Chapter 53: Preparations

After the fight with the Chimera, it became known to me that I went too far beyond my limits. As it turns out, using up all of the stocked Stamina in such a small timeframe, can have some pretty nasty effects on a mandrake’s body. Apparently, my stocks are a part of me, and if that part suddenly is used up…it damages me.

A few hours after Cobalt and I got back, I could barely move, and began getting sick. The bindweed that had thrummed with power earlier was bruising and melting off my body like candlewax. I even lost quite a bit of health thanks to pulling that stunt.

When I explained what I exactly did with my skills, Sairal sighed and shook his head. “You should be happy that mandrakes are a Constitution-based species. What you did was dangerous, Green.” He sat down next to me and continued, “You shouldn’t fight like that. At least not yet.”

He pulled out a potion and began to apply it to strands of bindweed that hung loosely around my limbs. “Only the higher grades fight like that. With their high stats they can bend the system more and handle stronger strains on their bodies. And most importantly, any threat they face is rare.”

“Rare?” I echoed.

“Think about it. As you get stronger there are fewer beings to oppose you. In a place as big as Luxia, there are only two (C) grades and one (B) grade. When they fight, the chance they will encounter another opponent after a battle is astronomically small compared to you.”

***

The days after the fight with the snake were quiet. Elites didn’t harry us, having learned that Cobalt would be out in full force if they tried to. The growing mushroom guardians took care of the weak Cave crawlers that almost continuously tested the defences.

In weeks, my resource pools had been fully filled since I only had to take care of the walls, and it was good. I almost forgot what it used to feel like to live without the constant small aches and pains throughout my body.

So on day 272 of the System event, I stretch the kinks out of my body, having almost fully recovered from the fight with the [Chimera’s vestiges].

I stroll over to the defences like usual, eyes still bleary from sleep and lean onto the walls for support. With my touch, I slowly push half of my Stamina into them to keep them healthy throughout the day.

I climb onto the battlements where Cobalt already stands, watching the mushroom guardians beyond the walls train their skills. “Anything new?” I ask.

“No,” she answers, hesitantly peeling her eyes off the mushroom guardians. “Have you recovered enough?” she asks not even bothering to hide the question underneath. Cobalt, like always, wants to go out hunting.

I nod at her, “You want to go out hunting today?”

Before she can answer Sairal’s voice calls out, “I’ve already decided on something for the two of you to do today.”

My face scrunches up in confusion. Cobalt notices and points over the walls. I follow her finger and stare at Sairal digging through the ground with his hands along the base of the battlements.

“What are you doing?” I ask already climbing down.

“Checking the Mycorrhizal Network. The pesky skill doesn’t give me much information about the network. So, I need to take a peek at it for my own.” He leans in closer to the hole he made, observing the hairy white strings that spread through the ground. Like the Valeroal moss, they shimmer with light, albeit far less intense.

Cobalt hops down the walls and lands next to me. She folds her arms over each other, a part of her attention still on the mushroom guardians beyond us. Among them are the five mushroom guardians that were birthed from the spores of the third layer. Together, they gang up on a weak Cave crawler, pelting it with attacks from all sides.

I can see why Sairal spent a lot of gold on those spores. Already most of them are showing hints of special or magical abilities. Azure shoots a tiny blade of water from her hands, killing the Cave crawler. They cheer and move on to the next together.

“What do you want us to do, Dryad Sairal?” Cobalt asks, drawing me back to the conversation.

He climbs back up the walls and motions for us to follow. Up there, he hands her a spyglass. Cobalt puts it close to her eye and follows his finger. “I see,” is all she says before handing it to me.

I look through it and find something that stands out in the ocean of brown, upturned mud. A few kilometres beyond the borders Sairal had set up stands a large white rock, almost like an island.

I adjust some of the lenses, making up for my low Perception. The blurry picture clears up and I growl, “A hive. They are setting them up on the surface?”

The dryad sneers down at the hive, “It’ll be the first of many. Neither of the Courts are reacting and the Cave crawlers are growing more bold by the day. I won’t have that filth near my tree. Green, you should destroy it and kill the queen for your last level. Cobalt. You will assist if the queen is stronger than I expect.”

I hand him back the telescope which vanishes into his pocket space. Cobalt spends some time, ushering the mushroom guardians back into the bastion before we head out, trudging through the mud.

There isn’t much to be fought, this close to the bastion, so I’m left alone with my thoughts that begin to drift towards my evolution. Last time, I also killed a queen before I evolved. Now, I need to take on an entire hive. Preferably without Cobalt’s help. It’s a nice progression.

Maybe after this evolution, I will take on one of the larger hives in the Depths, or one of the higher queens Sairal told me about before I evolve again. Though, there are probably lots of things out there that will provide some good experience in the next grade.

I scroll through my menus and end up and the list of the Event’s participants.

*Enemy factions include:

- Zulis

- The Cave crawler Empire

- The Plateau

It’s the same as before. I haven’t seen anything from this fabled Plateau faction, though they are on the opposite side of Luxia, so they must probably be wreaking havoc there.

