And then, from somewhere, another walking sugar beet appeared. This one moved well, taking tiny steps with its two roots, not fast, but with a familiar gait. … I wondered if this was the right gait it had developed. It was still walking using roots, though.
It offered a leaf to the collapsed sugar beet. The collapsed sugar beet also wriggled its own leaf into that leaf and was pulled up…
…beautiful brotherhood…?
The sugar beet that came later was handsome in what he was doing… a handsome sugar beet… though it lacked a face…
But then, suddenly, a black shadow jumped out from the forest. A beast, probably a badger, about the size of a small dog, chomped the handsome (?) sugar beet.
I heard it squeal. With the beet still in its mouth, the badger rushed back into the forest.
At that moment, there was the sound of something cutting through the air.
“Young Lady!”
Mina drew Ekaterina behind her for protection, while the knight Oleg stepped forward with his sword drawn. The hounds growled threateningly, but Ekaterina had no idea what was going on.
Only that the badger disappeared in a puff of smoke, and the beet that had been bitten fell to the ground and rolled around.
“Mina, Oleg, don’t worry. Quell the hounds, too. They will not attack humans as long as we don’t touch them. –Ekaterina-sama, a mature one has appeared.”
“Is that it…”
Ekaterina’s eyes widened when she saw where Forli was pointing. She could only make out half a figure of it in the forest outside her house in the vermilion light of evening – come to think of it, this time of day was called the hour of meeting in her previous life – but it was similar to the sugar beet in the field.
First, it was large. It must have been two meters tall. The part that should have been the root of a turnip was covered with a tough, bark-like skin that was as thick as an adult’s leg.
The part of the plant that was split into two legs was completely stable and looked like an elephant’s foot, while the neck, or rather the part where the leaves were growing, appeared to have been transformed from leaves into sword-like spikes.
And mixed in with the sword-like spikes were several whip-like, vine-like stalks (?). One of these stalks was connected to the vine that sprouted earlier. It was wrapped around the badger I saw earlier.
“The adult protects the young and feeds on those that attack them. It has a pouch full of digestive juices in its body and can digest them.”
Ahhh… like a carnivorous plant in my previous life…
The mature sugar beets were not aggressive toward the forest people and were friendly to the giant bees. The individuals near their habitat were ancestors of those planted in the fields and had grown into full-grown individuals, so they probably remembered how they were taken care of in the past.
The full-grown individuals would eventually produce enormous flowers, and the Great King bee would collect the nectar with the bees under their control.
The Great King Bee, on the other hand, collects nectar from fully grown giant flowers to produce a special royal nectar to nurture the queen bee. Thanks to the Great King Bee, the full-grown plants would be cross-pollinated and produce fruit. This is why full-grown sugar beets are grown near the Great King Bee’s territories.
Royal nectar would produce Royal Jelly, right? …Is the sweetness of the sugar beet what attracts the Great King Bee when it blooms? I guess the sugar beet needed to be large enough for the Great King Bee to pollinate it.
The full-grown beet disappeared into the depths of the forest, shaking its big body in a lazy manner.
The beet, which had been almost snatched by a badger, seemed to be safe (?) and was supported by the other beets.
Because they didn’t reach full maturity, I understood what they meant by “safe.”
