Chapter 154 Nest Spore 2

Looking a little displeased, Paul was forced to use an ability on a nest spore.

The ability was far too powerful for such a low level creature, it felt even a little embarrassing to use it, it felt wrong. It would be like Jay using an unstable tooth spell against an ant.

Energy coursed through his hands and into his weapon.

His deep blue cloud spear began to radiate with energy, appearing like it was fuzzy for a moment – then suddenly four other copies of it appeared in the air, floating around it.

The spears all seemed to be possessed, having minds of their own as they all began to wreak havoc on the poor wooden furnace. Slashing and thrusting recklessly, each of them were chaotic, as chaotic as the green energy within the helpless elemental they were destroying.

For the nest spore, it was simply too much damage to cope with – and much too fast.

The logs which formed its body began to tremble and collapse as its light flickered for a moment. This continued until it just couldn’t take it anymore, and after holding on for so long, it suddenly imploded with a final flash.

Life left the wood creature, never to return again.

“Nice work mate.” Paul nodded to the other guard as they began to walk back behind Jay’s V-formation. It was a casual thing for them..

This whole time, the adventurers were simply standing around watching – the swarm of elementals had all crowded around the nest spore so they had no enemies to fight. Temporarily anyway.

Some of them were even surprised at how casual the whole thing had been. The veteran guards made it look entirely too simple.

Some were even sad at how pathetic the nest spore looked under their sheer power; they expected some kind of valiant life and death battle – but no, it was simply over with a flash.

Jay, along with the other adventurers, had analysed the whole fight – not just the boss, but the guards too.

Paul and the other guard didn’t panic. One of them gave simple orders as the other followed them. They had remained calm during the whole fight, quickly dealing with any problems that sprung up during the battle.

For some of them more novice adventurers, it was an eye opening experience. Typically they would panic as soon as one unforeseen event happened during a dungeon – the worst of them acting like Peter who would turn a simple situation to shit.

Jay and his human troops now had to deal with the fallout. The nest spore had not only drawn the elementals in Jay’s field towards it, but also from the two fields on each side of them.

The other fields were barely left with anything to fight – some of the adventurers from the field on the right (the disorganised bunch) even looked on with sneering glances.

To the field on the right, it was a good thing, as each of them had been struggling desperately since the beginning.

“Ignore them.” Jay said, seeing Conroy who was being distracted by their glances.

“Pf, yeah. They couldn’t even bring down a treant. What do they know.” he chuckled as he readied himself for battle.

It was sadly true, their guard even had to kill all the treant hectopedes that came charging out of the forest. Just by looking at their faces during the battle, Jay could tell they felt a mix of desperation, frustration and shame – though this was now replaced by looks of jealousy and bitterness.

The field with Stephen’s adventurers on the left was doing just fine though. With the battle nearly over most of them look cheerfully relaxed. They had even managed to kill a treant hectopede themselves.

Some of the melee troops even looked longingly at Jay’s field, it seemed they still wanted to fight, their thirst for battle was not quenched. Fighting side by side in an intense battle had made some of them invigorated, like extroverts of the fighting world.

It was easy to tell what some of them were thinking: ‘More… more! MORE!’.

The wood elementals had almost formed a small mountain. Balls rolled over each other while the skittering nestlings ran across the tops.

The final wave of the wood elementals had gathered – and it would be focused on Jay and his human troops.

There were still more waves of wood elementals moving against other parts of Losla, but it seemed that the weak ones of the north-west had been successfully crushed.

All that was left to deal with was this single large wave of enemies.

– – –

~Mist Keep, Level 3 Dungeon, Losla~

*SCRIIIiii!*

Pain. Intense pain. It was the last thing the dihexapede soul eater felt before it died.

Perhaps it was a good thing – the only other things it felt were loneliness, hunger and an empty feeling in their souls; their hearts cried out for something that they couldn’t comprehend.

Consuming their own kind’s soul stones, found at the centre of the stone statues, would at least make two of these feelings go away, for a moment at least. It was a torturous existence.

The dihexapedes sensed a familiarity in the stone soldiers, and a sense of longing and sadness moved through them each time.

Still, it didn’t matter now; they had become monsters as they lost their minds to time, waiting in the darkness – meanwhile the stone soldiers had become their enemy, their own minds similarly broken. Perhaps they were not so different.

However, whatever familiarity they had and whatever bond they held was broken, lost to time. All that remained was emptiness and hunger.

One thing had changed in these unchanging cursed lands: there was a new enemy – the undead.

The undead in this dungeon didn’t discriminate, ruthlessly hunting both the soldiers and dihexapedes alike. It was like they were slowly carving out their own territory which would become a no-go zone.

What was odd was that it made no sense why the undead hunted them – they barely had any bones or flesh left; meanwhile the stone soldiers had none, nothing the undead could want – yet they were all culled.

It was like they were purely driven by hate. Intense, cold, uncaring hatred.

The four skeletons were slaying them with brutal efficiency – it seemed like they were even made for this, perhaps some higher intelligence had even trained them.

First, the carapace of black stone would be shattered by their iron-bone hammers. Despite there being four skeletons they would always hammer at the exact same spot, like they were being guided.

If the dihexapedes could still think properly, they would have a single thought when fighting them: ‘where did the undead get fucking hammers and armour from anyway?’

After a big enough hole was made in the carapace, the skeletons would give up the hammers and use their claw-covered hands, plunging them deep inside their weak black flesh to shred, destroy and extract whatever they could.

Somehow, the skeletons knew exactly where to grab, every time they would coincidentally find one of its black hearts.

As they ripped, tore and sliced one of their black hearts with ease, the dihexapede would take massive damage; the claws on the ends of their skeletal hands were as sharp as their killing instinct.

It was like they knew their anatomy. Just how many dihexapedes had fallen victim to these skeletons?

As the creature would fall to the ground, three of the skeletons would scramble to higher ground on the ruins – looking for their next target.

Without so much as a breath, the soul stones were extracted by a single skeleton and the hunt would begin again.

Every vessel of consciousness was a target in this dungeon, and soon those vessels would be broken. There was no such thing as rest to the undead.