Matt only had a few moments to wonder if the Scourge`s tactics were going to significantly change.

　　The first sign that they would came in the form of Matt being alive at all. At the exact moment the vines had collapsed, the mana attacks had also stopped. Matt`s mouth was full of ash, honey, and lord knows what else, but he wasn`t taking any chances. Swirling his tongue around his mouth as best he could, he downed it all, hoping to get even a slight buff against further attacks.

　　"Matt! Are you okay?"

　　"Yeah, for now." Matt swung his spear, shaking some of the ash off his body in the process. "I`m going back in."

　　"Wait, why are you naked? Dammit, that suit, Matt!" Lucy turned back to the Scourge.

　　"It`s the dumb acid skill! Just& look away? I have bigger problems right now."

　　Matt was down to very few resources, but with the Scourge visibly growing in front of his eyes, he couldn`t afford to give it much time. With no combat skills left and experience telling him he`d have a hard time cutting the thing in general, Matt switched to his Survivor`s Club. It would have to do.

　　There was no use hiding where he was. Screaming, he charged the Scourge. It was then that the second change in the Scourge`s tactics made itself known. One of the thinner vines the Scourge was growing suddenly detached from the main body and uncoiled almost straight up before cracking at him like a whip, faster than any of the thicker vines had moved before. Matt had gathered up a precious few points of stamina since burning it all on his over-powered scythe attack, and had to burn them to flare Spring Fighter and dodge the vine.

　　He was immediately glad as the tip of the vine made a sharp, inches deep cut in the ash, cracking like thunder.

　　Oh, fuck that, Matt thought. Especially naked. Nope.

　　Matt brought his club down on the vine, pulverizing a small section of it before nearly doubling over in pain as the vine hit him with a mana siphon. The honey in his system seemed to hold off any actual consequences to Matt`s body beyond the pain, but the moment the lance hit, three new vines rose from the Scourge`s mass. It was fueling its attacks with Matt`s Mana.

　　His situation was now pretty clear. The Scourge could still reach him through the extra range its vines gave it. Matt could run or attack, but not delay. It was either go all out, or give up entirely and abandon the planet to the Scourge.

　　Matt went all out. Between the adrenaline in his system and the small amount of stamina regen trickling in, he did pretty well at first. It seemed the actual mana-siphoning range of the thin vines was pretty limited, and after a few more minor hits from the ability, Matt had a pretty good idea of that range. He zig-zagged wildly, swinging his club when necessary to deflect vines that got too close, and strafing closer and closer to the main bulk of the body. He bit down on one of the vines, hoping that something would happen. Nothing did. So he kept moving forward. If he could just get to the taproot, he could end this.

　　He was only a few strides away when the man-sized tower of vines that made up the Scourge suddenly scrunched downwards, then shot out several feet on every side, spreading along the ground like a net. Matt didn`t have time to contemplate that the net was probably meant to catch him before it did.

　　He was hit by several mana lances at once, then a whip when Spring Fighter failed to activate. Before he could get out of the net, the vines snaked around his feet, keeping him from withdrawing at all. The lancing intensified, and he was losing skills and stats like crazy. And just before he fell, finally, horrifically, his last trap was sprung.

　　—

　　A few days before, Lucy and Matt had taken turns both refusing to do something, and trying to convince the other to to do the same thing. It was completely necessary. It was, if they thought about it, nothing anyone concerned would have a problem with. Both of them acknowledged this. But it was also going to be the worst thing either of them had ever done, and as this occurred after Matt ate both the Clownrat and the Meltbats, this was saying something.

　　Right now, it was Lucy`s turn to object.

　　"But you`ll have to&"

　　"I know."

　　"And the Gaians&"

　　"I know, but it`s what they would have wanted us to do. We know that. We know why they would have wanted that."

　　Lucy`s look turned stern.

　　"Matt, if we do this, what does that make us?"

　　Matt sighed.

　　"It makes us people who will do anything to kill the Scourge, and to put the hurt on the system. And that makes us& I don`t know. Desperate. Shameless. I get it. Believe me, Lucy, I don`t feel good about this either."

　　Matt knelt at Lucy`s eyeline.

　　"But you know what else it makes us?"The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

　　"What?"

　　"People who will do anything, sacrifice anything, to kill the Scourge and protect this planet. It makes us part of the Gaian resistance."

　　Lucy opened her mouth to object, then closed it wordlessly, a thoughtful look on her face. Finally, she met Matt`s eyes again.

　　"Fine. Fight the Scourge, Matt."

　　"Yup. Fight the Scourge."

　　—

　　Building a trebuchet with two payloads hadn`t been hard. It took a few minor redesigns before Trapper Keeper would recognize it as a single trap, for instance. It turned out that the trick was to make both parts of the trap work off the same trigger, which took a while to figure out, but wasn`t exactly rocket science.

