The process repeated three more times, with each round of new growth exceeding the previous in both size and scope. Increasingly large mushrooms sprouted directly from the nourishing corpses of those that came before. Until finally, Alan was surrounded by an impenetrable haze of grey dust.
He could feel his mind becoming foggy as the invasive particles seeped into his nostrils, attempting to fill his lungs with their putrid stench. Overwhelmed by a sense of impending doom that was impossible to place, Alan's thoughts became scrambled.
Unable to breathe, and robbed of his sight, Alan tried to activate [Tenacious Concentration] and [Trap Detection], only to find that his Skills were inaccessible.
Alan made the mistake of thinking that things couldn't get any worse, and the universe deemed it necessary to correct his attitude. An eerie moan sounded out as an unknown force pulled at the cloying haze of spores like an unseen vacuum. Cutting through, and hastily drawing it all away.
Gathered up into a single location, the wretched smelling dust underwent another disturbing transformation. A pulsating, amorphous blob began to form not fifty feet away. Directly below the boughs of a massive, but sickly-looking tree.
Alan felt a chill run down his spine as he gazed upon the pulsating form. Its surface was a foul green color, and tendrils of mist seemed to be reaching out from somewhere deep within its mass, as if it were still attempting to draw in additional particles.
Without warning, the center of the blob split open, revealing a tall figure hidden within. The being was shrouded in shadows, its form indistinct. But Alan could see a pair of piercing red eyes staring right at him from beneath a twisted rack of horns. Studying him curiously from the depths.
Alan felt like he was being judged, and it really pissed him off. “HEY!!“ he yelled at the mysterious figure, “What the fuck is going on?“ As if angered by his voice, the being narrowed its eyes even further.
It raised the silhouette of an arm to gesture in Alan's direction. The casual movement sent a wave of insidious pressure rushing out of the misshapen orbs entry. Striking all of Alan's senses at once, if not for the roots holding him upright, Alan would've collapsed under the casual scrutiny.
Whatever manner of entity that thing was, it radiated an aura of overwhelming density. It was like a physical force, pushing and prodding him in all directions at the same time. Only once before had Alan felt an aura more refined than this, and that had been the aura of his own Goddess.
While that realization should've been enough to impress upon him just how fucked he really was, in reality, things weren't ever so simple. For a reason he couldn't explain, some instinctual part of him railed against such a foolish proposition. It was unacceptable.
Gnashing his teeth in an attempt to remain conscious, Alan's fury reached a boil. The thought of this cowardly creature posessing strength nearing that of Gaea's was infuriating.
“Why don't you come out here and eat my ass!?“ Alan shouted hoarsely. Although physically restrained, as long as his he could speak, Alan was determined to be heard. If questions wouldn't get a response, he was going to have to improvise. It was a dangerous game he was playing, one in which he was clueless as to what the rules were.
Defying all expectations, Alan heard a raspy hacking sound, that, while unlike any he had ever heard, he was almost certain the creature had begun laughing at him. Having seen all it needed, the hidden being lowered its arm, easing the pressure weighing on Alan's senses, and faded into the darkness.
“Hey! You fuck! Get back here!!“ Alan raged, thrashing against his restraints, only stopping when in a bout of sudden fortune, he managed to unstick his right hand from where it was glued to his chest. Alan cackled maniacally and shoved his freed-up arm through a thin gap between two roots. He grabbed a handful of putrid vines, and pulled back as hard as he could.
Greeted with a satisfying crack of snapping wood, and then an equally unsatisfying elbow to the ribs, Alan took a slow breath to cool his temper and got to work on the next root.
In less than a minute, Alan was working on the final root barricading his right arm. It was thicker than the others had been, and already he had put more effort into breaking this one root than all of the others combined.
Alan's heart kicked into high gear when he heard a sudden howl, followed closely by the sound of light footsteps rustling the grass. The sleek form of a moss-furred wolf stepped confidently out from behind the green blob and into full view. Standing over five-feet-tall at its bulging shoulders, the fluffy green exterior did little to mask the rippling, and overly-defined muscles hidden beneath. Head held high, it locked eyes with Alan, and he readied himself for a fight as well as one could be expected to while unable to move anything other than an arm.
With excitement gleaming in its yellow eyes, the wolf raised its hackles and grinned a sharp toothed smile. Using its powerful back legs, the beast covered the distance in three bounding leaps and launched itself at Alan. He was fairly certain that the creature from earlier was truly gone, yet he knew for sure that there was no way he was going to be able to survive if a two on one fight under such adverse conditions.
It was now or never.
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Putting everything he had into the effort, Alan was able to break the final binding holding his right arm in place.
The beast was already upon him, but at the very last second, Alan's desperate slash cleanly cut through the wolf's neck. Although it was unmistakable that he saw his claws sever the beast's head, he was never met with the feeling of impact that should've come with such a savage attack. Alan didn't understand what was going on, yet he didn't have time to dwell on the issue.
Before he could react, the seemingly uninjured wolf reformed just out of reach. Ears laid back against its mossy fur, the wolf snapped its jaws with frustration and dispersed into a green haze that blocked his view just long enough for it to flee back into the shuddering blob's entrance.
