It turns out, crashing into a boss monster while traveling at terminal velocity covered in rocks to the point that you’re basically a rapidly spinning boulder-bullet does a considerable amount of damage. The impact alone didn’t make much sound, but mushroom-bits exploded all across the room in a giant wave that nearly reached the ceiling. Sean didn’t see that part however, he was too busy reading the blood-red damage prompt that had appeared the instant they made contact. Its contents brought a savage smile to his now-stony bone face.
You have struck Slave-Shroom Network Core for 238 points of damage (base 50 terminal velocity falling damage, multiplied 250% for for rotation speed and additional mass for a total of 250, 250 multiplied by 200% due to a critical strike for a total of 500, 500 reduced by half due to target’s natural resistance to bludgeoning damage and minus an additional 12 due to target toughness).
To Sean, dealing over two hundred points of damage in a single blow felt a lot like crashing through a marshmallow factory. One that had blown out its windows in a misguided attempt to make the world’s biggest smore. The pair shot through the top of the network core’s tower and smashed their way all the way down to the now-devastated creature’s base stalk. As they went, careening through what felt like multiple floors of structured mycellium, Sean’s euphoria at somehow surviving the experience inspired him to sing.
“I came in like a wwrreeeckinnnng baaaalllll!” The slime warrior mentally sent his friend, in his admittedly horrible rendition of the hit song from his homeland. “All I wanted was to break your controllllll!”
To his credit, Gel didn’t comment at all on Sean’s impromptu pop performance. The slime was far too busy cackling with wild laughter, as he had been their entire way down.
Thump.
Sean’s undead nature cut off the euphoric feeling the fall had brought on as they struck the ground. For a moment, the slime warrior expected to fall into another rage at having taken damage. Expecting that had been a calculated risk. Where else could he do more damage than from inside the fungal boss monster anyway? To his surprise though, a boulder-grey prompt appeared in his vision. That, along with the ‘damage’ prompt that followed, explained the lack of his usual fugue state.
You have drank a ‘Rock Skin potion! You have been granted a temporary exoskeleton formed entirely out of rock! You have been granted an additional 25 temporary hit points that will be lost before your own can be damaged. The new exoskeleton coating has a toughness of 15 and has dramatically increased your current weight. This boon will last a maximum of ten minutes, or until the entire surface coating has been destroyed.
You have fallen from a great height, and taken 10 damage to your temporary hit points (base 50 terminal velocity damage, 50 reduced by half due to impact material, minus 15 due to exoskeleton toughness).
Hell yeah! Sean crowed as he, rather unsteadily, picked himself up to his feet. The prompt hadn’t been kidding about the dramatic increase in weight. He felt like a golem now, rather than a skeleton. Still… Ten more minutes of free hit points and badassery right here!
The slime warrior looked down and at his left arm, realizing that he did actually look kind of like a golem right now. Then he made a mental note to go back and acquire the rest of Bancroft’s potions store whenever they went back and ransacked his mansion. Every one of these things is just too damn useful.
Now… where the hell are we?
They had crashed down through the mushroom tower almost perfectly through the center, but now it looked like they had almost shot through one of the exterior walls. Surrounding them in all directions but one were thousands of interlocking purple-white membranes and more of that ‘piping’ they had seen outside. Sean looked up, and saw almost no end to them.
… apart from the ones they had destroyed, that is. Which now that he could actually see what they had done, was a rather impressive amount. A truck-sized hole had been blown through the roof of the boss fungus all the way down to where they were now standing. More of the structure had plumed outwards, and the section of wall they had landed next to was simply gone. With a grin Sean pulled out his frying pan, twirled it, and addressed his friend.
“I’m ready to topple some tyranny. How about you?”
“Are you… are you going to cook the entire thing? The whole tower?” Gel asked, half in awe and inadvertently ruining the whole ‘movie one-liner’ vibe Sean had been going for.
“I was thinking of serving it up on a hot plate, yeah.” Sean adjusted the knob on his magic frying pan to max oil distribution, and then flung a helping of the flammable liquid around the boss monster’s insides. “We’re already here. Might as well, right?”
