B.F.HUUPS
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Chapter 51. Escape
🕑 Added 2024-05-26 21:51:11 +0000 UTCThe sporekings’ reactions seemed slow compared to his own movement, he thought as he watched them turn toward him as he propelled up through the branches toward the acorn.
He knew his body was more physically capable, but they seemed sluggish as they turned lazily toward him, their bodies slowly unraveling from their hunched stances.
As he reached the branches just below the energy-rich acorns, Abe increased his speed further and, within seconds, was within reach of the closest acorns.
Still, several meters away, he commanded tendrils to form across his fibrous flesh, and they shot out, wrapping around the acorns and snapping them away from the tree as they pulled them toward Abe.
He hadn’t stopped or changed his path, though. The black acorn was still the prize he had come for, but each of these regular acorns was worth a million ducats if the store owner was to be believed, and there was no way he would turn down the offer of a literal fortune.
Flinging himself from branch to branch, Abe loosened the sting of his pouch and let the remaining ducats he had not banked fall out, and in their place, the tendrils put the acorns, tightening the pouch as it filled within seconds.
He glanced down at the clouds between jumps and was reminded of the enormous fall beneath him. Perhaps it had been his near-death experience, living in a foreign and dangerous world, or even his evolution, but he didn’t find himself fearing the height as he had when first visiting the shardworld. It was one less fear he held, and he wasn’t sure anything could scare him at this point.
The ship below was only just moving away from the dock now, and it would be easy enough for the sporekings to follow him if he jumped to it now.
Abe swung to the side, circling the top ring of branches where the sporekings guarded the acorns so that he could loot as many as possible—since he had to delay his escape anyway.
SHOOSH!
Shit! His eyes widened as one of the sporekings seemed to materialize between him and the acorns as he flew between the branches. His tendrils of flesh shot out in different directions, hoping to slow his momentum and carry him in a different direction, but it was too late; a spear was heading for his neck.
Sending dreamer energy flooding through his arm, he whipped his sword defensively, smacking the spear off-target, but his momentum sent him slamming into the mushroom.
The red-capped spore he slammed into flew backward, but mycelium roots rapidly grew from its back and anchored it to a massing branch.
Okay, they’ve got them too. It makes sense, I suppose.
Abe had brought himself to a halt after they collided, with his white, fibrous limbs connecting him to several nearby branches as he scooped up more acorns in a hurry.
He would keep looting as long as they weren’t inflicting any serious wounds.
His continued looting seemed to enrage the sporekings as they let out a high-pitched shrill and shot up toward him, with some of them seeming to teleport into the higher branches. He felt a rush of energy pulse from the sporekings as when they teleported.
That power is coming from a mushroom. Damn it, I need to get my hands on whatever they are consuming to do that.
Unfortunately, he was fairly certain they would be immune to his poisonous mushrooms, a theory that was strengthened by the sporekings not trying to use any similar attacks on him.
However, while they could teleport and cling to the branches with their mycelium, their dexterity, and speed in the tree branches was nothing compared to Abe’s. The worms had been effective before, but with their essence integrated into him, it was as if he had a nearly endless supply of limbs that could stretch over a dozen meters in any direction and reacted to his commands instinctively. In an ironic turn of events, he found himself looting these dreamers in an environment that was tailor-made for his abilities.
The sporekings soon realized their inability to catch Abe. Even when they teleported right beside him, his tendrils could swing him away well before they could mount a serious attack, and teleporting into his guard would make them as vulnerable as he. Instead, they took up defensive positions, moving to guard the remaining acorns, with the majority of them gathering around the black acorn above.
He fancied his chances against the far slower mushrooms individually, but a dozen of them had already gathered to defend the black acorn, and there were thousands of potential reinforcements throughout the domain.
His eyes widened as clouds of gray spores burst across the sporekings, filling the air with a dense brown fog.
He realized that the spore clouds connected to one another, blanketing the upper branches. The sporekings had strategically chosen positions so that their clouds would connect and they could fill the entire area with their toxins.
His wight nose picked up the threat that carried on the clouds of spores as he sniffed the air. But his body had changed, and whatever toxic properties these spores would have once held against him, they no longer did. Still, the clouds created a thick blanket, concealing the area.
With his myriad of senses, Abe could easily see through the clouds. However, concealment still made it harder to spot errant branches and other small obstacles that might cause issues.
Darting forward, Abe ignored the clouds and flew straight into them. Whatever difficulty they might pose, he doubted it would weigh any heavier on him than the sporekings, and he hadn’t come this far to be dissuaded from his goal by such an attack.
