Chapter 47: Painting the walls

“...you two get to see what will happen when you discard a skill,” Sairal says.

Each and every one of his skills is strong, really strong. Discarding one of them must be detrimental to his fighting style.

Cobalt argues with him, saying that it is too extreme to be switching out skills impulsively.

The dryad shakes his head in annoyance, “The skill I’ll pick will bolster our defence and will bring me further along my path. Now, don’t do anything. Don’t touch me, don’t scream, don’t get close to my tree. Don’t do anything.”

He waits until he receives two nods and takes in a deep breath. His eyes flicker to a system window, removing the skill and picking another one. A second later he doubles over on the ground, wheezing as his hands pull on the moss. Sairal shakes like a leaf in the wind, gasping for air as his skin turns deathly pale. He sputters out wet coughs as black blood flows out of his nose.

I step forward but Cobalt pulls me back, shaking her head.

The gasping dryad rolls onto his back, his breathing growing uneven as he looks up at his own tree. More black blood leaks out of his nose but on closer inspection, it isn’t blood at all.

Thick like tar, it dribbles out of him and I imagine that it’s the remnants of a skill construct that might have been with him for decades.

He lies sprawled out on the ground as tears leak from his eyes, forcing himself to continue breathing and letting out painful groans all the while.

Slowly, he recovers and regains control of his own body.

Cinealla hugs his leg in comfort and he pats her on the cap, comforting her.

“And that is why no one likes to discard skills. Not only do you lose the work you put into it, but the experience can also be quite…hellish for high rarity and high-level skills.”

I take in a gulp of air for myself, while he stretches out the kinks in his body.

“Dryad Sairal, what kind of skill did you pick?” Cobalt asks.

He doesn’t comment on her being so direct, “Mycorrhizal Network. With it, I can defend the ground we stand on.”

We make some more small talk and head back to our own positions, preparing for the Cave crawlers that can find us at any moment. Having finished building the last parts of the bindweed battlements, I spend my Stamina on reshaping my body to be combat-ready. All my fingers are shaped back into razor-sharp claws that will easily rend through Cave crawler carapace. My feet are stretched apart, with small hooks on each toe, creating more grip. And finally, the branches of my crown are shortened, making it less vulnerable.

When that is done, I spend my time, unmoving and testing Solar Storage. As I thought, the conversion ratio of actually storing energy is pretty bad, probably being around half if not a bit more. The skill, however, feels very different. Where Photosyntehis felt like bathing, new energy flowing through my veins, Solar Storage is comfort, a warm meal in your belly and the knowledge that you can call upon extra power when you need it the most.

On my left and right, more mushroom guardians that I’ve even seen being active at once, climb the walls. Sairal is really putting everything into this. Like a warcry, they slam their fists together rhythmically, their beady eyes on the forest line.

And drawn to the sound, the first scouts peek from behind the trees. Compound eyes glint in the light as the first of them presses further into the grassland that lies between the Bastion and the surrounding forest.

Cobalt is quick to act and leaps off the walls, blurring over the grass and hopping over a tree stump that gets in her way. In a flash, the insect is frozen solid. She smashes it to pieces, dusts off her hands and casually strolls back to the walls, glaring over her shoulder.

From behind the trees, shadows shift and the forest returns to normal. They found us. Soon they will come.

The air continues to grow thick with dust and far off in the distance, there is the everpresent scratching against bark with the occasional low thud, telling that yet another tree has been felled.

Shadows gather at the treeline and a second scout appears, hesitantly scuttling forward. The monster looks back over its shoulder and more begin to flow forward. All of them are only (H) grades, and to be frank, not even worth mentioning. However, we all know that this is only a prelude like the first raindrop of a storm.

Ordinary arrows fly through the air and pierce through cithin, killing them. But it doesn’t deter. It only encourages.

More and more flow forwards, uncaring of the barrage of arrows that seems to come from everywhere, nor the swirling mist that moves along the wall. The steady trickle of insects doesn’t increase further than that and half an hour later, it even stops altogether.

I leave the mushroom guardians behind on the walls and head back to Sairal’s tree. I’m forced to scold Aeru and Leo who seem to have taken it upon themselves to anger the tentacle monster in the lake by throwing any pebble or rock they can find into the lake. Both of them scuttle away as they see me approach, knowing that they are forbidden from doing that.

