The vines fell back inside the room as if they realized they couldn’t reach far enough to catch anyone. That wasn’t a good sign; it meant there was something controlling them that was smart enough to have them stop. It also meant that they were actually tied to the location in some way, which was better news.
Sophia took a few steps to the side, careful to stay well out of the reach of the vines but close enough to get a look inside. She needed to see what was in the room to decide what to do about it.
The creature inside the room looked like a mummy wrapped in vines. It had bright orange mana-lights where its eyes should have been and its feet seemed like clusters of roots that extended into the vine-covered floor. Curtains of vines hung on the walls of the room; that was clearly what had tried to reach Dav when he opened the door. Just as clearly, they were controlled by the vine-mummy.
Vine Mummy [https://i.imgur.com/c8lwO0A.jpeg]
They couldn’t safely enter with the fines there, but they looked loose and looked easy to damage. That might or might not be true, but it gave Sophia an idea: they might be vulnerable to her Force Blast. She turned a little towards Dav. “Hold the door open, I’m going to see if I can take out the vines.”
Before she finished speaking, the vines writhed and formed a barrier protecting the monster from view. That was probably in response to her words, which probably meant this monster could detect sound, but it definitely didn’t show understanding. If anything, it meant the vines were easier to damage because they’d hold firm and break rather than just moving as she hit them. Blasting them into whatever walls or ceiling the room had would work, but breaking apart a net would be even easier.
It would also be easier to damage with more traditional weapons, but Sophia wasn’t about to ask Dav to try. The vines moved too quickly.
Sophia gauged her mana and shook her head. She didn’t have any to waste. She needed to be more judicious with it than she had been outside; yes, it made things easy, but she only had so much. She threw a single Force Blast to see how it did.
The vine wall shook and a couple of strands broke, but it wasn’t enough. Other vines started to weave their way into the openings formed by the damaged vines.
Sophia frowned. That didn’t work nearly as well as she hoped. One more spell might do it, but she didn’t think so. She needed to hit it hard. This time, she levitated her Animated Spell Blade up and carefully released a pair of Force Blasts from as close to the same point at as close to the same time as she could manage. She aimed them up instead of towards the mummy, on the theory that that was where the vines seemed to hang from, but other than that she didn’t restrict the spells’ expansion.
The second spell tore into the vines while they were still completely taut from the blast of the first. Vines broke and the anchors that held them to the ceiling and walls collapsed, then the vine wall plummeted to the ground and revealed the vine mummy. Sophia had no doubt that the vines were still dangerous, but they would be badly hampered and should be far harder for the mummy to control.
At least she achieved something for all the mana she just spent.
Taika didn’t wait for a question. “The whole thing is alive, even the vines. The strongest part is the head, but it might not be the only spot.”
“My turn,” Amy stated bluntly. Her words were almost immediately followed by an arrow that slammed into the vine mummy’s head. It was far larger than the ones she normally used, clearly designed to cut its way through softer materials instead of penetrating deeply.
Dav started to move forward, but Sophia stopped him with an outstretched arm.
“I want to see if Amy’s right.” Sophia could already guess what Amy was thinking: this particular corpsevine didn’t obviously seem to have the bone protection of the others. Instead, it was either animating or controlling the vines in the room. If Amy could kill it from a distance, that was a huge advantage.
Unfortunately, it was not to be. The broad-headed arrow sliced through several of the vines that wrapped the mummy’s head, then skidded away. The injury revealed pitted ivory bone still covered in tiny bits of plant matter.
The vine mummy’s eyes flashed a brilliant red, then one of the vines that wrapped around its shoulders flew up, stabbed into the ceiling above it, and pulled the vine mummy forward, to the edge of the room. All motion in the other vines stopped as the vine mummy’s feet cleared the floor. Roots trailed away from the vine mummy’s feet. It looked like a plant ripped from the soil more than like the infested monsters they’d fought earlier.
“The vines just died?” Taika sounded confused. “No, they’re not dead, they’re still alive but they’re normal plants now where they weren’t before.”
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Sophia shook her head, annoyed. She knew what that meant. “It was controlling them somehow. It probably had to be stationary for that, that’s why it didn’t come out. When we didn’t go in…”
It was worse than that, though. They would almost certainly face more of the same later, and she wasn’t going to have enough mana to keep ripping up the vines. That meant they had to find another way to deal with it. Amy’s arrows worked once the vines were out of the way, but they weren’t likely to be able to do it if the vines could still act as a barrier. Sophia didn’t know how to deal with that offhand.
She also didn’t have time to think about it.
The mummy vine threw up its hands. The vines wrapped around its shoulders imitated the motion. Sophia expected them to lunge at her or Dav, since they were the closest, but instead she felt an intense dryness, even desiccation, emanate from the mummy. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but it was intensely uncomfortable.