“Am I still going to be able to eat it afterwards?”
“Probably.” Sean hedged, unsure as to just how flammable this mushroom was on its own. “But if you want some now you’re welcome to start before I–”
Before he had even finished the sentence, Gel’s whip shot out from the rocky crevasse that ended at Sean’s right shoulder. The potion had apparently not considered his broken arm part of him – at least not enough to be worth closing off – so the slime had plenty of room to maneuver. Which he did with abandon, shooting across the fungus monster’s insides and consuming as much as he possibly could.
When the base section of the tower they had hollowed out was all but awash in cooking oil, with Sean making sure not to get any on them, the pair clambered out of the mushroom tower.
“Alright, now swap to your axe and just keep attacking until it lights up.” Sean instructed, and Gel happily complied. Within the first two dozen strikes, Sean’s ‘Amateur Arsonist’ title activated, and the oil ignited.
At first, the flames spread across the surface. They whisked across the mini-pool that Sean had made inside the creature like hungry spirits, already beginning to brown and char the interlocking mycelium network. Then the tunnel of rushing air caused by the hole they had made combined with clearly incendiary spores and the rest of the oil, and a sudden fwwoooooshhh swept through the cavern.
The resulting fire was so bright Sean instinctively threw a hand up to shield his eyes from it, only to realize at the last second that wasn’t necessary. He took several steps back as the flames began to spread much further and faster than he had expected. Then he looked down, and realized he was still standing on that mushroom-carpet that blanketed the entire cavern.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Sean looked from the carpet, to the mushroom tower the carpet was connected to, which now had roaring flames going off inside it. He might have tried to run back to the wall, but that would only have trapped them above the fire.
“We need a large area cleared of this carpet before we get caught up in those flames!” Sean told his friend. “And do it fast, because I think that thing might still be alive.”
As if in response to his comment, the fungus tower began to violently writhe and shake around in a way that no true building ever could. An ominous and familiar-looking pressure built up in many of the nearby ‘pipes’, and the slime warrior had a bad feeling he knew what was coming.
“On it!” Gel affirmed, before whipping out to do just that. Sean quickly walked around in a spiral circle outwards to help, and within minutes they had a 30-some foot wide circle cleared down to the dirt.
In front of them, the slave-shroom network node – the rotten core of the fungus that had enslaved an entire colony of ants – shriveled into itself and began to fold downward. Most of its purple-white interior was now either tannish-brown or a rapidly darkening black. The ant queen behind the tower rose up on its massive legs and retreated from the spreading flames, backing up to the wall before bashing her own head against it in apparent confusion.
Sean watched her as they continued to expand their circle of non-carpeting, curious at the behavior. The queen turned her head, and began bashing it ferociously at the ground as if trying to get something out. Then she froze, and stopped. She laid down only to get back up again and try to repeat the behavior.
She’s fighting the control. Sean realized. He pointed over to her. “Gel, it’s working! Look! The queen is starting to break free already! Maybe if we can get you over to her back and have you work your magic, then she’ll be rid of it completely!”
“Wooohooo!” Gel shouted in triumph even as the slime rolled up more of the shroom carpeting. “I’m glad you have finally started to recognize that everything I do is magic.”
Sean let his friend have that one, and was about to add in a retort of his own when the sound of hissing steam shot through the cavern.
“Oh, no.” Sean said.
Right before the spore clouds emanating from the near-bursting fungal pipes all around them shot jets of purple-white spores directly into the air. It took about two seconds for the first parts of the spore clouds to reach the flames, and Sean curled his rock-form back into as tight a ball as he could make it in that time. He pushed Gel and his frying pan back into his stomach as the cavern exploded in flames all around them.
You have been burned by an expanding flame for 0 damage (base 7, reduced by 7 due to exoskeleton toughness).
You have been burned by an expanding flame for 0 damage (base 8, reduced by 8 due to exoskeleton toughness).