I come to a halt before the moss carpet, greedily taking in the sun and storing it in my body to expend later. Sairal is fiddling with that metal box again, his face completely blank.

“Is the magic still wrong?” I ask as he reads another number on the device and scribbles it down on a piece of paper.

It takes a moment for him to answer, but when Cobalt reaches his tree, he finally nods, “It is, and it’ll be a problem later on.”

He hands Cobalt a clean cloth to wipe the blood off her which she happily takes out of his hands.

With a few points of Stamina, I extend my branches and make my leaves less clumped together for more coverage.

*Bindweed of Nature (R) lvl 8/20 -> Bindweed of Nature (R) lvl 9/20.

I smile at the notification and turn back to the conversation. “How big of a problem are we talking about?”

The dryad seriously considers it and exchanges the metal box with another piece of paper. He scribbles down numbers faster than I can track, letting out ‘hmm’ sounds all the while. “I am…not certain. The magical density is increasing and I do not know when it will end…it’s subtle, very subtle.

“Anyway, the problem is that Cave crawlers can use magic to supplement their food. It is inconsequential for the footsoldiers-”

“Their queens will increase brood production,” Cobalt hisses.

Sairal turns to her with a proud smile on his face, “Exactly. They can’t forgo biomass, however, with their increasing intake and the higher magical density their population close and on the surface will grow exponentially.”

“Why does everything keep getting worse?” I complain.

“That is how an event works in this world: A free-for-all all where the stakes grow with each day. At the end of it, even (D) grades might not be safe.” Sairal turns to the side, reading something off a system panel only he can see. “But to increase our chances, we need to grow, continuously. Be it improving our defences or our own levels. We need to grow.”

We split up again since there is so much to do. Sairal has to work on his new skill, gain levels in it and make the ground beneath our feet Cave-crawler-proof. Cobalt needs to practice her skills since she is apparently close to a breakthrough of some kind. And I naturally need to continue building defences, one metre after the other.

I don’t think that with a hundred more skill levels and several more evolutions under my belt, I can create the entire Bastion out of bindweed, let alone supply it with enough Stamina to regenerate damaged parts and keep the plants alive.

Continuing my cycles of building the battlements, regenerating Stamina and practising my skills, I make steady progress throughout the rest of the day. A handful of skill levels are gained between Breathe, Solar Storage, and my bindweed skills but it is a drop in a bucket compared to where I need to be.

The stupid insects even tried to take advantage when the temporary walls got taken down before I could put up the new one. The mushroom guardians happily used them as punching bags ready to achieve the fabled story of punching a monster’s brain out.

None achieved that, though, hitting a monster so hard that it turns from a solid state into a liquid is a victory in my books.

The sun dips beneath the horizon and the darkness grows. I somehow find myself standing on the bindweed walls, staring out at the forest line, searching for pesky insects trying to crawl up the walls.

My entire body aches thanks to expending my Stamina pool several times over. The joints in my body are sharp, rubbing against each other and send shivers down my spine. My skin is raw and I’m afraid that rubbing against something will make the bindweed strands peel off with no effort.

Something flashes in the darkness, drawing my focus. The alluring blue light in the darkness is something that I need to see up close. Maybe it’s a weird Cave crawler that’s planning to destroy the walls.

I take a step forward, preparing to jump off the two-metre wall and feel a hand land on my shoulder. “Green, stop,” Sairal says.

With some effort, my eyes peel away from the light and I stare at him. Thoughts that were cloudy and jumbled together suddenly stretch apart, becoming reason and logic. “Fuck.”

Sairal looks at the light in the forest while I do my best focusing on his face, pushing the faint whispers out of my mind.

He nods, “Yes. The monsters of the second layer made it to the surface. It is yet another hurdle we need to overcome. I don’t want you to be on the walls while it is dark for now.” he leads me off the battlements back to his tree, “Besides, you should rest for now. I’ll wake you when your Stamina has fully regenerated.”

I shake my head, “I’m fine.”

“Perhaps, though, you need to take a break at least.”

“...fine. Let me just spend my resources first. Can you remove half a metre of temporary wall?”

