Warmth, euphoria, and powerful energy permeated Cella as the fungus she had eaten began to do its job. Her skin began to turn from lightless pale white to burnt orange. Her eyes began to grow yellowed as if bloodshot.

With newfound strength, she picked up Ren’s mangled form. She pulled him along, while he slowly recovered half conscious. The exit to the red moss room was guarded by twisting vines that she bent with a glow of her green life mana.

It was long minutes of fast travel before she came to another corridor. Letting Ren go back to the ground, she readied herself as three creatures appeared.

They were the spore-infected remains of three of the Marked Men. One of them, perhaps two, might be able to fight if they were weak enough. Alas, she had no choice, and the intoxicating mushroom inside of her bent her mind towards killing.

With a flicker of green light, she summoned a glaive of fungal growths to sprout forth. A small smile played on her face as the discoloration of her eyes began to seep into a dark yellow, turning orange.

The glaive in hand she charged at the Spore Carriers. The first of them ran towards her, and with a flourish, she lashed and cut off three tendrils of the zombified corpse. A handful of spores left her hand as she let a green light glow. The spores entered the fungal host and rapidly hard growths began to piece through the horror. Its movements were severely impaired, and she quickly decapitated the fungal zombie.

Two more of them came towards her. She stepped back as a tendril slashed into her upper left arm causing blood to leap forth. Her arm was mangled, and yet her mind did not register the pain and she slammed the glaive down into the half-rotten, and fungal head of the Spore Carrier.

The head not completely severed still functioned as two tendrils battered Cella. The third of the monsters slashed into her leg. She remained standing in sheer delusion under the effects of the mushroom.

Her glaive spun as she finished severing the head of the spore carrier. The final one whipped her with three tendrils at once, she scattered to the earth as most of her ribcage was shattered.

The glaive lay on the ground next to her, without the madness of the fungus melting her mind, she would have been on the brink of madness with the pain running through her. Instead, she smiled softly.

She let spores sink into the earth below her as nearly all her remaining mana left her in a warm green glow. The stoney ground began to pulse to life with fungal growths.

They were a minor trick, taking only a tiny bit of mana compared to the hardened ones earlier. The fungal carrier fell when its foot came into contact with one of the small black mushrooms. The mushroom exploded into a thick black oil. The Spore Carrier failed to stand as its tendrils flailed aimlessly around it.

Cella stood, a slowly, half gurgled laugh coming from her. From a punctured rib, blood seeped into one of her lungs. Energy flowed from the red mossy biome and slammed into her body. She struggled to try and integrate the energy within her own. Her mind slowly sobered as the euphoria of the mushroom began to fade.

This was the difficult part, why they never used the mushroom unless in dire emergencies. She diverted the energy into three parts, one, into her mana, one, into her stamina, and the last into vitality.

Her resource pools began to flood as her three vital energies began to refill. She tried to stop the flow, but it wouldn’t cease. She did the only thing she could.

With a pulse of green mana, she sent spores into the flick Spore Carrier on the ground several feet from her. In its disoriented state, it couldn’t fight back as she sent hardened roots throughout its body. Swiftly, the glaive took its head.

Even after expending the mana and vitality to restore herself and kill the monster, she was still being flooded. Unable to stop the flow of mana, she used it to cover Ren’s unconscious form with several layers of protective fungal growths. She left room for air, but nothing else.

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The energy burned at her as she felt her soul begin to become damaged.

Looking within herself, she was as if her own form was being damaged. She never expected to ascend any further, yet she still wanted to believe it was possible. With the kind of soul damage it would soon take, it would likely be impossible.

She ran further into the trail that led them to the surface. She blocked other paths with growths from the stoney ground, and ran as fast as she could to reduce the energy.

The skin of her entire form began to glow a vibrant red as she looked into a great darkness. The pause had allowed the energy to build, but it had possibly saved her.

Beyond was an entire nest of insects, weak and small creatures, but they’d do just fine.

Calling on nature a green glow came alight around her. From the ground beneath a nest of cat-sized scorpions arose a forest of jabbed growths. A dozen of the creatures were pierced through by the damage. Several of them scuttled towards her as she hesitated before allowing them to slam finger lengths stingers into her body.

Venom coursed through her as the red energy burned away. She quickly summoned a new glaive from spores and gave death to several of the creatures. Dozens more began to pour out of the nest as she was surrounded. A colony of the creatures stabbed at her as she summoned growths to pierce them between cleaving sweeps of the glaive that rendered them into pieces.

The madness of the mushroom began to bubble in her again as she lost herself to the killing. By the dozens she killed the creatures, their chitin did nothing to stop the blade of the glaive.

Her body was pumped full of venom, and yet the red energy kept burning.

It was all she could manage, just enough to keep her from killing herself with the excess of power.

Soon she felt the energy begin to weaken, her form grew slightly slower just as the scorpions began to come in lesser and lesser numbers. It was a long time after the last of them had left the nest. A giant scorpion left the burrows from which they came.

It stood the height of half a man, the height of a Mark Man to be certain. Its stinger dripped with a venom that could be sensed from several paces away. The very toxicity in the air could be felt.

She stepped forward and swung the glaive in front of herself. With a gesture and green light, growths slammed into the scorpion king. The

A Lord of the nest, it slammed forward and tried to skewer her. The glaive collided with the stinging tail and reflected the stab.

Slashing downward she landed a glancing blow across the back of the giant dull-colored beast. It tried to land a pincer on her, swiftly moving herself, but it missed.

Cella released another wave of piercing growths to attempt to stop the creature’s movements. This time with more success. With three swift blows, she took away a pincered arm of the scorpion before it freed itself from the spiked growths.

Coming at her, the scorpion managed to make a small gash on her arm with its stinger. Cella immediately felt the toxin begin to numb one of her arms. The weakness of the red energy was barely able to overcome the sensation before it struck her again, this time piercing into her side. The numbness here spread quickly.

In panic she released spores directly into the mouth of the scorpion causing them to grow rapidly and damaging the beast’s face. With a moment of advantage, she struck at the tail just below the stinger, severing the end of the tail.

The remaining pincer grabbed onto her left leg and severed it deeply. The bright flow of arterial blood spread down across the pincer running down onto the ground below.

Slamming down the glaive she pierced into the head of the scorpion, it fell limply.

Cella fell backward as she pulled her leg free of the pincer. The blood loss was tremendous, potentially deadly if not for the power of the red energy flowing into her.

After resting for nearly a half hour the bleeding had stopped, and the red energy along with it.

She sighed as she moved to the corpses of the scorpions. With several minutes of work, she had harvested some of the materials from the corpses. The poisonous stingers of many of the smaller scorpions, as well as the giant ones. Along with all of the venom, she harvested them to feed them during their recovery process. She also needed some decent armor, and well chitin did better than nothing.

She made her way back to Ren where she had covered him and left him to rest. On her back was half of the large scorpion’s midsection, along with a bundle of stingers in her hand.

With a pulse of the green light, a small opening appeared in the safe space she made for him.

“Ren, wake up. I have food.” She spoke in a gentle voice, that in no way fit her blood and viscera soaked form.

Ren’s eyes cracked as the blackness within them ate away the light of a fungal lanturn she had summoned. “What happened?” His eyebrows furrowed as he stared deeply into her.

“I had to kill some little bugs. It was nothing special, just needed to clear them out.” She gave a small smile at the lie.

“Oh, alright… well, you said food. Right?”

She laughed as a smile played on her face. She showed off the large portion of the scorpion’s carcass she had brought back.