The mushroom forest was a bit stranger place that I initially thought. Sure there was only a straight path leading through it, but what was situated at it’s borders was a bit… weird? I mean what else would you call something resembling a fairy but with a mushroom instead of head swallowing a whole rabbit covered in the same mushrooms, and also two times bigger than her? 

Scary? Well, that would be adequate too, maybe even more than weird. Fortunately there was only one fairy like that… two… three… RUN! Suddenly a swarm of these creatures appeared from the sides of the road, each one of them having a very hungry look in their pseudo eyes. They were clearly looking for a spider steak for their dinner.

For some reason, almost none of the fairies were looking at Felicia, but if I were to guess why, it would be because she’s kind of thin. Wait, am I fat? Am I seriously looking like a better thing to eat while being covered in all that chitin instead of slightly thin catkin? Or were they swayed by her cuteness?

One look at their sharp teeth was enough to confirm that my second guess couldn’t be correct at all. They probably just wanted a bigger bite for their main course, while leaving the rest for the dessert. Do spiders even have that much meat? I mean I’m a spider monster so that’s probably different from normal spiders, but still, there shouldn’t be all that much to eat right?

To know that I would probably need to eat another spider, which wasn’t really all that appealing to me. Are spiders even tasty? Should I give myself a bite to test it? I may try that in the future when I’m not running away from a swarm of… where did the fairy creatures go?

Maybe I should ask that giant crab thing? Well, that probably wouldn’t be a bad idea if it wasn’t looking at me with the exact same hungry look the fairies had. Its huge pincers were currently trying to cut me with speed greater than this of the fairies by quite a margin. I was pretty sure they were going to slice me in half, but suddenly there was this thunder like sound and the pincer changed direction.

It was Felicia with her yo-yos. It was a bit surprising they could pack a punch like that, especially since they were made out of crystal that was kind of fragile, but when I looked closer I saw that their color wasn’t like before. They both were bluish in color, meaning that either they were filled with mana, or with her ice magic.

I guess that’s one way to improve the hardness of magic crystal, but the drain of that must be pretty severe. It’s okay as long as the crystal is small just like her yo-yos but if it was something bigger, a massive hammer for example, then my old mana pool would dry in minutes. I’m not sure how long it would take now though, since my mana is a bit bugged.

If I remember correctly, I already used something like that on a bigger scale, but that time it wasn’t even my mana. I simply used the stone that already absorbed the power the duke attacked me with. Not only the stone didn’t shatter when I used it to attack back then, it even had an additional damage bonus due to being effective against that particular skeleton.

Now when I looked at the crab’s pincer, it was clearly covered in ice meaning that Felicia used ice magic to fill her yo-yos. It was pretty smart of her I had to admit. I didn’t even need to appraise the crab to know that it took a lot of damage even if it was the most armored part that was attacked.

I quickly made myself a thread and then filled it with my own mana using the [Darkness creation]. When using a skill, I didn’t have to worry about any amount of data going through my brain, because it was all handled by the system, so, even if my magic was crippled, I still could use something very similar.

[Don’t need to thank me.]

For some reason I’m not sure if this was a hallucination or an actual system message. Let’s go with hallucination, the thought of the system gaining sentience and reading my every thought is terrifying. Man, I’m really hallucinating a lot these days, I could swear the system was answering my thoughts for some time already.

Anyway, back to the fight. While I was in thought, Felicia kept jumping around using both the road and mushroom trees on its sides as her footing, and probably even air somehow to harass the much bigger enemy. I could literally see the shock waves surrounding the crab when it was pummeled at an extreme speed from every side.

I shivered a bit when I thought about how weak that girl was when we first met, she didn’t look like she would last long, and yet here she is, fighting an enemy that would probably give me some problems. Even her stamina was good, since she kept up that speed for good two minutes, but she was starting to slow down.

That didn’t matter much, since the crab’s hp was whittled down enough so I simply told her to retreat. When she was back at my side, panting with exhaustion, I swung my black thread activating [Thread slash] and killed the crab. Yup, totally easy fight.