3.08

“What are they gonna do, kill me again?” - The Revenant King on the Revolutionary Forces outside his palace.

 

I swung my staff behind me, knocking off the corpse, but the digging sensation still remained.

 

Rain of parasites. Numbers were probably in the hundreds. Parasites in my back. My mana was half spent.

 

‘Run.’

 

I grabbed the two mushrooms and turned around. The path was covered in bugs. I wasted half a second before I realised there was no clear way through. Cradling Greenie and Yellow with my arms, I rushed through, ignoring the things gnawing at my feet.

 

Two bugs landed on me, one on my cap, and one on my back.

 

I kept running.

 

One of them latched onto my left leg, another fell on my back. ‘Not yet.’

 

I hunched down, covering Greenie and Yellow from the barrage on top.

 

A third on my back, a second on my cap and a new one on my shoulder. ‘Not enough.’

 

Two more latched onto my right leg.

 

I reached the exit and jumped through. The sensation of digging now over my entire body. Bark Skin and the Bracken Polypores acted as a buffer, but the first parasites had already made it through. A tickling sensation was inside my back. A small spasm went through me and I couldn’t help but feel a bit giddy.

 

Some kind of chemical was being released. These things would not only eat me, but they would also make me laugh through the entire thing.

 

Joy.

 

‘Nine is good enough I guess,’

 

I didn’t have much time to consider, the grubs were spreading through me, making my body feel lighter but less responsive. I quickly scanned the surroundings, spotting a decent bench, I dropped Greenie and Yellow there.

 

“Stay here, if my corpse starts twitching, blast it,” I directed, “I’ll be back in a moment.”

 

Now to see if friendly fire was a thing.

 

I took a few steps back and brought my hands to where the bugs were concentrated on myself, then cast Poison Spores with all my remaining mana.

 

You have died.

 

I dreamt of an endless black sea. Waters of possibility yet I drifted alone on an island shaped by me but made by someone else's hand.

 

I woke up to an odd quiet. My first thought upon resuming lucidity was relief that self-damage worked. The alternative would be painful, well, probably not painful, but it would be long and disgusting to think about.

 

Quickly dismissing a pop up detailing my lost experience, I glanced around. The spawn was empty. Completely so. No one, not even the marks of the previous bloodbath, it was uncanny how little difference there was from the first time I stepped in here.

 

A world reset? No, more likely just an instance reset. I suppose there were still zones Eve was unwilling to change. Nevermind that, I needed to get going, quickly dusting myself off, I ran towards the direction of my death.

 

Dodging other players and moving through various terrain left me slightly out of breath, but it only took me a few minutes to get back. I knew I was at the right place upon seeing Greenie and Yellow wave at me from atop the bench.

 

A few paces from them, was my corpse.

 

I knelt in front of the body, Greenie and Yellow climbing into the safety of my cap as I did so.

 

I told the wisps to guard my corpse in the heat of the moment but upon actually seeing it I was puzzled.

 

Why had this remained when other player bodies just despawned?

 

The body was fresh, but my clothing, gear, and armour were completely gone, so I guess I can’t use this to dupe items, that would’ve been too easy. The body was completely naked except for a thin film of fungus on the skin, the floppy husks of Bracken Polypores and the bug corpses still clinging to my skin.

 

It was here I also noticed that my myconid body had no visible genitalia or reproductive organ, something I suspected but never bothered to check.

 

Prying off a bug, I was rewarded by the sight of several dozen holes dotting my skin and the answer to my question. Well, a theory anyways. Looking into one of the middlemost holes, I saw movement. A parasite was alive and still squirming. Noam lost his whistle thing to another player, perhaps the condition is that the thing had to be claimed by something else before they despawned or was this just specific to parasites like this?

 

Regardless, the body made the next few steps easier.

 

“Yellow, Green, I need you two to watch my surroundings and warn me whenever you can.”

 

Yellow seemed to raise it’s eyebrow at that statement, even though the thing didn’t have any visible eyebrows.

 

“I am not perfect,” I elaborated, “but I am aware of some of my flaws. Regardless of whether I want to or not, I often become too focused on one thing at a time and lose track of my surroundings,” gently patting Yellow on the head, I continued, “you warning me earlier was good even if redundant at the moment, don’t stop warning me even if I look in control. It’s a good habit because six eyes are better than two,” I glanced at Greenie. “This applies to you as well.”

