Ch212-Mush-Rooms

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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 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 forced 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%!]

“Oh wow…” Sylver said, as he willed the mushroom to stop growing, and manipulated it towards the center of the room.

“These don’t look like any kind of golem you’ve shown me so far?” Ria asked, as Sylver grabbed hold of all 4 corpses’ cores and used [Dead Dominion] to lay gently lay them next to each other.

“Technically, and I do mean technically, these are a type of slime,” Sylver explained, as he felt around the first dead golem’s body, and found something similar to a clasp inside its shoulder blade.

When he forced the latch thing open, he was able to pull the chest plate away.

Inside there was a creature that looked like a lump of dark yellow flesh, with slimy tendrils spread out all over the place. Sylver poked it with his finger one time before he went to close the chest plate.

“What's wrong? You can’t raise slime as undead?” Ria asked as Sylver shook his head.

“I can only raise these as zombies, but with my current range of abilities, they won’t have enough control over their muscles to move these things around,” Sylver explained, as Ria formed into her little girl form, the one she took from Chrys and stopped Sylver from closing the chest plate.

“Would you mind scooping everything out of it? I want to try something,” Ria said, as Sylver nodded at her, and in a couple of seconds, managed to tear out every tiny piece of dead matter he could sense within the brass-colored armor.

Ria very gently pulled the folded-up staff out of her body and handed it to Sylver.

She was very careful as she placed her hand over the now empty spot where the golem’s core had been.

The thing about golems, and any kind of magical technology, was that it required mana, or in this case Ki, to function. Anything more complex than a pocket watch needed to have some magic incorporated into it so as not to tear itself to pieces from mana fluctuation.

As amazing as some of the technology the dwarves had in their manaless mountains, it was worthless in 99% of the land and sea mass that made up Eira. Even the Ki dense areas had some ambient mana in the air.

Ria’s black and gold liquid metal seemed to seep through the brass-colored armor, as more and more of her body flowed into the hollow in the monster’s chest.

This kind of “golem” was sometimes referred to as an armor slime, or a metal slime, depending on who you asked. In the same way, a snail builds a shell around itself, an armor slime builds itself a set of armor. Obviously, given that this is a dungeon, sort of, some of the steps wild armor slimes had to follow had been skipped.

This thing probably ate the weapons and armors that belonged to the people that died here, and then copied the kinetic energy utilizing mechanism from some other armor slime.

Sylver was in the middle of wrapping up the three ribs at the end of his staff, so he didn’t accidentally touch them, when Ria, now inside of a golem, stood up from the ground and leaned down over the other dead [Melee Dummy].

Just as Sylver was about to offer some help, Ria lifted one club in the air and hit the monster in what would have been a groin on a human man. Sylver got to watch as she then proceeded to use her clubbed hands, to gently pull the interior mechanism out of the monster.

She repeated this process with the other 2 monster armors, and while Sylver tended to his bruises, and reformed his soul armor shields, incorporated all 4 bodies, into 1.

Apparently, Sylver had damaged some of the tightly wound springs inside the chests, and Ria needed spare parts to build 1 functioning kinetic energy storage device.

From what Sylver understood, because he wasn’t interested enough to ask follow-up questions, was that the monsters had a latch and gear system inside of them. Every time one of their limbs is hit, the gear is pulled back, the tension in the spring is increased, and the latch stops the energy from dissipating.

After that, using a series of pistons and other fancy words, the stored-up energy can be used to punch a necromancer so hard that his body is sent flying.

Ria hadn’t been able to use the spread-out tendrils the monsters had on their backs and assumed that they were used for one of their biological functions, either for sustenance, or to breathe through, so she discarded them.

She ended up giving herself 4 clubs, as opposed to 2, and also gave herself a third leg, for no reason other than that it was more difficult than she expected to maintain her balance.

Aside from that, the color had changed. Previously the whole thing had been a bright orange bronze, but now it was tainted with Ria’s gold and black colors.

She even went as far as to make her golden face inside the helmet.

Once everyone was prepared to leave, Sylver made a pinhole within the closed entrance that the Blue Tiger sect group had gone through.

Now that she had a significantly larger body, Sylver had to raise the door really high for Ria to pass. She and Mora stood there, while Sylver made sure that his tendril of [Fog Form] was solid enough for him to teleport through. The amount of force required for the tiny piece of [Necrotic Mutilation] to hold the mechanism that held the door open, meant that Sylver couldn’t move away from it. He had to stand right next to the wall, practically hugging it.

Once he used [Fog Form] the door slammed itself shut, in the exceptionally fast ways only dungeons are capable of. Thankfully there was nothing to worry about. Sylver was with Mora and Ria when the door slammed shut.

Although he was tempted to increase his dexterity, Sylver inevitably placed all 30 AP into intelligence. He had stressed his mana channels almost to their limits with the sheer amount of mana he needed for that mushroom to grow. So it only took repairing his shades at an unhealthily fast rate for him to reach his actual limit.

