Chapter 31 – Working Off the Debt

No!

Bulwark One!

I spent an entire month shaping that thing!

Damn it, there were seven or eight pieces of equipment inside!

Admittedly, Evan had raised Bulwark One’s Constitution to 40 and given it LV4 Detonation precisely to deal with anyone who refused to follow the rules.

He had not expected that precaution to become necessary so soon!

If he had known, he would have put fewer pieces of equipment inside. He had somehow managed to maximize his losses!

Humans killing humans was none of Evan’s business. He was a monster and had no reason to interfere.

But how dare someone attack his mushroom?

The guilty Dwarf had already been blown to pieces. His companion would have to repay the debt!

* * *

Nash wiped the chunks of flesh from his face. Spores and dust suspended in the air flooded his nose, making him cough in ragged bursts.

He shook his dazed head. Only after the black spots dancing across his vision began to fade did he stagger upright.

The rock around the cave entrance looked like dough crushed in an invisible giant’s fist. The opening, once six feet high, had been violently torn open to ten feet.

The fat walking mushroom and Grunbar were both gone.

No, that was wrong.

Nash spotted half a set of steel teeth embedded in a nearby tree trunk.

Grunbar had not vanished. He was everywhere.

The nearness of death sent a shudder through Nash.

Thank the gods for his little hobby. Thank the gods he had not gone with Grunbar to inspect the bulwark Puffcap.

Convinced he had narrowly escaped disaster, Nash lost all interest in tormenting Vera and the others.

He picked up his knife to finish them quickly and leave.

He fell the moment he took his first step. A long mycelial tendril had wrapped around his ankle without him noticing!

“What is this!?”

Nash hacked at the tendril with his knife, but the blade lodged only a third of the way through.

He had to saw and wrench at it repeatedly before it finally parted.

Nash tried to stand, only for another mycelial tendril to crawl up his back and coil around his waist.

Before he could swing the knife, more tendrils surged forward and bound every joint in his limbs.

Puffcaps with tendrils hanging beneath their caps had appeared all around him, encircling Nash before he realized it.

“Walking mushrooms? Tendrils?”

The Half-Elf frantically tried to reach inside his clothes for a packet of powder, but the tendrils only tightened.

“No, no!

“Take them! Eat them instead!

“Help! Hel... mmph... help...”

Countless tendrils wrapped Nash into a human-shaped cocoon. Still struggling, he was dragged deep into the forest. Only his muffled pleas remained, fading gradually among the trees.

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Fiona, the sole witness to everything, bit down hard through her trembling and refused to make a sound.

Only after every Puffcap disappeared did she begin to sob softly.

“Sever...”

“Sever...”

“Sever...”

...

Fiona did not know how many times she cast Sever before the ropes binding her finally broke.

She hurried to free her sister and Vera.

Faye was all right. She had only been knocked unconscious.

Vera’s breathing, however, was barely perceptible. He might die at any moment.

Their packs were nowhere to be seen, and all their potions had been inside.

Fiona did not know any healing spells. Without a potion, Vera would die!

Tears gathered in her eyes again.

Through her blurred vision, she caught a flash of red.

A Healing Potion!

It was the bottle the Half-Elf had taken out earlier!

Fiona scrambled toward it on all fours. Her hands shook as she poured the entire potion into Vera’s mouth.

“Cough! Cough!”

Vera suddenly choked. He did not awaken, but a hint of color finally returned to his face.

“Thank goodness. Thank... thank... sob...”

Relief washed through Fiona, and at last she let herself cry.

* * *

Deep in the forest, within the now-empty Gnoll camp, Puffcaps repeatedly smashed the Half-Elf against a rock.

Nash looked wretched beyond description. His nose was broken, every tooth had been knocked from his mouth, and half his tongue appeared to have been severed.

Barely conscious, he could make only faint, incoherent noises.

The Puffcaps continued their work with mechanical precision.

Evan was not trying to torture him. This Half-Elf needed to pay his debt with his body.

