Putrid wasn’t a strong enough word to describe the mouth-watering, spine-tingling stench that emanated out from the ground, wall, and ceiling alike. It seeped into Barry’s every pore and he was unable to escape the heavy pong no matter which way he turned. Every breath of air stung his nose and throat with such utter foulness that it made vomit on more than one occasion. His steps squelched as he was forced to walk through god knows what sort of thick, filthy brown sludge. Worms and bugs slithered around his legs and at one point he flinched when a giant, slimy worm slid over his foot. He fell to the side and his shoulders bumped into the wall of the corridor which was just as soft and disgusting as the floor below him. As he moved away from the wall he found he had brought with him a sopping clump of steaming brown gunk. Horrified, he tried to wipe the muck off his shoulder, but instead he found it just stuck to his hand as well.
“Ugh, this is disgusting!” Barry hollered.
As he felt another vomit coming on. Just as he considered turning around, Barry saw the end of the corridor not too far in the distance. So whilst holding his breath, he ran forward with awkward, heavy steps until he found himself looking out at another open area.
This space was the same size as the area that had held the small sprouting tree of life from before. It was even the same design, being circular with a twenty metre or so wide raised platform of muck in the centre. But on this platform was not a plant, but instead, a large, spherical mess of speckled dark brown muck identical to the stuff he was trudging through. The strange ball easily took up at least half of the platform. Around the platform were dozens of smaller balls of muck, around two metres in diameter. As he looked around at them he noticed something strange, the balls were... moving? Perplexed, Barry turned to his ever reliable inspection skill to help provide him with the answers to his questions.
Inspection:
Beast: Living fertiliser spawn
Level: 17
Stat: Stamina
“Fertiliser? Like you would use in a...” Barry’s sentence was cut short as he realised why these strange beasts were here.
Surely these fertiliser beasts were linked to the tree of life from before. Suddenly, something else caught his eye as he saw the big mound in the middle shuffle ever so slightly.
Inspection:
Beast: Living fertiliser queen
Level: 22
Stat: Stamina
Barry took a step forward to peer further out into the large cavern of filth, and the moment he did so all of the fertiliser spawns stopped moving and instead two bits of brown gunk dropped off of the front of the creatures and sunk into the muck at their middle. In place of the fallen blobs appeared two large round eyes, each of them staring at Barry unblinkingly. The sight sent a chill up Barry’s spine which was only amplified when two-metre-wide blobs dropped down from the queen, revealing a set of dark black pupils. Below the beasts eyes a large gaping, gummy maw opened up with bits of stringy gunk suspended between the top and bottom lip. Then, each of the creatures let out a gurgled howl, and began waddling towards him. As they moved forward at a slow but steady pace, Barry saw clumps of brown mess emerge out of their sides, which then quickly reformed into arms. Barry could also see rotund legs start to appear below the creatures as they grew a little taller, yet at the same time a little thinner. With their newly created legs they began to move a bit faster towards him with evil intentions visible in their eyes.
Barry’s adrenaline masked the stench as he fully stepped out of the corridor and into the cavern to give himself more room to move. He summoned an aura chain in each hand and charged forward at the closest fertiliser spawn. He slammed the chain in his right hand down at the creature as it shuffled forward in a bee line straight for him. Barry’s chain collided with the creature’s mouth with a solid squelch and it took off a chunk of brown, gooey flesh with it. However, the now droopy faced beast was unphased by the attack, and despite the power of Barry’s blow, it’s forward momentum was unimpeded. It’s thick, disgusting frame crashed into Barry’s front and he felt himself being dragged into the beasts body, like he was sinking forward into soft mud. He couldn’t see, and he couldn’t breathe. When he brought his hands forward to push himself away from the creature, he just found his arms sinking further forward into its body. Barry activated duplication directly behind him and followed up with his clone transfer skill, freeing himself of the beast’s grasp. Unfortunately for Barry, the transfer to his clone did not remove the muck from his face, chest or arms, and he had to shake his head like a wet dog in order to remove some of the mud from around his eyes. Meanwhile his clone has no such problem passing straight through the creature and Barry directed it to the side to ensure he had an escape route. In fact, after realising how many of them there were he summoned another clone to the other side in case of emergency.
Barry raised his chain and swung down again at the deformed spawn. After taking another chunk out of the beasts head, Barry was suddenly slammed into by another spawn who had rocketed towards him, seemingly out of nowhere. The creature fully absorbed him into itself and again he found himself unable to see, breathe or move. After another clone transfer Barry was free of its grasp and both he and his clones looked around to see what had led to the blow. As his vision reached the platform Barry saw the giant fertiliser queen standing up on two short, tree trunk width legs, reaching down and picking up the smaller spawn beasts with its enormous, protruding arms, preparing to launch them in his direction.
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Barry dove out of the way of the first flying spawn, which hit the soft mud, but maintained its form. However, he was forced to use a barrier to block the second flying beast as the thick mud slowed his movements significantly. The beast hit the barrier, separating into hundreds of smaller globules of muck. Barry even received some energy from the kill which was a pleasant surprise. Meanwhile the queen roared in irritation at the sudden death of its kin. This did not dissuade her from launching another three spawns towards him in quick succession as Barry must have seemed distracted from needing to fight off the spawn within melee range. But what the queen didn’t realise was that he constantly kept a clones vision on her whilst he fought, to ensure he wouldn’t be caught off guard again.
