He slid down the slide silently praying that it doesn’t end in a dead end leaving him stuck forever. The prayer was answered then he shot out into a large cavern. The floor was seeded with various mushrooms, some glowing some not, and he crushed them all in a mad slide-spin. His movement was stopped once he hit a mushroom tree with his head; it was okay because he wore a helmet and the tree had spongy flesh.
“This could have gone better.” He stood up and scraped mushroom goo off his butt.
He looked around, the cavern wasn’t out of the ordinary except that mushrooms were growing everywhere, and a small detail of a large mushroom walking right towards him. Its eyes were glowing red and were filled with mad rage, it frothed some thick green sludge out of its mouth and it had purple throbbing veins coiling around its brown fungal body and spreading like some sort of disease.
He had never seen anything like that, and he was still affected by the debuff meaning that he might have just hallucinated this monster. Hallucination or not he had to fight it, so he ran back to the hole and retrieved his legendary Slayer Spear. He raised the weapon towards the shambling myconid.
It was futile talking with monsters, or hallucinations but he decided to try anyway. “If you attack me, I will fight back. Don’t come any closer.” He waved his spear.
The myconid just frothed some more of that sludge from its mouth and raised its stubby hands for an attack.
“I warned you!”
He stabbed at the soft fungal flesh, the spear had no trouble piercing the myconid. Purple substance gushed out of the wound but the myconid proceeded as if it felt none of that. A hand landed on his shoulder with a hard blow; heavier than it had any right to be for unarmed attack. He stumbled backwards ripping the spear out of the flesh, and then a few steps more. The shoulder throbbed in pain but otherwise, he felt alright.
The walking mushroom kept approaching him ever so slowly.
“Aren’t you a bit too slow?” But then he realised something, maybe he was the slow one here. “Take that.” He threw a loosely tied pouch at the monster, it burst in a cloud of blue dust.
How did that saying went? – Fight fire with fire, debuff with a debuff. “…or something like that.” He muttered watching the tall myconid just flop onto the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. He wasn’t one to waste an opportune moment so he thrust his spear into it, again and again, until… [Fighting +50 exp], the monster was dead.
[Perk: Life Steal, activated.] He didn’t lose any HP or at least he thought he didn’t but his shoulder felt a lot better now. That reminded him to use another perk.
“Harvest Material.” He tried hoping that it will work on a larger mushroom like it did on that ‘cork’. The body went through the usual process of ‘disappearing’ and then dropped a soggy pile of a powdery substance, [Red Spores] - the system informed.
“Ever so useful, system. But what does it do?”
Well, he had a hunch anyway, so he collected the spores. The myconid was defeated, but he still had no clue where he was or where to go. So instead of feeling worried and lost he chose a random direction and began walking. He didn’t get to walk far because two familiar monsters blocked his path. They growled something unintelligible and began to slowly shamble towards him.
He killed one, so he can kill two - no problem, plus the monsters were slow like zombies, if he wanted he could even outrun the two. However, the only problem was that he was feeling tired all of a sudden. Not sleepy-tired, but slow-tired.
“Torpor.” A stark reminder that he was under the debuff.
He was slow, but he wasn’t stupid; he used the blue dust again. He finished the closest enemy and harvested it for materials. [Fighting +50 exp], [Perk: Life Steal, activated.]. The message didn’t make much sense, he definitely didn't lose any health this time, however, he felt very angry all of a sudden so he pulped the other myconid to vent out. [Perk: Life Steal, activated.].
“This is weird.”
All of a sudden another large myconid appeared, taller and fatter than the previous ones. It just stood looking at him, radiating menace. Taking initiative was important in battle so he struck first. He threw dust at it, but the monster refused to fall asleep; it was likely the size made it immune. Regardless, he timed his attack well and stabbed the monster on the side, and then again. The large myconid barely fought back, but it stood like a true tank soaking all the damage and refusing to die.
“The bigger they are, the harder they fall.” He motivated himself.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
He was getting tired from all the thrusts and dodging acrobatics he had to perform, but he felt that the monster’s health pool was at it’s and. And sure enough with a well-timed swing, the monster fell to it’s knees defeated.
“Huh?”
Only then did he realise that the monster was no monster at all, but only a tall mushroom tree. He looked around in worry, luckily there was no one to see his embarrassing ‘fight’.
“I have just wasted a pouch of dust.” He lamented at the fact of only having four more left.
He kept walking still cautious about the trees that looked like monsters. Finally, he found an exit of the cavern, guarded by four large myconids. If monster numbers increased all that meant was that he was going in the right direction; hopefully.
He didn’t need to change tactics, the dust cloud was more suited for group attack anyway. All four were soon fast asleep. He didn’t just kill them, no, he had an experiment to run. The theory was that each time he killed a myconid his life steal perk would activate and somehow interfere with the debuff, setting it to a different negative status effect. In other words, if he wanted to change the negative status effect he had to kill a myconid. That was theory number one, theory number two was that the debuff could give him only one negative status effect.
