Beneath Jake at the bottom of his ladder was a big mushroom cap around the size of a car moving around.
Every now and then out from under the cap a cloud of spores was sent into the nearby surroundings.
Jake had no idea what he was looking at exactky, but he certainly wasn’t planning to go anywhere close to the big moving mushroom.
Instead he ordered his drone to go down and take a closer look, he connected to the drone and immediately a window appeared in front of him, showing the perspective of the drone as it flew down towards the mushroom.
Yesterday when he had been walking towards the big rock he was currently residing in, he had been doing little experiments with the drone, and he had figured out how to get a live feed of what the drone was seeing as long as it was within range of him.
Just like the drone’s description had told him, this live feed was only shown to him if the drone was within 100 meters of him (330ft).
As the drone got closer to the mushroom he got a better view of what was actually going on under the moving mushroom''s cap.
Under the cap were thousands of tiny tendrils moving the mushroom around. Jake was captured by the sight of the tiny tendrils moving in patterns and fluid motions, the stem of the mushroom seemingly being made from thousands of intertwined tendrils.
When the drone finally got close enough though, the mushroom and its tendrils suddenly froze in their place.
He quickly ordered the drone to stop getting closer and just observe for a little bit, as a precaution he also ordered his drone to take evasive manoeuvres if the mushroom made any weird movements.
He watched on with interest, waiting for the mushroom to do something besides the occasional spewing of spores into the surroundings.
Then suddenly from out of nowhere thousands of tiny tendrils shot forward trying to latch onto the drone, as the mushroom shot forward towards the drone at high speed.
Jake would have lied if he said he hadn’t gotten a little bit of a jump scare thanks to the sudden attack from the mushroom, luckily for him though, his drone was able to move away faster than the mushroom could reach for it.
The drone flew up a little more while keeping its camera on the mushroom, when the drone had flown far enough away the mushroom got back to slowly moving over the ground.
He had to admit the mushroom was quite the eerie sight, the speed and the movements of the mushroom in its last attack were scary to say the least.
It reminded him of an octopus laying in wait for prey to get close, only to launch itself forward at high speeds and entangle the prey in its tendrils.
Except now, it was a huge mushroom with thousands of tiny tendrils and on land.
To say this posed a problem for him was him being nice about it, because if the mushroom didn’t leave he would be stuck up here, slowly running out of food and water.
Before taking any further action though, he decided to wait a few hours first, maybe it would leave his area on its own, and if it didn’t? Well then he would have to find a way to kill it.
Talking about finding a way to kill it, he still hadn’t checked out his weaponry creation skill that he had taken for situations exactly like this.
And after sleeping, his mana had regenerated, so he had 100Mp to work with.
He activated the skill and a window similar to his two other skills appeared in front of him.
Weaponry creation
Level of weaponry: Earth 1900–2000
Categories
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Melee weaponry</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Ranged weaponry</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Ammunitions</li>
</ol>
“So I get categories I can choose from, just like with construction?”
He clicked on the category of ranged weaponry, and just like with Construction he got little images of his available choices with their mana costs and short descriptions.
First he wanted to take a look at the ranged weaponry, maybe find a gun or something he could use to attack the mushroom.
He came along many guns, but also some basic artillery which turned out to be really expensive Mp-wise.
A mortar for example was 500Mp and its ammo 100Mp per piece. At some point he even passed a flamethrower and a ranged taser.
But eventually he found something that would probably help him more in his current situation while being affordable.
Pistol (Semi-automatic) - 75Mp
A basic 9mm semi-automatic pistol, the magazine can hold up to 12 bullets.
It seemed like he would need to buy the ammunitions separately.
9mm pistol ammo - 10Mp / magazine
The basic ammo for a 9mm pistol
With the 100Mp he currently had, he could buy a pistol and 2 magazines of bullets.
Just for the sake of it he also took a look at the melee weaponry, but it was mostly knifes, swords, axes, hammers and a hand held taser or other unique weapon here and there.
He even saw a stun baton at some point.
Now granted, Jake was anything but an expert in weaponry or guns, if he were to be honest he never really had any interest in such weaponry besides a little sword wielding as a kid.
But he felt like normal gun ammo wouldn’t do much good for a mushroom, I mean a few tiny holes surely wouldn’t kill a huge walking mushroom.
It was pretty safe to say normal ammo wouldn’t do the trick, luckily for him incendiary ammo got invented in 1938, and he was sure a bullet that lit a fire would do wonders for destroying a moving fungus.
So he searched through ammunitions for a little bit until he found the right Incendiary ammo.
9mm Incendiary pistol ammo - 30Mp / magazine
This ammunition lights nearby flammable materials on fire upon impact.
He wouldn’t be able to purchase the gun and the magazine at the same time, so he’d buy the gun first and then wait until he regenerated 5Mp so he’d have 30Mp to buy the gun.
Jake decided it was better to purchase the gun as soon as possible, and if the mushroom hadn’t left before he got the ammo, he would just go kill it.
