Reincarnated As A Plant Life
Reincarnated As A Plant Life - Chapter 91: Radiant Augmentation Index (1)

"Sergeant, what's your reason for fighting in this war?" asked a blood-soaked soldier, his words coming out as mere gasps of air.

"Enough, Riley, stop talking. You'll just make the bleeding worse," Lucius responded, trying his best to apply pressure to the massive hole on Riley's side. Deep down he knew it was a hopeless effort, Riley was going to bleed to death, and he would be forced to watch.

"You know, I'd rather be in my room right now… watching anime or reading manga. But that isn't the way a man should live, or at least that's what paps said. He always wanted to have a son in the army," Riley mumbled, his eyes looking to the sky with a sort of distant gleam.

"A stupid reason to fight, I know," he tried to say, before breaking into a fit of bloody coughs.

"I'll carry you back to base, don't worry. The docs will fix you right up," Lucius tried comforting.

Riley was 18, an adult in the eyes of the country, but still a kid nonetheless, the youngest in Lucius's squad. From their time together, Lucius had realized that the kid hadn't even had his first kiss, hadn't explored all that there was to explore.

War is such a cruel thing.

"You're usually so good at lying Sergeant," Riley said before coughing again. "I don't want to die."

"And you're not going to," Lucius replied abruptly, his hands still fidgeting to try and stop the bleeding.

"I feel cold."

"Say, where do you think we go once we die? I read something about the cycle of rebirth… reincarnation," Riley said, his voice now a whisper.

"I hope in my next life, I get to do things differently…" he said finally, a single tear running down his cheek.

On that day, Lucius was the last soldier left in his platoon. He had several bullet wounds, three cracked ribs, a broken foot, and a fractured arm.

They were losing the war, and public sympathy was at an all-time low. Many people were starting to believe that the war wasn't worth all the money they were investing into it, all the deaths. And though a leader ought not to think this, Lucius knew that they would soon lose the war entirely.

He used what little strength he had left to dig a makeshift grave for Riley and the others. Burying a soldier on foreign ground was probably against what others might've thought, but Lucius wasn't even sure if he would make it back alive. And chances were that their bodies would lie there anyway, so as a final show of respect, he buried all those he could, before falling to the ground in exhaustion.

"Why do I fight this war huh?" Lucius whispered to himself, taking a gulp of alcohol from a flask while holding a handgun in his other hand.

At the time he had no family, no wife to go home to, no father to make proud. He wasn't a patriot, apart from his trivial human attachment to the country he called his 'home' he didn't care all that much. Not enough to fight in a war they had no business being in at least. So there was no point lying to himself that he was fighting for some greater cause.

So why?

As he cocked the pistol in his hand, embracing the pain that resounded throughout his entire body, he tried to get an answer.

He placed the pistol to his head, hoping that in his final moments he would think of something. Something to place meaning to the amalgamation of random events that was his life.

*Click*

The gun failed.

He cocked it and tried again, but once again it failed. He quickly pointed it to the sky and fired, and a loud bang resounded. He then pointed it to his head once more, and again nothing.

The laughter of a single soldier played a symphony over the dusty battlefield.

The 'Undying Boogeyman'.

Lucius had been skeptical about the name at first, but he couldn't deny it. If life was fair, he would've been dead a long time ago. Yet he had survived multiple deployments, him alone, the soldier without reason for living.

Ironic.

~~~

~Damnit,~ Lucius grunted inwardly, still fighting the pain. His mind had been tip-toeing on the line of sanity for hours, doing anything it could to get him away from his reality.

He had probably been circulating radiant energy for 10 hours at this point. If his time constantly doing this had taught him anything, it was that the energies that powered his crux when it acted externally, and the one that powered it internally were two different resources.

His radiant energy seemed to be coming from within his body, like some organ which he supposed was his crux, was secreting it at regular intervals.

Whereas his solar energy, the one that powered his spells, seemed to come from the sun. And due to the fact that very little amounts of solar energy got this low into the ground, it was taking its sweet time to be replenished.

Circulating the radiant energy had stabilized him, but it was akin to a thin thread acting as the support for a large bridge. If he so much as moved a fiber, all his hours of work would go to waste.

He was hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and in pain. He felt like pure shit, it was a wonder how he was surviving. Though he noticed that the longer he went without eating, the less radiant energy his body was secreting. Which meant that eventually, he would die anyway.

Though all he could do was circulate. While all this was going on, he was learning more and more about the Radiant Augmentation Index.

Unlike the Solar Sorcery index, it seemed like there was no physical limit to how long he could 'cultivate' for. A fixed amount of radiant energy was let out into his body, and each time he completed a full circulation, he could feel his vessels becoming larger, and more complex.

Multiple times he tried to see if creating new techniques in this index was the same as the solar sorcery index, however, he found that visualizing what he wanted had no effect.

His best bet right now was to wait until he had enough radiant energy to perform a Radiant cowl and hunt something small to eat. From what the remembered Radiant Cowl seemed to protect every part of his body, temporarily 'freezing' his injuries in place.