The list that has mostly changed is the smaller groupings or individuals. Some of them have vanished, probably killed by the dryads or having left the area. Sadly, the one I want to be gone the most is still around.

- The Firesword maidens

The name makes my arm burn with phantom pain. With another evolution under my belt, I’ll be a step closer to taking her out if she comes for me. Having seen her eyes right after I clawed the skin off her face, she will come after me sooner or later.

We head past the borders, the hive already in sight. A few Elites popped up and Cobalt happily took them down by herself.

“Can I have a turn?” I ask.

“You already get the hive.”

“Fair enough.”

***

“Huh, they haven’t actually finished building it,” I say while gazing at the hive from a distance. Around it hundreds of the insects swarm, regurgitating some kind of liquid that helps them glue the parts together.

With almost no (G) grade presence, I suspect that the queen isn’t that strong, at most only being middle (G) grade herself. I leave Cobalt behind and trudge closer to the hive. These bugs are growing bolder if they think they can just set up hives anywhere they go.

A few of the pesky insects notice my approach and swarm me like always. They fall apart in front of me, cut down by my claws.

I lay my hand against the walls of the nest. The paper-like material stretches like fabric right before I push through. It rips in front of me, revealing a hallway that angles to the left, slightly winding up. Dozens of Cave crawlers turn to me. A few carry grubs with their mandibles, shipping them through the hive.

I step inside the hallway, letting bindweed grow out of me and crawl along the walls, encroaching on the helpless bugs.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

With some quick uses of Identify, I realise that these aren’t the standard bugs. No, all of these are [Cave crawler broodtenders], most at the peak of (H) grade.

My bindweed rips through them, snaking in front of me, spreading through the hive like an infection while I wander through the hallways. A sacred silence clings to this place, clashing with my view of the barbaric monsters.

The vines around me spread out further, mapping the nest for me. Occasionally, I’m forced to pull some of the bindweed vines back, lest they cost too much Stamina to keep up. One of them finds resistance down a hallway. I halt and turn around, following the faint signals that I’m receiving through the bindweed. It’s yet another perk that comes along with the high skill level.

The bugs I come across are almost frantic, throwing themselves at me with not a single shred of care as if their only goal is to stall me for just a few more moments.

I step over a dead Broodtender that has been torn apart by my vines and move into an offshoot that ends in a large room. Piles of white, translucent shapes are stacked up in the back of the room. Several (H) grade Cave crawlers stand between the pupae and the bindweed vines, coiling like serpents in the entrance.

I ignore the Broodtenders, letting a bindweed vine deal with them and move in front of a pile of the grubs, all (J) grade. They all look so weak as if a single touch might puncture their skin.

I wonder. Are there any like Cobalt or me stuck in this room? Imprisoned in these translucent bodies, waiting to grow enough so that they can move. Does it really matter? For better or for worse, I already killed humans, what are a few bugs compared to that?

My claws crash through the pile, and over twenty notifications flood into my mind. I let my scream charge in the back of my throat, knowing that it would kill all of them in a second. With a single note, another hundred notifications chime in my mind, each one a victory. One or two of these pupae might’ve become an Elite, sowing havoc in the Outskirts. Well, not anymore.

I head out of the chamber, searching for the queen who should still be around somewhere. Even with my vines, I lose my way two times, ending up facing groups of soldiers that rushed in or finding another brood chamber.

The queen, like I thought, wasn’t anything special, not like the one that could control gravity.

With surprise on her face, she screamed for her guards, for every one of them to meet me. Her chamber flooded with them, out of every hallway, they came crawling as if possessed.

It didn’t matter.

I killed the queen, piercing my claws through her thorax. I tore through the soldiers and ripped through the brood tenders.

Not having earned my last level, I headed back into the hallways, letting my hand trail over the white walls, peeling off slivers when the ends of my claws touched the material. Now that the queen was dead, the structure wasn’t enforced by her skills anymore. Almost any blow is enough to pierce through the hive.

I got lost again and decided to just carve my way through, slashing the walls apart, dropping into other pathways, and hunting down the last few brood chambers that were spread around.

After three of them, the system chimed.

*Congratulations. You have gained a level. You are now level 20.

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

I nodded at the notification. I thought that this would feel good, finally getting back at them. But this all doesn’t mean anything. It is one hive of thousands if not more. And a weak one at that.

Tired of searching for an exit, I cut through the walls and meet up with Cobalt.

She turned to me, “Excellent work, Mandrake Green. Have you had your fill?”

I wave her away, “Yeah. Do what you want to do with it. Most of the bugs in the hive are dead though.”

She jumps off the throne of frozen bugs she made while I was in there and leisurely strolls to the walls of the hive. She puts her hands against the white walls. The mist brushes against it in a wave, streaming over the surface.

She turns back to me, not moving her hands, “You see, Mandrake Green, when the queen has been felled this material tends to grow weak. Especially to the cold.” She knocks against the walls that seem to have been turned to stone.

