It would be nice to get to a city. That would mean it wouldn’t need to deal with all this plant life. Some of it was getting more aggressive too; weird objects moving inside the tall grass made threatening noises as it passed, and the constant damage vegetable matter did to its body was a constant ache.

“What’s up with the plants around here? They’re slightly more hostile than normal.”

The human pauses for a moment.

“I don’t think the Puffins are in season. None of them have attacked us yet at least.”

It had no idea what the human meant by ‘puffin’. From context though, it wouldn’t be the small flightless bird. There did exist the possibility that it was that thing, and they were what lurk in the vegetation ready to strike at a moments notice, but it was more likely that the name was shared by some local fauna or ambulatory flora. Probably ambulatory flora, since it had specifically asked about that.

With the translator assigning the word to the creature based on the human’s intent, that likely gave some clue as to the nature of the beast. Plant, puff. Some kind of mushroom, perhaps. Spores couldn’t do anything to it, fortunately. Unfortunately, fungi were still plants and would contribute to the passive cellular damage. Additionally, this noise-making from the sidelines was a baseline level of hostility, so no need to worry overmuch about being attacked. If they weren’t taking notice of its presence at this point, it would be fairly safe from reprisal as long as it refrained from going any closer.

“Perfect. I saw a town over that way, so we’ll head there and figure out where to go for the next armor segment after we have a base of operations.”

“Not to complain, but the monsters grow far more powerful as you go further away from the mountain. I lack the physical constitution to fight against them, should one spawn when you aren’t looking.”

Using the word ‘spawn’ in conjunction with the rest of that sentence was concerning. The idea that a mushroom could grow behind it and start resonance without any indication of the phenomena beginning needed to be addressed somehow.

“What do I need to do to prevent this most heinous of situations from generating itself?” the experiment asks the human behind it. Normally it’d just rely on its nature passively disincentivizing life anywhere nearby. This particular place seemed to be extremely verdant for a moon though, and it might need to take a more active approach to prevent indiscriminate fungification.

The human pauses again. If it kept doing that, they’d end up falling behind, regardless of how the experiment was having to move slower without intact musculature.

“Once the moon rises, the miasmal energy it generates covers the land and allows the monsters to appear. Since it’s yin, those monsters are powerful in the darkness and cold. If you are attuned to fire, keeping a torch of powerful flame nearby keeps anything from spawning nearby.”

“Got it. I’ll take a minute to see what I can do about that, and you rest up. I plan on making a break for the city and getting there before any more nutjobs show up looking for a fight.”

Sitting down in the middle of the dirt path, the experiment focuses on the intangible. During the fight against the sword-guy it had gotten a good feel on what the local environment was supposed to be like energy-wise. Granted, it had also gotten a good feel for a meter of steel, three million watts of electricity, and quite a bit of rock. This ‘miasma’ was pretty easy to distinguish though.

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It seemed to be like the opposite of light, in that it was a particle and a wave, but extremely slow. The stuff built up on a non-physical level, but had a physical weight. Grabbing a clump of the energy, it pulls the miasma together into a small clump. As soon as it lets go of the ball, it starts expanding again to fill the area. For another test, it covers the ball in its physical hands. While the majority of the gunk stayed in place with a physical barrier around it, a thin mist spewed out from the gaps in its handbones.

“There aren’t any negative consequences to miasma exposure, are there?” it asks, not giving any indication about what it was planning on testing next.

“Indirectly, in that the more miasma concentration a person is exposed to, the more powerful the monster that kills them is going to be.”

“Perfect,” it says, turning around and throwing the tiny ball of compressed dark energy at the human.

Said human flinches backward, and the ball dissipates halfway between them. It probably hadn’t aimed well enough to get there in the first place, but that was irrelevant. What mattered was that the human was off-balance enough for the experiment to compact all the miasma in the area into the helmet. That was going to have to be an ongoing process if this worked, but it’d find out if there were any real issues in a minute.

“By the way, would you kindly do a self-scan? I want a baseline to compare against in a little bit after the area has been clear of the miasma for a while.”

It can’t see the human’s face, but it just assumes that it was happily going along with its request.

Ah, and there was the regeneration kicking in. Flesh regrowing, muscle winding up over bone, skin sliding up to cover the exposed bits, and eyeballs returned to functionality. Now that it had a chance to sit down for a bit and take stock of its surroundings, the giant planet the human had referred to as ‘the moon’ was definitely Jupiter. Big red storm and everything.

Standing up, the experiment stretches its new body in a ‘praise the sun’ pose. Deciding that it might as well scoop up the encroaching miasma while it was doing so, it gathers the energy into a ball above its head. Apparently in greater density the stuff would have a color, reflecting purple. That was a little bit interesting. For the sake of seeing how much it could gather in one place, it starts walking forward, adding more and more miasma to the ball as it enters its range.

It lowers one arm as it turns around toward the human.

“Another self-scan. I’ll need to know if that had any effects on you before doing anything with this.”

Since the dimensions of the ball of energy were going to be limited by the range of its telekinetic ability at the very least, the experiment could only casually grab monster foodsource until the ball was a total of 321 cubic meters in volume. At that point, it was going to have to try compressing it down, and either it could focus on that or it could shove the stuff into the helmet and not have to deal with it.

“I haven’t had any change to my statistics, but you are apparently at full health now.”

“Very true. We’ll pick up the pace from now on, but first… Breathe deep.”

Lowering its other arm toward the human, the experiment pushes the miasma down and around the helmet. It hadn’t bothered with compression in an open environment, so it was able to start maxwell’s demoning the purple anti-photons up into the neck hole of the human. It could either compress in there, or get metabolized by human processes. Whichever.

Breaking into a jog, the experiment cycles the miasma in front of them into the human’s face. Two things at once wasn’t too bad, when one was physical and the other was mental. It was just a matter of-

“Hey why is there some sort of fifteen meter tall horned lizard-gorilla on the road? Isn’t getting rid of the miasma supposed to keep them from spawning?”

“That doesn’t do anything about the monsters that have already spawned. There’s another path, we can just go around.”

“Nah, it looks slow. Just run past it, not that hard.”

With that, the experiment follows its own advice, slipping between the taloned legs and under the admirably long tail. The human would probably be able to keep up.