Collide Gamer

Chapter 122 – Good old Forest Elementals.

John counted down the timer. They had beaten the Wood Giant, the boss of the fifth wave of the Forest Elementals dungeon, with relative ease. The reason for that was pretty simple: it was made out of wood and Salamander set him on fire. Sure, it wasn’t THAT easy to just set the creature on fire and the tree trunk arms aflame had been extra threatening, but all around it was still a smooth fight.

When John thought about it, the hardest boss he had faced this far, compared to his level at the time, was probably the Vermintide. Anything else he could defeat by simple kiting, making all of their great abilities totally useless. The oppressive number of rats with their simple assault tactic was dangerously effective. It was best to think about countermeasures to that sort of attack at some point.

The timer reached 0 and the forest went through a sudden transformation. The air became humid and filled with spores that tinged the air slightly yellow like a poisonous mist. Indeed, every breath John took felt slightly painful.

‘Huh, that is one way to up the difficulty level, also I guess we are going with a mushroom theme this time around.’ John thought. 2 HP per minute was not immediately concerning (Although it vastly outclassed his health regeneration) but who knew what other nasty effects might pop up over time.

“Sylph, Salamander, can you take care of these spores?” John asked and indeed they could. Burning and blowing off the spores, they cleared a free area where John could breathe freely again. “Were any of you affected?” he asked and looked around.

Aclysia immediately shook her head, she only needed to breathe to speak in the first place.

“Burnt them out,” Salamander stated with her usual mean grin.

“Held my breath!” Sylph boasted.

‘Cleansed,’ Undine whispered into his mind.

A wave of embarrassment followed soon thereafter. Gnome was too busy trying to break off the various small mushrooms that popped up all over her body to respond. They were not harming her, the HP bar informing John of that much. It seemed that she was less getting affected by the Spore Infection and more by the general environmental effect. Her body, made of dirt, made for as good a bed as the rest of the forest. From the ground and the trees, the fungal bodies quickly spread.

‘Is it painful?’ John asked through the mental connection.

‘No, John, just… unpleasant,’ came the swift answer.

‘We can’t have that,’ He decided and instructed Salamander to burn the mushrooms away - carefully. In the meantime, he kept an eye on the surroundings. He noted three different kinds of mushrooms. The first one were the ones that grew on the ground and Gnome, long and thin with tiny heads that only sprouted upwards, they seemed to fulfil no other purpose than to set the new ambience.

The other two were much more concerning, there was one that seemed to consist only of one giant head, about half a metre in diameter, of bright red colour with yellow spots. It grew very close to the ground. The last kind infected the trees, white outward growths that quickly covered most of the bark. The reason John was concerned about the latter two was because they were shaking in a way that made them look very eager to burst out into movement.

The suspicion he had was confirmed just a moment later, when a hand appeared from beneath the ground. A second one followed just a moment later – then a third and a fourth. The hands were of the same bright red as the mushroom caps they sprouted around. The four-armed monster unearthed itself and revealed its form. Two stumpy legs on a round, yellow body, four arms that grew from it as far distanced from each other as possible and the big cap on top. It had no eyes or mouth, yet John was certain he was at the centre of the creature’s attention.

The exploding part was slightly worrying, as was the number that started popping up all around. Aclysia was likely immune to poison so he had little worry in sending her to the front lines, The spores still hanging in the air would infect him and Gnome though, which meant he needed Sylph and Salamander around to keep the air clean. This would be a lot more defensive than he was used to. “Keep close!” he therefore instructed just as the white shrooms on the trees started bulging outwards, giving birth to an old acquaintance of John.

‘That throws things out of whack,’ John thought. Ranged attackers, however weak their attacks were individually, threw a wrench into his defensive strategy. “Okay, new plan. Aclysia you take out the Treants ASAP, the rest of us will stay here and hold our ground. Gnome, create a slanted plateau so that we have the high ground, Undine, prepare to block whatever kind of attacks the Treants will shoot at us!”

Aclysia nodded and clutched the Cleaver of Streets in her hand before storming off. John poured his mana into Gnome and she changed the battlefield as he requested. His mana bar was a bit of a cause of concern. Setting the Wood Giant on fire had cost John a fair amount of mana. After Gnome was done taking this new toll, he was down to 489. At least he had what he wanted to show for it.

John and his elementals now stood on a circular platform, atop a small hill, putting them about two metres above the rest of the forest ground. The sides of the hill were loose dirt, soft and difficult to climb. An activity the Sporelings immediately engaged in. Only the ones right next to Aclysia paid any mind to her, the rest waddled towards John. They were slow, hypnotically so and although their number was concerning only so many of them could climb the hill at once.

