The glistening lights of various hues were sentient. To an extent anyway. These special mobs had lived for a long while now after all. Their sentience was the natural wit that came with age often called wisdom.
But their wisdom was a bit different, it was one driven by the limited instincts.
While each of these mobs could not communicate with the other, they were all thinking similar thoughts, every single one of them.
I'm being threatened!!!
Were the words that continued to reverberate in their minds. They who had overcome many tribulations and faced many nefarious creatures were being threatened by a new unknown.
What is it? How could this happen? These thoughts were pointless. The calculating mushrooms, therefore, did not ask themselves this question. The only question that their collective minds were able to think of was how to stop it.
With age came wisdom and resourcefulness backed by the wisdom of experience. They had many aces up their sleeves.
***
The glistening fields of gray seemed to have become more vibrant for a few seconds. That was because a creature was dying on the field of mycelium and its body was being collected.
'Another wave done' As the waves heavily relied on creatures already in the vicinity, the yield from the waves were only becoming smaller and smaller. At this rate, Ed could unleash his super bait and be left completely fine.
To be fair, he had done a couple of simple upgrades to the defenses.
[Tripwire Mushroom]
[Tripwire Mushroom (Fire)]
[Mushroom Net (Fire)]
[Poison Turret Mushroom]
{ Shoots out a poison stinger at targets }
There was one thing about these upgrades. They weren't offered by the system.
The Tripwire mushroom was prepared by tying a string merged with a mushroom around two mushrooms. It was a large success so Ed promptly moved onto the next phase of every experiment process, setting it on fire.
This was harder since Ed had to place some water mushrooms near the area of the fire tripwire shrooms but it was ultimately no big deal.
It was such a small deal that Ed then made intertwined multiple strings to make a net and set that on fire too! The ideal function of the net was killing small creatures but…
'All the wire additions are flawed' They were one-time uses when against large creatures. The centicrawlers could charge through almost entirely unaffected thanks to their skill charge and tough exoskeleton too.
Ed was however lucky to create another success. It was the poison stinger turret. The stinger was acquired from a stinger fly often found near the area, and the poison was actually from Bloody.
The stinger fly had skills to shoot out its stinger as well as one to aim at things. The aim wouldn't work without sight however so the turret had… an eye for eye spy, pinpoint, and expel as skills.
All of these things made for a successful low-speed attack tower. The growth speed of the thing was not very fast either but some gray mushrooms had enhanced spores so Ed was starting to pass that around and at least getting stronger mushrooms.
'Sigh…' Ed was starting to grow tired of creating freaky mushrooms by now though. Since he last called for the dungeon to summon him, many hours had passed. Evidently, nothing was done. Ed had to continue his mushroom expansion meaning he had already conquered half of the neutral zone.
That was the entire point of running the waves, to expand his conquest.
'This is kind of frustrating…' That didn't mean he hadn't tried to do anything else. It was just that the fact that he had to remain stationary at all times was very difficult. He wished he could uproot himself and start running amok.
The reason why Ed thought this was because he had to send out W on an expedition with Bloody.
'I didn't expect Bloody to become so formidable' That was why he never thought of having Bloody escorting W before. The other reason why he thought of this was quite simply that the memory extraction was not going smoothly.
The many things he uncovered were things that might be found in clips from nature documentaries. For example...
Why would he want to see a slime-like creature slowly gobble up prey? Why would he want to see it squeezing past a crevice?
Ed had learned the hard way that the extraction machine was NOT made for reading memories.
'With so many locked rooms in the system space, one of them has to fulfill the role but… How long will that take?' Ed only had four rooms available to him. The storeroom, the forge room, the spirit room, and finally the branding room.
Thus, the plan to have Bloody escort W puppet was the only choice. Ed summoned W and sent him off with Bloody. Feeling jealous, Ed decided to move on with his experiments.
'Maybe it's time I investigate transferring my main body' Ed had long since believed that as a consciousness being, he had to be able to exit bodies one way or another.
'But let's not get too far ahead of myself' He needed a body to transfer to. The puppet body of W seemed sufficient but Ed wasn't sold on it. What Ed wanted was something stronger than that.
With his experience as an orc, Ed was no longer willing to accept many trade-offs when it came to his body. So what if he could make nearly infinite resources?! So what if he could?!-
'Well if I put it that way I sound kind of stupid…' Which he probably wasn't. The point of this new body however was to be made for combat so not accepting some trade-offs seemed acceptable.
'One of the positives of this mushroom body is the ability to regenerate' The earth puppet turned mushroom did not keep this ability. It was still earth at its core and was bound to crumble in the midst of battle.
But how was he to make the body then? Would he have to throw mushrooms into the forge and mold them? He was afraid they might still be quite weak. His gray mushrooms didn't even have an element for example.
'In that case…' The only other thing Ed could think of was body recollection!
'Would it work as a mushroom?' His regeneration speed was already frightening so how was he supposed to have a chance to use body recollection?
'There is only one way after all' He would need to cut himself in half! The mushroom would still regenerate even without his consciousness in it. Body recollection could then restore himself and connect him to the mycelium.
The only problem with the plan was that a bad cut could mean his death. If he died, most of his defense efforts would have been wasted. Not to mention he would lose the location of W and Bloody.
'That's assuming the dungeon doesn't spawn me back in the same area' It was curious how it failed to accurately jot him in a location. Ed could only attribute it to some sort of distancing issue.
If the dungeon shifting him into areas was like throwing an Ed doll into a model scale of the different floors then it might make sense that it wasn't able to accurately drop him in places.
'Hm? Does it put me into a body before tossing me then?' Thinking about it further, did the dungeon not use a portal to drop his body as it did with the boars? Those were spawned rather accurately.
'Either my theory is wrong and the dungeon is just a pain or I'm missing something' This dilemma of attributing to malice what could be attributed to incomplete knowledge was one he found himself in rather often.
Back to the previous topic, Ed needed to figure out how to accurately bisect himself. His first option was to try and summon a skeleton but summoning the wrong one could mean death.
'Brutus is a no-go' That anti-skeleton didn't even use a sword!
After some more consideration, Ed summoned the one and only, Pioneer.
'Kenny Jr is a horrible choice' Ed didn't know why he said that, but he needed the people to know. Kenny Jr. was always messing around!
In contrast, Pioneer had pioneered the path of the skeleton and maintained a serious dedication to it. For the anti-skeletons, they might have felt rejected but Ed was always keeping tabs on all of them.
'One of the pluses of being a consciousness being' Ed could remember everything if he tried hard enough to recall it. That meant he still knew the likes of the dead Sole, and Settler.
'Settler that lazy bum' Sole was like an injured veteran but injuries didn't fare well in battle. A pity, the current Ed would have been able to save it.
'Wouldn't it be funny if Settler was still alive buried underground?' A sneaky thought entered Ed's mind but he quickly cast it aside. There was no way.
Pioneer was instead assembled for Ed in the system space before being materialized into the field of gray. Ed tried to be quick and inserted the consciousness of Pioneer into the anti-skeleton body.
After a short while, the anti-skeleton came alive. Pioneer gazed at the area with a brief confusion but ultimately, his gaze fell on a stubby mushroom.
'Pioneer, hack me in half' Was what the mushroom said. Pioneer who was certain that was his lord was befuddled by the command but acquiesced nonetheless. It lifted a sharp and sleek blade Ed had handed it for ultimate slicing power.
'Cut precisely the area just under my cap-' Ed was trying to say before a sword went off with his head.