Bang! The commander was violently shoved aside by the female agent and crashed heavily to the ground in front of the team.
Splat! Before everyone's horrified eyes, a thick vine a full meter in diameter descended from above, opening the ringed, toothed maw at its tip and swallowing Ada along with a huge chunk of concrete beneath her.
The vine swiftly changed color, blending into the surrounding walls, then darted back into the ventilation shaft before anyone could react.
Camouflage and invisibility, stalking in close, fleeing immediately after one strike to find a corner and digest its food! This nightmare had returned!
"It's that main vine! It appeared once while Alice was escorting Dr. Sakurami Haruharu away!"
"But we saw it get blasted to pieces... Why is it still alive?"
Rebecca muttered, her face pale. To deal with that damned thing, the second team had lost two-thirds of its members just to severely wound it.
And Alice, who had arrived later, had directly used Mental Power to completely shred it once.
Kevin rose unsteadily, burying both hands in his hair. His eyes were bloodshot, and he kept muttering without pause, like a man possessed.
"The leaves have degenerated... That means it doesn't rely much on photosynthesis... Its habitat is probably rather dark..."
"The vines don't smell like soil... So it's not underground..."
"Color-changing... Multiple rings of serrated teeth... Feeding organs similar to an earthworm-like mouth..."
"Using the ventilation ducts... and the walls... the corridors... covering City Hospital as its hunting ground..."
"Hunting ground... Right... Evolution... the evolution of a plant into an animal!"
"Hunting DNA... using animal flesh and blood to alter its own plant genes..."
"But what about the beginning... Before it developed predatory organs... With little soil and insufficient sunlight... what did it rely on to complete its