Trial 3: Spore War

Vivian watched the screen, trying to decipher what plan John, Rowan and Tok were making to deal with the fungal creature. The lack of sound was a bit annoying.

“You can complain about the lack of sound. We’re used to it,” a voice from behind Vivian said. The redhead twisted her head back to see the presumable daughter of Gin approaching, a look of mild annoyance on her face.

“Something tells me doing so would just be rubbing salt in the wound,” Vivian countered, electing to play the diplomat. “I know enough about barrier mechanics to know having a live feed from one to another isn’t an easy thing to pull off.”

The dwarf smiled, though it was tinged with a hint of bitterness. “At least some people understand how much work goes into what we’re pulling off here. I suppose this is where I introduce myself. Goe Tan.”

Goe extended her hand and Vivian shook it. “Vivian Renoux, though I suppose you already know that.”

“Your name has been going around a bit.” Goe grinned.

“Good things, I hope,” Vivian bantered back, already knowing what sort of rumors were flying.

“Hmm, more or less,” the dwarf cryptically remarked. “To be fair, we really don’t know much about you, or your organization, so the chatter’s been rather wild. I think it’s all rubbish. We’ve had all of one meeting. Hardly enough to make any real impressions. And today’s been rather pleasant so any untoward rumors should die off.”

“One can hope, but they’re like weeds. They can and do persist,” Vivian said.

Goe let out a little laugh. “I suppose. But Tok seems to get along well with John, and if he’s going to be the face of your outfit, then I’m sure things will smooth out. It’s a little funny, with a group that has a goddess in it, that a rather unassuming man like him is likely to be the most interesting.”

“What do you mean?” Vivian asked, a harsh edge to her voice.

“Oh, I’m not blind,” Goe said. “It’s clear that he has a very potent innate ability. Not a damn clue of its limits, but people with that high a ceiling tend to reach great heights. Even if they have the humility to not actively try for it. There will always be something that forces the potentially strong to the top. Or crushes them into the dust. I’m sure you didn’t think things would work out the way they have when you met him, right?”

“I suppose that’s one way to look at it,” Vivian said, not willing to be drawn into Goe’s hypothetical, even if it painted a rather accurate picture of her life since meeting John.

Before the dwarf could try to press Vivian for a more concrete answer, her phone let out a chime and Goe fished it out of her robe, frowning as she read the screen.

“Trouble?” Vivian asked politely.

“Just the usual hiccups with running a high level barrier like this,” Goe answered dismissively and Vivian couldn’t help but believe things weren’t running as smoothly as Goe, or the rest of the clan’s fateweavers, would have liked. It seemed to her that the audio issue wasn’t the most pressing.

She could only hope that they remained on top of any major issue.

John waited in his rear position as Candle guided Rowan and Tok into their ambush spots, wand and wind spirit at the ready.

‘You’re a bit tense,’ Senka said in his head. ‘Are you having second thoughts about this?’

‘You know I’m not,’ John remarked. ‘I’m just not a big fan of the full split up. We’ve done a little too much of that in the past.’

‘Mostly at the hands of others,’ the spirit reminded him. ‘This is a plan made from the start. And it’s not like you’re all thrown to the far edges of the forest and have to fight alone to reunite.’

‘Let’s not give anyone any ideas,’ John joked as he looked through Candle’s eyes. She had led Rowan and Tok around the edge of the clearing, leaving Rowan in her intended spot and was close to where she would leave Tok. Once he was in place, she would race to the far side of the clearing from him and bait the Gravetender.

But the image of the spores eating away the already dying grass wouldn’t leave his mind once they had separated. The fire and wind he was going to be throwing around should prevent them from being an issue, but now that the idea was stuck in his head, he couldn’t get it to go away.

And in the back of his mind, a back up plan began to form should their efforts fail to take down their enemy.

Shaking off his paranoia, John waited. Candle did her job dutifully and his allies were now in place, waiting for the fireworks to begin. Now it was time for him and Candle to light the fuse.

Candle bounded into the clearing and let out a loud yip. The fungal monster turned towards her, a hissing accompanying a small release of spores from the underside of its cap. The creature took a step towards her, more jets of spores shooting down, forming a growing cloud around the Gravetender.

Candle stood her ground, waiting for John’s command. And with one more step from the Gravetender, it was time to spring the ambush.

John dashed into the clearing, causing the Gravetender to pause mid-stride, the wind spirit shooting towards it like a comet. As John set it to circle the fungus, he aimed his wand and let fly a Flame Spike. The condensed arrow of fire flew with great speed and sank into the flank of the fungal monster, its skin sizzling as the elemental heat began to burn.