He nods and systematically cuts through the wood with a few swings of a sword.

I replace it at record speed, afraid that something might come out shambling out of the darkness to take advantage of the disappearance of the walls. Having finished, I trudge back to the mossy carpet and finally sit down for what feels like days. The tiredness catches up with me and my eyes grow heavy.

I lay down further between the few glowing mushrooms that still dot the moss, and feel the soft ground between my fingers before I drift away into the temporary oblivion.

***

Princess Seveiah expected the untamed lands to be, well untamed, but as she pushed further into the dark forest, she couldn’t help but doubt her abilities. Fleeing from her guards and climbing over the walls with her Hoaverboat was one thing, but this? Alone, having run out of provisions, in the deep dark Luxian forest where monsters are more abundant than the trees?

She grips tighter on the hilt of her blade, drawing an iota of comfort from it.

A shadow shifts in the darkness. A monster moves, trying to ambush her. Her sword blurs forward, cutting the head off a strange insectile monster.

The moon, partly covered by the canopy of the forest, is reflected in the monster's dead eyes. Seveiah stares at it in confusion before moving on, resuming her hunt for precious event points, the head of a grand beast, and the body of a mandrake.

The forest is a blur as she fights one monster after the other, painting her sword with their blood. From beavers to large orange lizards, she slays them all, easily, dismembering them before ending their lives for good.

When the first rays of light flow over the horizon, she stumbles upon her greatest foe yet; a grand forest slime, its membrane shifting between tones of emerald as the sunrays are reflected by its membrane.

She unsheathes her sword, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips as she takes in the behemoth that reaches halfway up to the trees.

[Royal Slime] lvl 48/50 (E)

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

The name of the monster makes her chuckle, in none of the universes, let alone the central one, can a slime be a royal.

In a sudden blur of motion, she speeds forward, sword aimed at the thin membrane of the slime. The monster, dense as it is, reacts by shooting out a rain of acid that dissolves the trees behind Seveiah and the grass under her feet.

The smile turns itself into a frown while she blocks the acid rain effortlessly with her sword. Seveiah deliberates how she should categorise this new experience. Not every day, a slime spits acidic bile at you.

One drop makes it through her defence and splatters on her face, hissing faintly. In less than a second her demeanour grows from passive and miffed to enraged and murderous, “You’ll be paying for that, overgrown blob of fake status.”

The rain of acid ends, and the so-called ‘royal’ slime, lashes out with thin tendrils of slime, trying to capture her.

She evades the tentacles, even gaining a level in Sworddance Acrobatics. Seveiah ducks under a tentacle that swipes at her horizontally, slashing it apart over her head with a flick of her sword. In fluid motions, she steps to the left, effortlessly evading the next attack.

With each blow, she gets closer to the monster that quivers with rage. Sliding over the ground once more, she speeds forward and lunges forward with her sword, the tip piercing the membrane.

Another one of her skills activates and the glob of mucus is invaded by hostile energies that tear at it from the inside. The monster quivers once more, though this time with pain, and starts to swell like a balloon.

Hissing, she pushes her sword further into the monster, wincing as the acid eats away at the sharpness of her blade.

More lethal energy enters the monster and soon enough it stops wobbling, reaching critical size.

The world slows down as the membrane of the monster splits open, unleashing all the acidic mucus inside.

Seveiah utters another skill, “Redirection.” And the mucus is blown away in the opposite direction by the power of her skill.

Clasping around the handle of her sword, she flicks it, removing most of the slime.

She nods at the notification floating in her vision and prepares to move on, searching for any valuables that the slime may have had. The core of the monster may not be a head, though it still carries value.

Wincing, she trudges through the slime, searching for a small core all slimes are supposed the have. After walking through the slime for several minutes, she begins to suspect that one of her skills destroyed the precious gem.

“Look in front of your left foot,” a voice calls out.

Seveiah pulls out her blade, pointing it at the darkness around her that continues to grow thinner as the sun rises higher, “Who are you?” she demands.

The voice chuckles, “Someone who wants to be your friend.” The owner of said voice steps out of the darkness, revealing her golden armour and blonde curly locks of hair.