“Allow me to demonstrate.” Her hands leave the walls, form fists, and slam back into it. The wall falls apart like a shattered mirror. The frozen shards fall to the ground, showing more of the hallways and how maddening the architecture of the hive is.

Her frozen mist travels down the hallways, into the brood chambers that I didn’t find, and she destroys it all.

Ten minutes later, where the hive stood now only remains a heap of frozen fragments with the occasional chunk of frozen Cave crawler mixed in.

“How I have missed this,” she says as we head back to the bastion. “Slaying the soldiers and Elites is a reward on its own, but the true victory lies with the queens. Each one dead means less of the insects. Kill enough of their queens, and we will end them once and for all. For everyone that I lost to them.”

I nod at her, “Yeah, for all the mushroom guardians we lost to them.”

“...Yes, those too,” she agrees.

***

Back at the bastion, I move towards Sairal’s tree. The root cellar I lived in for a while ended up being outside the bastion. It wasn’t feasible to stretch the walls out so far just for me to continue staying there. So ever since we set everything up, I’ve been crashing on the carpet of moss beneath Sairal’s tree. It might be in the open, but we all know that it is the safest place to be.

But not safe enough to evolve.

“Follow me,” Sairal says while he peels the carpet of moss off the ground. He reveals a small entrance to a larger underground room. Strings of his Mychorrizal Network line the walls along with a few mushrooms that pulse with colourful light.

“How long do you think it’ll take?” I ask him, lying down in the middle of the room. I stare up at the ceiling and the ropes of white string that run along it like electric wiring.

“It depends on the evolution you’ll pick. However, for most, it takes a few days,” he answers.

“That much? What about the walls?”

“We will be fine. Take your time with choosing the right evolution.”

I look at my menus, reading over the skills. “Okay”

The dryad leaves the room, stepping on the stairs. Before he leaves he turns around and faces me, “Green. Remember our promises. We need to keep the walls.”

“I will…unless I get a legendary evolution,” I joke.

I earn a low chuckle from him, “Good luck with that.” He climbs up the stairs that have been dug into the mud. “I’ll see you in a few days.”

The entrance of the room is sealed and only the spare mushrooms remain to light the chamber.

I opened my menus once more and took a look at my entire status page.

Species: Mandrake: Bindweed force lvl 20/20(G)

HP: 285/285

SP: 244/345

Strength: 71

Agility: 58

Perception: 31

Constitution: 81 (+15)

Endurance: 57

Mind: 56

Unallocated Stat points: 28

Skill points: 19

Skills: 13/17 skill slots in use

Solar Storage (C) lvl 12/20: Store the energy gained through photosynthesis in the form of sugars and starch, increasing your weight proportionally. Energy density scales with level.

Mandrake scream (Un) lvl 23/25: A mandrake’s scream is one of its methods to defend itself. Damages enemies slightly and has a large chance to stun opponents the closer they are to the user's level.

Identify (C) lvl 23/25: See through opponents and enemies alike. Allows the user to see basic information and gives access to the most commonly known knowledge.

Bindweed of Nature (R) lvl 17/20: You are nature and you are roots. Allows the user to make small changes to their root body at the expenditure of Stamina.

Claw Infusion (C) lvl 24/25: Infuse your claws with stamina, increasing their efficacy and manipulation. Expending more Stamina increases efficacy.

Hide (B) lvl 12/20: Blend in with the surroundings to stand out less at the expense of stamina.

Dance of Death (C) lvl 28/30: Enter a special kind of meditation, increasing your focus to a pinpoint while making things such as pain and emotional distress fade into the background at a small expense of stamina and health. Warning: This skill can only be activated when the being is in large-scale fights.

Fire Resistance (B) lvl 17/20: Basic resistance against fire.

Depth Sense (O) lvl 17/20: Grants a sense of the depths and a vague awareness of where the surface is.

Bindweed Manipulation (R) lvl 34/35: Allows the being to manipulate bindweed at the expenditure of Stamina. Expenditure scales with range.

Bindweed Conjuration (R) 34/35: Allows the being to conjure bindweed at the expenditure of stamina. Expenditure scales with range.

Energising Breath (C) lvl 7/20: Allows the being to breathe in the energy of the world, claiming it as its own with each breath. Boosts regeneration of Stamina, Healthy, and Mana slightly.

Flexibility (C) lvl 8/20: Increases your flexibility and conserves Stamina while moving.

I didn’t get to evolve most of my skills this time and could’ve practiced more with them. Surely I’m only a few skill levels away from a skill evolution for some of them. I just need more time. However, there isn’t enough time. There never will be.

I spend my stats I still have to round off my stats. The remaining six I added to Constitution.

Strength: 75

Agility: 60

Perception: 35

Constitution: 91 (+15)

Endurance: 60

Mind: 60

With that out of the way, I accepted the evolution prompt, and fell into my soul, ready to evolve and become an (F) grade.