What Logan had assumed were snakes were more like larvae. Larvae that had ballooned in size, each one three feet in length, the width the size of three garden hoses stacked side by side. With army green skin that shed gold petals as they moved, they writhed like worms.
With his heart in his throat, Logan deployed [Idiot’s Inspect].
[Undead Sacculina, Castrator of Prey: Level 85. A parasitic larva that enters the host through the groin, wrapping its flower petal tendrils around reproductive organs and injecting undead mutating pollen through the bloodstream.]
[A fun time all around.]
[Highest Stat: Constitution.]
They weren’t speedy, but they didn’t have to be speedy. Not with a level that high! Just how overpowered was the serpent if its minions were already level 85? Not to mention the description. Oh hell no. Even though Logan had fully deployed his armour, he reflexively covered his groin. What kind of description was that? Castrator of Prey?!
What was the use of trying to fight monsters over fifty levels above him? And a hundred of them at that. He could deploy the Cursed Rope, launch it into the air, but in the confined space, one snap of the serpent’s jaws and it’d be a dead weapon. For the first time, Logan wondered whether his drive to succeed had reached its limit. It was possible that he might not make it out of this alive.
They were so screwed.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t save Ernie. Even though Logan had only known Ernie for two days, those two days felt like an eternity. Struggling to survive allowed you to know the depths of another being. Ernie, although murderous and crazy, had been nothing but helpful. Logan had seen hints of a personality that was beyond killing, a thoughtfulness for Logan’s wellbeing, a yearning to know his other hatchling siblings. If Logan didn’t save him, all of that would be lost.
“Ernie,” he projected, “I can’t escape, but you can. You can climb to that opening up above by clinging to the cave wall, and then scoot your way to the surface. At least that way, one of us will make it out alive.”
There was dead silence from Ernie’s end. He was still clinging to Logan’s back, motionless.
“Ernie? You don’t have much time.”
Ernie blew out an agitated breath. “If you weren’t wearing a magic helmet, I would slap you with a tentacle! We are bonded companions! Bonded companions do not abandon each other when the going gets wormy! Logan has much to learn.”
Logan wanted to argue, but there was no time. If he could push Ernie up the wall by sure willpower alone, he’d be long gone. Yet, Ernie was over twenty levels higher than him. There was no forcing him if he didn’t want to go.
Logan felt a crushing pressure, a pressure to survive. If he didn’t find a way to get them out of this situation, he’d be responsible for not just his own death, but Ernie’s as well.
There had to be something he could do, but the gun would be worthless against so many, and a hazard in a confined space. He had a pile of boulders and logs inside his spatial storage, but there was space for one or two boulders, if that, and for it to be effective, he’d have to deposit them on top of his own head! Other than the Cursed Rope, the baseball bat was his only other weapon, but with the larvae’s constitution being its highest attribute, it would be like trying to hit a metal rod. Level 85 meant its resistance and healing capabilities had to be off the charts.
Was there anything else inside his spatial collar that could help?
Hold on.
Undead. These things were undead.
Logan hadn’t gotten the chance to try this against the undead fungi, and the sturgeon had been so immense it hadn’t even occurred to him to try.
He knew he couldn’t move living beings inside his collar, but ‘undead’ was the antithesis to living.
His jaw locked in tension, Logan willed one of the larvae into his spatial collar.
Unlike normal, he felt an immediate resistance, as if an elastic band were holding the larva back, a push and pull back and forth. Logan scowled, commanding the fucker to get in.
One blink.
Two.
The larva closest to him disappeared, leaving a noxious, sewer odour in its wake that made Logan scrunch his nose.
But something was wrong.
[34#359#Er40]
[….]
[….#2#34Error!]
The System was messed up, as if his actions had scrambled its brain and it didn’t know what to say.
[34!359#Er40]
[….]
[Error! You cannot store living beings inside a spatial device!]
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Logan had a second to comprehend the more cohesive message before his spatial storage returned the parasite back with… he didn’t have any other word for it other than spat. The spatial collar had spat it out like a cat ejecting a fur-ball. But it hadn’t come back intact. It was as if being inside the storage device had done irreversible harm. After all, the larva had been inside a magical pocket dimension governed beyond the normal laws of physics. The equivalent of Logan travelling through dark matter in space without a spacesuit.
With an unnatural screech so loud it made his ears ring, the larva writhed in pain, the end of its tail cleaved in half, gold flower petals and viscera splattering the cave.
Hell yes! He’d figured out a glitch! A way to get one up on the System! Elation surged and for the first time since the serpent had launched its attack, Logan felt a trickling of hope. Hope that they weren’t doomed and that they had a chance of making it out of this alive.
Logan wasted no time.
He willed larva after larva inside his spatial collar, one after the other. But this wasn’t the same as grabbing a pile of sand. Each larva resisted, that same elastic push and pull, followed by the same glitchy message. The messages flashed by so quickly it was like blips on the screen, from error-ridden, to firm, repeated, over and over.
[Error! You cannot store living beings inside a spatial device!]
He’d shredded at least twenty of these groin mutilators, larva after larva ejected in various states of cheese grater hell. It was as if he’d gone at them with scissors, snipping here, snipping there. One larva snake was missing its whole mouth, the other had a deep slash on its side.
