The grasshoptaurs didn’t waste time. When they couldn’t immediately spot the trespasser in their territory, they spread out to broaden their search area. Periodically, I’d hear one of them make a crackling sound, much like a regular grasshopper, to communicate to the others they’d found evidence. Or at least, that was what I assumed, given that the noises were almost in a straight line from where I’d come from.

Once I couldn’t detect their gentle heartbeats, I called down Galahand, and we put distance between us and the trackers. The elven-insects didn’t seem especially powerful, but there were so many of them I feared taking damage if they swarmed. Also, to be fair, I was encroaching on their territory.

If worse came to worst, Cloud of Entropy would have been really nice right now! Notably so with my poison breath unusable again until tomorrow.

I tried not to let my choices bother me. Living in the past never helped anyone, and besides, I made my decision out of nurturance for my only friend. Who was too big to sit on my shoulder now and instead rode on top of my backpack.

Our escape was going well until I caught the telltale sound of heartbeats in the direction we traveled. The sound was identical in cadence to the group of hoppers behind us, and I wondered if the creatures had drawn me into a trap.

I picked up speed, crushing the soft earth and delicate fungi beneath my heavy feet. Each of my steps left an obvious trail in the dirt, and excluding that, a trial of broken roots and fungi. Yet, despite the pounding steps or cracking mushrooms, my trait Skulking Lurcher ensured that I never made a sound.

I couldn’t say the same for the rest of my body, however, and there were a few occasions where I had to tear through a clump of vines or wall of moss with my bastard sword. Every swing left me cringing at the racket, nevermind the conspicuous smells of burning flora left in my wake. Because of the distinct lack of bird life in the strange biome, the fungus jungle was disturbingly quiet; making my intrusive noise that much more apparent.

I broke into a sudden clearing created by a ring of toadstool mushrooms of a previously unseen species. The strange shrooms were black and purple with a red eye centered in the caps. As I slowed to a stop, every eye turned toward me and I felt a shivering draft descend across my head and down my body.

It was just like the spell Pollina had used to try to control me.

The blatant attempt at magical coercion pissed me off, and I set to prepping the fungus for a hibachi. Galahand and I only slaughtered roughly half of the evil eyed things before I felt more of the heartbeats speeding in our direction. We set off without killing the rest and it didn’t sit well with me. Especially when they turned out to be an excellent source of mana for a monster. Still, I didn’t want to tackle a legion of locusts for the reward.

My enhanced speed was too much for the bug people, and I quickly outdistanced them again.

Their pursuit persisted for several hours before they eventually gave up. I had the occasion to stop every so often to murder a new type of wildlife, and upon doing so, would wait a bit to see if they were still following. Along the way, I killed a man-sized venus flytrap, a bright orange-colored beetle that reminded me of a basketball, and a decidedly flammable humanoid creature made of moss. Given the tempered mana they all provided, I concluded that they, too, all had monster cores.

Suddenly free again to do as I wished, I set about filling my backpack with any plant or fungus that looked adequately rare by frequency. I still maintained a safe distance from the disturbing grasping bluegrass when I encountered it, for no other reason than it was creepy. But nothing else was off the table.

While exploring, I encountered what I could only best describe as a fat hairless squirrel with no eyes. The creature was sloth-like in its manner, barely moving along a branch whilst dragging an enormous fleshy tail that looked a lot like an extended nut sack.

I discovered rather quickly that the lethargic creature would consume almost anything I put in its path. So, I set about experimenting with the different selections of samples I’d picked up by funding the creature's weight gain. Under normal circumstances, I would never abuse an animal by testing things on it. Fortunately, my subject was firmly in the classification of monster and that let me off the hook for any moral entanglements.

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None of my samples had an effect until I’d given it a piece of that eyeball mushroom. The rodent turned a purple color, nearly the same shade as the mushroom, then sprouted an eye on its forehead. Fearing that I’d just committed a truly heinous act, I immediately decapitated the mutated monster.

I didn’t have many specimens of that frightening fungus left, but thankfully I’d been smart enough to keep them separated from the others in an empty side pocket.

