Drops of water were dripping from stalactites in the lonely dark cavern.
Lonely. There were no creatures. Only the cold hard rock and the smell of humidity. Not that it could be smelled, for there was after all, no living creature.
So? What did it take to be a creature? For at that very moment there was something. It was something slithered across the ground opposing what was commonly known about slime-like creatures. It was bloody, to be precise a lump of blood called Bloody.
Mistaking Bloody's figure was understandable considering it was hardly recognizable now. To accommodate its slithering it looked more like a chubby deep red gummy worm. Of course, this gummy worm didn't seem very appetizing.
Though if it was appetizing, one only stood to gain. Surprisingly, Bloody had at least doubled in size. The reason why there were no creatures became normal then. There were no survivors.
The blood clot was a harmless creature without Ed's modifications. That was because it couldn't see, had no attributes, and had little intelligence. Things were different now though.
The anti-blood clot Ed released into the world had a total of five skills. They were eye spy, metal body, charge, poison body, and slither. While they didn't sound like much at first glance such an opinion couldn't be more wrong.
Eye spy was solely for looking at things but metal body and charge made for a fearsome combo. Most of the creatures hit by it would feel as if they were hit by a carriage!
Slither was a passive movement-type skill which meant that the more it increased proficiency, the faster the active skill charge would also become. Unfortunately, the poison body passive skill was mostly nullified after activating metal body but when it wasn't activated, the skill was quite potent on its own.
Bloody's current poison was a paralyzing agent which didn't seem to hold much potential for danger, but there was plenty wrong with underestimating it.
That was because Bloody like most creatures actually possessed a unique skill/trait. This skill had also been what allowed its size to double within this short time span. Bloody could gobble up the paralyzed victims all while continuing to poison them.
After much massacre Bloody's eye, which was inside its gel-like body, finally spotted what seemed to be radiant light. This light was not like the soft glow of the mushrooms, it was the sun's dazzling rays.
When Bloody was sent off it was told to return upon getting a glimpse of dazzling light. The transmission sounded iffy for a thing that had been previously blind but since Transmission sent out intent Bloody was able to convey what dazzling was and since it had already learned what light was on the way it was not hard for it to distinguish it.
Following the chain of commands and transmissions, Bloody's next action was to retreat. It had gone through more than one narrow path and it could only hope it would still fit through them while making its way back.
***
Back at Ed's mushroom forest, gray lights were being snuffed out as a bulldozer stormed through them.
"SCREECH!!!" The millicrawler had let out an ear-piercing screech after scraping itself against the barbed shrooms.
'Attack where mushroom ANSBFAJSBJ is!!!' Transmitted W from his sentinel tower. The string of characters he transmitted sounded nonsensical and pointless, but Ed was in fact able to accurately pinpoint where the millicrawler was.
That was because while he wasn't a true hivemind, he was still able to know the names of each mushroom.
The sling shrooms and doom shroom slings all targeted the position of the allied gray shroom immediately and proceeded to send out their barrage. The millicrawler which had been momentarily stopped by the recoil was hit by multiple peg shots as a result of this.
As soon as those hits registered on its body, the millicrawler was no longer interested in wallowing in self-pity. Its film-like legs instantly burst into motion.
'Mushroom SAGSUIGDF!!' Even after its charge, W did not stop transmitting location. The only difference now was that W had to try and think of the Millicrawler's trajectory!
It wasn't simply going on a straight line, the millicrawler was smarter than it seemed, it was weaving and increasing and decreasing its speed with a frightening degree of control.
With the delay between Ed and the sentinel tower being vast, giving accurate coordinates depended greatly on W. It wasn't that Ed didn't want to help but rather that even the sentries had 10, 9, 8 seconds delay.
On the ambiguous side, the closer the millicrawler got, the less the delay became.
'Use doom shrooms in the area surrounding DKJABSQISLXKN!!" As soon as Ed heard this, he blasted the area with as many doom shrooms as his manifestation upgrade could muster.
The explosions shook the cavern to the core and the blast which was transmitted from multiple angles by the sentries was quite great. If it weren't for the fact that those multiple angles existed in the first place, Ed would have assumed he killed most of his mushrooms with the explosion.