Seveiah’s eyes grow wide as she sees the three scars that mar the woman’s face. Quickly, she regains herself, adjusting her posture into something more regal and befitting of her station. Seamlessly a thin, polite smile grows on her face as she clears her throat and lowers her sword, “I’ve heard my father’s advisors speak of you. The mad soldier on her quest to gain revenge, Iveihla Firesword.”

The woman’s twisted lips lift up into a vicious grin, “That’s me,” she purrs. “Now, tell me what I should princess who fled her cage. They’ve been looking for you and promised to give quite a large sum of gold to the soldier that brings you back.”

Seveiah scoffs at the mad soldier’s antics, “You didn’t ambush me, so I assume you want something else?”

Iveihla nods, “I’ve been thinking. You want the same thing as I do.”

“And what is that,” Seveiah snaps, growing more weary as more people walk out of the darkness. Her hand clenches tighter around the hilt of her sword and a skill construct drifts to the forefront of her mind, ready to be activated in less than a second.

Iveihla makes a show of it, lifting both her arms up and gesturing to the forest around them, “You want to kill every monster here. Slay the dryads, behead the forest dwellers and burn every scrap of greenery to the ground.” She takes in a slow breath, a coy smirk growing on her face, “So why don’t we work together?”

The proposal takes Seveiah off-guard for a second before regaining the posture she has practised her entire life, “What does working together entail, mad soldier?”

The scarred woman continues her show, the shrug rolling from shoulder to shoulder, the motion clearly practised but overdone, “Together we can fight stronger monsters, and gain more event points and levels. And most importantly, The army won’t think to look at my group, suspecting that you are one of its members.”

Seveiah sucks on the inside of her cheek, ruminating over the proposal. Escaping her father’s wrath is more than enough to accept in her mind, even if she has to lower her station and work under someone for the moment. Though, one point remains unspoken, “What if we find the mandrake?”

Iveihla’s casual smile melts off her face, revealing the anger that burns beneath, “I’ll have my revenge. You can have the body after.”

The princess nods, “Very well, consider me to be your teammate for the moment.”

Iveihla beams and gestures to the rest of her team which has slowly been closing in as if she were a wild beast.

The scarred woman points a finger at the first member who stands closest to her, “Quik introductions since we’re wasting time. This is Rheria from the city of Rhymes. She is our battlefield forgemaster,” The woman in question has a paler complexion than most people that stem from Zulis. Jet black hair disguises most of her face and Seveiah has to wonder how she can even see anything with it obscuring her vision.

The introductions fly past and Seveiah is forced to note that one of the mages comes from Maural; the city in the Human Federation that specialises the most in magic.

“...and finally there is Lizak. He’s our water mage who assists us in battle when we need to. So, he is only a tagalong,” Iveihla says, dismissing the man with a flick of her eyes.

Lizak, who in Seveiah’s opinion, shares much of his likeness with Headmage Atellan, shrinks back further into himself like a wounded Segriad snail.

She commits all the names of the party of six to memory and nods to herself, “Where to?” she asks Iveihla.

The wrathful smile blooms again on the scarred woman’s face, “Deeper into the forest where the strong monsters are. Who knows, perhaps we can even pick off a few forest dwellers.”

Sheveiah nods, lets go of her sword and follows her new party after pocketing the core of the slime. If the group isn’t up to her standards, she can always discard them later on.

***

The low rumbling screams of Mushroom guardians rouses me from my restless sleep. In a flash I’m standing, Claws spread open to slash apart the nearest enemy.

Blinking sleep out of my eyes, I watch the mushroom guardians come out of hibernation and rush towards the wall.

Sairal sits against the trunk of his tree, his eyes flicking all over the place, his hands moving jerkily as if he’s counting on his fingers as he gives commands one after the other to hundreds of mushroom guardians.

“What’s going on?” I yell at him as more and more of the world is revealed as I drunkenly stumble out of my sleep.

“Cave crawlers attacking. Full force. Help them,” he fires the words in rapid bursts, his chest heaving as his eyes roll more unevenly. For a moment they settle onto me and he gives me a weak nod, “I’ll be fine. Help them.”

I don’t hesitate and sprint towards the battlements, pulling slightly on the stock of Resources that has built up with Solar Assimilation. My stomach feels full and heavy, warmth courses throughout my body and I feel like I have enough caffeine in me to kill a bull.

