Chapter 80: The wandering cave mushroom

Felix Sythias’ POV:

My eyes widened as the mushroom monster prepared to attack. I cursed myself for letting it get so close. I had just wanted to see if it would walk past us without even noticing us. Idiocy.

We’d be fine whatever happened, I knew that. But it would knock us out of the fight, and we’d have to stop for the day. It wasn’t an option.

I flared my wings and pushed them down hard just as the monster released its poison attack. Black spores wafted out from under its mushroom head en masse, threatening to fill the tunnel, but my wingbeat created a gust of wind. A strong gust of wind. It blew the spores away, further down the tunnel we’d just come from.

I turned to my friends. “Run! I’ll deal with this one!”

If it came down to it, I had way more body mass than both of them combined. I could handle much more of the monster’s poison before it became an issue than they could. For once, it was a boon that I was that much heavier than everyone else.

Luckily Alex and Tiki didn’t need to be told twice, and they ran in the opposite direction until they were out of sight, hidden by a bent in the tunnel and far enough away the spores wouldn’t be an issue. I turned my attention back to the mushroom monster. I’d need to end this quickly.

I reached inside myself, drawing out the mana from my pool and guiding it towards the ground. Though I’d practiced this a lot, I still wasn’t sure I could aim it properly. It was just another reason my friends had to leave. Well, if it didn’t work, I could always still tear the monster apart from up close. I’d rather not do that, though. That was just asking to get poisoned.

For a small moment that felt like forever, the earth mana built up, increasing force and pressure until finally, with a crunch only I could hear, it moved all at once. The mana slammed into the stone beneath my talons and at the same time, spikes erupted beneath the wandering cave mushroom. Mostly. Half of them missed, but the half that hit did monstrous damage. Spikes tore into the dog-like creature, going clean through its paws and ripping its belly open. Instead of the expected blood, white liquid flowed out, and I took another step back. The creature trembled, but it didn’t scream. It couldn’t. It had no mouth. But it sure looked like it wanted to, though.

The spikes through its feet made it lose its footing, and so the monster fell on the spikes, gravity pulling it down and making its wounds worse. It writhed in pain, tearing its wounds up even further. But it was stuck. It had lost use of its paws and was now stuck, impaled on the stone spikes.

And though its white blood flowed like a river, it didn’t stop moving. It thrashed and writhed, trying to get off. But gravity had pulled it all the way down to the base of the spikes now, and it was too small to get off them. I considered sending another set of spikes its way, but realized I had a much less mana-expensive option—waiting. It would bleed out eventually. And that’s what I did. Meanwhile, both Alex and Tiki had returned and were throwing rocks and shooting arrows at it. That way, they’d get the experience and it wouldn’t go to waste.

It didn’t take long for it to bleed out.

“That was… gruesome,” Tiki said.

I shrugged. “It would’ve tried to kill us by melting us from the inside out with its spores. I think it had it coming to it.”

“I know,” she said. “Just, the way it kept spasming. I think I’ll be seeing that in my nightmares. I’m glad it’s dead, though.”

Alex nodded in agreement. “It was an unpleasant sight, but fighting monsters is rarely a pleasant thing,” he said, and I noticed him glancing at my wing, the one that I’d had to tear off when we fought the dire bear over a month ago. He then turned to Tiki. “The important thing is that it’s dead. But if you ever need to talk, let us know. We’re in this together.”

She nodded “I might take you up on that later. For now, I just want to focus on leveling up as much as possible.”

Alex smiled. “Agreed. Let’s check our gear and update the map, then continue.”

Our gear was still fine, and the map was up to date again, so we continued. We came across dozens of monsters, of which luckily only two more were a wandering cave mushroom. They too didn’t seem to notice us at first, but we knew better now. This time we knew not to let it get close at all. Tiki sent arrows at it, aiming for its knees. She quickly took out its ability to walk, then pummeled it until she got the kill notification.

The only other different monster we came across was a large lizard. They had really sharp hearing but were blind, and we used that against them. I’d run my claws down the wall of the tunnel, causing a star-damned awful noise. We had prepared for it, so it didn’t bother us too much, but the lizard had shrieked loudly, before running around wildly and slamming into a wall, knocking itself out. I also killed a few using my stone spikes. Their bodies were low to the ground, making them perfect targets to get perforated. All in all, the lizards were an easy fight.

The only issue we really had was that the darkness and tightness of the tunnel was starting to get on everyone’s nerves. We talked about it a bit while we walked, and it turned out Tiki was used to forests, which, while dark, were relatively open. And Alex, being cold-blooded like me, was really starting to miss the sun and the warmth above ground. The caves weren’t exactly warm, after all. If it weren’t for his [Temperature resistance] skill, he would’ve had to return within the first thirty minutes.

It was great for his levels, though. He had leveled the Skill three times in the last two hours, pushing it to level nine. These tunnels were just that much colder than the first floor. He had also leveled his drawing Skill once, too. During a break, he’d taken the map from Tiki and had redrawn it with much greater detail.

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Tiki also made good progress. Her archery and pathfinding Skills got much needed practical experience.

And all the killing had also pushed each of them to level up, too. Alex had only gained one more level, but Tiki had received three. It made up for her lack of levels earlier. It would likely be a while until they leveled up again, though. Each of their last levels had taken an hour. They were just too high leveled for the monsters on this floor, now. There was even a decent chance that by the time we got to the third floor, they’d be above their levels, too, greatly limiting what they could get out of it.