With singular assailants like that, Mana Ray was probably his best bet. He could kill one every 25 seconds and remain at status quo with his mana. Raising his newly gloved hands he used the Skill. For a moment a panicked thought surfaced, ‘Wait, the attack originates from my palm, wouldn’t it just destroy the glove?!’ but it was already too late, so he kept his hand steady at the quickest of the Sporelings.

Thankfully, Gaia was not that strict in her game design. The Mana Ray bypassed the glove and hit the Sporeling’s red body. It stumbled backwards, a mixture of blue lightning and smoke rising from its fungal flesh. As it rolled down the slope, it turned into ash and dust. Mana Ray was still as strong as ever. For its cost, it better be.

John saw a ball of wet spores fly at him. The projectile was slow and Undine had no trouble blocking it by stretching her body into its trajectory. Following the path back to its origin, John's eyes landed on an Infected Treant. Aclysia cleaved it apart like a woodcutter with their axe a moment later.

His Artificial Guardian was being chased by a small army of the Sporelings. She attracted them just by moving and kept their attention by being the closest target. She ignored the slow moving horde in favour of killing more of the Treants. The monsters rooted themselves at the foot of the hill, in order to bombard John at the top. It made them an easy target. Aclysia was tirelessly keeping at it, running counter-clockwise and quickly disposing of whatever Treant she came across. The horde of Sporelings that followed her eventually reached critical mass. She picked new ones up at the same rate as the ones at the back became disinterested with the distant target.

Even with Aclysia’s indirect contribution, there were still a ton of them that tried to climb the hill. Salamander and Sylph teamed up to take on one of the things after another, while Gnome and Undine kept close to do their usual job of protecting John. He used another Mana Ray after some hesitation. He disliked spending more of his mana but there were too many to ignore and so his MP gradually dwindled as he took care of more enemies than his regeneration could cover.

He felt like he was in some kind of reaction based rhythm game, using his Bee to keep complete vision of his surroundings and his hand to laser whatever passed the threshold of his comfort. ‘Might as well,’ John thought and used the Laser Beeam for the first time. Pointing the stinger of his Possession at one of the Sporelings he unleashed the enchantment. He hoped for something great. What he got was a yellow beam that struck through several of the Sporelings, which then proceeded to roll down the distance they had travelled. However, they didn’t vanish after arriving at the foot of the hill. Paralysis, not kills, yet good enough for something that was essentially free. Too bad it had a long cooldown.

A sudden explosion demanded his focus. Barely, the Gamer caught a slightly burned Sylph that was tumbling towards him. “What happened?” he wanted to know, he hadn’t given any mana to Salamander. Considering the happy cackles, he assumed the fire spirit was the cause of this in some form.

“Dunno, we attacked one of them and then he went boom-boom,” Sylph’s cheery tone indicated that the bit of soot on her armour was the worst of it.

Two Treant projectiles hit Undine, causing John to look for Aclysia next. She was still at the foot of the hill, however instead of taking care of Treants like before she was currently occupied by a couple of Sporelings holding onto her left leg, slowing down her movements. John noticed the cap of them swell unnaturally and he could see exactly what would happen next. They burst into another explosion, spores quickly dissipating through the air. The cloud expanded halfway up the hill before Sylph rose from John’s hand and blew it away by whirling around and locking it in a wind tunnel.

In John’s mind the facts came together and he formulated a plan. A daring plan, sure, but unlike the one he had to deal with the Vermintide, it was of low risk to himself. He left his position on top of the hill, sending hasty instructions and explanations to everyone else. He grabbed one of the Sporelings by an arm and picked him up only to slam it to the ground a moment later. This would have proven a stupid idea days ago, when his Strength was just slightly more than that of an eighteen year old nerd. Now he was at Strength 25. Not physically imposing enough to make him confident in engaging other Abyssals, but definitely at the edge of superhuman.

When the Sporeling began to bloat, John tossed the thing as far as he could. “Salamander!” he shouted. It was his theory that the earlier explosion had been caused by Salamander hitting a Sporeling at the exact time of its own explosion, causing the spores to ignite in an effect similar to a dust explosion before they could dissipate. If they could nail the timing they would have an extremely effective way to use fire without John having to sacrifice what little mana he still had.

Salamander broke out the smokescreen, a flame flickering through the air burning hot as it consumed what John offered her, and collided with the Sporeling at the exact time of its explosion. A wave of heat rolled over the hill, consuming several other Sporelings in the process. Salamander herself lost a bit of HP in the process, but not enough to dissuade him from this plan. Especially since she was having so much fun in the process. ‘Okay, let’s repeat this. Aclysia, how are you doing with the Treants?’

‘The numbers are dwindling, Master.’ She answered a heartbeat later and so they continued their fight with hope and an effective plan.