It was a goblin surge, they started rushing towards the wall as the archers fired. There were hob-goblins mixed in with the regular goblins, arrows flew and bodies hit the ground. The witches cast a green fire that didn’t stop burning, and that they struggled to control.
Karl as his sling was useless at this range, fed arrows to the archers and low-grade mana potions to the casters.
When they got to the treeline in front of the wall, the archer lit it on fire and witches maintained the fire. Druids raised high sturdy earthen walls around the goblins preventing them from retreating or running. We had created a primitive kill box, casters fed the smoke towards the goblins trying to suffocate them.
The goblins started running through the burning trees, to try to get to the ranged attackers. He grabbed a couple of Molotov cocktails and started chucking them as far as he could towards the flaming forest.
The hob-goblins managed to break through and make it towards the wall, the warriors dropped barrels of alcohol downwards and lit them. The normal goblins couldn’t make it through the forest fire and the hob-goblins were weakened, so using high heat fast-burning flames they managed to finish them.
After the last of the goblins had died, Karl helped dispose of the corpses.
Looking at some of the stronger hob-goblins corpses it was made clear they were parasitized. The mutated parasites indirectly help us survive by trying to kill everything, as monsters are just fine sitting around breeding before attacking a small group of survivors and outnumbering them twenty to one. Most parasites, controlled or manipulated a monster weaker monsters were more likely to be controlled. However stronger monsters were manipulated by parasites making them more aggressive and moody, and occasionally hormonal.
Some exceptionally rare parasites mutated a body making the body theirs, however, they usually die before becoming a problem.
Monsters like dragons, wyverns, and giants can’t be controlled or manipulated as their bodies will almost literally burn the parasite out.
The world was slowly recovering and police forces and military personnel became adventures. Now as they are highly skilled they are highly sought after so the government decided to let them choose their assignments.
The adventurer guild works as a place to gather and trade information on the monster's whereabouts. Every adventurer had a tier and type of flower, there were six tiers, Copper, Bronze, Steel, Silver, Gold, Mithril. Or D-rank, C-rank, B-rank, A-rank, and S-rank, the flowers let you determine good adventures from bad ones.
Any parasite quests were at minimum bronze rank, infestations were steel, and hordes were silver. And you needed at least a well-balanced party of four, if you were a rank higher than the quest you only needed two.
Anyway parasites, they had six different types the first was a Tagger. They tagged weak targets and mutated in response to different organisms, they tended to look like additional organs to disguise themselves.
The next was Manipulators, they were brain parasites on the weaker side controlling hosts by boosting certain neurotransmitters in the brain.
The next was Replacers, they replaced entire organs and sometimes the brain to infiltrate refuges. And after that and arguably the worst Mutators, completely controlling the body and changing it, think chimeras but worse. The last two were unknown, as nobody had been able to study them in a controlled environment. But they are fondly called disasters and calamities, disasters mutate the body into an unrecognizable form. Calamities turn your body completely into a high-level monster that is at least Gold rank.
These different parasites after a certain amount of time and energy consumed become a higher type of parasite.
In the tavern after the surge, everyone got free drinks, if you were over 18. After a couple of drinks and starting to feel buzzed he turned in.
In the morning Karl began his trek through the wilderness again. He saw a couple of orks by a crashed supply helicopter attacking the pilots, he shot a flare in the direction of the refuge and chucked a couple of rocks at the works, and led them away.
“ Crrrrk kuk” the orks hollered after him, leading them into parasite territory was easy enough when they were pissed.
Taggers and Mutators crawled out of the woodwork and drilled into their bodies, denting their skulls during the process was difficult as they screamed and writhed in agony. He missed one of them and the parasites managed to drag it underground to parasitize.
“ Fucking he-” he quickly went back to camp after grabbing the rest of the supplies from the helicopter.
“ Billy we have a problem, the parasites got one of the orks when I used them to hold them in place to kill them”
“It's fine anybody could have made that mistake, your sling only shoots so far. And at least you acknowledged your mistake and told us instead of staying quiet like some adventurers I know” Bill spat
Billy informed the guards and told them to pay more attention during the day and night and report every single detail.
