As he walked, he began to hear a chattering noise rising up in the far recesses of the mushroom forest, and he felt a few small auras blossom into being a few hundred feet away from him. Their auras were undoubtedly F Rank, but not especially powerful ones.
Sam changed his trajectory a moment later, heading towards the source of the auras. If there were monsters there, then all he saw them as were sources of essence to fuel his ascension.
Sam remained quiet as he walked, and he made his way through the looming towers of mycelium without making a single noise. The auras grew brighter in his metaphysical sight, and he eventually laid eyes on their sources. A trio of loosely packed amalgamations of flesh and mushrooms squatted in a small clearing, hunched over the body of some dead animal. They tore off great strips of its flesh with their stubby fingers, stuffing them into their mouths. They constantly projected the chattering noises that he had heard earlier from their grotesquely large mouths, either some sort of ritualistic eating noise, or a form of communication.
Sam edged towards the clearing slowly, gathering up power in his hammer as he did so. With a sudden roar, he burst out from behind the mushrooms, and brought his hammer down on the nearest monster. It splattered in a cloud of spores and gore, and he was on to the next one in a blink of an eye, shattering its form with ease.
The third one tried to run, making noises of distress, but Sam did not let it, and he crushed it into the ground with the end of Mjolnir., They had given him a decent amount of essence, but not enough to level up, not by a long shot. Sighing, he kept moving. He would have ample opportunity to fight these creatures before he fought the monster whose aura he had sensed earlier.
Over the next hour, Sam butchered his way through dozens of the mushroom monsters, leveling up twice for his efforts. As he neared the center of the mushroom forest, or what he assumed was the center, given by the presence of the high leveled monsters, they started to become more powerful, taking more hits from his hammer to kill. In addition, a few of them had been able to strike him, but none of them had gotten through his master forged armor.
His Dao empowered the armor beyond its normal state, with the addition of his Dao Smith abilities. The armor was stronger than any low F Rank suit of armor should have been, short of some supreme artifact that only the wealthiest could afford. For Sam’s purposes, it was ideal. Of course it could not hold up to far more powerful opponents, but he would eventually find a way to deal with that. For now, he counted his blessings as he got them, rather than yearning for something in the future.
By this point, the aura that he had felt earlier was growing to a fever pitch, and he knew that he was nearing the center of the cavern. Grunting noises began to drift out of the mushrooms in front of him, and a malodorous reek that carried the scent of death and decay with it. He was nearing something at any rate, even if it was not the monster.
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Sam parted the mushrooms in front of himself with his hammer, and eventually found himself standing on the edge of a massive clearing amid the mushrooms, which was dominated by a monster unlike any he had seen before. It looked like a massive mound of flesh, with a grotesquely elongated head, which drooped under its own weight. The monster looked like a normal creature, but its flesh was made out of mushrooms, and it somehow bent and moved just like actual flesh, something that the earlier monsters had not been able to achieve.
Great clouds of spores drifted out of the monster every few seconds, rising up to the cavern roof and drifting off throughout the mushroom forest. As they emerged, the monster wheezed, which explained the grunting noises that Sam had heard a few moments ago. Sam quickly analyzed the monster, finding out what it was in the blink of an eye.
Mycelium Progenitor
Level 89
The creature was high level, but not into the realm of having to use his Dao Juggernaut skill. Besides, it was a monster, which were in many ways easier to deal with than sapients. In many ways harder too, but Sam had a great build for dealing with monsters as well as people. He was not optimized towards either extreme, but his natural power and talent allowed him to be quite effective in most fights that he entered. His hammer was great for cracking armor and tough skin alike, and his Dao evened the playing field in many ways with its conceptual abilities. In addition, his monstrous stats were that of someone of a far higher level, and he could use that discrepancy to his advantage if his enemies underestimated him. If he leveled up a few more times, he would be able to use his nodes more effectively than before, potentially cultivating for the rest of his tenure as an F Rank without a single battle.
Obviously he had no intention of doing so, but he knew that quite a few cultivators probably did something like that, spending years at a time cultivating in safety. It had its merits, but also its demerits as well. One could not collect titles or any other power boosting bonuses without struggling, and sitting in a room for years was hardly a struggle. If you had time, the method was quite efficient indeed, as every node opened increased the amount of power that you could draw in, but Sam was a firm adherent to his warrior’s path, and he would not deviate from it for something like that. Of course, he would cultivate the ambient essence whenever he could, if he leveled up a bit more, as he was not going to simply give up free power, but he would not dedicate any more time to it than he normally would.
With that, he was ready to face off against the monster. Sam started to draw his elemental energy and Dao energy into his hammer, causing it to glow with the power of his energies. In addition, he decided to try something new with his mana, and sent it towards his hands, seeing if he could use it to empower his strikes in any way. The use of the mana berry had allowed him to exert far greater control over this mana, and now he was able to draw enough of it into his hands to cause them to glow with a faint blue light. He could feel strength surge with his form, but of a kind that was not of the physical variety. Instead, he almost felt as if he was empowering his energy reserves.
When he sent more power into Mjolnir, it was heightened as opposed to before, almost as if his Dao energy and elemental energy had been empowered by his mana, simply by passing through a part of his body that contained the pure mana. In any case, he would be able to test its efficacy soon enough.