It’s a strange thing to figure out that you no longer need to sleep. Well, not that I never need to sleep, but three days into my hunting trip, I realized that I could keep going. I spent more than a week ranging out into the forest, trying to find enough boar monsters, enough prey, to make talismans from before bothering to return to the island. As before, the boar meat only gave me Earth affixed mana, but damn, was it tasty.
Given that I only have the ability to create the most rudimentary enchantments, talismans, the things that I can do with my accrual of mana is limited. Talismans at their core are monolithic pieces of affix infused materials that are arranged to represent a single rune, the most useful ones relating directly to the eight primary attributes. Knowing that I only have Earth affixed mana to work with, I made my first talisman with the rune representing Defense, the attribute for which Earth has the greatest efficiency. I’m lucky that the “Glossary of Basic Affix Interaction” describes the attribute efficiencies of each affix so that I didn’t have to waste my time with trial and error. Despite all the limitations, after a week and a half of boar hunting, I have gained two levels and created eight more talismans: Earth has a negative efficiency with speed and perception, so I didn’t bother with those.
I am fully aware that in the first three days of the Passage I found magical equipment that far outstrips rudimentary talismans that I can make now, but there is something so gratifying about making my own equipment. Wearing nine talismans is not the quietest approach I have found; the increasingly heavy burden of jangling trinkets around my neck certainly cut into my ability to moved unnoticed–something to deal with at a later time.
My hunting grounds have become sparser over the last week, the mana in the atmosphere not powerful enough to replenish the forest boars at the same rate in which I kill them. I wander the woods North of the island after having stored all of my camp materials back into my ring. Again, the ring proves itself as my most valuable possession.
Following the river north, the pervasive smell of sour water grows, the pebbly shallows of the river taking on a sickly purple-green hue, the rocks growing an odd orange moss. Dams of odd lichen floating in the river accumulate at natural eddies, growing thicker as I hike to the point of stretching in wild tangles all the way across the water. There is nothing that could possess me to drink the water anymore, just being within a few feet of it makes me gag. The mushrooms throughout the forest also grow more dense, colorful patches of green, purple, and orange sprouting from the duff like wildflowers in bloom. Worrying, certainly, but the more mushrooms, the more boar monsters I am able to find.
Standing a few feet away from a tree completely overtaken with a colony of purple-specked mushrooms crowding the base and spreading up the trunk, I stare down at the odd remains of what was once probably a dwarf. This isn’t the first time that I have come across an odd body in the woods, far from it; the sight of these skeletal remains surrounded by a burst of mushrooms has become common. It is the best place to prepare an ambush for a pack of boars.
Without any real evidence, I always figured that the remains are from trial takers decades ago. Maybe so far off the regular path as I am here, many of their bodies aren’t reclaimed when this terrible event ends. The Passage certainly seems bloody enough to pile up this many bodies. That doesn’t explain why even after checking five of the bodies I have yet to find a single item or article of clothing among them, or why I have found all of them leaning up against trees.
I am just about to pick out a tree to climb up to the first layer of the treetops when a shuffling sound catches my attention. Holding the talismans to my chest to stop them from making noise, I slink to the tree, putting it between the noise and myself. Peeking around the tree, the oddest sight that I can remember greets me.
At first, I mistake the three figures plodding through the underbrush as being a band of three short men in odd hats, but my Eye of Volaash dismisses that possibility.
Mycose Wandering Spawner(Level 50)
The odd monsters are vaguely humanoid in shape, barely four feet tall. Their two stubby feet almost bounce as they move through the forest, their flesh the off-putting gray-beige of the mushrooms in the forest. Two grotesquely muscled arms stick out of what I can only describe as stalks, ending in hands that bear five-inch talons instead of fingers. They have no face. Instead, their bulbous torsos transition into a mushroom cap at least four feet in width, from which dangle fruits that glow a soft golden color. Each of the monsters has a different speckle pattern to their caps: green, yellow, orange, all on a bed of lavender purple. They also have a different number of the fruits hanging from their mushroom caps, the one in lead having three while the two behind it having only two.