Karl walked back to the inn solemnly, he failed to kill the orks and might have screwed over the refuge. They might all have to relocate, parasite ork might not seem like a problem but it can snowball. Using the ork body's strength and the parasite horde they can take on bigger and bigger monsters and control them.
Twenty orks can kill a wyvern and corpse parasites exist, so even though everyone sometimes makes this mistake it still is a massive screwup.
Listening to radio chatter for a couple of hours, his patience was wearing thin and he was pissed. So even though this was a stupid idea he snuck outside the refuge to go try to deal with the horde, he started setting up a kill box. He dug out a huge pit over the next couple of hours and used thin sticks, leaves, and mud to make it look like real ground.
He sprayed it with a horrible scent to keep larger monsters away and started making mana bombs which he filled the pit with. Karl felt sick and like he shattered his organs but he filled the pit.
Next, he went to find the ork before the horde got too big, he wandered and filled his bag with poisonous flowers and herbs.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
He found the orks traces and started making powder out of the plants, and gathered firewood.
He waited until dusk, before grabbing the orks attention. It was a grotesque-looking thing, bones growing out of its stomach and legs. Pus and rotting flesh strewn across its back, teeth, and muscle distorted beyond recognition. Grabbing a rock he aimed and chucked it and as it bounced off its head the eyes on the back of its neck opened.
Karl started running, trees whipped past and bushes nipped at his heels but if that parasite caught him well there were worse things than death. Then it screamed and the ground began to shake as worms, centipedes, flies, and birds mutated by parasites charged him. Then the ork bent down and jumped it flew past trees and barely missed him.
He ran in the direction of the pit far enough away that the ork couldn’t smell or see them. But that also meant help would never come he was on his own, leaping behind a tree and orienting himself he got himself behind the pit with the thing between him and it.
It whipped its head in his direction and opened its mouth, this time it wouldn’t miss. It started bolting towards him mouths open, muscles and bones twisting.
When it fell into the pit he triggered the explosion, he was sent flying through the air. He hit two maybe three logs while flying and then he abruptly stopped when a tree caught his leg and he was sent tumbling towards the ground.
He couldn’t move all he felt was blood trickling down his chest as his broken spine had ripped his stomach open.
He couldn’t even feel the burns, he could see them but couldn’t feel. Then a snap later as a branch broke, he looked in its direction and saw the ork. The parasites were trying to prop it up, it was just a broken jaw. Nothing left just a couple of fragments of bone, all he could do was watch as the weird worm thing crawled over to him.
It looked at him not moving, it probably didn’t even think he was alive.
He smiled and it jumped back, and then experimentally touched his torso and started eating. IT COULDN’T EVEN LET HIM DIE PEACEFULLY.
All he could do was watch, it almost drove him insane just the crunch of his flesh ripping and breaking. Then when it made a sizable hole it crawled inside and made a cocoon, it would not.
Fast and abruptly he moved his stump of an arm and ripped his bone through its cocoon and started stabbing it, over, and over, and over again.
But it wouldn't die
He started gathering mana in his core and threw it around and around. Bouncing it across the inside of it until it started to crack and break, and he ripped it through his chest and towards the parasite and it exploded.
Pov switch :(
After he woke up Toby went about his routine, checked his traps killed anything that looked like a snake along the way. Some of these things had tusks, HOW DID THAT WORK, anyway going to the lake he watched the animals for a while.
After a moderate amount of time, he walked towards the lake and filled his sack of water, and some of his empty water bottles. Toby later went towards his camp and started making blood spears, trying to form spikes and blades with it. That didn’t work maybe it was too advanced to be tackled in one day so he decided to continue experimenting later.
Walking home he started making a puppet tree, over the next couple of days it would become more suitable to graft to his new body.
