The tunnel of pulsing flesh wasn't a tunnel. It was a throat.
We stumbled into a vast, cavernous space inside the corpse of some colossal fungal growth. The walls were spongy, weeping clear sap that stank of vinegar. Phosphorescent lichen provided a ghastly green light. The air was so thick with spores it felt like swimming.
And it was a dead end.
"Shit! Shit, shit, shit!" Jax was hyperventilating, clutching his acid-burned arm, his eyes wide behind his mask.
"Vorca! Seal it!" Selene's command sliced through the panic.
The lizard-kin didn't hesitate. She slammed her club into the spongy wall beside the entrance we'd just come through. A grunt of effort, and her Earth affinity flared. With a wet tearing sound, a section of the fleshy ceiling collapsed, burying the tunnel entrance under a ton of dripping, fibrous biomass. It wouldn't hold for long. The chittering of the Striders was already muffled, digging.
"Light, Mara," Selene ordered, her winter-grey eyes scanning the cavern.
Mara raised her staff. "Fire ball." A steady, contained ball of fire no bigger than an apple bloomed at the tip, casting long, dancing shadows. The light fell on the cavern's center.
There, growing from a mound of what looked like blackened bone and decaying wood, were five fungi. They were cap-shaped, the color of a week-old bruise, with rivulets of viscous, metallic-smelling fluid weeping from their gills. Weeping Caps. The air around them hummed with a faint, discordant energy.
And standing sentinel before them was the guardian.
It was a mockery of a human form, seven feet tall, assembled from the bones of forest creatures—deer ribs formed a cage for its torso, wolf skulls fused for shoulders, finger bones clattering as it moved. But this skeleton was packed and sheathed in a dense, fibrous, violet fungus that pulsed with its own sickly life. Where a face should be was a smooth, concave disc of mushroom flesh, with a single, vertical slit that emitted a visible, shimmering distortion in the air—the psychic "song."
[Monarch's Gaze - Target Locked: Spore Nyx (Fungal Amalgam)]
[Cultivation Equivalent: 3rd Order, Rank 4 (Psionic/Fungal Symbiosis).]
[Primary Ability: Psychic Spore Emission (Cognitive Disruption, Mana Leech).]
[Secondary Ability: Bone-Fungal Construct (Enhanced Strength/Durability).]
[Weakness: Extreme Heat, Sonic Disruption, Disruption of Central Psionic Node (located in thoracic cavity).]
A 3rd Order beast. And it had just noticed us.
The shimmer from its face-slit intensified. A wave of palpable wrongness washed over us. My mask filtered the physical spores, but this was a psychic attack. It slithered against my mind, a greasy, compelling whisper: Lie down. It doesn't hurt. Become part of the beautiful decay...
Jax gasped, then let out a choked giggle. "It's... it's okay... it's all okay..." He took a step forward, a blissful smile on his ruined face.
"Jax, no!" Mara grabbed his collar.
The Spore Nyx's bone-fungus hand rose. It didn't point at Mara. It pointed at her staff. The Fire ball guttered, dimming by half, the heat leaching away as if sucked into a void. Mara's eyes widened in shock. "My mana... it's draining!"
"Disrupt its focus!" Selene snapped, already moving. She was a streak of grey, her knife aimed for the shimmering air around the Nyx's "face."
The creature was fast. It swatted her aside with a backhand blow from a limb that ended in a fused mass of antler points and fungus. Selene twisted in mid-air, landing in a crouch, but I saw her wince. The thing hit like a runaway cargo hauler.
Vorca charged with a roar, her club aiming for its legs. The Nyx didn't dodge. It took the blow on a thigh of packed fungus and bone. There was a crack, but the limb held. A tendril of violet fungus shot from the point of impact, wrapping around Vorca's club. She tried to pull back, but the fungus held with unnatural strength, starting to crawl up the weapon towards her hands.
Chaos. Our heavy hitter was neutered. Our scout was charmed. Our handler was out-sped. And the goddamn Striders were scratching at the blocked entrance.
I moved for Jax.
Mara was struggling to maintain her flame and hold onto the entranced wind adept. I reached them, grabbed Jax by the shoulder, and spun him around.
"Look at me, you idiot!" I snarled.
His glazed, happy eyes focused vaguely on mine. The psychic whisper was a constant pressure. I didn't have a sonic attack. But I had something else. My Killing Intent.
I focused it into a needle, a single, ice-cold spike of pure, undiluted malice, and I drove it straight through his psychic defenses and into his mind.
Jax's blissful smile vanished. His eyes bulged. He let out a short, sharp scream of pure terror as my mental "voice" echoed in his head: SNAP OUT OF IT OR YOU'RE FUNGUS FOOD!
He stumbled back, falling on his ass, vomiting inside his mask. But he was present. Terrified, but present.
"Get your wind blades ready and cut those damn tendrils on Vorca's club!" I barked at him before turning away.
The Nyx had backhanded Vorca, sending the lizard-kin sprawling. It now turned its attention—and its mana-leeching field—fully on Mara, who was being forced to pour more and more power just to keep her flame from dying, sweat beading on her forehead.
Selene was darting in and out, her shadow-knife leaving shallow cuts that oozed black sap, but she couldn't get a killing blow. The Nyx's fungal flesh seemed to absorb the darkness.
It needed to be disrupted. Shaken. Its concentration broken.
I charged with my blades out. It saw me coming, a lesser threat. It swung that antler-fist again in a wide, predictable arc.
