Shadowcroft's Academy for Dungeons Chapter 8
Added 2020-07-15 00:08:50 +0000 UTC
Logan stepped into a gloomy, rocky cavern, filled with towering stalagmites and stalactites like the teeth of some monstrous creature. Flittering bugs, each the size of a quarter, buzzed lazily through the air, shedding witchy green light from glowing abdomens. The light bounced off the slick stone columns and rippled across shallow-looking pools of water dotting the ground in pockets. Logan instantly felt a rush of relief—if all he had to do was swat a few bugs, he’d be golden. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all, he thought.
As a landscaper, he was well familiar with bugs of every variety and had no problem serving up justice with the bottom of a metaphorical shoe—
That thought fled a heartbeat later as he caught the scrape of hooves on stone and movement blurred in the corner of his bulbous eye. Across the cavern, loitering in a pool of murk, was the biggest hog Logan had ever seen. Boar was probably a more accurate term, though even that wasn’t quite right since this thing was covered in thick grey hide, had blazing red eyes, and curving tusks long enough and sharp enough to shish kabob him straight through. The thing’s mouth was the size of a manhole cover and compared to Logan, this thing seemed to be the size of a small car. It snorted its piggy snout and its eyes narrowed as it caught sight on the interloper.
Logan glanced down at his pitiful rusty dagger, then back up at the rabid, genetically altered Pumbaa out for blood. Of course it would be a pig—probably a truffle-sniffing boar hellbent on his destruction. No way did he stand a chance. Not in a straight up fight.
Logan stowed the knife and exchanged it for the rope and grappling hook instead.
The monster boar snorted again and pawed at the ground, lowering his head—clearly preparing to charge.
An idea slithered through Logan’s mind.
What if he didn’t have to fight this thing at all? What if he could somehow get passed it instead? The doors didn’t require a key, so if he could just avoid being impaled, he might be able to escape to a more favorable room. Thinking fast and working faster, he whirled the rope round-round-round and tossed it up, aiming at a crevice near one of the hanging stalactites. The grappling hook clanged loudly and dropped to the ground. The boar chose that moment to charge, flying toward Logan, hooves kicking up rooster tails of water in passing.
Logan wondered if mushrooms in France felt like this when the pigs came sniffing. He frantically spun the rope again, hurling it up, muttering a silent prayer under his breath. Clang! This time the hook caught and when he applied pressure to the rope, it held. Grabbing on with grubby arms, he wormed his way up the rope—coiling it around one leg to make the work easier going. As a fungaloid, he didn’t have much upper body strength, but thankfully he also weighed next to nothing. Plus, climbing a rope was really more about technique than raw strength and thanks to his time in the Corps, he had that technique down in spades.
As quickly as he moved, however, the boar moved faster. It closed the distance in a matter of seconds.
Logan was well on the way toward the ceiling, but one of his legs was still dangling a little too closely to the ground. A fact he realized too late when the boar reared up and clamped down around his foot with incredible crushing pressure. He felt a flash of pain lance up through his limb and he had a momentary flashback to his time in Iraq. God, but he hoped he wasn’t about to lose a leg straight out of the gate; though, there would be no small amount of irony in that. But instead of panicking, he felt something build inside of him. It was almost like a reflex, a knee twitch.
He thought of his rudimentary spore attack: pollen.
No sooner had he conjured the image in his mind than a cloud of yellow spores poured from his gills under his toadstool cap. The motes of dust danced in the air, getting into the creature’s eyes and snout, filling its mouth with a chalky yellow residue. The boar recoiled at once, before promptly letting out a honking sneeze that shook the room from the sheer force.
The pollen attack didn’t seem to hurt the boar in the least, but it had distracted it just enough for Logan to pull his wounded foot up and climb the rest of the way to the top of the rope, well out of reach from the ravenous boar.
Logan let out trembling laugh. This was fine. He was safe. He had a second to breath.
From up high, he could easily see both the golden door and the blue door. Both doors were too far away. With only one rope, there was no way to get to the other stalactites and the thought of somehow leaping along the upward-jutting stalagmites was laughable. He’d bought himself a little time, sure, but he’d really only prolonged the inevitable. If he wanted out of this chamber, it would be over that boar’s dead body, literally. And speaking of, the hairy beast was now circling below, snorting and pawing at the ground as it watched Logan’s hanging form with hate-filled eyes—which were red and inflamed thanks to his awesome fungaloid powers.
