Chapter 184: Grave Flower

"Really? I don’t think it’ll be a problem for me."

Gideon sounded unconcerned. After all, he was nearly level forty now. He had defeated the Verdant Devourer when he was somewhere around level twenty or thirty. Compared to back then, he was significantly stronger.

Elaine immediately shook her head. "That thing is different, Gideon. It’s not actually that strong, you know? Its direct combat ability is only around D-rank."

She placed both hands on the table as she spoke. "The real problem is the pappus and the seeds that scatter after the aberrant is killed. Imagine someone pouring oil over an entire neighborhood and then tossing in a single spark. The fire would spread everywhere before anyone could stop it."

"So we just need to get rid of the pappus?" Gideon asked. "That’s the fluffy part that scatters when you blow on a dandelion, right?"

He honestly didn’t see the problem. Unless the pappus was somehow resistant to destruction, it didn’t sound particularly threatening.

"The seeds get rid of the pappus themselves a few seconds after coming into contact with the air," Jade explained with a sigh as she leaned back in her chair.

"The seeds look like oversized snowflakes after that. Once they fall to the ground, it’s almost impossible to tell them apart from normal snow."

She rubbed her forehead before continuing. "And that’s where things get worse. Once they’re airborne, they can get inside a fire. Any person staying near that fire will eventually die from hypothermia. That thing basically does the opposite of what fire is supposed to do. It steals human body heat."

"And this is the really annoying part." Aaron picked up where Jade left off, sounding as though he were reciting a list of particularly unpleasant facts.

"Once someone dies, the seed enters the corpse and uses it as a nest until the next winter arrives and a new Pyrovour Borealis blooms."

"We can’t even reliably tell whether someone died from actual hypothermia or because of one of those things. That’s why people also call it the Grave Flower."

Gideon frowned. "Can it get inside a warmer? And isn’t there any way to destroy the thing without the pappus scattering?"

"Yes, Chief," Percy answered immediately.

"They’re attracted to heat. Regular fires, personal warmers, even the central warming system that distributes heat through pipes. They can get into all of them."

His expression turned grim. "Their bodies are tiny. They’ll find a way into houses and stay there."

"The worst thing is that the fire doesn’t look any different from a normal one. There are no warning signs. No strange colors. No visible changes. Nothing. Once the seeds have scattered, there’s basically no way to prevent it except by burning the corpses of people who died from hypothermia."

"As for killing them without triggering the spread..." Jade crossed her arms and stared at the screen.

"We haven’t found a method yet. My personal theory is that destroying them instantly might work."

Her gaze drifted toward the image of the frozen field displayed on the monitor. "The problem is that Pyrovours communicate with each other."

"When one senses danger, it can signal nearby Pyrovours to release their pappus as well. To prove my theory, you’d have to eliminate an entire field of them at the same time before any of them could react."

Aaron let out a dry chuckle. "You’d need a nuclear bomb to kill all of that in one go."

Everyone glanced at him. "Seriously. Even though they’re only D-rank in direct combat, their durability is comparable to an A-rank aberrant. They’re ridiculously hard to destroy. It takes at least five C4 charges or specialized laser-based weapons just to kill one or two of them."

"And they’re one of the most aware aberrants out there," Percy added.

"If someone starts planting C4 all over the area, they’ll notice long before you’re finished and the way they never crowded one place and have a good distance within each other..."

Gideon fell silent. In the screen, indeed they look closer, when actually they were about 100-200 meters apart. The room gradually quieted as he stared at the frozen dandelion-like creatures covering the landscape.

Only now was he beginning to understand why everyone was reacting so strongly. If those things reached Climber Rift or his Safe Zone, the consequences would be catastrophic.

Fire was the one thing people depended on to survive winter. Whether it came from a warmer or a simple campfire, it was what stood between life and death.

But Pyrovour Borealis turned that lifeline into a weapon. If people extinguished their fires, they would freeze to death. If they kept them burning, they might still die.

The way the seeds spread from body to body like parasites only made the situation worse. They hid inside homes, disguised themselves among snow, and used the dead as breeding grounds for the next generation.

Thinking about it now, Gideon could understand why the Pyrovour Borealis was classified as an S-rank aberrant.

Its danger had very little to do with strength. It was the kind of thing that could wipe out entire settlements without anyone realizing what was happening until it was already too late.

"But why is it there in the first place? White Death doesn’t have any settlements besides Cinders of Dusk."

Jade’s question immediately drew everyone’s attention.

"Maybe it was already here before we arrived?" Gideon suggested.

Elaine shook her head. "That’s impossible. Pyrovour Borealis always scatters its seeds together with the first Eternal Snow. Every single time, without fail. If it had already been here all this time, Climber Rift might have fallen years ago."

"Don’t exaggerate things. As long as I become a Path Madre, Climber Rift will still stand," Jade declared before turning toward Gideon.

"What do you think? What are you going to do? Those monsters are less than twenty kilometers away from your territory. That means when the Eternal Snow arrives, the seeds will reach your land first."

Gideon fell silent. He was fairly confident that the barrier could deal with the seeds before they penetrated the Safe Zone. The bigger problem was everything outside his territory.

His people would eventually need to leave the settlement to hunt. Most of the aberrants that had appeared tonight couldn’t even be used as food because their meat or body parts were toxic. At least, that was what Percy had reported.

And if the Climber Rift fell...

Sure, many of the survivors would likely move to his territory, but the disadvantages far outweighed the benefits.

Climber Rift served as one of the largest human strongholds in the region. Losing it would create problems that extended far beyond population growth.