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Ch212-Mush-Rooms

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The maze was made redundant by the fact that Sylver simply followed the bright blue lines drawn on the walls. Aside from the shades he had walking in front of him getting killed by the traps they activated, nothing too interesting occurred.

The traps mainly consisted of darts, falling boulders, a spring-loaded blade, and a very odd spiked net contraption. The walls and ceiling closed in a couple of times, but Sylver could turn into a formless gas, and Mora could very easily squeeze through any opening, given enough time.

There wasn’t anything fully solid in her body, even her “claws” were made out of tightly wound string. When the walls didn’t reset back to their original positions and “blocked” the path, Mora waited for Sylver to find a clear path for her, and then simply squished her whole body through a gap barely bigger than one of Sylver’s darts.

After the second wall, Mora discovered a better method. She passed her thread through the gap she planned to pass through, attached it to something solid on the other side, and then simply pulled the thread to move through the janky metal wall. Like a fish being reeled in by a fishing line.

The purpose of these “traps” was to test the person's reflexes, durability, and strength.

The fact that Sylver was using a decoy shade to activate all the traps for him, and then used magic to walk through the flying darts unharmed, made the traps a nuisance at best, as opposed to a serious test.

The odd smell Sylver had smelled when he had first entered the maze had grown stronger. The best way to describe it was damp ozone mixed with burned strawberries.

Sylver couldn’t say it was an unpleasant smell, it was just strange.

As they turned the corner, they found a copper teapot that was hanging over a burning flame. A small bright red cube provided the fire and heat. 

After Sylver snuffed the Ki infused cube out, and opened the lid on the smokeless teapot, he discovered that the source of the smell had been the black charr inside. Whether it had been some kind of grass, mushroom, or whatever else, it was now nothing more than charcoal. 

The bottom of the teapot had melted away and burnt the insides to a crisp.

Just as Ria was about to ask, “why did they leave this here?” Sylver turned his head towards the figure standing a half step away from him.

It had the shape of a very thin lanky man, with long limbs that made it look even thinner. Metallic tendrils extended out of its back were spread out, like tree branches. Instead of hands, it had barbed metal clubs that looked oddly similar to the clubs those training things Faust had built.

The whole creature looked as if someone had stolen his original idea, and simply made it out of metal, and added a helmet on top. It was swaying on its feet, in the same way the metal arms on Faust’s contraption had been.

Sylver and the creature stared at each other, in a very loose sense of the word given that it was pitch black, Sylver’s face was covered in his [Necrotic Mutilation] armor, and the creature didn’t have anything that resembled eyes.

It looked like someone had taken a brass bucket, and without making holes for the eyes and mouth, molded it into the shape of a helmet.

[Greater Coiled – Melee Dummy – 200]
[HP: 44,722 – 83%]
[MP: 0 – 0%]
[Stamina: ??? – 0%]

Sylver experimentally touched the monster’s shoulder with the tip of his finger, and immediately understood that the similarity in appearance wasn’t a coincidence.

The gentle push translated into an equally gentle movement with the club. It didn’t so much wave it, as much as it floated towards Sylver’s head.

“I see how it is…” Sylver said, as he leaned to the side, and could see 3 more identical-looking monsters standing near the middle of the large empty room. 

Sylver looked the swaying monster up and down, and as he attempted to extend his fog past it, felt the tiny net stretched out between the 4 tendrils.

“What is it?” Ria asked, as Sylver took a casting stance to balance himself, and lifted his hand to the same height as the monster’s head.

“Some kind of golem. And going by the name, if I try to fight it, it will get faster and stronger every time I hit it… I probably need to use a specific set of martial art moves to be granted passage,” Sylver explained, as flattened his hand, and began to slowly channel his mana.

“The core isn’t in the head, it’s never in the head…” Sylver said as he lowered his hand towards the monster’s stomach, “not here either, the center of balance would be off too much…” Sylver said, as he lifted his hand towards the monster’s chest, “here?” Sylver asked.