“Silk on my dick,” I mutter, watching the odd and uncoordinated creatures plod along. Galea, floating next to me, opens her mouth to make some kind of comment about my choice of words. “Don’t even,” I tell the dragon, unable to stop myself smirking as I see the dragon’s disappointment. No doubt, she was going to try and correct me about something.
Thoughts of hunting boars having vanished, mana begins to pour into my fingers, blooming orange fire over my skin. The boars are great for their mana affixes, but after a week and a half and having only gained two levels from hunting them, they are becoming a disappointment more and more. Each of these monsters is level fifty, probably a good challenge.
As my magic has grown, the time for me to over channel a Dragonfire Bolt has stayed fairly consistent, around thirty seconds. Occasionally, I will be able to break through that barrier, creating a truly masterful explosion, but I still haven’t figured out how to do so consistently.
Holding condensed fire in my hand, I round the tree enough to have a good vantage on my targets. The monster in the middle seems to be the leader of this band; I will begin with it. Orange light burns like an arrow through the forest, shrieking as it cuts the air with its speed. The monsters hardly have a chance to slightly turn in my direction before the magic makes contact with the center mushroom man, the explosion enough to toss its two companions a good distance away.
The dust from the explosion clears in less than a second, revealing the body of the mushroom man engulfed in fire from orange-specked cap to weird pudgy toes. It makes no noise as it flails, dragonfire turning its gray flesh to charcoal as it stumbles around like a drunk. A well of pity tries to manifest in my heart as I watch the monster scratch at its cap with its clawed hands, but I quash that emotion. If I want to make it to the end of the Passage, I don’t have time to pity monsters.
“Your dragonfire seems to be very effective,” Galea comments at my side. We both watch the center monster fall sideways, slumping to the forest floor where it continues to shake for a few moments before falling still.
“It does,” I agree. So far, my orange dragonfire has been fairly effective on beast-like monsters, but anything substantially stranger has had some kind of innate defense against the fire. Even the catfish had been practically immune to my fire. I know all of that has to do with how mana affixes work against one another and powerful monsters having especially high magical defenses, but as I watch the body of the mushroom monster smolder on the ground, dismissing the window Galea shows me to let me know the monster is dead, a warmth spreads in my heart. “Finally, some good luck.”
“Left,” Galea says, somewhat lazily.
My feet are already in motion, my speed able to easily put ten feet of distance between where I was just standing and myself in a split second. I land unsteadily, the crash of a taloned hand with the ground shaking the earth beneath my feet. In the spot where I had been just a moment ago, a monster that my eye still identifies as being a Mycose Wandering Spawner stands, pulling its hand up out of the ground, but a clear transformation has taken place. The monster is more than eight feet tall now, its arms and legs now looking more jointed, like a person’s would, no longer flesh blobs. The talons at the ends of its hands extend three feet, almost looking like five black sword blades.
I see its legs coil for a second, and already my fire is flying forward towards its gray body as I run sideways. The blob of fire splashes into the monster’s chest as it lunges forward like an unwinding spring, digging a burning hole into the center of its mass as ten talons race towards me. I kick forward off of a rock, pushing myself closer, inside the range of its closing talons, while also planting a hand on its chest. A blazing eruption engulfs the monster’s right shoulder as its swing finishes, the meat of its forearm colliding with my own shoulder. A crack sucks the air out of my lungs as my body is sent flying to the side, the world a dizzying jumble of leaves, dirt, and pain.
A lucky bounce off of the ground gives me an instant of vision without my head buried in the duff. Finding my orientation, my heels slap into forest floor, and I roll backwards head over heels twice before I can stick the landing. The monster affords me barely a second to get myself together before it is flying through the air at me once again, a taloned hand outstretched like a spear, its other completely engulfed in flame. More falling to the side than anything else, I manage to drop beneath the monster’s body, hearing it crash into a tree trunk some distance behind me.
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In the same moment that I realize my left arm is broken somewhere near the shoulder, I realize that the monster’s single strike sent me bouncing through the forest for almost fifty feet. If I let that thing touch me again, I won’t survive it. A thunking sound behind me makes me spin, fire spreading over my hand, ready for another lunge.
