The lizardmen squinted trying to see past the brightness that had greeted them but it wasn't until it dimmed that they were able to get a proper glimpse past it.
"Is- Is that Var?" Korz asked with genuine surprise. The reason was that the respected shaman that seemed to act with both wit and grace was covered in dirt and soot. It was an image that these devout believers were unwilling to believe. It equated to vandalizing the statue of a respected figure.
Korz and some others couldn't help but clench their fists seething with anger. How had they with the support of their mighty deity fallen to such lows? The picture of Eon quietly appeared in the image of some lizardmen when answering this question.
But this image instantly vanished when they were reminded of the perilous situation their Shaman had fallen into.
The lizardmen, including the new ones, started to run towards Var and the few members behind him.
After no more than a minute, the two sides met atop of a charred field of mushrooms.
"What- What happened???" Someone blurted feeling the mushy stuff beneath his feet.
"This…" The devout believer of Var, Girusk, could not properly answer the inquiry. The whole situation had progressed too quickly in a matter of seconds. This meant that what had happened was hard to explain.
Bloody who had been blasted into bits was slowly reassembling back onto its plump semi-circular shape. To protect Ed at the fateful moment, it had swallowed his main body hoping it would mitigate the damage.
Unfortunately, all it did was buy time. In the end, Ed had perished. But he did leave remnant of himself.
'AAAAARRGHH!!!' W who had been floating towards Ed following his death screamed feeling the pain of his consciousness starting to slowly fade.
With the activation of sixth sense, W spotted a chunk of something near him and almost instinctively guided himself towards it. But even after reaching it, W was not able to enter.
His mind was starting to become both weary and stressed. Under the threat of death, W could only try to cling to the body and come to life.
'AAARGH COME ON!!!' He didn't want to disappear!
[<Thought Manifestation> is in effect]
The pain abruptly left W as he successfully entered the red blob. This in turn made Bloody rather angry but as that piece had flown off too far, it couldn't do anything in protest.
'A close call…' W thought now feeling relieved. He should have been inside the system space after being called in by the soul-calling sub-skill yet… there he was… inside a small piece of Bloody.
As it turned out, a mushroom bug hybrid did not die so easily. The swatting merely put him in a near-death state that caused him to become unconscious.
Being put in such a state, W did die eventually. It was simply unfortunate that it happened during the climax of the fight. As he was being called towards Ed, the sudden explosion killed both Ed and the giant monster and resulted in him having no destination.
His desperation then gave rise to a miracle and things came back to the present.
W wanted to ask why Ed had chosen such a suicidal option but anticipating something might come near like the millicrawler, Ed had booby-trapped his vicinity. The flame crystals and doom shroom combo were simply more destructive than they anticipated.
Were it not for the fact that the lizardmen were behind Ed who had been momentarily eaten by Bloody they likely would have perished alongside Ed. That was how potent the blast had been.
'Now what?' W thought keenly noticing that he couldn't actually see. Bloody was the one with the eye after all.
'I should have entered a mushroom…' W grumbled slightly. Some sentry shrooms had to have survived, right? But he was stuck inside the glutton's body.
'Oh no! I can't store the pieces of the Wailing Mushroom!' W thought panicking. He didn't want his death to have been in vain!
For better or for worse, Bloody didn't have this problem. The blood clot was unsatisfied having become small again and had no choice but to try and absorb the pink stuff from the monster.
Bloody's dark red body started to grow a bit brighter. Unbeknownst to Bloody, its skills started to shoot towards level 9 and began to require advancements. While the toxic substance wasn't exactly blood, thanks to the poison body skill Bloody was able to integrate it all the same.
While this occurred, the lizardmen were discussing things.
"We got here first! Of course, we are leading this camp!" A lizardman claimed.
"Var is the only leader right for us!" Girusk said supporting the previous statement.
"With your paltry strength, you should be satisfied by merely being alive" The civil discourse however had turned into discourse and then into boisterous noise.
