Chapter 310: Vipera antrum

Ed's mushroom body which had charged right into the cavern wall was, well, blind. Running into a wall should have been within expectations.

'I should add some sentry shrooms' Just as this thought enter Ed's mind, a new video feed entered  the mycelium network. 

'The sentry spores have started to grow into sentry shrooms' Ed said inwardly while waiting for the blurry scene in front of him to clear up. But wait as he might the scene did not clear up.

'Maybe they haven't grown quite yet' W transmitted pitching in.

'That's probably it- Wait, can you hear my thoughts?' Ed paused and asked. He had not transmitted his previous two statements. He had only been silently thinking to himself.

'Must be the network' W transmitted or thought, at this point, Ed could not say that transmission was used.

Regardless of how the communication was occurring, Ed had another question for W now.

'Why did you run into a wall then?' If he could see he shouldn't have run headfirst into any objects.

'You try moving a third person character with fixed camera positions' W retorted.

Ed concurred with himself on that point so he quickly brought the living mushroom statue into the system space. He also took back some sentry shrooms. He tossed these things into the forge to combine them.

Since the mushroom puppet was made out of mushrooms and earth, the sentry shroom were bound to mingle with the regular gray ones without issues. After a few minutes, the puppet exited the forge and Ed ran an assessment.

[Mushroom Puppet]

{ A living puppet waiting for a puppeteer. }

'This new assessment is quite reassuring' Ed commented before exiting the system with W and the puppet.

'Now this works better for me' W said looking around. Ed who was not in the body was also able to see what W saw which came as a surprise.

'The image gets a bit jittery when you move too fast, but this is quite handy' Ed told W who started using his charge skill across a field of gray mushrooms.

[<Charge> is recovering - 29 seconds]

The skill did have a cooldown but it was about half a minute. This was simply level 0 however so Ed did have some expectations for the later levels.

'I wonder if my mushrooms can advance' Looking around would quickly tell him that some were nearing level 6 or 7 with their spore skill.

After W performed some more running around he finally sat down inside a field of water crystal mushrooms.

'The body gets quite tired' The choppy connection to the network that running around created resulted in nutrients not being reliably passed. This wouldn't be an issue if Ed gave W rations but for the time being there was no need to do anything of the sort.

'Since all of my split parts can see the system while connected to the network…' It meant that Ed had to assimilate more consciousnesses. Like that he could put some parts of himself to watch over the mushrooms as a sort of logistic specialist and others into mushroom puppets.

'For now, I'll make do with one puppet' Ed's ultimate goal was to create farms so he needed a constant influx of nutrients. Thanks to the centicrawler he had recovered a lot of energy but it was already starting to decrease dramatically. The desolate corner he was made to spawn in had little vegetation or remains.

'W, can you lure over a mob from the other fields?' Ed asked the resting puppet. W faintly nodded and nutrients immediately started to cross the mycelium network and enter W's puppet body.

'Which one should I lure over though?' The other fields weren't too far but they could still hardly catch a glimpse of anything. If they could, the creature was too big for attacking it to be feasible.

'Hm… Just get another centicrawler' The previous one was immature and young, but Ed doubted the adult ones would have anything more than high endurance. Their intellect would remain the same and Ed could take advantage of their reckless use of the hundred legs skill once more.

With a target and a goal, W set out. He waved the octocrawler who was nearby goodbye  and walked towards the end of Ed's mycelium network. When he inevitably stepped out, Ed was no longer able to see through W.

After W departed, Ed entered the system space and started making new mushrooms. Previously, he had made skeleton mushrooms, metal mushrooms, and sentry mushrooms as a means of defense.

'I need offense now' He only had the suicidal doom shrooms for that job.

Ed threw a couple of arguably random objects into the holding box and the spirit smith gave him a new list of possible combinations.