Despite not having enough energy to move the metal golem's equivalent of a muscle, the golem’s soul had more than enough to react.

The tips of his fingers began to glow with a pale golden light, as he very slowly straightened his whole arm out.

Sylver considered positioning himself to get another one with the same beam, but the nearest metal golem was just out of reach.

His fingers shimmered for a fraction of a second, before a flat blade of nothingness appeared, and skewered the metal golem straight through the chest.

[Greater Coiled (Melee Dummy) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 30 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

Sylver reacted way too slowly, as the monster’s lifeless body fell backward, and the fucking piece of shit helmet sprung off its polished mother fuck of a stick body and collided the one of the other 3 [Melee Dummy]s.

It hit the monster right in the club and caused the blunt instrument to spin.

After that, Sylver watched as the monster hit its two companions, who also began to move around.

“They use kinetic energy as a power source… Like a windup toy soldier…” Ria said as Sylver was thrown into the room.

A wall had appeared behind them and then pushed Sylver and Mora out of the corridor as if they were inside a syringe. His robe blocked the first club’s attack to his head and the attack to the right side of his pelvis, and as Sylver successfully managed to throw Mora up towards the ceiling, he was shown another trick of this particular monster.

The one that had attacked his head hit the one that was attacking Sylver’s pelvis, and that golem then transferred 2 golem’s worth of force, into the 3rd golem, who hit Sylver so hard that he managed to break through Sylver’s robe, [Necrotic Mutilation] armor, and burst his first soul armor layer.

Sylver’s body was sent flying as the golem hit its two companions to return some of the expended energy.

As he tried to stand up, Sylver discovered that his left leg had gone numb. He ignored the limb, and got back into a fighting stance, as the twitching golems walked over to him. Sylver’s back was to the wall, they had him surrounded.

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you aren’t 100% efficient. Between the air resistance, and gravity, as long as I don’t attack you, you’ll just stop moving,” Sylver explained to the monsters, as Ria floated out of his robe, and flew up towards the ceiling.

Sylver watched all three monsters started to walk toward him, and he decided to start with the one on the left. He wasn’t certain if they all had an equal amount of energy, but he had to start somewhere. The tendrils at their backs didn’t seem to be for combat, Sylver’s best guess was that they were used to absorb as much kinetic energy as possible.

Or possibly they were there to absorb the kinetic energy created by wind.

He could see the silent communication between the three of them, there wasn’t anything as telling as a head nod, or a club pointed at Sylver, but he could feel the simultaneous reaction in their souls. As Sylver used [Fog Form], he was instantly replaced by the 4-armed Dai and Sho combination shade.

As the three monsters attacked the large shade, they the 4 arms gently grabbed the blunt clubs and-

Sylver’s ax bounced off the monster’s shoulder, as he heard the loudest clicking noise he’d ever heard. The monster moved at such an insane speed that Sylver barely registered the direct hit to his side. He used [Fog Form] just before he collided with the wall, and with a painful bruise where his kidneys used to be, stood, and watched as the rewound monster shared his energy with the other two.

Their movements became significantly smoother, to the point they almost looked human as they walked. Sylver could tell he had maybe 2 more shots of abyss magic before his skin started disintegrating, but he wasn’t sure if these things had a limit to the amount of energy they could absorb.

Even now they were faster than him, another fuckup like that, and they would just be blurs that turned his head into pulp. 

Ax is out of the question, armor is too tough, dagger won’t reach deep enough, [Greater Undead Armament] would snap, and explosives would do more damage to me, than to them…

Sylver once again used [Fog Form] to dodge out of the way and sacrificed another shade to absorb at least a little kinetic energy.

The room they were in right was identical to the one with the white fox, albeit not quite as large. There were 12 entrances/exits that were all currently closed and would likely remain so until the 3 monsters were defeated.

Granted, Sylver could make a hole in the wall, and have Ria open the door for him, but he needed to stand in one place for a relatively long period of time to do that. Which meant that his only way out was to somehow kill these three monsters, without accidentally making them fast enough to make him into pâté.