“Too bad you don’t have your inhaler, Piggy,” Logan crowed.
The boar sneezed and snotted—that wasn’t much of a consolation because it soon cleared its sinuses. Maybe the monster had secret Benadryl powers.
Logan knew he wasn’t going to allergy the thing to death, and he doubted the rusted dagger would even pierce its tough hide.
As a former ground pounder, his natural instinct was just to brawl, but he wasn’t a grunt anymore he reminded himself—he was a mushroom. Choosing fungaloid had gotten him here and being a fungaloid was going to get him out, dammit. But he needed to know what tools he had at his disposal. Dangling like a Christmas ornament, he tried to pull up his character sheet again. This time though, he pressed his eyes shut and visualized what he wanted to happen, envisioning the floating screen in his mind’s eye. He felt a trickle of energy in his belly—his core activating just as it had when he released the spore cloud.
When he opened his eyes again, the screen was floating before him.
<<< >>>
Logan Murray
Guardian Core Matrix
Base Race: Fungaloid
Current Evolution: Toadstool
Cultivator Class: Deep Root Cultivators; E Class, Rank 9
Primary Elemental Affinities: Morta/Toxicus
Racial Abilities:
- Digestion
Racial Skill:
Domestic Fungi
- Cultivated Fungi: Outstanding Allotment!
Fungal Form (Active):
- Harden
Fungal Form (Passive):
- Fungal Vision
Spore Halo:
- Pollen
- Symbiosis
<<< >>>
Logan felt an ember of hope stir in his chest and a surge of wild adrenaline race through his limbs. He had options here—way more than Shadowcroft had let on about. He was sorely regretting the fact that he hadn’t gotten even a basic rundown on how all of this worked, but he was no stranger to chaos, pain, or hardship. Logan would improvise, adapt, and overcome, just like he always had. He needed to act quickly, though, since his arms were starting to get tired and he couldn’t just hang here all day. He needed out of this dungeon and the quicker the better. His eyes skipped passed the first few options, dismissing them since he’d seen them before.
He started on Digestion and worked his way down the list, looking for anything that might help.
<<<>>>
Digestion: Consume immobile and dead creatures to absorb more of their core-essence, and instantly convert it to usable Apothos. Fungi are nothing if not efficient, and that efficiency is on full display in the digestion ability! Would you like to learn more about the digestive abilities of the fungaloid? Yes/No?
<<<>>>
Hmm, that sounded like it might have some interesting uses down the road, but since the boar below was neither dead nor immobile it didn’t seem particularly useful at the moment. He moved on to the Racial Skill, Domestic Fungi:
<<<>>>
Domestic Fungi: There are thousands of types of mundane and magical mushrooms that grow throughout the realms connected to Ashvattha. But the fungaloid can spawn many of the rarest, deadliest, and most valuable mushrooms around. These fungi can be quite useful to dungeoneers and attract those looking for rare alchemic ingredients. More advanced types of fungi can have additional abilities or even be mobile and aggressive. Proto-Spores Cultures live inside of the host fungaloid and can be spawned even if mature specimens are lost, destroyed, or harvested. Mature mushrooms can take days or even weeks to grow, though it is possible to drastically increase maturity with the Rapid Growth Spore Ability.
As an E-Class, Rank 9 Cultivator, you can select two Level-One Proto-Spore Cultures and one Level-Two Proto-Spore Culture. Would you like to view a list of available Proto-Spore Cultures? Yes/No?
<<<>>>
Logan absolutely wanted to get a gander at the different mushrooms he could domesticate and grow, but his fleshy arms were burning and none of those would help with his current circumstances. The skill box said they could take hours or even days to grow and he needed something that would help right now. So, he dismissed the info and moved on to the next item on the list, Fungal Form Active.
<<<>>>
Fungal Form 1: Harden. Trigger Harden to temporarily calcify your exterior by 25%, reducing damage, though at a 20% reduction to speed. Harden is a stackable ability and can stack up to four times. At higher levels, this turns into Chitin Armor, creating hardened plates of chitin—similar to an insect’s exoskeleton. Light but resilient, the chitin reinforces the body without being cumbersome.