I ducked under it, the air whistling where my head had been. I came up inside its guard, my left short sword stabbing for the "thoracic cavity" my Gaze had highlighted. The point hit the fused rib-fungus and skidded off, barely piercing the surface. Damn thing was tough.
It backhanded me with its other arm. I crossed my blades in a desperate parry.
CLANG!
The impact was monstrous. It felt like blocking a falling anvil. My bones shuddered. I was flung backwards, skidding through the slimy floor, my arms screaming in protest. One of my swords spun from my numb fingers.
The Nyx loomed over me, its blank face-slit humming, drinking in my fear. It raised a foot—a cloven hoof of bone and fungus—to stomp.
A blast of superheated air hit it from the side. "Back off, you rot-licker!" Mara roared. She'd abandoned defense, channeling everything into a single, desperate Fire Jet from her staff. The concentrated stream of flame washed over the Nyx's side, making the fungus shriek and blacken. The mana-leeching field flickered.
The Nyx staggered, turning its fury on her.
This was it. Its focus was split.
I rolled to my feet, my right hand still clutching one sword. My left was empty, throbbing. I didn't need it.
I focused on my Earth core, on that deep, grounding certainty. I couldn't shape this corrupted ground. But I could use the principle. Density. Impact.
I poured Earth mana into my legs, my spine, my remaining fist. I didn't glow. I just became heavier, more solid, a living weapon.
The Nyx had Mara on the ropes, her fire sputtering under its renewed attention. Selene was a blur, trying to find an opening.
I took two running steps and launched myself with the force of a landslide with my earth mana.
I slammed shoulder-first into the Nyx's burned side, right where Mara's fire had weakened it.
There was a wet, cracking sound, like stepping on a rotten log. The creature staggered. The psychic hum stuttered.
I didn't let up. I dropped my sword, wrapped my arms around its torso—the fungus was cold and slippery—and squeezed. Earth-enhanced strength met fungal resilience. I heard more cracks. Sap oozed over my arms, burning where it touched skin.
The Nyx shrieked, a sound that was half psychic wail, half physical tearing. It brought its elbows down on my back. Once. Twice. Stars exploded behind my eyes. Something cracked. A rib. Maybe two.
But I held on, my face pressed against its cold, fibrous body. I could feel a central, hard, rapidly vibrating mass in its chest—the psionic node.
"Selene! The chest! Now!" I gritted out, my voice a raw scrape.
She was there in an instant. Her knife, wreathed in a darkness that seemed to finally bite into the fungal flesh, plunged past my arms, deep into the Nyx's thoracic cavity.
There was a final, silent psychic scream that made my nose bleed. The vibration stopped. The glowing lichen in the cavern flickered violently.
The Nyx went rigid, then collapsed, its fungal body rapidly deflating and decaying into a putrid slurry.
I let go, falling to my knees beside the dissolving mess, gasping, my chest on fire.
Silence, broken only by the distant scratching of Striders and our ragged breathing.
Mara stood panting, her staff-light steady again. Vorca was getting up, shaking her head. Jax was white-faced, holding a jagged wind-blade in a trembling hand, having finally severed the tendrils on Vorca's club.
Selene wiped her blade on a clean part of her coat, her expression unreadable. She looked at the dissolving Nyx, then at me, kneeling in the muck.
"Good one," she said flatly. "Brutal. Stupid. But effective." She nodded towards the Weeping Caps. "Harvest them. Quickly. That collapse won't hold forever."
I pushed myself up, every muscle protesting. I walked to the caps. Up close, the coppery smell was overwhelming. Using my remaining sword, I carefully cut them at the base, placing the sticky, weeping fungi into the lead-lined specimen box Selene provided.
As I worked, I saw it. Among the blackened bones at the base of the fungal mound, half-buried in decay, was a leather pouch. It was rotted, but something inside glinted. I nudged it with my sword tip. It tore open.
Coins spilled out. Tarnished silver. And three thick, heavy coins of unmistakable gold. The universal currency. A small fortune for a journeyman hunter or a lost herbalist. The previous victim of this place.
I didn't hesitate. While the others were tending wounds or watching the blocked entrance, I swiftly scooped the coins into my own pocket. The weight was satisfying. In this world, gold bought silence, bought favors, bought a way out. It was a different kind of power.
"Damian! Are you done? We need to go!" Selene called.
"Done," I said, sealing the specimen box and walking back, the gold a secret, comforting weight against my thigh.
We fled the cavern through a narrow fissure Selene found at the rear, leaving the Blightwood and its horrors behind. The return journey in the Skimmer was silent, thick with the smell of blood, fungus, and earned exhaustion.
Back at the pocket dimension's training yard, under the hellish red light, Selene handed the specimen box to a waiting acolyte. She turned to us.
"Mission accomplished. House Credits have been allotted to your ledgers. Jax, report to the infirmary. Vorca, Mara, Damian—you're on standby for the next assignment in 48 hours. Dismissed."
As we walked away, Mara fell into step beside me. She was quiet for a moment, then spoke, her voice low.
"You didn't have to do that. Grab that thing."
"I did if I wanted to live," I said.
She shook her head. "Not that. I mean... getting Jax back. You could have let the spores take him. One less weak link."
I looked at her. Her face was smudged with soot and sap, her red hair escaping its tie.
"Weak links can be strengthened," I said, holding her gaze. "Or used as bait. A dead recruit is just a waste. A living one who owes you is an asset."
A slow, grim smile touched her lips. The smile of one predator acknowledging another's hunting style. "Asset," she repeated. "Right."
She walked away, heading for the female barracks.