Sophia could see the vines and leaves on the mummy turning green and starting to form new leaves as she watched. She tried to shout a warning, but her tongue was too dry.
Well, if she couldn’t speak, she didn’t have to. Sophia’s blade stabbed into the mummy’s shoulder near where some of the vines separated from the mummy’s body. More importantly, he hit the shoulder itself. If it had to raise its arms to use the spell and she could stop that, she’d stop the spell.
Dav swung straight for the head. He put his full force into the swing and it smashed deep into the corpsevine’s skull. The spell didn’t end. Sophia could still feel the moisture drain, and as she watched, new vines seemed to spring up to replace the ones Dav smashed.
One of Amy’s broad-headed arrows thudded cleanly into the newly unprotected cluster of vines. The corpsevine shuddered, more of a reaction than either of the previous attacks, but it didn’t fall. If anything, it seemed even more determined.
The eyes flashed again. The dryness intensified and spread, though it seemed stronger to Sophia’s right, the side that she hadn’t hit with her knife.
The monster’s right arm fell as Sophia yanked her blade out of the shoulder. The spell seemed to shift even more to Sophia’s right; her left side still felt dry, but it no longer felt like it was being blasted by hot desert air.
She needed to stop the spell before it managed to use it to heal its arm the way it was healing its head.
The vine mummy didn’t even try to stop her when she swiftly flew the blade to the other side and stabbed the other shoulder. It probably couldn’t move without breaking the spell, and the spell definitely had a limited range.
That thought made Sophia decide that she needed to make some distance from the mummy. She could control her Animated Blade as long as it was within her aura’s reach, so she might as well get that far from the mummy. It was harder at the edge, but if that got her outside the range of the mummy’s desiccation spell, it would be worth it.
It was still dry, but not nearly as dry as when she was closer.
Sophia didn’t see Dav’s next attack, but when she turned, she could see that the mummy was trying to re-grow its entire head. Unfortunately, it was still standing and Sophia could tell that its right shoulder was writhing, which was probably the plant-monster trying to move the shoulder back where it needed to be to maintain the withering spell. She telekinetically pulled her Animated Blade from its left shoulder, let the arm fall, then stabbed her blade back in. Hopefully that would pin the arm in place.
Two more arrows thudded into the monster, then Dav smacked it again. This time, he went after the arm Sophia had initially disabled. He didn’t manage to cut through the vines, but it would slow the monster’s ability to recover. With the arms out of the picture, the desiccation spell was far less powerful.
From there, the fight was a straightforward matter of slicing the vine mummy into pieces small enough that they couldn’t drain the liquid out of everything around them. It took far longer than any previous fight against a corpsevine, but eventually the creature was in small enough pieces that they didn’t feel the effect anymore. They still took the time to build a fire and burn most of its body; they hadn’t taken the time with previous corpsevines, but this one deserved it.
Pulling the monster out of its lair worked out well; it was obvious that the vine mummy preferred to immobilize enemies using its control of the vines around it, then desiccate them. Once it couldn’t immobilize its targets, it became a battle of attrition that Sophia, Dav, and Amy could win.
It took quite a bit of water and an entire one of the alchemical energy drinks Amy had provided before Sophia felt decent again. Sophia took a moment while she was rehydrating herself to check with Cliff and see if he knew what spell the corpsevine used.
He did, but it wasn’t a spell. It was a Martial Technique called Siphon Sap, and it basically did what she’d seen the plant monster do. Sophia considered adding it to her repertoire, but the requirement to stay completely still while using the ability made it less than attractive. It was strange; all of the Martial Techniques she’d found so far had major drawbacks or limitations. None of them just worked the way spells did.
She was done examining the new option when something else on her Status caught her eye: her Shield wasn’t full. She was pretty sure it was full before they ran into the vine mummy, which meant she’d lost five Shield during the encounter. That was bad news; it was the first time she’d seen anything that wasn’t a direct, obvious attack damage the Guide’s Shield. It was also something that would be hard to recover from, since Shield recovered very slowly.
Dav, who was close to the monster for longer than Sophia, lost fourteen, while Amy lost only one. That worried Sophia; Dav didn’t really feel hurt, any more than Sophia did, just dehydrated. Until Sophia noticed that her Shield was reduced, Dav hadn’t even realized his Shield was damaged. That could be deadly, if they assumed they could take a hit and they couldn’t.
Taika had no idea how much Shield he lost; he still couldn’t see a full Status. He didn’t seem particularly affected, so Sophia guessed that it was probably fine. It was a good thing that Taika normally rode in Dav’s pack; he could help speed up Dav’s passive Shield regeneration while they searched the room and traveled onwards.