Available at: E Class, Rank 10+
<<<>>>
On the surface this one seemed absolutely worthless—seriously, what good would it be to turn yourself into an immovable brick of petrified wood? He was on the verge of moving on when inspiration struck. Under normal circumstances this skill would be basically useless, but these weren’t normal circumstances. He was dangling thirty feet above a rampaging murder-boar, his arms only a matter of minutes from giving out. True, Harden was obviously meant to be a defensive ability, but in this situation he could use it offensively.
He probably only weighed seventy pounds or so, but seventy pounds of calcified rock, dropped from thirty feet had to do something. Right?
He wasn’t exactly spoiled for choices, so he made a snap decision. That was something else the military had pounded into his head. Initiative and decision making—because no decision was often worse than making a bad decision.
Logan focused on meager energy radiating out from his core.
With a thought and an effort of will, he triggered Harden. Energy surged out of his core creeping into his limbs, turning him into a reinforced husk of his former self. Since it was a stackable ability, he added another dose—his joints stiffened and his muscles felt sluggishly tight. He was also sustainably heavier, putting an additional strain on his frail arms and sloth like hands. With a grimace, Logan tucked his knees up into his chest, trying to transform himself into a tight little ball while still clinging desperately to the rope. He used every last bit of energy in his core to add a third and fourth layer of armor, maxing out the ability. He was a chitin covered mushroom almost as wide as he was tall. NO way could he hold on.
The rope slipped through his petrified fingers and he plummeted toward the ground, air rushing past him. Logan’s stomach lurched into his throat and he hoped fervently that he hadn’t just killed himself during his first combat encounter. Well, then Shadowcroft could warn the next yahoo who thought being a fungaloid was a good idea.
Below, the boar roared in a frenzied fury, rearing up on its hind legs, mouth yawing wide to claim its falling prey. Logan rotated and a moment later his back slammed into the creature’s tusks and fangs, smashing through them baseball bat to the teeth. The creature squealed in pain, but it was too late for that. Logan was lodged firmly in the creature’s oversized mouth—a bitter pill that the monster hog couldn’t swallow. The boar dropped to all fours, crunching on Logan’s hardened exterior, trying to turn him into a tasty shiitake snack.
Logan didn’t feel a thing. He was an unbreakable jawbreaker, laughing in the face of the laws of mastication.
The boar was wheezing now, walking in drunken circles, trying its best to spit Logan out, but that didn’t work either. Logan couldn’t move much, or fast, but he was able to use his frail arms to lodge himself in place, slowly choking the air from the boar’s lungs. After a handful of minutes, the creature toppled onto its side, seizing then finally falling still. Despite being lodged in a boar’s mouth and covered in monster slobber, Logan felt like an absolute champion! He’d done it, he’d killed something!
Maybe Shadowcroft would have to re-think his stance on the fungal Guardian Form.
Ha! Logan thought. He had to think it because he couldn’t actually laugh—he had what basically amount to lockjaw. But a win was a win.
After what felt like a lifetime, Harden wore off enough for Logan to pull himself, inch by drool covered inch, from the boar’s mouth, tumbling out onto the dusty floor. He stood with a groan, testing out his mauled foot and finding that it could bear weight even though it still looked like a mangled piece of portabella on a cooking show. These Guardian Forms were far more resilient than the typical human body.
Satisfied, he turned his attention back to the dead hog, just waiting to be processed. Since this was game of sorts, that meant there should be loot. He dropped to a knee and placed a hand against the creature’s course side, trying to see if there was some way to open an inventory. But nothing.
He did, however, feel a faint thrum of power radiating out from the beast. The same power that he felt burbling into the gem lodged in his belly button. Apothos. The energy of the universe. He focused on that potent buzz—like a live wire running beneath his fingertips—and, on instinct, drew the power inward. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. Like a man dying of thirst, sucking up water through bendy straw. It flowed effortlessly through his fingers, coursing along unseen pathways in his arms, and directly into his core where it hit like a shot of Jack. Hot and angry and potent.
Logan had never felt more alive or more powerful.
He also was determined to get something more out of this hog. He removed his knife from the pack and went to work, cutting through the tough outer hide and skinning the beast, revealing dense muscle underneath. With a few quick strokes, he cut off a hunk of meat. He had no idea what kind of food they would serve at Shadowcroft, but he knew one thing for certain. He would be eating bacon. With a grin, he rose to his feet, feeling like he could move mountains, and headed for the golden door at the far end of the chamber.
It was time to rack up some more wins by finishing this dungeon run!
Keep Reading Here: Chapter Nine
