Chapter 421 - Unfettered Joy II

Claire shed her armour as she emerged from the cave. After glancing briefly at the fox, who had followed in her footsteps, she extended her ears, her arms, and her wings in tandem to stretch her freshly freed body. The winter air flooded her lungs, but she felt no discomfort. Even in a casual blouse and a summer skirt, she didn’t feel chilly enough to be anything short of comfortable; the shard in her chest was far colder than the mountains could ever be.

Once fully loosened up, she raised her fluffy listeners overhead and focused on the soundscape. Her ears reported ongoing conflicts all around them. The forest was so rife with roars and yowls that it was almost more difficult to find a place where things were quiet. Relatively speaking, the sky came off as the most obvious contender, but simply rising a few hundred meters was unlikely to allow her to escape the ground-dwellers’ range, and climbing higher was analogous to foolishly challenging the aerial predators. Though they were obscured by the clouds, a single glance in their direction sufficed to affirm that approaching them was best left for after she bolstered her strength. Such was the extent of the dread that their presence exuded.

She took a few moments to weigh her options, but with no clear winner amidst the sea of choices, she found herself reaching for the nearest branch.

“Uhmmm… what’s that supposed to be for?” asked Sylvia.

“I don’t know where to go.”

“I don’t really know what that means.”

“You’ll see.”

Ripping the stick from the poor pine, she removed its needless needles and spun in the snow. The first time it stopped, it led back into the cave, so she gave it another whirl before setting off in the resulting direction.

“Wait, really!?” cried Sylvia. “Shouldn’t you be a little more careful? Since, uhm, you know, this place is supposed to be super dangerous?”

“You worry too much.”

“No I don’t! You just don’t worry enough!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Claire spun back around and stuck out her forked tongue as she continued on her way.

With no need to rush, she proceeded at a leisurely pace, casually walking through the boreal forest as she would on a lazy stroll. And somehow, despite the danger that came with the Langgbjerns, it was every bit as relaxing. She couldn’t tell if it was because of the battle, if talking to Marie had lifted her spirits, or if there was some other reason altogether, but she just felt good.

She didn’t mind it at all when the snow blew into her ears, nor did she complain at all about how deep her feet sank with each step. Simply allowing the mana to flow past her body, she enjoyed every moment that passed.

It was a mood that persisted even as she was attacked, some fifteen minutes after her departure.

The perpetrator was a snow-white object that had somehow eluded her senses. Without warning, it sprang from the ground in front of her, failing to land a hit only on account of a last-second evasion.

When she looked at it more closely, she found a curious writhing mass, halfway between a piece of moldy cheese and a spider’s web. It tried to retreat back under the surface of the snow, but she grabbed it with a vector before it could and yanked it back towards her.

When she turned Boris into a dagger and brought him against the material, she found it surprisingly tough. It felt like she was trying to cut through a piece of treated hide. But even as she sawed it in half, the creature continued to attack. Both parts of the tendril ejected a strange fluid and retreated from her hand as the ground began to shake.

The trees quivered like newborn fawns. Their roots creaked, practically screaming for salvation as they were rent from the rising soil.

From beneath it appeared a towering mass made of the same material as the tendril. The piece that she had cut was only a tiny piece of the creature’s whole. All in all, the thing stood over thirty meters tall. The porous stringer material grew from under its head and extended over a hundred meters in every direction. It almost looked more like a piece of clothing—a long flowing dress—than it did a part of its body.

It was a giant fungus—a faceless stalk with a massive gilled hat that shared the snow’s pure colour. Dress aside, its only notable features were the crystals that grew from its stem. They glowed in the same light blue as her own jagged protrusions, for they were crafted of a familiar material.

Indeed, the monster that had emerged from beneath the soil, roughly two hundred metres in front of her, was a skirted mushroom embedded with shards of what almost seemed to be true ice. It was difficult to say without any extended exposure. The magic that radiated from the jagged pieces was just a little bit off, but she couldn’t quite discern the reason.

