Reborn in hell with a skill creation system

Chapter 20: The Garden Of Hungry Things

The forest revealed as Mael moved deeper.

Not gradually, Hell didn’t do gradual but in sudden shifts, as if he were passing through layers of reality that had been folded together like pages in a book. One moment he was in the black-barked forest with its red canopy and glowing spores. The next, the trees were white, bone-pale, and their branches wove together overhead to form a tunnel that blocked out the light entirely. Then the tunnel opened into a swamp where the water was thick as blood and the lily pads were large enough to support his weight, each one pulsing with a single heartbeat he could feel through his feet.

Hollow Stomach cataloged everything, the white trees were edible but nutritionally void fiber without substance, like eating paper. The swamp water was rich in minerals but carried parasites that his demonic biology could eventually process, given time. The lily pads were the most efficient source he’d found so far, dense with stored energy, though their faint consciousness, a vegetative awareness that registered as discomfort when he stepped on them made him avoid them when possible.

He wasn’t starving yet, that was the important thing. In a place where everything consumed everything else, not starving was a victory.

Sensory Web tracked the other champions as he moved. Kess was ahead, moving fast, his jointed limbs carrying him through terrain that would have slowed anything with a normal skeleton. Vora’s insect cloud had fragmented, spreading through the forest in a search pattern that suggested she was hunting something specific, prey, or information, or traps laid by others.

Gorr was behind him, not close, but closing, his massive signature moving with a directness that suggested he wasn’t trying to navigate the Hollow’s dangers, simply power through them. The forest had other ideas. Twice, Mael felt Gorr’s progress stall, once for several minutes, accompanied by sounds of violence that ended in silence.

Syrus was the ghost, his signature appeared and disappeared in Mael’s web, never stable enough to track, never close enough to threaten. He was moving, but not toward the tree. Mael couldn’t determine his purpose, and that uncertainty was worse than Gorr’s open hatred.

The Envy Tree itself was a constant pressure in his senses, a soul-signature so dense it registered as pain when he focused on it directly. It was somewhere ahead, somewhere above, the Hollow’s geography didn’t map cleanly to three dimensions and the path toward it grew more difficult the closer he approached.

The garden was his first real obstacle.

He found it at the edge of a cliff, where the white-bone forest ended abruptly and the ground fell away into a canyon filled with vegetation that shouldn’t have been possible. Flowers the size of houses, their petals opening and closing with rhythmic hunger, revealing interiors lined with teeth. Vines that moved with serpentine purpose, coiling around anything that came within reach and digesting it slowly, over days, while the victim remained alive and aware. Trees that bore fruit in the shape of demons, perfect replicas, down to the expressions of terror frozen on their faces and in the center, visible even from the cliff’s edge, the Envy Tree.

It was smaller than Mael had expected. Not the massive growth he’d imagined from its soul-density, but a slender thing, perhaps twice his height, with bark that shimmered between black and gold and leaves that held actual stars, pinpricks of light that moved, slowly, in patterns that suggested constellations Mael didn’t recognize.

A single fruit hung from its lowest branch. It was the color of fresh blood, perfectly round, and it pulsed with a light that matched the rhythm of Mael’s own heart.

The garden between him and it was alive with consumption.

Mael studied it the way he’d once studied lab specimens, looking for patterns, for efficiencies, for the path of least resistance through a system designed to kill him. The flowers had ranges, he could see the limit of their reach, where the petals opened fully and then stopped, constrained by whatever biology or magic governed them. The vines moved in predictable patterns, clockwise around certain trees, counterclockwise around others, as if following invisible currents. The demon-fruit trees were stationary, but their fruit, bait, obviously, lures for the hungry or desperate, would fall if disturbed, and the fall would attract other predators.

He was calculating a route, a sequence of movements that might carry him through, when Killer Instinct screamed and he threw himself sideways.

Kess landed where he’d been standing, his jointed limbs folded into a crouch that should have been impossible, his black eyes reflecting the garden’s light.

"You’re hard to sneak up on," Kess said. Not aggressive. Conversational. "I thought the sensory field was limited to five meters."

"It is." Mael kept his distance, Sensory Web focused on Kess’s signature, ready for any shift in intent. "You were outside it. I felt the air move."

"A lie, but a polite one." Kess straightened, his joints unfolding with a sound like wet wood cracking. "I’m not here to fight you. Yet. The garden is the real obstacle, and I’m not arrogant enough to think I can cross it alone."

"Arrogant enough to think we can cross it together?"

"Pragmatic enough to try." Kess gestured toward the flowers, the vines, the waiting consumption. "I can move through spaces you can’t. You can sense threats before they manifest. Together, we might reach the tree. Alone, we become fertilizer."

Mael considered, Kess had been neutral in the arena, neither hostile nor friendly, simply observing. That made him predictable in a way that Syrus wasn’t, reliable in a way that Gorr couldn’t be. But alliance in the Hollow was temporary by nature. The rules said only one champion could present the fruit.

"Temporary alliance," Mael said. "Until the tree. Then we compete."

"Naturally." Kess’s mouth twisted in what might have been a smile. "I’m not foolish enough to expect trust. But I am practical enough to accept useful partnership."

They descended into the garden together.

---

The first flower caught Kess.

He was moving ahead, his jointed limbs carrying him through a gap between two vines that Mael’s body couldn’t have fit through, when a petal the color of infected flesh snapped shut around his leg. The teeth inside needle-fine, thousands of them began to work immediately, and Kess’s hiss of pain was the first genuine emotion Mael had heard from him.

Mael didn’t hesitate, he activated Leech Mark on the flower itself, felt the strange sensation of draining something that wasn’t a demon, wasn’t even properly alive, and used the energy to fuel his own movement. His claws raked across the petal’s base, where it connected to the stem, and thick sap that smelled of rotting honey sprayed across his arms.

The flower opened, releasing Kess, and Mael dragged him clear before the neighboring flowers could orient on the disturbance.

Kess’s leg was damaged, not destroyed, but deeply scored, the joint mechanism exposed and weeping fluid that wasn’t quite blood. He tested it, grimaced, and nodded at Mael.

"Debt acknowledged," he said. "Temporarily."

They continued more carefully.

Mael used Sensory Web to map the flowers’ ranges, their timing, the gaps between their hunger cycles. Kess used his flexibility to navigate spaces that would have triggered the vines, his damaged leg forcing him to rely more on his arms, his body folding into configurations that made Mael’s own joints ache in sympathy.

The demon-fruit trees were worse than the flowers.