The monster stands, its burning arm hammering into the trunk of a tree while its only good arm is stuck into the bark for almost a foot. It tries to pull itself from the tree even as the fire continues to spread across its body. Another bolt of dragonfire smashes into the back of the Mycose Wandering Spawner, followed by another and another. With one good hand, I put four more Dragonfire Bolts into the back of the monster before its struggling finally begins to slow. Fire has turned it into a burning husk by the time that it stills.
“Where is the other one!” I demand of Galea, turning while I cradle my injured arm.
The dragon spirit looks me up and down before pointing in a vague direction. I take off, sprinting towards where she pointed. It takes me less than a minute to overtake the Mycose Wandering Spawner, the short creature stumbling through the leaves as it races off. Dragonfire already condensing in my hand, I try to find a good vantage to incinerate the monster before it has a chance to make a move.
It notices me somehow, its faceless body half spinning in my direction as I race after it. As it runs around a tree, the mushroom monster plucks one of the fruits hanging from its mushroom cap. By the time that it emerges around the side of the tree a second later, its body has swelled to giant proportions, looking almost identical to the last one that I killed. The Mycose Wandering Spawner begins to coil its legs, its hands coming up to point in my direction, but I stand at the top of a rise, looking down at the monster, relief on my face.
The Mycose Wandering Spawner never reacts to the ball of screaming fire sailing at it. The bolt of dragonfire passes right between its outstretched arms as it prepares to launch itself in my directions, its movements stopped by an explosion of fire. A burning body rolls out of the plume of flame, the giant mushroom knocked a good two feet backwards through the air by the explosion before falling to the ground, burning like a yule log. The monster never moves again, and a minute later, Galea floats up to me, holding a window between her claws.
You have defeated Mycose Wandering Spawnerx3
I breathe out my relief, falling on my ass at the top of the rise. My heart pounds in my ears, and it takes a long moment before I can calm it to any extent. As I watch the monster continue to burn at the bottom of the short slope, a painful popping in my left arm draws my attention away. The pain is gone after a second, strength flooding through my arm once again. I flex my hand, making a fist, and stretch out my arm.
“That was fast,” I say, looking at the bloody patch of new skin where a nasty gash had been just a few seconds before.
“Mistress Charlene is a recovery specialist,” Galea says.
“Still.” I give myself a few more moments before getting back to my feet and walking down the slope to the body. I nudge the dead monster with my foot, using Disenchant to turn it into a cloud of pink smoke. Looking over the message window that tells me what has been added to my inventory, I see all the expected things. I have no clue what “Mycose Flesh” will taste like, and at the moment, I am not particularly interested to give it a try. At the bottom of the window, something does strike my interest.
Opening my inventory window, I retrieve the newest item in my collection. A fruit, about the size and shape of a chicken egg, appears in my hand, glowing a warm golden color.
Mycose Spawn Seed of Growth(Rare):
A spawn seed from a colony of Mycose with natural affixes of growth. If planted as intended, the spawn seed will attempt to grow into a Mycose Territory Bulb, helping the colony expand its reach. If consumed by a non-mycose, this spawn seed can grant a permanent increase to one’s attributes.
My eyes widen at the description. Natural treasures that are capable of permanently increasing the attributes of a person are some of the most sought after items–if my books aren’t lying that is. Naturally, there is a limitation to their effectiveness, but it is a common practice for wealthy magicians to stuff themselves with as many as they can get their hands on. Access to these expensive items is an incentive that many of the larger magician guilds use to bring in new members. Who would say no to easy power?
“Am I reading this right?” I ask Galea.
“The description should be perfectly legible, Mistress.” She looks between me and the message window.
“I just wanted to make sure.” I bring the spawn seed up to my mouth, ready to eat the thing whole then and there, before a stray thought stops me. Aren’t the other bodies still burning up?
Five minutes of frantic running and disenchanting later, I sit on the ground, four of the spawn seeds laid out in front of me. Even with the first monster having still had three of the spawn seeds attached to its mushroom cap when I blew it up, my disenchanting ability only gave me one. When I used the ability on the body still stuck to the tree, my multiplicity affix managed to give me two.