[Parasitic Fusion] could infect only a target at critically low HP.

They first had to grind Nash down to a sliver of health.

Attacking him directly with skills would be too dangerous. One careless blow might kill him.

Weakening him little by little like this was safe.

It had absolutely nothing to do with Evan holding a grudge.

Once Nash’s HP finally reached its limit, the Puffcaps elegantly sprinkled a few spores into his wounds.

Then they hung him from a tree.

In several days, a mature parasitic puppet would naturally drop to the ground.

This was Evan’s first human puppet. He intended to have plenty of fun with him... to make him properly repay his blood debt to Bulwark One!

Come to think of it, when the Puffcaps brought the Half-Elf back, Evan had also collected all the abandoned objects on the ground.

There were weapons, armor, rings, potions, packets of powder, and other odds and ends.

Seen that way, perhaps he had already recovered the value of the equipment lost inside the bulwark Puffcap.

His heart did not ache quite as much.

The Half-Elf’s debt would not be reduced, of course.

As for the bulwark Puffcap...

Fortunately, Evan had prepared in advance and produced five of them at once.

These Puffcaps with high Constitution could grow larger and store more items.

Their greater HP also dramatically increased the damage of Detonation.

The only problem was that their other Stats could not keep pace, making them painfully slow whenever they moved.

Why else would he call them bulwarks?

Bulwark One’s disastrous debut meant Evan could only send Bulwark Two to sit inside the now-enlarged cave.

The items collected this time could go into its belly for future trades.

Once people grew accustomed to paying monster carcasses as a toll and exchanging them for random items from the bulwark Puffcap, Evan would gain an endless supply of carcasses from other strata.

Adventurers’ impression of the Puffcaps should improve dramatically as well.

At the very least, they might stop attacking on sight.

Was Evan worried that he would run out of items to trade?

This was only the beginning, so naturally Bulwark Two would remain filled with valuable goods, and every adventurer who made a trade would earn a handsome profit.

Once the habit became established, Evan could stuff it with low-grade Mana Crystals as filler and occasionally add something valuable to keep the adventurers hungry for more.

Most monster carcasses were nearly worthless to adventurers anyway, so they would lose nothing by trading.

Heh!

Even Evan admired his own talent for management.

With such a wise Mycelial Sovereign in command, how could the Mycelial Garden fail to prosper?

...

Hm?

At the height of Evan’s self-satisfaction, the signals from several spore Puffcaps advancing slowly through the caverns suddenly vanished.

They had reached an incredibly deep location, one almost impossible to find without exhaustively searching every passage.

Ordinary Crystal Bats or Rock Lizards did not seem responsible. All three Puffcaps lost contact at the same instant.

Evan shifted his attention there and directed several nearby spore Puffcaps toward the location.

The moment these Puffcaps reached the same point, their health bars emptied.

Like their predecessors, they collapsed on the ground.

This time, however, Evan understood what had happened. He possessed the same skill.

It was [Infrasonic Attack] from the Crystal Bats.

In the brief instant before the Puffcaps fell, Evan also opened the enemy’s Status Panel.

[Species: Crystal Bat]

[Level: LV25]

[HP: 850/850]

[Mana: 1200/1200]

[Strength: 16/27]

[Agility: 20/34]

[Constitution: 13/22]

[Intelligence: 35/59]

[Spirit: 30/50]

[Racial Trait: increased proficiency gain for sonic and crystal skills]

[Permanent Effects:

Extreme Aging (all base Stats reduced by 80%)

Crystal Symbiosis (skill power increased by 500%)]

[Skills: Crystal Symbiosis LV10, Infrasonic Attack LV10, Echolocation LV10, Mental Resistance LV10, Physical Resistance LV8, Magic Resistance LV7, Heat Resistance LV5, Dodge LV6...]

[Titles:

Lizard Slayer: damage against lizards increased by 10%

Bat Slayer: damage against bats increased by 10%

Beyond Death: age-related negative effects are halved]