　Matt ruthlessly ransacked an Ape-iary. He felt bad about stealing all the ape-bee`s food, but he couldn`t take them with him, and his guess was that the Scourge would wipe them out just as thoroughly. Several pounds of honeycomb wrapped in an old tunic might be the difference between life and death, and he couldn`t let the advantage pass.

　　By the time he reached the museum, he was out of breath. Depending on how the Scourge grew, every moment might count, so he poured every single repair stone into the plinth. The plinth drank every one of the new, larger repair stones just as easily as it had with the smaller versions. It was a giant chunk of repair points, but it disappeared like it was nothing. And then so did Matt and Lucy, into the museum.

　　They sprinted through the prerequisites to activate the war effort exhibit, then entered.

　　"Welcome, reincarnator. I am pleased&" The hologram took note of Matt`s condition, and stopped whatever speech he was planning. "Are you all right?"

　　This was promising. The hologram had never been able to carry on a conversation like this before. Matt wasn`t wasting any time digging information out of it. "No. We aren`t. The Scourge is outside."

　　The hologram took a deep breath, then banged on the table in front of him, apparently overjoyed.

　　"The Scourge? Thank the soil. Oh, thank the light. You can`t know what this means!"

　　Matt glanced at Lucy, baffled.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

　　"You& like the Scourge?"

　　"No, no, of course not. It`s just that when we set the museum plan fully into motion, things did not look& good. But if the Scourge has not burned itself out, and you`re here& you got here in time. We had hoped that there would be something left," the hologram said.

　　No. No. I hate this.

　　Lucy, safely invisible, winced. "You have to tell him, Matt. We don`t have time and he deserves to know."

　　Matt steeled himself. "I`m sorry& hologram? How do you like people to refer to you?"

　　"Ramsen, please." The hologram gave a slight bow.

　　That was simple enough. The same as the man the hologram represented.

　　"Ramsen, I`m afraid we did get here too late. There isn`t anything left. It`s dust out there. I`m sorry. From what we can tell, it`s been centuries. It`s hard to say because&"

　　A muffled noise interrupted Matt as Ramsen stifled a sob. Ramsen seemed to accept Matt`s words quite easily, perhaps a side effect of him being a hologram for so long. Matt gave him a moment, during which Ramsen settled himself.

　　"No, it`s all right. I`m well aware of what the Scourge would likely leave behind once it ran out of resources. In its later incarnations, it would explode with a type of unstable, decaying mana when attacked. I can only imagine what would happen if all that were released at once. Even the Nullsteel might not survive it. But& if it`s gone, reincarnator, how can you be fleeing from it?"

　　Matt gave him as short of a version of things as he could. That he had been misled by the system to coming to Gaia, only to find nothing. That the system had turned on him because of his authority, that he had survived despite it, but that one of the attempts had somehow morphed into the return of the Scourge. That they were only able to talk now because of Matt`s efforts in repairing the museum, and that now they needed help.

　　"I& I see. And you said the Scourge was described as in its nascent stage? And a core? You are certain?"

　　Matt nodded. "So long as this wand is correct, yes."

　　"It should be. And it`s using our terms, which I suppose makes sense. We were the experts. Did you recover the map? Lay it here."

　　With the map unrolled on the floor, Ramsen stooped and indicated two or three particular resources. The bunker was one, but the other two were yet unvisited by Matt and Lucy, days worth of travel away.

　　"If there`s hope, it`s here. These buildings were Nullsteel, set up to withstand even the harshest of attacks. Each was intended to deal with different aspects of the Scourge. The first was an information analysis center. The scourge changed quickly. Whatever the latest information on its form was, it would have been recorded there."

　　"And the second location?"

　　"Munitions. You were wise to flee the Scourge. Strong as you are, it wouldn`t have even been a fight. But these were our brightest minds, our most dedicated scientists. They would not have stopped working until the last moment. I can`t say how much weaponry there will be that`s relevant to what you will face, but if anything on Gaia can hurt it, really hurt it, it`s there."

　　"And hiding out won`t work? I know it will eat my estate, but won`t it then starve?" Ramsen couldn`t see Lucy, and Matt had opted not to confuse the conversation by explaining she was there. But her consistent question had been if Matt could simply avoid the danger by ducking into a dungeon and wait the Scourge out.

　　"No. The fact that you are here at all means that`s not an option."

　　"Why?"

　　"You`ve mentioned the unmoving suns. I regret to tell you that it was us who did that. Centuries of science, plenty of resources, and a generation of exposure to the system had allowed us a grasp of the fundamentals of mana and nature that I doubt many civilizations could rival. We used what we knew to do that. We froze the suns. In many ways, we froze the planet."

　　"That doesn`t seem possible."

　　"It has been explained to me that we shouldn`t do it, or that we wouldn`t do it. But never that we couldn`t. The dedicated and united force of an entire planet can do a great deal. We altered the way the energy filtered in from the sun. We stopped the planet itself on its axis. We blocked out the system."

　　"But&"

　　"I know it doesn`t make sense. I assure you it`s true nonetheless. But if you are here, that`s beginning to break down. If you survived as long as you could, grew plants with any mana content at all, it means the shield we threw between the Scourge and the light of the sun is breaking down. That`s a large enough foothold. It won`t just survive. It will thrive."

　　"So we must fight."

　　"Or flee. Look." Ramsen pointed at another dot on the map, this one large but much more distant. "We had thought to flee ourselves, before we committed to the course of action I just described. We didn`t know then that cutting this world off would doom us. But here, at this point, we built a gate, one that allows travel away from Gaia and to other worlds."

　　He sighed. "It should have still worked, even despite the blocks we put in the way of the system. What we didn`t expect was that the system was also eager to hide what it did here. This planet`s system instance twisted what we had done, trapping us here just as we had trapped it."

　　Yet another reason to kill the system, Matt thought.

　　"But& I know this isn`t what you chose, reincarnator Matt. And it isn`t your fight, not in the same way it was ours. If you chose to flee, you`d be blameless. It would be understandable."

　　"Where would it take me?"

　　Ramsen shook his head. "We were never sure. What we knew was based on the fact that it piggybacked on the system`s ability to deliver reincarnations and establish dungeons. It would be another world, one from which reincarnators were taken or to which they were sent. It would have dungeons. Beyond that, we don`t know."

　　And there it was. Escape. Matt didn`t have to fight the Scourge, and he didn`t have to deal with at least this particular system instance. He could just& go. It might be dangerous, but what could be more dangerous than Gaia? He could survive almost anywhere. He was good at that.

　　He just had to run, and he`d be safe, or at least safe enough. He`d be free.