With a surge of mana, the wind spirit raced around the Gravetender, kicking up a tempest as the wind manipulation reached full strength. Within the swirling mass of spores, John let the spike detonate.

The blast lit up the clearing like a bonfire, the vortex containing the blaze even as it fed it, sending the fire up into the sky like a tornado. John could feel the Gravetender flailing within the wind, held in place by the buffeting tempest. Unfortunately, he couldn’t keep the storm going until the monster was charred dust. While he was getting a much larger bang for his buck with his leveled up spirit, between the cost reduction from being Rank 5 and an upgrade to the power of its manipulation ability, he still couldn’t be too cavalier with his mana. Not this early into the trial anyway.

The wind fell away and the spirit took a position a few meters above the ground, bobbing up and down like a buoy, ready to jump back in if needed. Without the surge of wind, the fire petered out, revealing a burned but still moving Gravetender. Before it could finally complete its turn towards John, the underbrush exploded with movement as Tok and Rowan surged into the clearing.

As they had planned, Rowan swung her blade high while Tok aimed low, their timing impeccable. Blade and ax struck true, biting into the charred flesh of the Gravetender. The mushroom, somehow, let out a haunting, gurgling cry as the blades cut into it deeply, the venting slits on the underside of its cap twitching in vain attempts to release spores.

Rowan drew her blade back, a sickly brown fluid coating the polished bronze metal, and she adjusted her grip so she could put all her power behind a thrust. John felt her mana surge as she ran the blade through the Gravetender’s head, burnt flesh and brown internal fluid flying out from the exit wound.

The Gravetender’s body convulsed as Rowan seemed to hit something critical. As she wrenched her weapon free once more, and Tok pulled back to swing again, the monster’s body stopped moving and fell over, a small cloud of soot washing over the pair’s feet.

67 EXP Gained

“Damn, I wanted to get another swing in.” Tok chuckled as he lowered his weapon in time with the Gravetender vanishing away. He grinned at Rowan and John.

“Let us be grateful that our plan went off without issue,” Rowan said. “I was not looking forward to trying to fight it all at once. Close quarters seemed like it was going to be a bad time with it.”

“Well, there was that.” Tok laughed. “Those spores did not look fun. That fire trick sure worked out as advertised.”

“We got lucky,” John admitted, his confusion over the low experience gain put to the side. “That guy wasn’t all that smart and quick. Made getting it trapped easy. Something with more of either could have gotten out and made things really dicey. And it wasn’t all that easy on the mana. I’m still good to go, but pulling off big moves like that isn’t cheap.”

“Well, we can take a minute to recover a bit,” Tok said. “And we need to figure out where to go from here.”

“Please tell me you haven’t forgotten part of the story,” Rowan remarked in a flat voice.

“No, I haven’t, but there’s no guarantee everything’s the same,” Tok said. “From the story, Gef found a path leading from the clearing, but we should have seen it as we moved into our ambush positions.”

“So we’re back to moving blind then,” Rowan remarked.

“Hold on a second,” John advised, his mind whirling. “There wasn’t a mushroom monster in the story, so maybe it messed up the path we’re supposed to find.”

“So we should look for anything that looks out of place,” Rowan said. “Odd growth where a path could be.” She turned to Tok. “Did the story say anything about the general direction they traveled from the clearing?”

The dwarf shook his head. “No, it doesn’t. And the story paints the path as a winding one. Going one way then another several times.”

“So if the Gravetender was messing about here for a while, the whole start of the path could be hidden,” John reasoned, then gave a command to Candle. “I’m going to have Candle move around the edge of the clearing. See if she picks up on anything.”

“Good idea,” Rowan said. “Not that we’re just going to sit around. There has to be some sign in the clearing to point the way. They didn’t know you had a scouting fox.”

It was a fair idea and John was already splitting his attention between seeing through Candle and walking towards the edge of the clearing to look with his own eyes.

As he made his way, Tok let out a hum of surprise. “Hmm, my ax still has mushroom gunk on it.”

Everything seemed to slow for John as he twisted towards Tok. Indeed, the brown blood of the Gravetender still stained Tok and Rowan’s weapons, forgotten in the rush of victory and need to progress deeper into the jungle. And it seemed that Rowan clued in on the wrongness at the same moment as John.

And it was in that moment where things went wrong.

The clinging muck on their weapons suddenly exploded with grey fungal growth, cloying tendrils that quickly raced up metal and wrapped around Tok and Rowan’s wrists, a sickly black aura beginning to rise from the tentacles.