You have been burned by an expanding flame for 0 damage (base 9)---
Sean watched the prompts cascade in and couldn’t help but notice the damage he was receiving was getting higher and higher. At this rate, they might be burned alive. If they hadn’t destroyed the flammable shroom-carpeting around them, Sean was sure they would have been already. Thankfully, the flames they had been exposed to by the dying boss monster were short-lived.
When the prompts stopped coming, Sean lifted his head to look around them. The entire cavern, previously running through with purple and white, was now a lightly seared brown bordering on charred black in places. The ant queen was laying stunned on her side, and the once-massive tower they had crashed through was now a rapidly deflating burnt husk.
“Well.” Sean announced, standing up and slowly turning around to take in the entire scene. “That went better than I expected.”
“Dibs on everything in this room!” Gel said quickly, before groaning in pure delight as he snatched up some of the charred mushroom carpet. “Mmmnhhh… Fire adds a whole new world of flavor. The sear on this is incredible. I can taste the flames!”
“That’s what I was telling you about the steak.” Sean said, looking up to make sure their gear was still undamaged on the ceiling and feeling rather relieved when he saw that it was. “You have to time it perfectly, or else you lose the essence of what makes it steak.”
“Impossible. I quite literally dissolve the steak’s essence when I eat.” Gel shot back, though by this point the topic was a well-worn groove of inside humor between them. “So I don’t ‘lose’ anything.”
The pair continued their back-and-forth until a new prompt appeared for both of them, one that immediately cut off their friendly post-battle bickering. It was a midnight-bordered crimson color with harsh, almost scratched-in text and it carried only a few words
Mass consumption requirements met. Gelaton evolution has been unlocked.
Just as Gel began to woop in victory in his mind, Sean got another prompt. One he had been desperately working to achieve. It sizzled when it appeared, and for a moment the slime warrior even thought he heard fireworks. Its border was a constantly shifting set of pans, some Sean didn’t even recognize, and the letters were shaped like fried meat on skewers.
Congratulations, you have earned the title: ‘Amateur Magichef’! Many are those who put meat to pan, but only the most dedicated can turn that meat into a dish fit for a king! Real Magichefs are those who have learned to infuse their meals with the very essence of mana itself, and this is your first step upon that path! Rejoice, new acolyte of the magi-culinary arts, for the journey of your tastebuds has only just begun!
This title grants the ability to passively infuse mana types compatible with the user’s nature into consumable material while it is being cooked without ruining the end result. Additional benefits may apply, but must be discovered.
“Alright, I take that back.” Sean said, feeling like even his undead nature couldn’t keep his rising joy at reading that last prompt from bursting out of his own chest. “This went way better than I expected! This day could not possibly get any better!”
Right as the words left his mind and were transferred to the slime, Sean knew he had just inadvertently tempted fate. And from the sound of the cavern rumbling overhead, his timing could not have been any worse. Sean looked up, terrified to see their gear dropping from the root and plummeting to the ground below. Instead, what he saw was even more horrifying.
A massive black figure plummeted to the ground much like they had only moments before. It landed in the last crumbling sections of the fungal tower with a resounding boom that sent burnt mushroom skin flying around the room. Sean didn’t need to wait around for it to rise up to recognize who it was. He had seen the hulking creature already on its way down.
“We need to get to the queen.” Sean said even as he began to race around the tower. The thing had landed right between them and the royal ant. Its appearance right between them and their goal was a message from the universe that even he could read. “We need to get to her right now.”
“Sean!” Gel exclaimed loudly, and there was a hint of fear in the slime’s voice as Gel came to the same conclusion Sean just had. “It’s back! How in the salt-covered wastes did it even find us down here!?”
“I don’t know.” Sean responded as he dropped into a dead sprint even as their new opponent began to push its way out of the crumbling shroom-tower. “But I don’t want to find out.”
Though neither of them knew what the undead monster was, both of them recognized the hulking creature that had slain the paladins back at the forest. They recognized the way it looked, the way it moved, and they recognized the midnight-black sword that it carried easily in one hand. Bancroft’s latest minion had finally caught up to them.
The Inmortu was here.