 

They both nodded, Greenie made a mini-army salute, though he used the wrong arm. I chuckled slightly at that, but humour quickly fell off my face.

 

I knew intelligently that those parasites were just following their life cycle. That even if they were designed as a sadistic joke, those things were not to be blamed for their nature. But I would not deny that I would enjoy killing those things in droves.

 

Ripping off all the other dead bugs, I began growing Sporages on my corpse. I had perfectly fine bait, it would be a shame to not use it.

 

Some time later, I lifted my corpse, placing it onto my back so that I may carry it, being very careful and gentle with it. I had to, after all, I was basically carrying a live grenade. It had become practically unrecognizable after I grew exactly one hundred poison sporages on it.

 

One hundred mushrooms.

 

I had grown one hundred mushrooms in the past three hours.

 

I had done nothing but grow magical mushrooms for the past three hours of my life.

 

If someone had asked me what I was doing with my life, I would not be able to answer them to any degree of satisfaction, but that was the majority of my life and to be completely fair, my real self should still be a completely stable, well-adjusted student. I think anyways, I might have to check up on him later.

 

Initially, I went for fifty, a nice round number, but when I reached it, I realised it barely covered two-thirds of the body. So I decided to cover the rest of the body, might as well after all, but then I realised I was only a few off a hundred, so I went for that, squirrelling more mushrooms under armpits, between the thighs and under the cap until I hit a hundred. I would’ve kept going too if the oldest of the sporages didn’t start to die off.

 

The worst part about this, however, was the fact that I couldn’t even start a business selling makeshift poison grenades. Thirty every hour was a decent yield, but the sporages started deteriorating after three, not only that, I currently only had Proximity and Line of Sight activations.

 

Line of Sight was a no brainer, I can’t sell a grenade only I can pull the pin out of. Proximity was also out. How it worked was that the sporage spread a thin sheet of mycelium around it to act as pressure sensors. When any part of the mushroom was touched with sufficient force, it would explode. This rule exempted me who made the thing and the two wisps, who were counted as my allies due to Symbiosis but anyone who wasn’t any me or the wisps would be playing hot potato with it.

 

It was important to note, however, that I could control how far the spread of the mycelium went, allowing me to change the sensing range anywhere from five to zero meters.

 

I quietened my thoughts when I returned to the car park. It looked like the thing had reset completely, only the almost emptied shells were on the floor, no sign that the huge horde was there at all.

 

At least until I looked up.

 

Initially, I could only see a dark, flat roof above me, indistinguishable from rough concrete. I squinted, only to be quickly reminded that my eye sockets didn’t have physical eyes to be squinted. Instead, I… focused and made out that the ceiling appeared rougher. There were no telling gaps between the bugs, their shells either overlapped or joined together snugly, but it was far from perfect. There were far too many grooves and rough ridges as opposed to the uniform flatness. The hosts’ shell imitated wood bark, not concrete or the more commonly used polymers you would usually see here.

 

For a brief moment, I wondered, how large of a tree did those host bugs stick to, for their shells to not only join together but also appear flat? Yet I just as quickly put it out of my mind, before it would wander to imagining the tree.

 

At best, the corpse can kill maybe eight hundred of them, to ensure the best outcome happens, there was one more mystery to be solved.

 

“How did the top parasites get alerted, if they relied on pheromones to alert others?” I asked aloud. Which, I mused, was probably a mistake, I haven’t confirmed if sound triggered them.

 

Regardless, I didn’t have a lot of time.

 

“Yellow, cling to the top of my cap, if any of the top ones move you yell,” I instructed, “Greenie, on my shoulder, be prepared to jump down for further instruction.”

 

I moved closer to one of the emptied-out shells, the one furthest from the rest, nudging it with my foot a few times confirmed the presence of a particularly large maggot thing. Unceremoniously, I dumped my corpse next to it, detonating a few sporages. Nothing to worry about. Until the spores attached to a living thing it would remain there. One of many positives with lingering damage.

 

Taking a few steps back, I warned the wisps to hang on, before kneeling down, sniffing the floor. The scent of the pheromone was there, as pungent as last time and ended approximately ten centimetres above the ground. I took a quick look behind me, confirming that the way was clear, I began doubling back. Following the spread of the pheromone. In the process, I discovered something odd.

