With one petal sliced clean and another hanging in torn fibers, its rage was no longer hidden in subtle movement or reactive defense.
From beneath its petals, obsidian-black protrusions began to slither free.
At first, they looked like rooted vines, but as they flexed and uncoiled, but it were something else entirely.
Each appendage was composed of thousands of micro-tendrils, twisted through violent evolution into thick, whip-like strands. Their surface shimmered with a metallic sheen.
At the core, its digestive orifice throbbed, ringed by rows of retractable, thorned teeth stacked in layers.
Cain counted at least thirty concentric rows as it flexed, the grooves already wet with some kind of mucosal fluid, designed not to bite but to suck the moisture out of flesh.
'This guy seemed to be around a year and a half with abundant prey to go around.'
It wasn't just killing that the centivine was built for. It was a savoring consumption.
"Fara, the whips, three of them. Ricky, two. The rest, grab a vine each."
Their movements were disciplined but not easy. Each step forward was calculated to maintain balance and suppress the natural tension of nerves.
No one used flame nor frost, not even a charged spark.
If the centivine felt it was being stalked with elemental magic, it would bolt out and they would lose everything.
That was the rule of this ecosystem. Predators fight back, but only if they didn't act like predators.
Fara danced in low circles, her footwork crisp but soft, avoiding splash or sudden pressure on the terrain.
Ricky moved with more weight, he didn't use the blade's capability to cut, he was afraid of spiking its heat signature.
Behind them, Cain watched.
His voice came low and sharp through the comms, steady as ever.
"Hold it off. I'll take out the eyes."
It sounded simple. Maybe even easy to the untrained ear.
But for them, it was a knife-edge maneuver.
A stunt that required every step to land just right, every breath measured, every ounce of panic bottled tight.
The Blight Centivine's trunk lay flat on the ground, stretching seven meters long, its entire length dotted with camouflaged, raisin-sized ocular growths.
Ten thousand strong, unfazed by flashy lights, and unbothered by the dark.
Each eye specialized in tracking heat, movement, rhythm, and pressure.
The primary function of these eyes was deceptively benign. They simply optimized exposure to sunlight.
But every twitch of its unblinking gaze directed the brutal cadence of its steel-like whips.
Cain moved like smoke, slipping past his teammates as they battled the vines.
He didn't cast anything flashy. No piercing, high-impact spells.
His rifle conjured simple lead pellet rounds built for hunting fowl, not war beasts.
Damage wasn't what he aimed for.
His goal was to eliminate as many eyes as possible, to make its thrashing less precise.
It worked at first.
Each clean shot made the creature shudder, its whipping arcs delayed by precious fractions.
Cain misjudged the output. The spell hit harder and flew faster than he intended.
The result was near catastrophic.
The centivine recoiled violently, one of its obsidian whips surging with twice the kinetic force.
Pumbo braced as the force hit. He was driven back behind his riot shield, his boots carving twin trenches through the mud.
He groaned, wheezing, and went back to do his task.
The next instance was on Beany. Her guard buckled under three simultaneous lashes, each moving faster than the last.
She parried the first with her staff, skated past the second, but the third hit clean.
"Woah! Look out!"
She stumbled, crashing into Cain's flank just as he was reloading.
The hit sent them both flying a dozen meters.
Spotting the gap in their formation, Ricky rushed in without a word, intercepting the next blow meant for them.
Already dealing with two, his blade couldn't keep up with a third. The vine slammed into his armored shoulder, denting the plate on impact.
"Argh!"
Cain didn't apologize. No one expected him to. They all knew the risks, and understood the biology.
They knew his performance was already beyond stellar, in lesser hands, two teammates would already be dead.
But the fight was dragging on. Precision was slipping, stamina wearing thin.
The Blight Centivine wasn't panicking. If anything, it moved with unnerving confidence, as if it knew time was on its side.
"Everyone keep at it, I can see those roots getting comfortable."
Its petal tasted the scent of desperation of the chemicals within their perspiration. It was a chemical mixture of both exhaustion and desperation.
Maybe it was how its whips lashed wider with each swing, chasing the trails of expelled carbon dioxide from the team's filtration vents.
Cain knew his rounds were landing, but a new strategy formed in his mind. He stopped firing abruptly and began breaking down his rifle while still running.
With practiced ease, the weapon split into two pistols, one landing in each hand.
In his left, the pistol flickered with a silent light emission as he conjured a sound resonance spell.
It wasn't destructive on its own but it let him hear.
Soundwaves rippled through the air and ground, scanning the creature's surface.
The waves looped back, funneled through his pistol, and fed straight into his mind, shaping a map not of sight, but of sound.
The spell was flawed as his control was still rough, however his foundation was solid enough.
Cain moved in continuous loops around the Centivine, weaving through its lashes with practiced precision, completing a dozen rotations.
He was testing, analyzing how best to approach the problem.
And then, it clicked in his mind.
The monster's eyes may have numbered in the thousands, but Cain had begun to see the pattern.
Some clusters were nestled in bark burls, others were positioned too flat, too ornamental.
Decorative camouflage, they weren't just for defense, they were for intimidation.
He wasn't here to fully commit on blinding the centivine, he was here to remove its precision.
He shifted fire to the ones protruding, those whose surfaces twitched with micro-adjustments before every vine strike.
'These... these are the ones it used to assist its aim.'
But the key was still balance.
If he overloaded it with firepower, the Centivine might self-destruct.
Detonate the pressurized toxin sacs within its body.
That may not be enough to kill them but it would ruin the entire harvest.
He had to cripple it.