Each of my steps eats up the ground between me and the walls as bindweed bulges and shifts colour into a verdant, slightly glowing, green. In record speed I’m standing on the walls, watching trees topple over as Cave crawlers push themselves forwards, crawling over each other to scale the walls.

Where the scouting party of yesterday only consisted out of (H) grades, this is an entire hive coming at us, Cave crawlers of each rarity up to (F) grade, spilling over the land.

Like a tide they flow around the walls before climbing up, assaulting us from each and every angle.

Off far in the distance, Cobalt roars as she leaps into the sea of insect bodies, taking on the (F) grades that the mushroom guardians on the walls can’t handle.

I turn back to the Cave crawlers in front of me just in time, trusting everyone to do their own part. The first of them hit the wall with the force of a wrecking ball, pushed on by its larger brethren behind it. I shove my hands into the battlements, taking control of the bindweed while looking at the Cave crawlers that are doing their best to snap the vines apart.

Like I thought, they have trouble with tearing through the small delicate vines that layer the wall but that only delays the inevitable. I need to act.

Pushing Stamina into the wall, I focus on a single vine and lance forward with it, wrapping it around the first Cave crawler. Thorns grow and the monster’s carapace gets pierced. The bindweed vine digs in further killing the monster a moment later.

That was just one of hundreds if not thousands that need to be killed. As I repeat the tactic, the thought of jumping into the fray like Cobalt drifts into my mind, but I know that I’d be torn apart in seconds. That’s how many there are.

My hands reach deeper into the walls, almost merging with them as I take more control. I Take deep breaths, stretching out my crown and pulling on the stocks of Stamina in my body.

Vines come alive as if they have a mind of their own, coiling around monsters and slamming them off the walls with brute force as I scream my lungs out. Mushroom guardians take care of the stragglers that make it past me and I’m forced to shift gear, giving up on killing them and just hit them with long vines with the sharpest thorns, wounding but not killing them.

Stamian ticks down, and Cobalt somehow speeds along the walls, on the hunt for big game. She fights with a frozen Cave crawler and shards of ice hurl around in the mist that cloys to her form.

Notifications drone in my mind ceaselessly, and I feel the need to scream louder over the din of gnashing mandibles.

I don’t even know why I’m screaming but as one of the insects makes it over the walls, spots me and lunges forward faster than any of the mushroom guardians can, I realise why. I’m fucking going to die.

One of my hands frees itself from the wall and claws elongate thanks to Bindweed of Nature. Stamina gets infused as I prepare to cut the damned monster in half but I’m too slow.

Mandibles close around my fingers and two are torn off. The Mandrake Scream that has been steadily building up in my throat swells. My scream abruptly cuts off as the skill takes control of my lungs.

More Cave crawlers make it over the walls, pooling forwards as endless as they are.

I let go of the wall with my other hand and fully focus on the monsters. Parrying a set of mandibles, I grab onto the monster and pull it forward, lancing through its brain with my other hand.

The raw nerve ending sends out another shiver of pain through my body as Cave crawler insides bleed onto them.

I let go of the monster and focus on the next, building up my skills in the background. Taking in deep gulps of air, I feel the need to vomit grow, my lungs compressing the air as Stamina courses through my body.

With an Idle though, I decide to forcefully push resources into a skill that doesn’t need them. The skill construct of Mandrake Scream roars in my mind like an engine. Pulling in more air with Breath I somehow infuse the air in my lungs with Stamina. I let go of my breath, unleashing it like a pack of wolves that ravages the battlefield.

Mushroom guardians clap their hands against their ears, shuddering as my scream echoes throughout the forest. The (I) grades on the walls next to me collapse to the ground in twitching messes while the rest freezes.

I kill as many as I can in the short reprieve where anything under (H) grade barely moves and push the thought of what I did to the background.

The familiar headache that comes along with pushing or bending a skill in a way it shouldn’t be used, assaults my brain. My legs wobble as black spots in my vision make themselves known to me.

The mushroom guardians stop shuddering as they realise that the attack was something I did. Together we push the Cave crawlers back, as the world resumes moving again.