[Compatible materials detected, listing acquired possible combinations]

[Blood Mushroom (!)] - Orc, Ogre Variant, Human, goblin

[Sling Mushroom (!)] - String

[Barbed Mushroom (!)] - Caltrops

The string came from a bow and the caltrops were acquired from one of the knights he defeated. Caltrops were useful for defending against Calvary and the like, but Ed saw no purpose in having them in a dungeon.

'Well, maybe there are horse mobs' He couldn't say. What Ed could say was which mushrooms should be made.

'I don't need a blood mushroom for combat but…' He did for potions, Ed immediately asked the spirit smith to manufacture all three. It wasted no time in calling out the materials as it had finished up the previous queue already.

'I ran out of lots of iron now but…' He could just smelt the mushrooms later. Not necessarily in the system forge, however. It wasn't easy to separate things without the help of the system and it hadn't offered a hand.

'Maybe there's an upgrade' But a brief look at the upgrade catalog told Ed there was nothing.

Approximately an hour later, Ed had started to plant the new mushrooms. He set up a defensive wall of metal shrooms around the sentry shrooms and a defensive wall of skeleton shrooms around the blood shrooms.

The sling mushrooms were also placed inside the defensive wall of metal mushrooms. The barbed mushrooms, which there were few of, were placed as a perimeter wall between himself and any incoming enemies.

'Which speaking of…' The large mushroom puppet came charging forward with a creature chasing behind it. W had already brought multiple centicrawlers which Ed had eaten up to speed up the creation of the barbed shroom wall. But this creature was NOT a centicrawler.

[Vipera antrum]

'THE DAMN THING IS TOO FAST!!!' W screamed as he burst forward briefly.

The Vipera antrum which had a stout body and gray patterns unhinged its maw and lunged forward to address the sudden speed up.

[You've been dealt damage. -47 hp]

An indirect hit landed on the fleeting puppet which caused Ed to also see the message.

'Damn it' Ed cursed knowing that he needed to do something quickly. The hit not only dealt damage, but it also ruined the puppet's balance! W started stumbling and rolling forward.

The Viper which tailed him closer seemed to want to wrap around it while simultaneously unhinging its nasty maw and preparing to sink its teeth into the mushroom puppet.

That was at least until it suddenly got a mouthful of death and fire. Since W had entered the mycelium range the viper had obviously done the same!

More and more doom shrooms appeared from Ed's storeroom and bombarded the viper until its gray scales were replaced with charred black ones and its wounds started to rot from the excessive death element.

'That was close' W transmitted with a tinge of fear and relief. The fear was of perishing away from Ed, and the relief was that he had reconnected to the network.

Ed also calmed down, the situation had been a bit unexpected but fortunately manageable. The previous catch of W had indeed helped amp defense, even if the perimeter was not yet done.

'What happened?' Ed had to ask what went wrong, he had lured young centicrawlers before. What changed?

'The mushroom drones attacked me!' W exclaimed with some frustration. He was about to charge into a centicrawler to get its attention, but all of a sudden the mushrooms in the area started to attack him.

'Attacked…' Ed muttered to himself understanding how that happened. The fungi in the ground must have tried to eat up the one on W's body as a means of retaliation. 

'The drones then also tried to attack me' They were sluggish but W still had to retreat quickly. If they did catch him, they could also try to eat away at him. With the small reserve he was provided fighting back would have been difficult.

But retreat was apparently not an option as a viper suddenly noticed his retreating figure and chased after.

'It just attacked?' Ed thought curiously. For the thing to attack it had to be certain that W was either an easy snack or worth the effort.

'Yes, that's right… I think the viper might have been… possessed' W transmitted with some hints of uncertainty. If that was true then some magic mushrooms had learned a hypnotism or parasitism skill.

'It could also be built differently from the other shrooms, or a new one altogether' The monster encyclopedia did not list parasitism as a trait of magic mushrooms after all.

'Where did the dungeon even put me?' Was he tossed into the cavern where it created and tested its abominations rather than the next floor?

'...but there was also no mushroom drones' Ed was suddenly struck with the realization that where he was might be more unusual than he previously anticipated.