“Maybe I need to not completely destroy the bodies in order to get all of the seeds,” I muse. Being able to do that without setting the flammable bodies ablaze might not be something that I can do just yet. Still, four of these natural treasures is quite the haul for a day’s work.
A book rests in my hand, a journal of an adventurer’s travels though the world and her recollection about what she found out in the wilds. I like to read it for the stories during stretches of boredom, but now I am more focused on her descriptions of some of the magical treasures she found out in the wilds.
“It says here that a skilled alchemist can refine these kinds of treasures,” I tell Galea.
“Will you save them then?” she asks.
I mull over the question. As it stands, I have no idea how potent these spawn seeds might be. If I could find an alchemist capable of refining these treasures, they could turn them into something worth a fortune and far more powerful. I sigh, looking in the direction of what I imagine to be North.
“No,” I say. “I was lucky today. I stumbled upon monsters that were naturally weak against my fire, monsters that also produce powerful items like these spawn seeds. I doubt that I have any luck left to find an alchemist before the Passage ends, and I can use all the advantages I can find to get out of this thing alive.” It wasn’t as if I was planning to find another living person for the time being either. “Best just to use them now.”
Before I can change my mind, I pluck up one of the spawn seeds and pop it in my mouth. The seed explodes with ecstasy inducing flavor the second that I bite into it, tasting like honey and strawberries. The magical juices of the seed try and dribble down my chin, but I catch them before they can escape. The power of the seed floods into me like a sweet wave, racing through my veins like the welcoming spread of fire. The sensation relaxes after a second, but the vibrance of the memory continues to linger for a time. A window appears in the air in front of me.
Congratulations! You have gained 2 Free Points!
“Incredible,” I manage to say after swallowing. The remaining three fruits disappear into my mouth before I can think to do anything else. Their power is intoxicating, like a warm massage that relaxes into my muscles and my core, but I notice that not all of the energy flows into my body. On a hunch, I open the window that shows my Enchanter’s Affix Index. A new rune has appeared in one of the empty boxes, its glow already vibrant and green.
I pull my book on spellcraft from my inventory as I stand, wiping my chin with the base of my hand. A short flip through the basic runes in the back of the book later matches the new rune to one in the book: Growth.
“We should find out where those monster came from,” I tell Galea, already heading in the direction the mushroom monsters had come from as I retrieve my copy of “Glossary of Basic Affix Interaction” to begin reviewing the Growth affix.
“There will be more of them in that direction, likely,” Galea says.
“That is the idea.”
According to “Glossary of Basic Affix Interaction,” the Growth affix is commonly used in high level enchanting to make growth items, magical items, like artifacts, which will grow in power alongside their users. I get a bit caught up in reading up on the affix, relying on Galea to inform me if there are any enemies nearby as our walk continues.
Unfortunately, it does not appear that the Growth affix is all that useful in the creation of talismans. I have already given up a space in my Index to containing the growth mana, it would be a shame to dissipate all of that stored mana without using it. I set my sights on possible enchantments that I may be able to do in the future; the idea of creating an artifact of my own is incredibly attractive.
I am so caught up in reading about this particular affix, flipping through the glossary to review the various and interesting interactions that it has with different kinds of affixed mana, that Galea’s warning catches me off-guard.
“Ahead,” she says.
I stop, the book disappearing from my hands, and ready myself to fight. Only, I do not see any apparent enemies around. The forest has changed, lichen and mushrooms covering the trunks of the trees and every loose stone around me. Budding mushrooms grow up from the ground, too numerous to avoid stepping on, and some of the stalks reach almost two feet high.
A tree stands directly ahead of me, its trunk eaten out and hollow, yet still somehow able to support its massive weight. In the hollow of the tree–an open space as big as a cottage–stands what at first glance appears to be a sapling. A spindly stalk of gray flesh rises up from the middle of the hollow, thin tendrils, almost like branches, sprouting from its top. There are six tendrils in total, and at the end of each sits a golden spawn seed, gently waving in the cool breeze of the evening.
Mycose Territory Bulb(Level 72)