Var who was a shaman was a valuable character but that was only under the presence of a deity or when making a lizardman society. These lizardmen did not have any such plans.
In their eyes, this was just temporary refuge. Var's value was therefore close to zero. While he was nice to have, they weren't willing to exchange control for it. These refugees were already divided as things were why let another party in on the business?
"Let it be…" Var Agus said with a sigh. They could just relocate. Without the deity's protection, or whatever it was that they had been following, they couldn't stay there. As they spoke, mushrooms continued to wilt under the presence of death.
The area was becoming close to unlivable.
'Bloody, get over here' W transmitted with no clear target. This caused the lizardmen to hear in on the decree as well. They felt that it wasn't directed towards them yet they all turned towards a location.
Over there.
W had conveyed his location through transmission. Realistically, Bloody already knew where W was located. It was just irked and not wanting to greet him. But thinking about it again…
Bloody started to make its way over. It stopped in front of the red chunk of itself and tried to flatten itself to put W on top of it.
Bloody's body started to heave up and down as if laughing. This was a victory! W had to be carried around by it, how embarrassed must W have been!
Unaware of these hidden thoughts of Bloody, W thanked it. It was directly beneath him so he was obviously capable of pinpointing it now.
"""I- It's alive!""" The lizardmen shouted in unison.
"How come…?" The youngest lizardmen of Var's party asked confused. Var Agus' eyes sparkled figuring something out for certain.
"It's obvious that the deity had a trump card." Var said matter-of-factly. The creature that followed it around was its subordinate for sure judging by how it carried it. Considering that it now looked like a piece of its subordinate…
It was almost shameful to explain it. Yet, such was the state of the world. Var Agus seriously regretted the scarcity of intellectuals.
"The deity transferred its body onto a new one as an emergency measure" Var nevertheless explained. He had to console himself with the fact that he didn't provide much information yet the lizardman nodded in approval.
This also explained a couple of things to Var. Like for example how the deity's territory was so small. It wasn't a mushroom deity, it was ummm… A ghost deity of sorts…
The atmosphere however did not turn joyous after the discovery of the deity's survival. In fact, it became much worse. Now the other new lizardmen had to actually make a choice.
***
[Recalling Champion's Soul]
The reports of Ed living were greatly exaggerated as it turned out, he had indeed died.
He was in the black void feeling somewhat dull inside.
'Damn…' He didn't want to use that trick but the monster had drawn too close. He did try to take some precaution by calling Bloody and even summoning mounds of dirt but it was to no avail.
His fields of doom shrooms were also ignited alongside the secret explosives. Pyrotechnics were not easy to nail down without the proper knowledge or experience.
'I gained nothing from this attack' Ed complained before sighing mentally. The mushrooms had gotten the best of him.
Although he had killed one of their trump cards, he ultimately left the area. The dungeon would not spawn him in there again unless it decided to be generous or he got lucky. Therefore, the mushrooms won.
The Wailing Mushroom and him were both losers.
'At least I can quickly repopulate' His spore level was higher and the modified mushrooms were all in his storeroom. Ed actually felt that restarting might be for the best.
'I can properly plan out my defenses and locations for farms, etc' It was a pity to lose the octobuddy and his mushroom accumulations but Ed wasn't that stupid to rig everything to explode if it was still valuable.
He made sure to fill up his storeroom with plenty of mushrooms long before the battle ensued. Even in the last few seconds before everything went kaboom Ed was throwing out the dirt and replacing it with mushrooms.
[10 minutes before respawning]
'An already available body' Ed thought to himself when thinking of the prompt respawn. The odds of it being his skeleton body were not low based on order but his destination was yet to be seen.
Either body was fine however since both had a human problem.
'One has not enough humans and the other has too many' The crypt was sufficiently far from the orcs so he wasn't afraid of humans piling up there.. Before he could annex various tribes however they were not allowed to settle in the orc plains.