Despite his success, the monsters weren’t dead. Just injured. And their constitution attribute was so high that their injuries were healing as he watched.
But wait, that didn’t mean he couldn’t throw the injured ones back in again, subjecting them to more cuts and mutilation.
Logan willed the next one into his spatial collar and then prepared to throw in the injured ones. He could do this. They could make it. They could—
[….]
[Patch 102.302.983.23 deployed!]
[Nice try, Idiot.]
Logan’s mouth fell open, heaviness expanding in his core. His elation turned to dread, and his heart raced as he attempted to will the next larva into his spatial collar.
[Error! You cannot store living beings inside a spatial device!]
Asshole System! How was that fair? He hadn’t even received a scrambled error message! It might as well be a firm, fuck you from the System. Sarcastic, sadistic jerk! Just when he was starting to think the System hadn’t been so bad. Logan had noticed a distinct lack of glaring sarcasm the last two days. The System’s saucy messages were missing in action, and yet, it still threw this bullshit at him. For once, couldn’t it let him have this win? If there was a flaw in the design of spatial storage devices, Logan should be able to take advantage.
The injured larvae were starting to heal; they had minutes before he’d be back in the same situation all over again. And something told him that even with his armour, he didn’t want to brute force his way through. The gold flower petals glinted in the beam of sunlight, vibrant, the edges looking like diamonds. And if, if they managed to get through the swarm, they’d still have to deal with the serpent.
His gut deflated like a balloon, his surge of optimism going down the drain.
Ernie tapped him on the shoulder with a tentacle. “Life Cycle Master.”
…What?
“Grow them into trees.”
How was an ability to grow trees going to…
Of course. Ernie didn’t understand how the skill worked. Logan couldn’t use it to grow larvae into trees without a seed, and even if he had one, merging those buggers into trees would make their situation worse, not better, the thought of the bark ants ever present in his mind.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t use [Life Cycle Master].
Every ounce of self-preservation rebelling, Logan deactivated [Mimicry Armour], letting his armour dissolve to sand and fall to the floor. He had to. He needed the Karma, and he’d already drastically reduced his pool.
Ernie made a startled sound as his armour perch disappeared, his slimy tentacles soon latching onto Logan’s neck and shoulders.
Logan had planted one of the raspberry packets he’d picked up from Martin’s Convenience in the greenhouse, but he had one left. Merging the larvae with a raspberry plant was an even worse idea than merging them with a tree, visions of larvae with hooked thorns in his mind, but that wasn’t his intent. He needed to confine these groin mutilators so that when Ernie and Logan escaped, their golden flower petals couldn’t infect them. Confining them would have been impossible if they were healthy and at one hundred percent, but most were a shredded mess.
Logan took out the package of raspberries from his spatial storage and wasted no time, tearing open the top and flinging the seeds towards the larvae.
“Ernie, keep an eye on the groin mutilators while I concentrate.”
Ernie tightened his grip on Logan’s shoulders and swung two tentacles, getting ready to swat anything that came close. At level 58, the larvae vastly outclassed him, but he was more powerful than Logan and his tentacles packed a bigger punch.
Even though he hadn’t deployed [Life Cycle Master] since leaving the cabin, getting back in the swing of things was just a matter of willpower. The power of the skill wasn’t just in its growing ability, but in Logan’s ability to sense every living being around him. There were other things in this cave—moss, insects, mold, tiny sprouts of grass growing through the cracks in the cave wall—but there was also a bright explosion of vitality beyond the larvae swarm, an incubating mass of life.
That had to be the Queen’s eggs.
Disregarding them for now, Logan searched, looking for what he already knew was there—the raspberry seeds. They had sunk into the ground, which was a mix of decomposing matter, dirt, and moss. Normally, he would have time to prepare a growing strategy, but they didn’t have time. They might have seconds before the swarm healed and they were back to square one.
Biting his lip, Logan put everything he had into pushing, brute-forcing the raspberry seeds into exploding with life. Roots expanded and burrowed into the ground like fine vines, seeking nutrients. Brown sprouts launched from the seeds until they turned green and multiplied. The plant wanted more nutrients than what was around it, but Logan disregarded its wish, forcing it to obey and grow.
Inch after inch, the raspberry plants obeyed, stems lengthening. The plant already wanted to latch onto something for support with interwoven vines. Logan nudged them along. Raspberry plants had natural thorns, but Logan wrenched, forcing them to lengthen and sharpen, each thorn like a claw.
Next, he directed the vines to wrap around the injured larvae like looping wire around a metal rod. After one loop, he directed the vine to lodge deep into the ground like an anchor in stone, and then directed it back around, looping it before he forced the vine onto the next.
Some of the less injured larvae were able to tear the vines and break free, but they moved so sluggishly that by the time they’d made progress, Logan had already extended a vine into another coil.
His head started feeling tight, a sign that he was running out of Karma, but he couldn’t stop now, not when they had a chance.
Vine after vine, multiplying and multiplying, he grew. He grew so many vines that he created a garden explosion. Then with a stretch, like Moses parting the sea, he pushed the larvae back, sticking them to the walls of the cave and widening a path for Ernie and Logan to rush through.
With one more push, a migraine building and signs of his airway growing tight, he released [Life Cycle Master].
“Now, Ernie!” he screamed out loud.