True to its mycological nature, the enemy’s body remained still. Only its dress moved to attack her, with the hundreds of tendrils thereon surging in her direction.

The strikes were powerful enough to tear open the forest; dozens if not hundreds of trees were felled with each swipe, but they were slow enough that Claire avoided them with ease. The slashes she returned were just as inconsequential. The tendrils had been hard to cut under perfect conditions. In an exchange of blows, her counters were even more shallow.

And yet, the smile refused to leave her face. Just like the shark, it was precisely the sort of creature that would test her limits, not only on account of its level. Without her sealed abilities, a lack of firepower was one of her greatest faults, and she had yet to test her most recent theories.

First on the list was her personal favourite. She jumped into the sky and ascended to a height of about a hundred meters. Raising Boris overhead, she transformed him into a massive cleaver with a particularly thick spine and an even thicker tip. It was one of the largest forms that he could manage, and she bolstered its already incredible weight by ordering him to maximize his mass. Simply lowering the weapon would have already produced a sufficiently destructive effect, but that alone would never have satisfied the lyrkress. Starting with a flap of the wings—an initial burst of acceleration—she threw in a series of vectors that launched her body into a rapid, vertical spin.

She descended from the heavens like a bladed top. The mushroom’s behaviour remained unchanged in the meantime. It continued to lash out with its tendrils; the strange porous tubules were launched straight for her centre of mass.

The perfect test for her all-out attack.

When the two offensive strategies collided, Claire found hers to be fairly promising at first. She busted straight through the first three waves of fungus—or at least she assumed it was three, it was difficult to count while her head was spinning—but she started to lose her momentum on the fourth, and found herself stopped in her tracks on the fifth.

It was a little more disappointing than expected, but Claire continued unperturbed. Weaving through the tendrils, she returned to the sky and summoned two more Borises, both of which grew to form massive bows. The metal lizard already in her hand was the only one to do anything different. He became an arrow, a massive bolt as long as it was possible for her to draw.

Weaving past another wave of tentacles, Claire assumed her true form and nocked both bows. The smaller one, she armed with Boris and aimed as one typically would. But to the larger one, she attached herself, becoming its projectile whilst using her vectors to pull herself taut.

The Clairrow was launched first; she sent her body flying through the air with enough power to blur the world around her. And then, whilst pushing herself forward to maintain her maximum velocity, she released Boris from the bow she held between her talons.

His speed was already bolstered by her forward motion, but she took it a step further by activating a spell to transfer her momentum. The arrow was accelerated to such a blistering speed that her eyes lost the ability to track it. Only by sensing the vectors she had assigned to pushing it along was she able to pinpoint its location.

Granted, such an effort was pointless in the first place. At the sky-rending speed of mach twenty seven, the thousand pound metal rod had struck its target by the time her senses caught up.

There was a roaring boom. Snow and dirt flew everywhere, exploding from the point of impact like a plume from a mountain of fire. The slushy mess was accompanied by chunks of rock, half-splintered trees, and bits of the mushroom’s flesh. Some of the debris even threatened to reach the clouds. Even upon returning to the ground, Claire found the Langgbjerns still shaking.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

And yet, the mushroom stood tall.

Despite her efforts, the bolt had failed to reach its target. Her foe had formed a thick wall with its tendrils, a veritable sheet over a hundred layers dense. That alone was enough to stop the bolt, but the fungus was unable to absorb the force entirely. Its body was pushed into the ground, half returned to the depths from which it emerged.

Perhaps because its tendrils had been damaged, or perhaps because it was simply fed up, the enemy’s patterns suddenly began to change. Instead of lashing out again, it pulled back all of its limbs and drew them close to its body.

It almost appeared as if the creature was firming up its defenses. Or at least that would have been the case had it not used its tattered dress to form a magic circle.

