I Became a Tentacle Monster Blooming in the Academy Garden 7

## Chapter 7 – A Time for Exploration

To be honest, this situation is a little hard to grasp.

I can’t help but think that anyone would find this turn of events a bit overwhelming.

I secretly watched Vivian’s servants take Anne away to deal with her, and then I watched them disappear.

‘The wound… it healed……?’

That moment, when my tendril caressed Anne.

I couldn’t help but feel a strange sensation as I watched the scratches on Anne, caused by the other girls, slowly heal.

‘Is it possible that they’re endangered because people eat them indiscriminately, thinking they’re good for them……?’

As a Korean, a people who would devour even designated harmful birds and beasts, not to mention cockroaches, if it was said to be good for them, I couldn’t entirely dismiss the idea.

If that’s the case, then my true identity must be hidden even more thoroughly.

Now with a rough idea of what I needed to do next, I began to open the earth with my newly discovered technique: slowly thickening roots.

It might seem like a parody of those cartoon movies where the ground opens up and a transforming robot hidden in an underground hangar is launched.

Thanks to my roots, which had grown thicker and denser as I devoured the woman and grew larger, a small, narrow solitary cell had formed beneath the flower bed.

Looking down at Vivian, still unconscious and huddled inside, I swallowed a small groan.

‘Well, for now, I’ve gotten past the dangerous part.’

There was nothing particularly special about how I figured this out.

The moment my tendril touched Anne, I instinctively realized that my body was trying to pull her in.

But unable to shake off the uneasy feeling, I decided to test the tendrils’ behavior, which felt slightly different from when I devoured the woman, and turned them towards Vivian.

‘Human experimentation is inhumane, but…
This isn’t that kind of world, so, well……’

Then, surprisingly, as the tendrils grabbed her body and pulled her towards me, the ground beneath me slowly began to open.

‘Is this like… a food storage?
I can even do this……’

At first, my roots were too weak to even support, let alone pull, the woman’s weight, but after eating her, they had grown this quickly. I couldn’t help but be amazed.

‘Is it because I’m still young and growing fast……?
Or was that woman unusually nutritious…’

Either way, the important thing was that I now had a way to store food that I could take out and eat whenever I needed it.

‘Treating people like food is a bit much, though.’

And perhaps because my roots were creating the solitary cell, I could see Vivian’s form buried in the ground as if she were right in front of me, which was an advantage.

As soon as I put Vivian in the cell, the roots automatically wrapped around her limbs, so I didn’t have to worry about her thrashing around either.

‘Now I’m starting to feel like a real tendril.’

You know how it is in most tentacle stories.

The tentacles hide in their lairs, attack approaching humans, and drag them into their dens.

This was probably a similar kind of ability.

‘I need to gather more information about Enic……’

Right now, I’m just learning little by little by following my instincts, but if I had more accurate information, Enic would definitely be a great help to my survival.

‘Then, shall I try a few simple experiments…’

What I was trying to experiment with now was how to control Vivian, who was trapped in the narrow den.

Of course, as someone who used to be human, I felt a bit of resistance to treating another human being so carelessly.

But considering what she had tried to do, I figured Vivian wouldn’t have anything to say even if she ended up like this, so I decided to discard any unnecessary pity.

‘I won’t eat her right away. I still… don’t think I’ve finished digesting……’

While the woman’s nutrients were still circulating through my body, I determined that Vivian needed to stay alive for now.

‘Or is there a way to slowly extract nutrients instead of eating her all at once?’

Referring to all the knowledge I had about tentacles from adult animation, I felt that the world was wide and tentacles were truly diverse.

Of course, as a living creature, Enic would have limitations, but it was an amazing creature that ate animals like a carnivorous plant and even reproduced with the females it ate, so wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect this kind of function?

After slowly closing the ground that had been opened by my roots, I began to focus my mind on the roots.

Then, I felt pressure through the roots, and like ripples spreading on the surface of the water, Vivian’s appearance and outline became increasingly clear.

As I felt the tautness of the roots binding Vivian’s limbs and the sensation of a certain organ that I felt like I had controlled a few times before, I could gain a small amount of confidence by moving it.

‘This is also a tendril, after all…
As expected, I can solve things from inside here without having to take her out…
Maybe it’s always good to know something before you see it?’

My desire to learn about my own body began to rise, and I slowly began to move the tendril.

At first, it was about the size of an earthworm, but now it was about as thick as a thin rope that could be called a tendril. As I moved it, I slowly began to realize something.

‘Am I seeing the world through the tendril……?’

The shape of Vivian in the den became clearer or slightly blurred depending on the movement of the tendril.

As if using a thermal imaging camera or some other sensing mechanism, I found that the more I experimented with the scenery in front of me, the more clearly I could understand it.

And as Vivian’s appearance in that image began to capture even the thin wrinkles of her clothes and each individual pore, I felt satisfied with this sense, which felt even better than the eyes of an average human, and slowly began to wiggle the tendril.

‘Then now… really……’

It was time to enter a full-fledged exploration.

It was time to explore my potential as much as I could, to the best of my ability.

Looking at Vivian, who was still asleep and breathing heavily in a slightly uncomfortable position, I gently extended my tendril towards her.

Even when I carefully stroked her slightly curly, deep blue hair, she only let out a small groan, like a mumble.

The girl was exposed, defenseless, to a threat that was right in front of her.

Of course, it might be because I was thinking in that direction.

But logically speaking, killing this girl, saving her, or even doing whatever I wanted to her in case of an emergency, was entirely up to me, as she was trapped in my trap and unable to move.

I began to feel a subtle sense of guilt, and I slowly began to scan her body.

‘Grenot, was it……? So she’s a noble here……?’

A world with nobles and royalty.

That’s how it was in my world in the past, and it’s a common fantasy setting, so it didn’t feel like a completely different world.

The fact that this girl in front of me was a noble gave me a slight sense of satisfaction.

It was like buying a product with a gold “premium” sticker on it.

And as if to reflect that, the girl in front of me, whom I thought was young, had a surprisingly great body.

Her body seemed to be well-maintained and curvy, and her legs, which were held by the tendrils and spread out like a frog in a dissection room, had smooth lines.

I timidly stroked those legs, which looked even healthier because she was wearing stockings, with my hesitant tendril movements.

‘It’s still a bit awkward…’

From the perspective of someone with little experience, women, who seemed like mysterious beings from a parallel world, were still full of things I didn’t know.

This was my first encounter with what could be called the essence of women.

But I plucked up the courage and began to unbutton Vivian’s clothes one by one, and soon I had her looking like Anne from earlier, with her front completely exposed.

‘Wow…… is this what a noble is……’

It’s a bit of a comparison, but Anne’s chest was nothing compared to Vivian’s.

Vivian’s breasts, covered by a red bra, revealed their heavy presence, almost reminiscent of hemispheres.

When I gently brought the tendril to it, I could understand the feeling of softness and squishiness.

It was a similar feeling to touching a ‘woman’.

Maybe all women’s breasts give this heavenly feeling.

“Ugh… uhm……”

At that moment, I was startled by Vivian’s actions, as she let out a small moan and twitched her body. I dropped the tendril far away and began to observe her.

My first and last contact with the woman had also been almost in a trance, so perhaps this was a natural result.

‘Women are still unfamiliar……’

At that moment, as I watched Vivian slowly open her eyes with a labored groan, I froze.