With the obtrusive veil of green fog no longer hampering his view, Alan tore his eyes away from the unsettling green blob just long enough to take a quick stock of his surroundings. From what little he could gather while being unable to move his neck, Alan determined that either he was in an extremely realistic illusion, or he had once again been relocated without his approval. Quite frankly, the how could wait until later.
The means of his arrival notwithstanding, Alan was still mostly-bound under heavy restraints. Only now he found himself in the heavily shadowed depths of an old-growth forest. Surrounded by trees with a wider circumference than his shack back home.
Isolated streamers of reddish light shown down from above. Piercing through the occasional breach in the treetops, they were the only source of illumination for as far as he could see. The forest floor was bereft of any plantlife worth mentioning. The pitiful ambient lighting simply wasn't capable of sustaining life of any real complexity.
A thick layer of mulch, interspersed with mosses of colors ranging in a wide variety of muted colors clung to a bleak existence in the low-light environment. Large, golden capped mushrooms dotted the landscape, placed as if at random.
Wary of the wolf making a return and catching him by surprise, Alan turned his attention back to focusing on the green orb. No sooner had he locked eyes on it than it lifted up into the air on a thick brown stalk. Using his free arm to tear at the cage of roots around his head, Alan managed to crane his head back just far enough that he could follow the ascending orb with his eyes.
What. The. Fuck.
Facing down an enormous mushroom that stretched all the way from the ground to the to impenetrable canopy above, Alan sucked in a ragged breath, and fought desperately to break free from his bindings. It was difficult to come to grips with what he was seeing, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to realize that the stuation was no longer tenable.
“Shit, shit, shit!“ Alan snarled. He struggled and thrashed, trying to break free from the grip of the black roots, but his efforts were all for naught. The harder he fought, the stronger their hold on him became. Something had to be done. If that mushroom were to dump it's spores, Alan was sure he would be buried alive.
Contrary to his beliefs, the cap of the mushroom easily forced it's way through the lower tree branches with all the subtly of a wrecking ball. Alan's assumption of the canopy's impenetrability was proven shortsighted when the vast treetops were roughly shoved to the side in a deafening squeal of over stressed wood. Exposed to the sky, Alan was bathed in the soft light of a blood red crescent moon, and laid eyes on an abundance of stars.
Before he was able to adjust to the new source of light, a plume of spores and falling leaves the likes of which far exceeded his earlier expectations blocked out the majority of the sky, placing him once more in deep shadow. Alan took solace knowing that at the very least, the majority of the spores would be blocked out by the treetops.
Distracted by the the shocking scene above, Alan failed to notice a root as thick as his leg shooting out of the ground. With him none the wiser until it was already too late, it wrapped around his right arm, twisted the limb behind his back, and pinned it in place before he ever had a chance to fight back.
Restrained once more, Alan ceased his pointless struggling, and tried to come up with a way out. Which was easier said than done when he hadn't the faintest idea of where he was. Or what was going on. What did any of this have to do with a Class? If there was a lesson to be learned from all of this, Alan was clueless as to what it could be.
Nor did he have time to ponder the potential ramifications. Hearing a strange buzzing, Alan turned his head back to the sky and was unable to look away as the treetops were sheared down and devoured by the descending wall of haze. Everything the spores touched was immediately, and remorselessly consumed. The destruction was only spreading faster with every second that passed.
Alan knew that if something wasn't done, it was only a matter of time before it was his turn to be eaten.
Although he understood that it was counterproductive, he was unable to block out a mental image of his discarded bones littering the floor of some unknown forest.
“What the fuck is going on!“ Alan roared in a loss of composure and self control. It was becoming increasingly difficult to keep from panicking. The trees were disappearing at an alarming rate, and, Alan realized with abject horror, the sky itself was being ingested. The stars were all but gone, and the blight was steadily encroaching on the moon.
A deep growl drew Alan's eyes back to the ground. That damned wolf had made a return. Standing before him with bared teeth, the beast cocked its head to the side and trotted a lazy circle around him. Satisfied with Alans restraints, it came to a stop, sitting by his left side right as the world-devouring rain of spores once again entered his peripheral.
He bellowed his fury at the sky, growing increasingly irate as the wolf echoed his action. As if mocking him, the beast turned his jaws to the sky and unleashed a high-pitched howl in a frequency that was almost imperceptible.
While it was difficult for Alan to hear, the spores seemed drawn to the sound. A tendril of airborne particles gathered together into a small cone and fell faster than the main cloud, slamming into the Wolf. It turned to face Alan, and if he wasn't mistaken, the beast was getting bigger.
No, it's definitely growing, Alan thought with concern. It had only been the span of a few heartbeats, and already the Wolf was towering over him. Over the course of the next several seconds, the remainder of the trees were reduced to jagged stumps, and all the while, the wolf only continued to grow larger.
When the last of the spores had entered its body, the wolf was easily a hundred feet tall. Alan knew that a casual misplacement of its foot would be all it took to reduce him to a puddle of crunchy goo. Yet he had no way to escape, and there was nowhere for him to go even if he found the means to do so.
The massive beast looked down at Alan, and the world seemed to come to a standstill. In a burst of speed that defied logic, the Wolf's head shot forward. Jaws split wide, it aimed to devour him in a single bite. Realizing that one way or another, the situation was coming to a close, Alan shut his eyes, and made his peace with the end.
And then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over.