Before leaving the area, I noticed a bunch of squirming parasitic slugs falling out of the headless corpse of my test subject. I wasn’t sure if the creatures were present before the mushroom infected them, or because of my interference. Either way, they really grossed me out, and I set them all on fire with my blade. For good measure, I added the rest of the eye mushroom pieces to the flames. Something I should have done the first time around.

I can see no good coming from these atrocities. It also explains why nothing grew around these horrors.

Not too long after that, I continued on my journey and came across another batman. I assumed the guy was supposed to be a sentry, due to him sitting in a shoddily built tree stand. Though he wasn’t a very good one. His steady heartbeat and lack of movement told me he’d fallen asleep at his post. Not that my trait was necessary to deduce his state. A hairy bat leg dangled off the stand and he snored his ass off.

I debated killing the creature in cold blood, but ultimately decided against it. The others had followed me from the roof of the ziggurat and tried to set an ambush. They’d deserved to get the business end of my big bastard blade. This guy wasn’t bothering anyone.

Beyond the tree the sentry sat in was a clearing in the fungle, revealing a stone village of the bat people. My eyesight was still rather poor for long distance viewing, and the shapes of the tribal creatures moving around their dwellings came to me in blurry form.

Not that I paid them much heed.

What arrested my attention was a large temple carved into the face of the cavern wall. Stone steps led up to an open faced entryway big enough to admit an airplane. And carved into the rock face above the entrance was the image of a black sun with an upside-down triangle in the center.

The symbol was recognizable to me from Pollina’s book I’d read about death cults. Against the shadow of a tree, I reached into my backpack and pulled the volume out, searching for the reference.

It didn’t take long to identify the religious iconography as belonging to Valmmuz, the Darkheart Alchemist, creator of vampires. According to the records, no one was sure what race Valmmuz was originally, or indeed if he had ever been mortal. What was sure was that he was a dickwad. The god didn’t play well with others, even his fellow death gods, and caused problems everywhere his cult spread.

The Zu-Rakan empire considered all the "virgin" vampire queens to be wives of Valmmuz, making it the de facto imperial religion. Thalzaxor’s rebellion hadn’t just been against the vampire queens, but also the god they’d worshiped.

Valmmuz had easily survived the eradication of his most powerful followers. Which, given that his religion was the singular most prominent death cult in all of Allwyn, meant that he cropped up frequently. Principally, two factors made his worship popular.

The first was that he was the only god of alchemy. For obvious reasons, alchemy would always be important to those with mana cores. His worshippers had access to recipes that were as powerful as they were repugnant.

The second reason was because people viewed vampirism as the most attractive form of undeath. Noble women with fading beauty, or miser merchants that had spent their good years fighting for every scrap of coin, all valued the inherent offerings of becoming a vampire. A condition that offered immortality, hedonic blood thirst, and ultra attractive looks wasn’t a hard sell to anyone with a low moral character.

When you marry the allure of everlasting vice to the bribe of alchemy, it isn’t too hard to see the problems that Valmmuz’s cult can incite.

Parallel to the temple steps was a walkway that stretched out behind the building leading upwards. An enormous wooden gate, manned by bat people guards, watched over the structure, which blocked off a tunnel.

I had a feeling, nothing more than base intuition, really, that the gate was what I needed to cross to get closer to the surface.

I turned back to the fungle behind me and considered what I should do. There was no way I could wipe out that village of death cultists. Yet, that was probably where I needed to go.

Meanwhile, going back into the depths of the fungi wasn’t exactly appealing. Swarms of bugmen were still roaming around out there, as well as evil eyed mind parasites. Then there was the hunting party I’d wiped out. Surely, the bat folks would send out a search party soon. That would probably lead them right in my direction.

But was that such a bad thing? The last time they’d come for me, it hadn’t gone so well. Maybe grinding for mana was exactly what I needed to do right now. I doubted I could grow strong enough to walk over the village cultists, but at the least I might weaken them enough to make sneaking past easier.

Or maybe I’d find another way out of this place on the other side of the biome. All my choices sucked, but that was the best possible outcome.

Mind made up, I headed back into the depths of the fungle.