Barry went to work on the spawns with a longer than normal chain to ensure he was well out of their reach. The awkward length of his chains made it difficult to strike with any real power, but it seemed to be enough to disassemble the spawns little by little. Before long Barry had killed the vast majority of the filthy beasts, either with his chains or barriers. By now the queen was visibly ropable and she roared so loudly that it shook the mud that Barry was standing within to the point that he nearly fell over. Then, as Barry felled the final spawn, the queen finally decided to leave her platform and start to make her way towards him. With every thunderous step the beast made Barry was splattered with specks of watery muck, some of which got in his mouth and he again found himself bent over and dry retching. Suddenly, the filthy monstrosity swung it’s arm back and clenched it’s fist like it was about to punch forward, which Barry was confused about as he was certain he was well out of its reach. Then its body began to glow and Barry tensed, as it’s other arm retracted into its body and the mass that had just disappeared suddenly reappeared in the arm that was propelling towards him. Reflexively, Barry summoned three simultaneous barriers in front of him, but the beast easily smashed through all of them and it’s mucky fist collided into him. The queen’s body felt firmer than the spawns, so instead of being absorbed into it like he’d half expected, Barry was instead sent flying backwards through the air and tumbling into the mucky ground.
Barry immediately got up, having taken little damage from the attack thanks to his barriers and the softness of the mud. He was mainly concerned with wiping the sludge from his face. By now he looked like someone who had fallen in a drum of black and brown paint, and he smelt like someone who had covered himself in faeces and then not showered for a week. He smelt like literal shit in more ways than one, and he was tired of the weird abilities of these creatures. So, with a clone to either side he charged forward and starting going to work on the queen with his chains. After a few minutes of whacking, dodging and diving Barry had removed hundreds of kilograms of muck from the queen’s form. But she was so massive that despite his efforts it barely made a dint in her, and she seemed to have endless stamina, whilst Barry was starting to tire.
“Fuck me, she’s so bulky it’s ridiculous,” panted Barry.
After dodging another extended strike of the queen’s arm, Barry was forced to summon a remote chain to try to lock the beast in place as he’d found himself cornered and he wanted to keep a few clone transfers up his sleeve as a back up. The aura chain did it’s best to hold down the creature but it was too large and slippery for his chain to get a good hold, and the beast easily slipped out of his grasp. Just as he was about to resort to another clone transfer, Barry suddenly had a sudden thought.
“That thing must be made of dirt, muck, and mess just like the ground. Maybe I can summon a chain from its own body.”
Then, with a wave of his hand he activated remote chain once and then twice, as two chains appeared on the body of the beast. It looked shocked to see the foreign objects sticking out of its sides. Then it’s shock turned to panic, as the chains started violently slashing at the flesh all around them until the large creature was the size of the spawns from earlier. As the chains finally dropped off its body, Barry stepped forward and delivered the killing blows with his aura chains and a large wave of energy rushed into him.
You have slain Living fertiliser queen, level 22.
Soul item aura chain has reached level 19.
Barry couldn’t quite believe that his final trick had worked, but he wasn’t going to complain. Instead he turned his attention to his stats screen. He wanted to keep his stamina, dexterity and strength levels all relatively even, and high enough to be relevant, so he threw a free point into both dexterity and strength, bringing them to level sixteen, just one behind his stamina level. Then he made his way to the central raised platform where he could see a new item of some sorts. As he stepped up onto the platform he quickly grasped the strange, glowing hessian bag and gave it an inspection before throwing it into his spatial storage and starting his walk back towards the corridor and away from this filth.
Inspection:
Life fertiliser: A bag of the highest quality fertiliser for use on one plant. This fertiliser has been magically enhanced to protect against disease and enhance growth.
Barry soon exited the mucky corridor and took a breath of clean air for the first time in what felt like forever. He marched directly up to the sprout of the so called tree of life. He was worried that the fledgling plant might have withered away, but it seemed the straw had done enough to keep the tree alive. Without hesitation he pushed aside the straw from around the base of the sprout, and carefully scattered the entirety of the bag of fertiliser out onto the surrounding dirt before replacing the straw. The sprout pulsed and glowed briefly before it started growing before Barry’s very eyes. Soon, the tiny ten centimetre sprout had grown into a twenty metre high tree that crashed through the first shimmering barrier above him, causing the bronze loot box that was previously resting on its surface to fall down to the ground with a thump. This also made the next shimmering barrier in the sky become easier to see, and Barry estimated it was over seventy metres high, with a silver loot box clearly resting on its surface. Moving his attention to the bronze box, Barry rushed over to it, worried that it might have been damaged from the long drop, but he was relieved to find it looked completely intact. Popping the loot box open Barry found a piece of paper that had the details of the recipe to create mana potions. Barry was pleased with this, but the smell was still overpowering his thoughts. So, not wanting to waste any more time, he moved towards the blue corridor, as he thought it was his best chance at finding some water that he could wash away the smell with. He took one last glance at the tree of life before he left the area, and as he inspected it, he saw that the description was unchanged, except that the word ‘sprout’ had been replaced with ‘sapling’.
“If that’s a sapling, then god knows how big this thing will get when it is fully grown,” thought Barry in astonishment.