 

The pheromone spread easily in the horizontal direction, but it always ended ten centimetres away from the surface. No matter how far it was from the source.

 

“The ground ones are moving,” Yellow warned.

 

I grunted a reply but didn’t raise my head. The pheromone reached them. Not out of expectations, but it meant I had to hurry up.

 

I stood up, Yellow and Greenie yelping something out but I was too focused to notice. Instead, I walked back towards my corpse. The original maggot had died clawing at my corpse, setting off a few sporages. The green spores forming a mound shape around the body. Standing a good few centimetres from the poisonous spores, I knelt down and sniffed.

 

The pheromone smell ended ten centimetres from the ground. In an awkward half crawl, I began moving back. Keeping my nose at ten centimetres.

 

Yellow said something, tugging at my cap urgently. I ignored it.

 

No matter how far I moved, the pheromone always ended ten centimetres above the ground until it suddenly didn’t.

 

I moved quicker, getting out of the pheromones. Keeping my head low to the ground, I waited until the smell reached me and confirmed my suspicions.

 

When it had reached me, the smell hit me like a wall. A perfectly straight wall, perpendicular from the ground. The pheromones didn’t act like a gas. No, it didn’t act like any form of matter at all. It spread more like an invisible energy field with the only indicator being the smell.

 

I laughed, the sound sharp and grating amongst the sound of dozens of things scuttering and Yellow’s panic.

 

“I didn’t even consider this, I guess I am too unimaginative,” I mused.

 

Yellow, still tugging at my cap, yelled, “They’re moving!”

 

I looked up, just in time to see the ceiling bugs in different stages of stirring. The movements were small, almost unnoticeable, gentle bobbing up and down. Some were moving more than others, my eyes followed the rows of bugs, until it was drawn to a spot where the bugs were moving the most. Right above a pillar.

 

The last piece of the puzzle slid snugly in as I examined the pillar.

 

Rectangular with hard edges and placed between parking spots, they were such a regular sight I had just looked over them. What a mistake. The pheromone must’ve been able to travel up vertical surfaces as well. “In a world where magic is a thing, physics is more a guideline than a rule I suppose,” I quietly mused. How stupid I was, for not even considering that normally mundane things won’t be affected.

 

There was a smile on my face, though I could not remember forming it and a jumping feeling in my chest… Adrenaline? No, giddiness, I realised, of learning something new and interesting. It was something I hadn’t felt in years.

 

“I can hear you Yellow, the both of you get under my cap,” I said as I strode towards the pillar. The two moved without the need for further prompting and were there when I casually picked up a scuttering bug.

 

The legs locked onto my hand, though I quickly stopped its movement with Poison Spores, killing off the maggots that would’ve dug into my flesh at first notice.

 

The bugs at the top were acting strangely, they were moving, but they were also waiting. To fall together in a huge swarm like last time. Uncharastically sophisticated for what were supposed to be insects. Were the movements some kind of warm up or another signal?

 

Now, I knew several things about these parasites, but most notably, how they communicated to form a fighting swarm.

 

One, they released pheromones which spread in an unnatural way, signalling the ground parasites to move towards its source. Possibly causing them to spread their own pheromones to strengthen the signal.

 

Two, there was a different set of responses for the ones on the top, different or perhaps randomised timers? Another signal I wasn’t aware of? I can find the cause for that later. For now, I needed to direct the bugs at the top to beeline my corpse instead of dropping off all at once like last time.

 

To do that, I just had to override whatever instincts that were stopping them from dropping down when they were signalled.

 

Prying the bug legs off its death grip on my hand, I raised a leg and brought the arm high behind me. Imitating baseball throwers of old, I lobbed the corpse hard into the nearest pillar.

 

It made a wet squelch as it landed near the top, then slowly began sliding off, leaving a trail of slime.

 

My smile became wider when the bugs on top immediately began scuttling down to follow that wet trail.

 

Three, they beelined the closest source of pheromones, at a close enough distance, it seemed to override all other instincts.

 

There was a single bug left at the capital of the pillar, it’s movement had turned frantic as the others left. As I stared at it, it rose from the ceiling, the bug-like eyes looking at me as a murky white line seemed to flit through it.

 

Four? Elite enemies capable of command? Was it intelligent? Did it matter? No, it did not.

 

I met the gaze of the parasite and simply chuckled. For at that moment, I had already won.