The scale of the spell’s sigil was nothing short of absurd. It stood even taller than the mushroom and spanned a length just as wide. Countless runes were mixed into the boundaries, with the individual symbols small enough that they would have been difficult to read from point blank.

Naturally, the massive formation was powered by an equally massive amount of mana. The mushroom drained it from the air; it harvested all of the ambient magic with a growing and shrinking motion that resembled a gulp before it activated its spell.

Despite how complicated it appeared, the end result was simple. It generated and fired a massive block of ice with all the same properties as the shards embedded into its stalk.

It was too fast and heavy to stop with her vectors alone; it continued to press forward with its speed slowly reducing, but Claire was unconcerned. Rearing up on her hind legs, she stuck out her front talons and waited. At the moment of contact, she transferred all of its momentum, instantly redirecting it into the snow at her heels. She knew that it was a foolish choice—her talons likely would have been shattered by the impact had she missed the timing by the slightest margin—but she couldn’t pass the opportunity when the enemy presented it on a silver platter.

The caldriess finally understood the substance’s nature as she felt it in her talons. It wasn’t true ice. It lacked the divinity that was required to make it into a source of power, but its properties were similar in nature. Though not quite indestructible, though its frostblight was weakened, it was an inordinately pure version of the element crafted by an experienced caster.

And by applying just a little bit of mana, not even enough for her circuits to complain, she was able to make it her own. Evidently, cutting the fungus only proved ineffective, so she employed the ice as a mace and bashed away whilst manipulating it with her vectors.

Her blunt force strikes proved more effective than her attempts at slashing. She still wasn’t doing much damage, but the impacts were disruptive enough that the enemy struggled to retaliate. The oversized mace, or rather maces with Boris assuming the same shape, kept the fungus’ dress disabled while Claire continued to approach.

It looked like she only needed to execute it, but its gills suddenly deformed and released a burst of dust as she closed in on its trunk. Turning Boris into a fan allowed Claire to push most of it away, but a stray spore came into contact with her back. And with its arrival, a sudden burst of pain. The mycelia sprouted in an instant, working their way straight through her skin. They latched directly onto her bones and drank from the ice that was the source of her power.

She fell to her knees, her breath heavy as a mushroom erupted from her back. Writhing beneath her skin, it migrated its tendrils towards her neck and threatened to reach her head. With their movement came a strange urge. She wanted to fly high into the sky and spread her body as wide as she could.

It didn’t vanish until she grabbed the mushroom and tore it from her body, ripping her own flesh apart in the process, thanks to its grip on her bones.

Her breath heavy, Claire opened her mouth wide and dug her teeth into the towering shroom that was her original target.

She was almost surprised to find that it lacked an icy core. It was nothing but fungal flesh through and through. And though it resisted when she sawed at its base, lashing out with more tendrils than ever, she toppled its trunk and brought its hat to the ground.

The remaining root-like structures wriggled away even as she seized them with her vectors. It wasn’t until she channeled her mana into her eyes and transformed her pupils from slits to magic circles that they finally obeyed her commands.

It had been a long time since she used the racial magic. Even in her true form, it clawed at her insides.

Still, she continued to channel her mana. In all likelihood, it was as her father had claimed. She simply needed her body to adapt. And in such a case, abiding by Alfred’s solution and waiting for her wounds to heal was simply not an option.

Blood flowed from her eyes for as long as the magic was active, dripping down her cheeks as would a trail of tears. Her whole head felt like it was on fire. But with the fungus frozen in place, she was able to drag it from its den, take it between her jaws, and drain the rest of its life force.

Log Entry 884793

You have slain a level 1209 Frostblight King Stropharia.

This feat has earned you the following bonus rewards:

- 15 points of agility

- 47 points of dexterity

- 32 points of spirit

- 25 points of strength

- 117 points of wisdom

- 68 points of vitality

A laugh escaped her lips as she spat out the fungus’ corpse and closed her aching eyes. The mushroom hadn’t even given her a full level. It hadn’t even given her a tenth of a level. Including her last kill’s overflow as well as whatever she had earned when Allegra finished off her last two targets, she had only gained four percent of the experience required for her racial class to grow.

