Psilocybin Eighteen |
Against normal foes, in a normal situation, there would be time to pull back and adapt, but while dungeons could, reportedly, change in response to abuses, those changes were incredibly slow.
Case in point: entire cities across the globe were very much abusing dungeons for material gains and messing with the planet’s entire magical ecosystem as a result. At least, that’s why I suspected that Feronie was in the situation she was in.
In any case, the Wendell-Smith dungeon was not ready for biological warfare on the scale I had prepared.
I walked through stone-walled corridors, head bowed and eyes forward, enveloped in a cloud of swirling spores so thick that what little torchlight illuminated the space was swallowed.
Before me, hyena-like monsters and mole creatures choked, sputtered and died, gasping for air even as their bodies twitched and spasmed through the throes of vivid hallucinations.
I kept my mask on, only occasionally reaching up to wipe the goggles clean of dust particles.
This was... a slaughter. The monsters here had no defence against my spores, and the only protection they might have had was the sheer size of the floor, only I had more mushrooms in my bags.
It took a solid two hours to reach the end of the fifth floor, at which point I cleared out a few of the rooms neighbouring the space with the stairs leading down, and sat at a hyena-monster camp. My feet were a little sore from all the walking. “I should buy better boots,” I muttered as I took my boots off and shook them. A few little pebbles clattered to the floor. Annoying, but whatever. A problem for a future me.
“Give it ten minutes or so,” I said.
When I had cleared this room out, I did so by calling out for the monsters in it. They had chased me into the previous room, where the air was still filled with lingering spores. I hid while they suffocated.
So, this room wasn’t as dangerous as the others, but I was certain that there were still some spores lingering. They were small, light, and tended to fly surprisingly far on any stray air currents.
After a decently long pause where I idly scratched Sir Nibble’s back., I removed my mask, then the panbadger’s. “There, happy?”
He growled at me, but didn’t bite, so I figured he wasn’t upset.
He was even less upset when I fetched a can of spam from my satchel and a small pot to cook it in.
We had lunch, warmed over the little camp fire the hyena monsters had been using. It wasn’t anything special. Oats boiled into a sludge and some cubes of mystery meat, topped with a few onions and carrots.
I was... not a good cook, even with Cooking {Common} to help me. The food came to a boil soon enough, and I portioned it out more or less half-and-half into two tin bowls.
“There you go, you little fatass,” I grumbled as I gave Sir Nibbles his portion.
He darted out and bit my hand, then shoved his face into his bowl while I laughed and shook the pain off. He hadn’t broken skin, probably because he was very good at biting. I bet he had a skill for it.
Speaking of which...
I opened my skill list and checked it over, setting it up so that I could see the progress in my skills since I had last looked.
Feronie’s Crusader Class Skills - Level Three Hundred and Thirty-Eight
- Blight {Epic} - Level Seventy-Nine
>> Level Eighty-One
- Mushroom Magic {Rare} - Level Seventy-Three
>> Level Seventy-Six
- Cherub of Death {Rare} - Level Thirty-Seven
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
>> Level Thirty-Eight
- Unnoticeable {Uncommon} - Level Forty-Nine
>> Level Fifty-Two
- Poison Blooded {Rare} - Level Eighteen
>> Level Nineteen
- Angel’s Touch {Rare} - Level Sixteen
>> Level Seventeen
- Running {Common} - Level Seventy-Three
>> Level Seventy-Four
- Basic Poison Resistance {Common} - Level Fifty-Nine
>> Level Sixty
-Poison Handling Expertise {Rare} - Level Seventy-Three
>> Level Seventy-Five
-Cooking {Common} - Level Thirty-Two
>> Level Thirty-Three
“Oh!” I said past a mouthful of grub. Those were some good gains!
I think there was something to say about novel experiences and putting skills to use in new and creative ways, not to mention there was some value in doing something big with a skill. Clearing out a dungeon like this was definitely a massive use of my skills, and a huge cost-sink of resources.
I was most surprised by Angel’s Touch, however.
[Angel’s Touch {Rare}]
You can, with prayer and the will of your god at your side, bless those you touch with minor healing or minor curses.
Category: Faith magic, Divine magic
That was a skill that I had never really figured out how to use. I think that was mostly because it was a skill with strong religious connotations, and... well, I wasn’t that sort of person. I hadn’t really explored prayer and that kind of thing yet.
I really ought to, however. I was tied to Feronie. Deeply tied, even. And this was a {Rare} skill, something that most people would never gain. That rarity came with implications about the skill’s power as well.
So far, the skill had levelled pretty slowly and very much at random. I had no idea what its underlying mechanics were, and that made it feel kind of wasteful.
I might honestly be better served with a lower-rarity skill that had better daily applications.
Speaking of which, two skills had crossed the threshold where they would gain subskills as well. Blight {Epic} and Basic Poison Resistance {Common}.
I licked my lips like a greedy Sir Nibbles as I looked over the first new subskill.
[You have unlocked a Sub-Skill!]
[Congratulations! Your [Blight {Epic}] Skill has unlocked the [Carrion Bloom] subskill!
[Carrion Bloom]
Where your Blight lingers, lesser forms of death flourish. Mold, rot, fungus, corpse-blooms, or necrotic growths can emerge from afflicted flesh, spoiled food, or dead plant matter. These growths may serve as anchors for further Blight or as reservoirs of mana steeped in decay
“Hehehehe, hahaha! Muahahaha!” I cackled until Sir Nibbles started to give me a look then the laughter turned into far more childish giggles. “Sorry! Sorry, this is just... good?”
[You have unlocked a Sub-Skill!]
[Congratulations! Your [Basic Poison Resistance {Common}] Skill has unlocked the [Iron Gut]] subskill!
[Iron Gut]
Your body resists common venoms, spoiled food, foul drink, and weak toxins with stubborn reliability. Nausea lessens, cramps pass quicker, and lesser poisons often fail to take hold at all.
Eh, okay, fine. The implication there was pretty heavily suggesting that those resistances were all centred around the gut, so the digestive system.
A good number of poisons targeted that, so I wouldn’t complain to a broader range of immunity there. But it wasn’t something utterly revolutionary. I’d take it without complaint.
I finished my meal, holding the bowl a little higher as Sir Nibbles tried to get his sticky face into it to steal what was left, then I packed things up. “You know, I wonder,” I said as I looked at the Panbadger. Then on a whim I placed my hand upon his head. “I call upon the will of the Goddess Feronie, protector and mother of nature. Bless this small, stupid child of yours to resist poisons and afflictions and oow--shit! Why’d you bite me, I was blessing you!”
So much for that idea.
I pinched Sir Nibbles, then finished packing up. Soon we were on our way down to the sixth floor.
By now, I had to assume that it was early in the evening. We would probably have to camp on the sixth floor, but I was hoping to make it relatively deep into it. Maybe far enough in that we’d be able to hit the seventh and eighth floor in one day? I wasn’t sure, but it was possible. Some teams had done it, certainly, and they didn’t have the benefit of being able to kill everything ahead of them with an expanding cloud of lethal spores.
I started down the stairs, already planning for the next bit.
The sixth floor was called the Deep Burrows on all of the maps I’d seen, and it was home to two kinds of monsters. Large burrowing worms, and larger, armour-wearing, weapon-wielding lizards.
Both of those were big threats to delving teams.
Both of those needed to breathe.
I’d have to be careful with the worms, but the lizards I had more confidence with.
Ah well. If things didn’t work out, then I’d have to back out and figure something else out. Too bad if that was the case, but I suspected that I was going to be just fine.
Poor dungeon monsters. They weren’t equipped for this.
***