　　Loading it had been harder. Matt had let Lucy wander off while he did that part, so she didn`t have to see. He would have loved the same luxury, but as the only person on the team who could manipulate matter, he was stuck with the dirty job by default.

　　The hardest part, though, was this moment. Matt`s eyes were turned into the sky, and as if in slow motion he saw a half dozen ancient corpses sailing through the air, all of which had left the trebuchet at different trajectories and were now being affected by air resistance in different ways.

　　What finally convinced Matt to do this was simple. Every note, every letter, and every record he found as they went through the Gaian facilities that referenced the Gaian`s choice to poison themselves, to turn their bodies into anti-Scourge weapons at the cost of their own lives, had expressed hope that one day the Scourge would find them. That it would consume them. That sacrificing their final days or hours wouldn`t be in vain.

　　That didn`t make this better. Matt had not expected the Scourge to be confined to a small space. He had assumed he was launching at a large, spread-out target, one he couldn`t miss. As the mummified bodies started coming to ground, they didn`t just hit. They snapped. They broke apart. All of them missed the Scourge by wide margins, falling well outside its reduced mana attack range.

　　All but one.

　　Matt was spared hearing the sound of the corpse impacting the ground directly by him because the Scourge was busy on the mana-draw attack. As the corpse came into range, it caught some of the mana siphon. The effect probably wasn`t full force, but it didn`t need to be. The corpse was hundreds of years old. It ashed immediately.

　　And then the Scourge stopped. It couldn`t howl, it couldn`t scream. It probably didn`t understand thrashing outside of a bare instinct to search for prey or threats. It just stopped in place, apparently unable to do anything at all, poisoned by the revenge of enemies long since gone, but not quite forgotten.

　　The vines around Matt`s legs didn`t slack. He tried to slip them over his feet and free himself, but found he lacked the strength to do so. He had to think of something else. He had no illusions that the poison would actually kill the Scourge, and the distinct lack of detonation meant it was almost definitely still alive.

　　His club was gone, but somehow his spear had still survived. Matt used it to begin hacking at the vines near his legs, desperately trying to separate them from himself before the plant came back online. It was no use. His strength was almost all gone, not just in terms of stats but also in terms of the damage that the vines had done to his normal, adrenaline-wracked human body. His vitality was no longer high enough to withstand his acid skin ability, and his legs were injured from the vines. He probably couldn`t even run.

　　He watched as the Scourge began to stir. It was purifying the poison.

　　It was going to grow and spread. It was going to overtake him, and he was going to succumb. This was it. He was going to die here, and now.

　　Lucy wasn`t unaware. From her bird`s eye view, she could see what was going to happen. She yelled anyway.

　　"Matt! Get out of there!"

　　"Can`t," Matt`s words choked in his throat as he watched one of the vines move not just at the tip, but throughout the length, moving over an inch or so towards him. Dropping the spear and consumed by rage, he crouched down and bit at the vines near his legs once again. A part of his plan was missing and in a fight of inches, every step was crucial.

　　"I think this is it." They weren`t pretty final words, but they were his.

　　Then, he heard a sound that was like music to his ears.

　　Ding!

　　Mana Vampire Trait Activated!

　　Warning! An error has been encountered analyzing this skill. Beyond the fact that it interacts with mana by drawing it towards you, the Gaian Defense System is unable to ascertain how this skill will work, or whether it will be a benefit or a detriment to you.

　　The skill itself is unstable. It will function for minutes at the most, and in order to assure it will function at all, it will be necessary for it to occupy all of your meta-trait slots simultaneously, displacing any currently held skills.

　　Would you still like to proceed?

　　Oh, hell yes. Matt thought. He felt something click into place internally, and after willing the skill to work seemed to do nothing, he swung his spear at the vines grasping his legs again, so weakly it couldn`t have possibly cut anything.

　　The vines instantly ashed, and all of Matt`s skills came back online.

　　Ding!

　　Mana deficiency abated&

　　It should have probably felt icky to wield the Scourge`s power, but Matt didn`t care. He had hedge trimming to do. He raced towards the center of the Scourge, ashing as many vines as he could as he went. The attack didn`t have unlimited range, but it didn`t need to. Anything disconnected from the taproot stopped working immediately. Matt wasn`t planning to kill the Scourge by draining it to death, anyway. But he did have a plan. And that plan needed him to disconnect as many of the vines as possible.

　　As he reached the center of the Scourge, he dug the very tip of his spear in the ground. Spring Fighter, he knew, was not supposed to be usable as an attack skill. But in situations like this, where his arms weren`t planning on moving, he could sometimes get some speed out of it anyway. He surged his movement skill, running in a tight circle around the very center of the flattened net.

　　The taproot was disarmed. But it was not still poisoned to the point it could not fight at all, which Matt discovered as he was hit both by a mana drain and a vine lance at almost the same moment.