Total Level: 166
[Koschei-10]
[Necromancer-100]
[Swamp Lord-56]

CON: 200
DEX: 110
STR: 110
INT: 449
WIS: 255
AP: 0

Health: 1,989/2,000
Stamina: 913/1,000
MP: 11,176/17,960

Health Regen: 23.34/M
Stamina Regen: 20.00/M
MP Regen: 10,708.65/M

Just as before, the system took Sylver’s stretched-out wounded mana channels, and replaced them with slightly larger, and equally stretched out relative to their size, mana channels. Sylver noticed something falling down his face, and with worrying ease, pulled out a clump of his white hair.

Great, just what I needed, Sylver thought, as he covered his head with his hood, and pressed it up against his scalp.

He needed to restock his body’s supplies, which required either performing a couple of expensive rituals or simply waiting for his internal organs to produce everything that he needed.

Sylver’s senses may have been restricted by the dungeon, but they were still sharp enough to feel the presence of the people ahead of them. As a precaution, Sylver waved his hand over the wooden board on his shoulder and altered it to look like he was a guest of the Blue Rat sect.

With his other hand, he pinched, and pulled the tips of his ears upward, to elongate them just a bit.

Sylver decided to keep his regular voice, as Mora jumped onto Ria’s back, and got ready for a fight.

“Hello! Is someone there?” Sylver shouted.

He didn’t quite slur his words, but he did add just a drop of that almost half-asleep speech pattern the vast majority of elves possessed.

In the time it took Sylver to blink, 4 people were standing in front of him, each armed with a near-identical perfectly straight sword.

Their emblems meant they belonged to the Blue Tiger sect, and the man standing closest to Sylver was the spitting image of his deceased brother. Not twins, but for an undead with terrible face blindness, they might as have been.

The second sword on the living brother’s right side, also explained where the dead heir’s sword had gone.

They maintained a ready stance, to kill Sylver if he tried something, but after they saw the wooden symbol on his shoulder, their eyes lost some of the edge they had a moment prior. They all had identical robes, and the only difference was the color.

[A skill similar to [Appraisal] has been successfully blocked!]

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” the heir Sylver had been sent to kill, asked. His robe was light blue.

Sylver was very careful not to reach towards his robe as he bowed ever so slightly, and maintained a calm, but partially confused, tone of voice.

“My name is Sorcha. I’m a mage serving under master Tarragon, the [Ancient Druid]. We had reason to believe the source of the sleeping curse was somewhere within this desert area, and we were sent to scout it out. A large group of monsters chased us into the abandoned city above, and we ended up hiding within an empty room, that brought us down here,” Sylver explained and suppressed a smile as the expressions on all 4 men’s faces changed.

“It was open? The spiral I mean, you didn’t open it, it was already open?” the heir Sylver had been sent to kill asked.

“Yes. After that, we followed the blue arrows in hopes of finding an exit, and now we’re here,” Sylver explained, as all 4 men exchanged a worried look with one another.

“What are those?” one of the men asked with a gesture towards Ria’s golem body. He had a dark red robe.

“My companions. The large one is Ria, and the small one is Morana,” Sylver explained.

By this point, their swords were still in their hands, but it was mostly because they forgot to sheath them. They were upset, but not quite, there was something else there.

“What are your classes?” the man with the orange robe asked.

“[Swamp Lord] and a specialized [Tamer],” Sylver responded.

“Do you have any healing skills?” the last man to speak asked. His robe was purple.

“Only using someone else’s health. But I have a great deal of first aid knowledge, and I have a very solid mixture of defensive and offensive skills and perks,” Sylver explained, as the man in the red robe shrugged his shoulders, as he put his sword away.

The other 3 did the same.

“We cannot guarantee your safety, but we would be indebted to you if you helped us complete our quest,” the man in the purple robe said.

“What quest is that exactly?” Sylver asked, as the man in the purple robe extended a hand towards Sylver.

The shy smile that appeared on the 4 men’s faces made Sylver’s skin crawl. The man in the purple robe spoke in an excited whisper.

“Dobrynya’s hat is somewhere here,” the man in the purple robe said and continued as he saw 0 recognition in Sylver’s expression.

“The hat that belonged to the very first Dobrynya. The one that conquered this land, and erected a shield that has no equal,” the man said, and for a moment, Sylver fantasized about simply snapping all of their necks, and leaving.

He somewhat liked his chances, even if it would hurt him, he was fairly certain he could fire off one good beam of abyss magic, enough to decapitate all of them.

But this was one of those rare times where Sylver’s gut disagreed with him. For some reason, it thought the hat was important, even if Sylver didn’t think it was.

Sylver flexed his abdominal muscles just to make sure they weren’t making a mistake.

“How far away are we from the end?” Sylver asked as he did his best to make his insides reconsider.

“We’re very close. Hours away, assuming we can pass all the tests,” the heir wearing the blue robe answered, as Sylver mentally sighed.

If he had said days, Sylver could have at least argued that it wasn’t worth the time it would take.

But even if the emperor was balls deep inside the shield ancestor right now, Sylver could spare a couple of hours, since it was his gut that was telling him to get it.

He and the man in the purple robe shook hands, as Sylver put on his warmest smile.

“Happy to help,” Sylver said.

Who knows, maybe this “hat” might help deal with the emperor.

All he had to do was help these 4 swordsmen pass a couple of tests.

How hard can it possibly be?

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