“Whew! I almost didn’t think you were gonna win there,” said Sylvia. She hopped off the branch she was using as an observer’s seat and landed on the lyrkress’ head. The kit extended her paws and prepared to heal the lyrkress, but Claire shook her head and stopped her. Her inability to rapidly regenerate was a shortcoming that she would have to learn to deal with. It was a shame. She would have picked up the warrior class had Alfred’s labyrinth not sealed it away. Rapid regeneration was almost too valuable to pass up.

“I had it under control.”

“That’s what I thought too, until you got hit by the spores.”

“I still had it under control.”

“Uhmmm… yeah. Right.” Claire couldn’t be bothered to open her eyes, but she could practically hear the fox’s forced smile.

“Can’t blame you for worrying. She’s a little too keen on going all in, if you ask me.” A gruffer voice soon made its way out of the woods and joined their conversation.

“Panda.” Still keeping her eyes closed, Claire shifted just her ears in the raccoon’s direction.

“In the flesh,” he said.

“Oh, hey Panda!” said Sylvia. “Is it just me, or are you like, a lot taller and skinnier? Did you go on a diet or something?”

“Nah. Some asshole cut my last body in half,” he said. “Honestly, the nerve of that man.”

“You probably deserved it,” said Claire.

“Who’s to say?” The raccoon shrugged.

“So, are you done with whatever it was you said you were gonna be busy with?” asked Sylvia.

“I still have a few loose ends to tie up, but they’re more or less inconsequential. I should be around enough to more or less guide you through the mountains.”

“No thanks,” said Claire.

“Figured you’d say that,” chuckled the raccoon. “Honestly, I couldn’t even tell you why I bothered to ask.”

“Because you’re an idiot,” said Claire.

“That was supposed to be rhetorical.” Panda pressed a hand to his head, breathed a sigh, and slowly shook his head. “Anyway, enough with the bullshit. The real reason I stopped by is ‘cause there’s something important I figured you needed to know.”

“Like what?”

“On second thought, this might not really be the time. I might still be able to up the profits if I wait a little longer to say it.”

Claire rolled her eyes as she got to her feet. “Keep your secrets then. I don’t care.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t be like that,” he said. “What if I told you that Allegra’s been lying to you this whole time? Hell, she’s got both you and that stupidly violent daddy of yours wrapped right around her finger.”

Claire narrowed her eyes.

“What do you mean?”

A warped grin appeared on the rat’s lips. It was a twisted, almost sadistic smile, as deranged as deranged could be.

“Your mother is still alive.”

“Explain.”

She practically growled the words as she grabbed him with her talons, but all she got was a lazy shrug.

“Sorry, no can do. Showing you through the mountains was kind of key to explaining everything, and you clearly don’t feel like going where I tell you.” The smile never left his lips. “So unfortunately, as much as I’d like to tell you everything, we’re stuck at a bit of an impasse.”

Claire dug her teeth into her jaws and her claws into the raccoon.

“Explain everything. Now.”

“I already told you, I can’t. You blew the only chance I was allowed to give you.”

“Sylvia. Read him.”

“I’m trying, but it’s not working,” said the fox. “I’m not really sure why.”

“Fine. Then I’ll just make him talk.” Her eyes glowed, first blue, then yellow, then red as she channeled her power through her circuits and bolstered the force of her grip.

And yet, Panda dislodged himself from her claws, pushing them away with ease before rising to his feet and dusting off his bloodied fur.

“If you really want to know, you’ll have to find the lord of this frozen land before the winter fades.”

With a deep cackle escaping his throat, the raccoon lightly waved his arm. And then, he vanished. Almost like he never existed, the ring-tailed pest simply disappeared.