As Sylver dodged out of the way again, by teleporting through his [Fog Form], he got an idea.

Mora knew what Sylver was planning on doing before he even started, and began to cover herself, and Ria, in a protective cocoon.

Sylver broke his lowermost outer rib by lowering his defenses and flicking it with an enhanced finger, and as a result, was surrounded by a couple of tons of swamp water. As he had thought, there wasn’t much of a reaction from the kinetic monsters, they barely slowed down.

If anything, the water flowing against their legs powered them up a bit.

“And for my next trick, I’ll need an assistant!” Sylver shouted, as the trio of monsters very successfully predicted where he teleported, and Sylver had to manually dodge out of the way using his robe.

“You sir!” Sylver shouted as he pointed with his hand towards a skinless skull floating in front of him. 

It was one of the last clones of his old body. He made a mental note to restock his corpse supply.

Two of the monsters passed their energy to the third, and that one was so fast that Sylver was hit directly in the head and lost another layer of soul armor. He used [Advanced Water Manipulation] to not hit the wall and used [Dead Dominion] to float the chunks of the shattered skull towards himself.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves!” Sylver shouted, as he manipulated the water into giant ice chunks to protect him and was intercepted as he teleported away from the monster attacking him and got hit in the left leg again.

He clutched the piece of grey matter in his hand, as he urged the barely visible spore to hurry the fuck up and grow.

Sylver was swallowed up by the water at his feet and summoned a handful of shades to stall the 3 monsters while he focused on spreading the spores around the airtight room.

The water had turned a dark brown color from the shattered skull, and with every passing second continued darkening, as the monsters effortlessly ran through the water and destroyed shade after shade in the process.

But with every destroyed shade the monsters lost some speed, and because of [Dying Breath] Sylver regained 40% of the mana he had spent raising the aforementioned destroyed shades.

It was hard to say if it was Sylver laughing that tipped the monsters off, or whether it was the fact that the “water” underneath their feet suddenly thickened into a slurry, but they stopped killing Sylver’s shades and came right at him.

The reason he was laughing, was because Sylver thought of a very stupid joke that involved the word “fun guy,” and decided to save it for later when he needed to stall for time and was fighting someone who might actually be capable of appreciating it.

The first monster “tripped” and hit the one in front of it on the back of the leg, where a person’s Achilles tendon would be. The second monster tried to jump into the air, as did the one closest to Sylver, but the mushrooms at their feet were like chewing gum and followed them.

The second monster hit the one closest to Sylver and transferred the remainder of its strength to it. Sylver took a fighting stance, and even summoned his ax, as the monster broke free of the quickly growing mushrooms and went for Sylver’s head.

As Sylver raised his ax to block the attack, he used [Fog Form] and simply disappeared into thin air. He floated around formlessly for roughly 10 seconds before he decided to materialize as far away as possible from the only remaining functional monster.

It tried to move towards Sylver, but every single step was so arduous, that it didn’t even reach the middle of the room by the time the dark brown mushroom finished enveloping it entirely.

Sylver remained where he was, just in case, as he forced the mushrooms to get into every available nook and cranny, and only when he was certain none of them would be moving, did he start attacking them.

[Greater Coiled (Melee Dummy) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 30 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 54!
+5AP

The first one died without making a sound, as the tiny beam of nothingness made a hole in its fragile core.

[Greater Coiled (Melee Dummy) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 30 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

The second one made one final lunge at Sylver, but the mushroom was very expensive to cultivate, and as a result, was very strong.

[Greater Coiled (Melee Dummy) Defeated!]
[Due to defeating an enemy 30 levels above you, additional experience will be awarded!]

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 55!
+5AP

[Swamp Lord] has reached level 56!
+5AP

[Necrotic Mutilation (IV) Proficiency increased to 29%!]

[Mutating Override (II) Proficiency increased to 81%!]

[Arcane Insight (IV) Proficiency increased to 32%!]

[Vigorous Conditioning (III) Proficiency increased to 19%!]