Still, they were leveling fast, and soon they would be able to pick their first Path at level twenty-seven. I was looking forward to learning how Alex’s prefix, the one for his lightning magic Skill—draconic—would influence his choices. Usually a person only got three choices, but prefixes were known to fuck with that.

With a bit of luck, they’d both get a Path before we had to go back to the Academy. With the hunting grounds still closed for the investigation, it would be a while until they got a chance to level again.

As we walked back through the narrow, confining tunnels, I wondered what my path choices would’ve been. There were standard variations, like mages, warriors, and such, but each Path was still different. Personal. With my original plans, I would have certainly received a mage Path for my choices, but that was a moot point now. What was interesting was what my choices would’ve been if I got them as I was now.

I’d deviated massively from my initial plans of spells and research, going with brute force and instinctual magic instead. There would likely have been an option for instinctual mage, or something similar. It would’ve been a first, and I wondered what kind of bonuses the Path would’ve given, and what its Skills would’ve done. It would have likely boosted my skill, power, and accuracy in various ways.

Luckily, I could do that without the System, too. I’d figured the earth spike out all by myself after all. I couldn’t have done that a month ago. Now if only the damned armband would light up to tell me my mana pool had grown again. Even with the stronger opponents down here, it had done nothing. Not even when I took on an entire puddle of seven slimes all by myself. Either fighting higher leveled monsters wasn’t the solution, or I’d need to fight and kill even higher leveled monsters. I’d get a chance to find that out later, when we went down to the third floor.

As we walked, I kept thinking about the fight with the bear and my sudden increase in mana, until finally we got back to the floor’s entrance. We were the last to arrive, and clearly the floor had been too much of a challenge for some of the other students. Some were unconscious and were tinged slightly black around their mouths. Spores, then. Others had simpler injuries, like a broken bone. Probably the fault of a cave slime. To my dismay, Alfred seemed to be fine. It felt petty, but him being injured would have proven once again that I was better than him, and that would’ve annoyed him.

It felt a little weird to want someone else to be injured, but I just couldn’t care when it came to him. He didn’t deserve that effort. Especially not when he smirked at me like he was doing now. He quickly glanced away when he noticed me glaring at him, however.

I had mixed feelings about the rest of the group, though. On the one talon, I felt sorry for them and their injuries. On the other talon, how did they get so injured? It was almost disappointing. At least, I felt that way until I remembered most of them probably hadn’t seen real combat before this excursion. Sparring and fighting monsters simply wasn’t the same, nor was training. You could prepare, but in the end, experience taught you more than a thousand lessons ever could.

Then there was also the fact that our group simply was that much stronger.

I shook my head. I shouldn’t look down on them. It was wrong. They did the best they could. I’d need to keep myself in check. It all was too easy to look down on someone because they performed worse than you. If I didn’t watch myself, I might slip and turn into… into Alfred. A shudder went through me at that thought. He was everything I didn’t want to be.

I wondered if that’s how he became how he was now. Did he start slipping, and slipping, until looking down on everyone around him became the default? If that was the case, why had no one helped him get back up after he started slipping? And what could I do to prevent the same thing happening to me?

I turned to Alex and Tiki, who were cleaning their gear while we waited to move. “Hey guys, if I ever become a jerk, or do something mean, please tell me. I don’t want to become like Alfred.”

Alex titled his head at me. “Yeah, of course. You’re my,” he lowered his voice, “boyfriend. As if I’ll let you become an asshole. I’ll keep you in check should it be necessary—though I’m not sure it will be, honestly. But what brought this on?”

“Yeah, what brought this on? You’re like, the opposite of my brother,” Tiki said.

I hesitated for a moment. I didn’t want them to think less of me, and I knew I didn’t have to share every thought I had with them. But leaving them hanging would be weird, and I felt I could trust them enough to, at the very least, tell them. So I did. I told them about the thoughts I’d had, if only for a moment, about my classmates, and how I felt about that.

When I was done, Tiki chuckled. “You’re adorable Felix. That was really mild, all things considered—that’s if you want to judge it at all. And really, why should you? If we went around judging people for the things they thought, the world would be much less pleasant,” she said, shaking her head. “Your actions are what matter. At least, I hope they do. I have thoughts like yours daily. But like you did, I always correct myself, and never act on the thoughts. So, does that make me a bad person?”

She asked the last question as if it were a rhetorical question, but there was something in her tone that made me think she wasn’t entirely sure. But she wasn’t a bad person. She’d hurt me a while back, sure, but we’d talked it out.

“No, you’re not,” I told her.

Alex voiced his agreement. “You’re not,” he said, then turned to me. “And neither are you. Yes, you had a mean thought, but you corrected yourself and knew it was wrong. I’m not sure Alfred does that.”

I nodded. “I know. But still, it would put me at ease knowing you’d stop me from being a dick if I was being one.”

They both nodded, and Tiki spoke. “Agreed, so long as you promise to keep me in check too,” she said.

“Of course.”

Soon after our conversation, we left the caves, and I felt a little closer to my friends. When we got back to the surface, the first thing I did was spread my wings wide and lie down in the soft grass, soaking in the remaining bit of sun. Alex flopped down beside me, and though we wouldn’t have minded it if she joined, Tiki said she had other things to do. She wanted to go lie down between the trees somewhere. So Alex climbed onto my chest instead, and I put an arm around him as he laid down. The field we’d chosen was secluded enough, so no one would see or bother us.

We laid together for well over half an hour, and I was about to doze off when Alex asked a question.

“So, do you want to talk about what happened with you down in the caves?”