Currently, he assumed he was under hallucination.
“So to change it…” he stabbed at the monster and all of a sudden he began to feel very sleepy, the vision began to dim. “Nope!” He stabbed at the other hoping that the next one, isn’t Paralysis. It wasn’t, he was just outraged and super angry so he obliterated the third and then he was just slow and lethargic.
“Torpor. I will take that.”
He didn’t want to experience Paralysis or Charm so he left the fourth myconid asleep deciding that Torpor was the easiest to deal with. Then he slowly shambled through the tunnel feeling like a zombie would but less hungry for brains.
“Brains… Brains…” he mouthed regardless just to entertain himself during the slow journey.
Then he had a realisation. He brought the Slayer Spear closer and coated the tip with dust. The dust didn’t need to enter the body through pores or lungs for it to work if he could just introduce it to the blood directly. The powder was not a poultice so it didn’t smear or stick to the spear perfectly, but that was only a minor inconvenience.
“Now the dust will last much longer.” He finally entered another large cavern.
As soon as he stepped in, he wanted to run. No, he wasn’t under Fright debuff; The room was packed full of little myconids. The little mushrooms glared at him with mad red eyes and began to pluck themselves out of the soil. One by one they stood and the floor came alive, they moved like a horde towards him.
He would run if he could, but he didn’t need to. He walked slowly back to the entrance so that they couldn't surround him and took a guarded position; one versus a horde. In reality, they were only little and of little concern to him. Tiny stubby arms pummelled him, and equally tiny teeth tried to bite him. Imagine a pigeon trying to fight a fully plated knight, that’s how it looked. He pierced the mushrooms one by one, putting them to sleep.
“Goomba Stomp!” He slammed his foot crushing two myconids into the soup.
[Fighting +2 exp.] The use of a spear was short and swift, and he didn’t use it for killing blows so the perk didn’t activate.
It took him longer than he was comfortable with, but the horde was dealt with. He waddled through the chunky soup towards the next tunnel. Halfway through the tunnel, he could hear the sounds of fighting coming from the other side. He knew what this meant and he wished to be quick, to run and finally help his allies.
“Damn this Torpor!” He cursed.
It felt like ages but he emerged on the other side. The place looked familiar but not quite so, it was the Lamia village but it went through some recent renovations. There were mushrooms everywhere, even on the walls and ceilings. It looked like an overgrown jungle but fungal. Glowing mushrooms, mushroom trees, mushroom stalks, fungi columns, fungal vines – everything was mushroom. Plus, it was infested by those large myconid monsters, an entire swarm of them. Myconids were frothing from their mouths, eyes bloodshot with rage. However, some were still and unmoving, seemingly consumed by throbbing purple veins coiling through their fungal body. Actually, the whole cave chamber had purple veins; they spread like webs through the surface and were only getting more dense towards the middle.
In the very middle was the Lamia Hot Spring, the source of the corruption. And in that pool, there was an abominable horror, he had no better words to describe it. It was half plant half animal, but its animal part was more bones than flesh, and whatever flesh it had was all rotten. The animal part was equally disgusting, it was fungal and oozing purple slime from the pores. The abomination had no actual shape, it was just a clump of tentacles and other amorphous growths, and it was large barely fitting in the corrupted hot spring.
“Malignant Cancer.” That was how he felt upon seeing this abomination and what it did to the entire cavern.
Unspeakable horrors aside, the chamber had a mundane one too. He could see his spiders bravely fighting the myconids, so it was true, the spores didn’t affect them. The Lamia however didn’t fare so well. He saw the typical signs of the debuff. Some were unmoving, sleeping or paralysed, others were enraged or fighting something that wasn’t really there. Obviously, some were already defeated and their injured bodies were dragged by myconids towards the Malignant Cancer.
He saw a familiar face, a friendly lamia was moved by two gnarly and twisted myconids right towards the corrupted spring. The abomination moved its tentacles in excited anticipation, the pores spat red spores and jets of purple corruption, and then a large hole appeared in the midsection of it. The hole was filled not with teeth, but with sharp and broken bones of various unknown creatures. It was clear what will come next if he just stood there and waited for his spiders to break the defending lines of corrupted myconids.
He would run, but… He threw a spear at the unmoving and corruption-consumed shell of a myconid hoping that it still had some life left.
[Perk: Life Steal, activated.], it was a gamble but it worked.
“Rahhh!” he was angry before but now he was Rage Incarnate, not only that, he also projected the Berserk Aura which only added to the effect. He was Enraged Super Furious Anger Machine The Embodiment of Violence and The Essence of Fury Itself, Berserk Level Over 6000!
[Error.]