As the vibrations dissipated and the dust settled from the explosion all that was left was...
[Millicrawler (Injured)]
An injured Millicrawler. It was very surprising. Not to Ed though as he had set his expectations of the thing quite high. Though he had used many doom shrooms at once, they weren't all that on their own to begin with.
While Ed was certain such a blast would have killed a regular centicrawler 10 times over, the Millicrawler was merely injured. Describing it as merely was not inaccurate either.
As soon as the explosion faded and the dust settled the millicrawler remained in its place like a statue. But since Ed knew it was not dead through the assessment performed by W, he knew that this had to be a skill.
The millicrawler's body soon started to show cracks on its surface. These cracks spread until they started falling off like shards of stone.
'I can't let you do that!' Before the process could finish, Ed followed up with another bombardment.
The thing had to be molting! If that was true, it was definitely a nasty skill. To simply shed off one's exoskeleton after you were done using it was discourteous. Thus, since the bug knew no manners, neither did Ed.
After the second round of explosions which shook the cavern, the millicrawler did not stay still like a statue anymore.
"SCREEEEEEEECCCCH!!!!" It had instead screeched as if the world's greatest injustice had just been committed. Its combat experience was vast but it seemed the intelligence of the millicrawler had not vastly improved from that of a centicrawler.
Its legs which were ranging amongst the thousand were now merely some couple of hundreds. This time when the Millicrawler charged out towards Ed its speed was much less scary.
'Mushroom SASBSJA' The sling shrooms were repositioned with each command, but precipitation was starting to somehow form on Ed's cap. That was because the feed and the commands were growing more and more in sync.
'Damn! This isn't working!' Ed transmitted alarmed, he had to defend himself somehow!
So, before the Millicrawler had a chance to hit him, Ed took out mounds upon mounds of dirt and rock from his storage. These mounds of rock and dirt all started to fall upon his main body as a final line of defense and even before the millicrawler had a chance to slam itself against the new fort, Ed's damage taken started to pile up.
[You've been dealt damage. -4hp]
[You've been dealt damage. -3hp]
Ed had lost nearly half of his health from this alone, he only had 16 health total after all. Fortunately, the mounds of dirt only hurt him so much. The real issue was still the millicrawler!
'Urgh!' Although Ed shouldn't feel too much as a mushroom, as was custom, the system or dungeon still made it so he had to suffer pain when the Millicrawler slammed against the defensive dirt.
[You've been dealt damage. -6hp]
The mound upon mounds of dirt that shook vigorously eventually slowed down and barely held on with... three hit points!
After making it past the small crisis, Ed now had to pity the millicrawler. That was because his first bombardment forced it to molt, the second injured it gravely, than the third was a sure K.O.!
The doom shrooms poured out of Ed's storage and then…!
An explosion occurred! Some of the film like legs of the millicrawler were flatout destroyed or sent flying off its body!
'Wait that's not right…' He ran out of shrooms! The explosion that had followed was at least half the size of the previous two and merely knocked off some legs.
The millicrawler was still alive and, kicking…?
The millicrawler fell over. It had 1000 film-like legs for its thundering speed, but that also meant that it couldn't support all of its weight when disproportionately losing some of these members.
It had fallen over and started kicking wildly. Confounded by its inability to move, it began to let out maddened screeches one after the next.
Suddenly, all the tension Ed had from the fight disappeared and was replaced with the feeling of triumph. All the the millicrawler could do now was wait for its death quietly.
Whether it would bleed out first or Ed would take care of it was unknown, but the only thing certain was that it wouldn't last.
To top it off, Ed could feel his health regenerating a minute after the shock from the collision.
'I guess 15 vitality is already no joke' Ed hadn't thought about it before, but the fact that the mushroom had so little health meant that it could regenerate them almost instantly.
Since the mushroom body still could not move, Ed would prefer to have more health, but this wasn't all bad either. The trait of rapid regeneration would keep on going no matter how much health he gathered in the future.
This was without any skills! Just his attributes! That was to say once he got molting from the millicrawler and learned to attach it to his main body… he would be unstoppable! ....or at least able to take one hit and die the next.