I slam my hands back into the bindweed walls, fusing with the battlements as more vines whip around and kill any of the Cave crawlers that try to near. But the tide is endless, more Cave crawlers appear from behind the toppled-over trees and I’m starting to get worried until Sairal joins the fray, launching arrows from high up in his tree, killing the stronger Cave crawlers.

Bottles of spores are thrown behind the walls, killing dozens at once.

Bit by bit, we push back against the tide, keeping them off the walls, then pushing outwards and taking back the ground around the Bastion.

When the Cave crawlers seem to notice that the battle has been lost, the flow abruptly ends. They drag back the bodies of the fallen back over the torn-up ground and as quick as they came they are gone. Though I’m certain that they are watching us, searching for a weakness to use or an advantage to take.

All the mushroom guardians slam their fists together like a gong, warning what will happen if they go in for a second round.

Cobalt, her blue carapace turned green from insect guts, drags herself up on the walls and sprawls over on the walkway next to me.

“Fucking bugs,” I say.

“I concur,” she agrees as she feels over her carapace for chips and cracks. One of her antennae has been torn off and her insides must be badly bruised since she literally slammed into some of the Cave crawlers.

“Good work with the walls, mandrake Green,” she compliments. I say my own compliments back to her and soon enough Sairal appears with a satisfied smile on his face.

“That went well for a test run, however, there are some things we need to improve,” he says as we get to business. “Green, as Cobalt said, you did an excellent job, but we built these walls to not have to fight them on even ground.”

I nod, thinking back on how that was almost the end of me, “We need to make them higher.”

He nods and what follows is a detailed discussion between Sairal and Cobalt on how they should give orders to the guardians sooner.

I leave them alone and jump down the walls, looking at the damage they did and wince. Most of the small, loose vines have been torn off the walls, though, beyond that there isn’t too much damage.

Looking at the walls with disgust I can’t keep off my face, I groan, “Who’s gonna clean the walls?” I ask no one in particular as I look at the insect slurry that slowly rolls down the walls.

Cobalt lands on the ground next to me and takes a look herself. She points at a particular spot with unhidden interest, “Mandrake Green. There are Cave crawler legs and mandibles stuck between the vines.”

I turn to face her, “I’ve noticed.”

She wrenches a set of legs out of the walls and nods at it, “Do you think those small mushroom guardians will like this? As a toy, I mean.”

I rapidly shake my head back and forth, “You don’t give monster limbs to them!”

She folds her arms over each other while still holding the insect's legs, “It’ll teach them who the enemy is. Back on Homeworld it was very common to play with the remains of our foe.”

Unwilling to argue with her, I climb back up the walls and head back to Sairal’s tree.

My eyes bulge when I open the system logs and see the amount of monsters I killed. Several hundred (I) grades, a bit over a hundred (H) grades and two (G) grades are now dead thanks to me.

Happiness bubbles up in my stomach and is only amplified as I take position in the sun to recover all the Stamina I spent.

When I turn to the levels I’ve gained, that joy is only amplified further.

*Congratulations. You have gained a level. You are now level 11.

+10 HP +15 SP +2 Strength +2 Agility +1 Perception +2 Constitution +2 Endurance +2 Mind +4 Unallocated stat points.

With the experience penalty for this evolution, it is only expected for me to barely level, but skills on the other hand?

*Mandrake Scream (Un) lvl 12/20 -> Mandrake Scream (Un) lvl 15/20.

*Bindweed of Nature (R) lvl 9/20 -> Bindweed of Nature (R) lvl 10/20.

*Bindweed Manipulation (R) lvl 22/25 -> Bindweed Manipulation (R) lvl 23/25.

*Bindweed Conjuration (R) lvl 20/25 -> Bindweed Conjuration (R) lvl 21/25.

*Breathe (B) lvl 8/20 -> Breathe (B) lvl 14/20.

*Efficient Movement (B) lvl 1/20 -> Efficient Movement (B) lvl 2/20.

My mouth gapes open as I count the amount of levels I gained in less than half an hour.

The next thing I do is compress all the notifications of Event points into a single number.

*Event points gained: 211,82

I make a mental note to look through the Event store later today if there’s enough time between building the walls. But first I need to talk to Sairal about something I’ve been holding off on.