[Player Log Start!]
[Log Holder: Terence Glasgow]
[Level: 1, Sub-Level: 4 & 5]
Terry took the stairs two at a time, feeling his breath slip out from his grasp as he reached this supposed greenhouse. The door on the landing below was a fragile thing, made of thin bars of metal spirals. It was as beautiful and artistic as every other piece of architecture in this glass dome. He grabbed it by the sides and pulled it right off the hinges. It creaked and bent, easily allowing him access.
He grinned, slipping through the thin metal bars and into the glass-covered bubble of a room.
There were plants on every surface, green and leafy and strangely out of place in this world where nothing grew. Stacked up on shelves, neatly potted and labeled in fancy cursive.
Immediately, he picked up on a pressing issue. This was the world’s most well-known stock of plants that still remained. And yet, there were no staples here. No vegetables. No fruit. Not even succulents. Just pretty flowers, stained with colors that were only immortalized in dyes outside of this room.
If they were to rebuild, then it would be impossible to make food to sustain all this. Wait, what were people eating right now? They hadn’t seen anything edible around here. The outside was sandy and uninhabitable. The inside was harsh and cold and hostile.
How was this supposed to work?
It wasn’t his problem, he consoled himself. They just needed to pick up a plant and escape. The locals could figure out this hole they had dug themselves into. With careful consideration, he picked up a tiny forget-me-not plant, tiny blue petals stretching out towards him with velvety softness. He tucked its pot under his arm, trying to look for some fertilizer in this humid room of growth.
He didn’t find the fertilizer, but his eyes caught onto something more interesting. A little green fern with curling fronds, settled into a pot painted white on the inside. No, not paint. It was a thin layer of some species of mold.
Juggling the pot with one hand, he picked up the other, trying to get a good look. There was a strange smell around it that he couldn’t quite place. Sickly sweet, outside of the general smell of damp soil and steadily growing plants that he was all too used to.
Finally, he realized what was up. The way the fungus was clustered, and the specific color leaning towards grey spoke of… well they didn’t know. A lot of fungi were white fuzz, alright? It was hard to identify using only sight!
What they did know was that it was wrong. It was shifting. Growing at an alarming rate. While before it had coated the inside of the pot, under his gaze, they found it flooding the pot, overflowing, even spilling off the sides and reaching towards his fingers-
He squeaked and dropped it, sending the fern crashing onto the ground. The pot cracked, spraying white mold and soil everywhere. But it didn’t stop. It continued growing in his direction, crawling towards him with surprisingly sentient intent.
“Stop.” They commanded, kicking out at this nefarious carpet. The fungus did not listen. Because it didn’t have ears or were not inclined to listen?
Terry was not going to take that as an answer. He squared his shoulders, held up his hands, and slowly, deliberately, fingerspelled, “S-T-O-P”
[Applying Nature Affinity…]
His hands heated up, lighting up with a faint green-blue glow. The mold froze, but they could feel it writhing and pushing at the back of his head.
They pushed right back with all the unending pressure that built up in his head, unable to express himself. It gave a little shiver, and then the pressure vanished.
[You have Tamed Maneating Mold Lv. 8!]
Huh. This felt… good. Taming something. Was this what those weird podcast men expected to feel?
They continued signing, falling into the flow of it because it wasn’t like he was necessarily communicating with anything that had higher intelligence. These things were just simple organisms!
“Hey, mind collecting yourself?” Was his first directive. Surprisingly, all the little fronds that had gotten everywhere were easily peeled off the floorboards, curling itself into a lump near the fern’s broken pot. He noticed a clear byproduct being left in its wake. One poke with a leaf from the fern revealed it to be a sticky, adhesive-like mucus.
Deciding to test a hypothesis, he gave another directive. With both hands, though, he had to resort to speaking aloud, “Fix the pot.”
He didn’t expect it to really do it, and yet, the lump twisted into numerous tiny tentacles, pushing the pot together, picking up all its little pieces and then completely ensconcing it. Once it pulled itself off, the pot was completely mended, the cracks visible, but sealed shut.
The fern was gone, though. He was reasonably certain that it had been eaten. Reminder to not touch this thing with his bare flesh. Tamed or not, it would have disastrous consequences.
They pulled out a clean sampling tube and put it on the ground with the open side facing the pile of ominous fungus.
“Go inside.” He suggested. The mold followed his order, stuffing as much of itself inside as it could. The rest of it remained outside, stagnant and uncaring about being left behind. He picked it up, gingerly corking it before they put it in their jacket pocket.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
And it was only when he turned around to leave that the more pressing issue struck him: what the hell was a maneating mold was doing here? In a greenhouse of a rich lady who liked only pretty and rare things? Was it an accident? Ha! The chances of it were astronomical. No, this had to be planned…
“Wow, did you only just now realize something might be fishy?” A sharp voice drawled from towards the door, “I really thought you were going to report a success to your friends.”
A man in a suit was leaning against the warped door, looking at him with enough condescension to curdle milk. Terry gulped, taking a step back. All his previous bravado melted away at the sight of this man, but she had no way to explain what it was.
“Who’re you?” He whispered, cringing at how weak and pathetic he sounded.
The man stepped into the greenhouse, which seemed to become half the size it was before. He was still smirking to himself, a card in hand that was glowing away.
“I am Harry Burks, surely your friends have informed you of who I am?” The man – Burks – asked, coming way too close, “I was able to find the Objectives your corrupted Console has been assigning you, and with the fact that Lucky Paine was working as an ally, it wasn’t hard to predict that you would come here. Would’ve preferred it if you had been eaten by the mold but it seems to not have worked.”