He suddenly summoned a blood spear and tried to bend it, it didn’t work either. So he continued with making more puppets and decided to build another body, and another medium. He set out to gather materials far and wide, but first, he set up a huge pillar of blood that sucked up mana to keep itself from dissipating and set off in a single direction.
He found a lot of materials and deliberated on what he should create, a darkness elemental Nah too basic. Maybe a fire elemental, he wasn’t a pyromaniac and he didn’t like smoke obscuring his vision in the middle of a fight.
Maybe an earth elemental, wait scratch that a magma elemental.
As a wood elemental, he could walk through trees and control them, as a mama elemental he should theoretically be able to walk through fire and earth. He wouldn’t have to worry about getting lost in a cave system as he could just walk upward. He could even live in a volcano without worrying about asphyxiation or burning.
That's a good idea now he just needs to find a good rock, the BEST ROCK.
Wandering for a while the pillar was starting to get small, after a long time, he couldn’t see it. So begrudgingly he had to head back, wait a minute the volcano how could he be so stupid. A volcano had magma and rocks, why did he waste his time doing this. The next day he would head to the volcano because by the time he got back to Helio it would be dark.
He set up another dome, a little faster this time as he gradually figured out how to manifest it faster. Then he took a deep long look at the sky before he went to sleep.
The morning came fast and hard as he had a bit of moss growing on his face absorbing it he started heading towards the volcano. After walking for a long time as it slowly got bigger and avoiding the magma pools and unseemingly hot springs of water he reached the base of it.
Then he started his climb to the top, slowly but surely making his way upward. A couple of times he had to move around a stray spike or jet of flame, about when he reached halfway was when it started to change. Magma was almost everywhere, making it almost impossible to continue the climb he made it up a few more times before he deemed it not safe to continue climbing.
He started by manifesting the base of the elemental, this time it was balls of [Blood crystal] and not a skeleton to allow form manipulation and fluidity.
The hard part started now he carefully dipped the spheres in the magma and reached into the mountain to look for some rocks that would suit it. He found obsidian and gold although it would look cool it would be impractical which was exactly what he didn’t want.
He grabbed a few pieces of coal he found and some of the particularly cool dirt that seemed to radiate heat instead of containing it. Slowly piecing it together he manifested another sphere with half of his mana pool and made a small pin-sized ball. After it was full again he repeated this 12 more times putting around 20,700 mana into it, now it was the size of a basketball.
Exerting mana manipulation to its fullest he shrunk it until it was around the size of the other a little bit bigger than a golfball. Then he made a couple ping pong-sized ones and put them inside the clump of material, and continued his search for more.
Eventually, he found this weird metal that didn’t melt even near the magma chamber, it was tricky bringing this one up as it was so close. It took until midnight to grab it, then manifesting a hammer from mana that was tinted red he started hammering the materials together. Planting seeds that were filled with mana a little side project he started each filled with around [100,000] mana. He filled them when sleeping and using his mana regeneration rate, after he managed to push all the materials into a sphere he started mixing them up.
Then he started exerting force until it got 20% smaller, they shoved his spheres inside them. Then he picked a medium for another body storage and picked the strange metal, now it was coming along day three of his forging when the metal started sucking in mana like crazy.
He had to dig deep into the environment's mana, and left a huge vacuum of mana that rapidly started rushing towards the sphere and smashing it. It had started around 40 feet in diameter and now it was around 15.
Then he started shaping it into a vague form that looked like a monster trying to look like a knight. It had a gaping maw and blood blades that could pop out its palms for close-range combat. Holes along its back to store mana absorbing spikes of solid blood, it had no tail like his current one but it could shift to a six-legged form. Yes, it had four arms two at the shoulder and two that reached over from its back.
Its legs were covered in blood crystal, used to make legs that were like an eagle. Slim and densely packed with four traction claws to keep it balanced. As it was mostly fluid and its exoskeleton was the reason it even looked like a humanoid instead of a blob, was filled with mana. The days blurred by as he pumped in an immense amount of mana, he couldn’t remember when he passed the thirty thousand mark but it felt exhausting and he wasn’t even half done yet.