His brow rose as he realized the spore cloud had dulled his deathly senses to nothing. However, as expected, his fungi-enabled senses still felt the life shimmering around him unaffected.
Bouncing between branches, Abe spotted the ship pulling away from the corner of his eye. It would be out of reach soon enough and already far enough away that the sporekings could not follow. He couldn’t draw this out any longer.
Sending his white tendrils out, Abe hooked onto several different branches simultaneously and flung himself forward, erratically changing directions. He released the tendrils and pulled on others, switching back and forth with lightning-fast reflexes.
The wild swaying was difficult for the sporekings to predict, and several used their teleporting ability only to materialize in the wrong location as Abe jerked away from them.
But it wasn’t for show; he had planned his path to the acorn and shot around in a zigzagging arc as he flew toward it.
He had hesitated to fight these things since he was so outnumbered, not wanting to attract reinforcements, but it was time for that to change.
As he flew toward the wall of sporekings, Abe let his deathly energy take over, and he transformed mid-flight.
He would be more susceptible to their attacks in this form, but he would also be much stronger, and he didn’t intend for the battle to last long enough for it to matter.
Within a second, he was among them. From what he had learned, the mushrooms excelled at breaking down the innate attributes of mushrooms and turning them into attacks, but they weren’t that fast or strong.
As gray, deathly flesh enveloped him, Abe felt his strength skyrocket, and he flew into the half-dozen shroomkings in a deadly flurry, whipping out with his sword in one hand and slicing with his claws in the other.
Their defenses came slow, far too slow for Abe’s attacks when propelled like a bullet by his swinging tendrils, and in a blink, he had severed several limbs from the slow-moving sporekings.
Clouds of spores were released as the sporekings shrieked, but Abe snorted and held his breath. Reverting forms would protect him against the spores but slow him down too much. Whatever poisons they possessed, he would need to endure them for a moment.
As some of his tendrils released from the tree branches, Abe redirected them at the sporekings. The worm-like tentacles speared into the nearest sporekings and burrowed into their flesh. He was flooding his deathly energy into the mushroom men. It wasn’t as effective as the worm's toxins had been, but with the mushroom poisons and their longer reach and agility, he was sure that he was far stronger than he had been before. And if he were fighting any enemy besides the sporekings, he could flood their bodies with poisons taken from the mushroom essences he held.
Still, the sporekings were slowed and weakened as deathly energy fought to enter their systems, and it was enough of a distraction for Abe to pass by his enemies and send a tendril shooting out for the black acorn.
Wrapping around the acorn, the ribbon of white flesh tore it free and snatched it back to him.
The sporekings screamed out in rage around him, and several teleported within meters, but he simply released the ones he had slowed and used his tentacles to shoot out and hook distant branches and swing him away.
But they hadn’t given up, teleporting around him as they tried to catch up and shooting their spears through the air as if they had been fired from canons.
If it weren’t for his dozens of extra appendages swinging from side to side through the branches, Abe would have been hit and caught many times, but whenever they reached him, he swung in a different direction. The tree he was stealing from had become his ally, and in this terrain, he was unmatched.
Watching the ship below create distance, Abe swung himself toward it. While the shroomkings had some limited ability to teleport, they were obviously limited by range. He noticed them following him through the branches—they only engaged their teleporting ability when they were within a certain range. He was certain that the ship had already moved out of the sporeking’s teleporting range, and it was only moving further away.
Taking hold of several branches simultaneously, Abe slingshotted himself through the air and into the ship’s off-shooting energy. The world below sped toward him in a blur, and a fearful thought entered him briefly as he imagined himself soring straight through the off-shooting dreamer energy. But he didn’t. His body flew into the energy and became weightless as if he had fallen into a body of extremely buoyant water. He had anchored himself to the far edge of the ship’s energy, and the white, tunneling streams of the tether were already enveloping them, forming a tunnel out into the Astral Vale.
He was relatively safe now but didn’t want to stay here, pulling himself up toward the ship as fast as he could. The pilots of the vessel could turn around, he assumed, and with the treasure he had stolen, he didn’t doubt for a second that the sporekings would communicate with them and request their return.
If he were going to survive this encounter, he would need to take control of this ship for himself.
As he neared his target, he spotted mushrooms, more of the pointy-eared humanoids, and gnome-like characters aboard its deck, staring down at him.
As the tethers pulled them into the starry darkness of the Vale, he watched them prepare themselves with weapons, dismissing the last vestiges of his mushroom form to embrace his deathly form once more fully.
“So, the in-flight service comes with a meal,” he grinned as he smelled the evolutionary brains many passengers held. This would make up for leaving behind the promise of power the sporekings had.