“Sorry.”
He waved his hand dismissively, “You don’t have to worry about that now. I’m familiar with all the other little set dressing you have accumulated. But you, Terry Glasgow, you’re a special one.”
They were? Of course. Right. Cure-Maker. Was it weird how often they forgot that?
“And your specialty is mushrooms?” He stressed, laughing a little, “I suppose that that’s what you’re making the cure out of? Innovative. Unique. Easily dealt with.”
Terry didn’t understand what he was talking about, but he made sure to scrunch up his eyes to display his distaste for this really weird man. He was still talking. Walking around Terry in circles that made his head spin. And monologuing through it.
“Well, the mold didn’t eat you, which is such a drag, but I guess it’s just as well, because then the Developers would be having more than a few words with me. No, no, we need you back in Zombieworld, so up you get!” He grabbed Terry by the arm, and they. Saw. Red.
His other hand was signing before he could think it. Just a few sharp mouth motion, followed by a hand pointing in Burks’ direction. A small, but effective message that translated to: Eat. Him.
The mold lunged forward eagerly, wrapping itself around his leather shoes and traveling up at startling speed. Burks screamed, releasing Terry in his shock. The fungus tore away at his skin, giving them a vivid image of what lay underneath for just a few seconds, before it reached inside, growing, infecting, crawling over him.
Terry turned around and darted out of the door, hoping the mold would kill this scourge on their adventure. He ran up the stairs, panting as he went up one flight, then another- was it getting hotter? Sheesh, he felt like he was in a… furnace. Right.
He slid into the blacksmith’s workshop, only half aware of the forget-me-not still caught like a vice underneath his non-dominant hand. Despite the heat, he found that the giant bulbous body of a furnace was… empty. Spewing the last remnants of smoke, but inside was nothing but wet ash. Asadullah and Lucky were standing over it, holding up a massive bucket that was dripping some amounts of water.
“Done?” He asked, desperately, “Go. Now. Harbingers. Think I killed Burks.”
“No, you didn’t.” Asadullah refuted, his ears contorting into a tiger’s circular one as he listened to the noises coming from down the stairs, “Whatever you did, he survived.”
Lucky gritted her teeth, setting the bucket aside, “Terry, Asad, get out of here, I shall take him on.”
What? No! He wasn’t going to let her. They shook their head furiously.
“You have both finished your objectives.” She pointed out, reminding him of the forget-me-not flowerpot, “Now, return to relative safety. I can fight him.”
After dancing to his whims for years? Excuse them if Terry was a little skeptical. And concerned for Lucky’s safety. Still, there was no point putting up a fight. He gave her the potted plant, however begrudgingly, and a panel popped up with an accompanying chime.
[Plant Sample Returned!]
[You have earned 2,000 Exp!]
[Return to Level One?]
[{x} Yes { } No]
He turned to look at Asadullah, who was looking at a panel quite like their own. As if sensing his gaze, the catboy turned to look at him, eyes squinting into a smile.
“See you on the other side. May God keep you safe.” He whispered, and then winked out of existence in a shower of sparks.
“You are a good man, Terry.” Lucky nodded to him, already barricading the blacksmith’s workshop against the approaching threat.
Terry was filled with the urge to correct her, even though he generally didn’t when people assumed that sort of thing, but she seemed like she understood? But he didn’t dwell on it. Simply slammed his hand down onto the [Yes] option.
And in the next second, he was surrounded by people, hems of his pants damp from the… water? The air was cool, the birds were shining, and breathing in wasn’t a horrifying experience! They lay on their back and sucked in another grateful gulp.
“Are you okay, boy?” A woman asked, leaning forward, “You- you were gone! We looked everywhere for you, but you were just gone.”
Terry stared at her, mystified, before they took control of their voice again, “I was… missed?”
“Yes! Desperately.” She nodded, “All the people in the Cure-Making team need you to help provide insight on some methods of distribution they might have pinpointed. Your position is irreplaceable in our little community of hope.”
Right… right. He was going to change the world. These people really thought that Terry had a chance to make it happen. When had that happened? Surely not before going into the Sub-Level. Must have realized only afterwards how important he was.
Even though he wasn’t entirely sure what they were having trouble with once he was gone. Should ask that soon, but only after they dealt with one specific thread he needed to tie up.
Derek had been with them through the worst of it all. Was the first test subject they had. And they had thanked him by simply leaving him outside? Untended to and uncared for? No, unthinkable, not after he had seen Lucky Paine put her life on the line for a person she had to know she would never meet again.
“Where are you going?” The woman who had greeted him asked, watching as he strode off to the nearest gate to the outside.
“Helping someone.” He explained as best as he could. It would be days until Asadullah would come back, so he had time to figure out how to break to the others that he had managed to cheat his way into doing two levels at once. And also gotten the Harbingers back on their scent. Whoops.
His hand curled over his heart, and the sample tube filled with tamed Maneating Mold. Let the Harbingers try to get their claws into his little pocket of safety. He dared them. They were much stronger now, all on their own. And had a whole team of badasses backing them up, too.
[Player Log End!]
[Log Snippet]
[Holder: Asadullah Khan]
[OG Language: Urdu]
Asadullah looked blearily above him, Ben fighting to keep him upright. A panel was gleaming into his eyes, not helping his discombobulated state. After much squinting, he managed to make out the words.
[Personal Challenge Lost!]
[3 Biscuits Transferred to Verity Monroe!]
Damn, he’d forgotten about that.
[End Log Snippet]