“Fucking hell,” Tok swore as his free hand snapped to the invading tendrils. As he tried to pull them off, more grew and tangled around his other hand. Even as the dwarf fought the fungus, John threw an Observe at it, **** for any information he could use to help.

Gravetender’s Spread
The internal fluids of the Gravetender contain spores tied to the main body’s health. Upon the **** of the main body, they wake from hibernation, greedily sapping life energy from anything they can to facilitate the rebirth of the Gravetender from the spores it dropped upon ****.

“Fuck,” John swore as he watched the tendrils grow up Tok and Rowan’s arms. At the same time, just under where the Gravetender had fallen, the ground began to buckle, a black miasma beginning to rise from the soil. He ran through what he could do and only one idea came to mind. The **** activation of the tendrils drew his mind to his new sword and the Amarlian effect.

Right before he summoned the sword, another thought popped into his head. Fire proved an effective weapon against the fungal monster and if he was going to save his companions, he was willing to go all in on the gamble.

He shifted the wand to his left and summoned his regrown blade. The twin warmth of autumn and spring filled him but that was quickly overtaken by the surge of pure fire mana now running through him as he converted his mana. He then threw the twenty-five fire mana into the sword, empowering the Amarlian Aura effect.

Amarlian Aura - Fire: The heat of flames invigorates those it protects, burning any undead magic affecting them to give a 10% increase to their physical abilities.

John didn’t feel any different as the effect washed out from the blade, but Rowan and Tok certainly did. Immediately once the magic took hold, the black aura and tendrils crawling up their arms stopped then began to retreat.

“What are you doing?” Rowan asked as she began to really rip into the weakened tendrils, pulling them off her arm. Tok was doing much the same.

“Took a gamble that these counted as ‘undead’. Looks like they do. I’m giving you resistance to their magic and a boost to your strength,” John explained, his eyes darting between Rowan, Tok and the spot the revived Gravetender seemed to be growing. “How much direct fire can your weapons take?”

“I’m sure they can handle a little toasting,” Tok answered with a snarl as he freed his left hand and clawed at the tentacles around his right wrist. “I’d rather have a charred ax than no ax.”

“Agreed,” came Rowan’s answer.

John nodded. “Then once you can, throw them there.” He pointed at the disturbed earth. “The Gravetender’s trying to resurrect itself. I think if I blast it, it’ll be down for good.”

Tok and Rowan nodded and continued to rip apart the fungal growths. Once both had torn away enough for them to do so, they threw the weapons down. John didn’t waste a moment, throwing a Flame Spike at them.

The burst of fire was accompanied by a large plume of sickly black smoke. John sent the wind spirit back in to stoke the flames more, just in case.

67 EXP Gained

That second experience gain made John feel like they had finally defeated the Gravetender once and for all and he relaxed a bit. Still on edge, John peppered the area with Observe while looking through his goggles.

“Okay, looks like it’s gone,” he sighed. “You guys okay?”

“I’ve been better,” Tok grunted as he rubbed his right arm. “Can still feel those tentacles.”

“Well, I don’t see any trace of it left on you, but it does look like they sucked a bit of your health away,” John said, stowing his wand and retrieving two Lynn crafted heath potions. “Here, these should help.”

He handed a potion to each of them and looked over to the smoldering weapons. The flames had burned away all traces of the Gravetender, leaving both sword and ax soot covered but ultimately undamaged.

“I think we should take this as a lesson,” Rowan remarked after she finished her potion. “We need to be aware of any oddities in how things should be. It was an amateurish mistake to not notice the monster’s viscera lingering.”

“Yeah,” Tok admitted, his tone grim. “Sorry about that. Jinxed us there and that kept you two from noticing the oddness.”

“I think we’re all a little to blame for missing that,” John said. “Too eager to rush ahead. Seems like a good lesson to learn. We don’t have a time limit, so no harm in playing things a bit safe.”

Tok nodded. “Right, right. You know, that’s not too far off from how the story goes. Some of Brave Gef’s men wanted to rush down the path once they found it, but he cautioned them to be slow, since there were still unknown dangers in the jungle.”

“I think we should have had you recite the full tale before we headed out,” Rowan said, a light note in her tone. “Maybe we could have avoided this if we all weren’t so focused on marching ahead without caution.”

“And I think now’s a good time to take a breather, re-center ourselves and get ourselves back in a good headspace,” John advised. “I’ve still got Candle looking for the path, so we’re not wasting time.”

“Sounds like a good time for me to go over the rest of the story, then,” Tok said. “So, once they found the path, they…”