Jake bought the pistol and laid it down in a corner for now, as he walked back to his temporary doorway to look at what the mushroom was doing, he heard some weird sounds coming from outside.
When he reached the doorway and looked down, he saw the mushroom walking on the ground beneath him, trying to reach up to him with its tendrils.
He wondered if the mushroom had somehow spotted him, and was now trying to reach him. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
He watched on nervously as the mushroom tried multiple approaches to get up the wall.
Luckily he was too far up for the mushroom to even get close to reaching him. But if the mushroom kept trying it might find a way to get to him, and then he would be in hot water.
As he switched to watching the mushroom through the drone, he remembered his little test with his scout drone he had done the day before.
“Well, this might be a really good time to try it out, I might even get some mushroom stew out of it” Jake joked
I need something to stall for some time anyways, at least until I can buy those incendiary bullets, he still needed 5Mp which meant he needed to stall for about 15 minutes.
Now then, let''s see how good a scout drone can be in combat.
He ordered his drone to start attacking the walking fungus. While he kept a close eye on the battle from his doorway, five meters above the ground.
The drone flew back a little first and then started accelerating towards the mushroom cap, the mushroom somehow knowing the drone was coming because when the drone got close hundreds of tiny tendrils shot out towards it.
The drone just did some quick manoeuvring around the tendrils though and flew straight into the mushroom cap, leaving a decent dent.
The drone then flew away only to return in an arc for a second attack.
Jake noticed something strange though, from the spot where the first attack had left a pretty deep dent, a purple liquid started leaking out.
Did the mushroom have blood of some sort? Was this due to the earth changing and evolving, that he now had to deal with a huge moving mushroom that bled for some reason?
Did normal mushrooms bleed? He was pretty sure they didn’t right?
After two more successful attacks the mushroom seemingly started focusing all its attention of the drone, as it stopped trying to get up the wall and towards him.
It seemed to have a very hard time finding his drone though, speaking of how it was finding his drone. How was this mushroom finding it anyway, he didn’t see any eyes or ears on it?
Did it use vibrations? In the air and ground to detect prey? Im sure those many tiny tendrils could do a good job at detecting vibrations. Would that mean the mushroom would get confused if he created more sources of vibration?
He really wanted to find out.
Would yelling really loud work to confuse the fungus? But that would risk other monsters or animals coming towards him, and if possible he wanted to avoid having to deal with even more monsters.
So instead it would be better if he could throw things on the ground near the mushroom, but he had nothing nearby he could throw except the stuff in his backpack, and he didn’t really want to lose or risk destroying anything in there. Since it was all pretty crucial to him surviving.
Well maybe with the exception of his two hiking sticks he had bought, he hadn’t really used them yet though, turned out they were meant more for the elderly, so they could have better balance and stability while traversing nature.
In your 20s unless going up a steep mountain they were more of a hindrance than a help.
But he only had two hiking sticks to throw, so if this idea worked, he had to make sure to make it count.
So in preparation he gave a few commands to his drone, when he threw the hiking stick the drone would back up, until the mushroom reacted to the hiking stick, at which point the drone would rush in for an attack.
He made a few practice movements and then just went for it, he threw the hiking stick close to the mushroom, and just as he had hoped tendrils shot out to grab it.
Jake let out a small internal cheer at the mushroom falling for his trick.
His drone immediately took the chance to shoot at the mushroom from behind, this time smashing straight through the cap of the mushroom, even more purple blood starting to leak out and onto the ground.
The mushroom not letting go of the hiking stick even after the drone attack. Maybe it thinks it has caught its prey? It did return to trying to grab his drone though, which made the situation return back to where both sides were unable to harm the other.
Jake quickly checked his mana to see how much more time he would need to buy the incendiary ammo.
29/100Mp
He just needed to stall for about three more minutes, then he could use his gun to burn the damn mushroom down.
The mushroom seemed busy with trying to destroy his hiking stick, so he just let it be for another minute.
Until the mushroom had seemingly had enough and let the hiking stick go.
Then he did the same he had done earlier, threw the hiking stick while his drone used it as a distraction to get an attack in. This time though, the mushroom didn’t fall for his trick, and went for both the hiking stick and his drone.
So he quickly ordered his drone to go back up. He just had to stall the mushroom for another minute, which didn’t really seem that hard, he just made the drone taunt the mushroom every now and then for the remaining minute.
When his Mp finally hit 30 he immediately used it for the incendiary ammo, grabbed his pistol and loaded the magazine.
He had never used a gun before in his life, but he at least knew the basic stance to hold it.
He aimed at the mushroom who was still busy trying to catch his drone, then a realization hit him. If i miss wont that set the forest on fire?
The mushroom had blood and was moist, so it wont spread much when i hit the mushroom, but if i hit the grass next to it? That could be a whole different story.
And since this is my first time shooting I can''t just believe in my aim, the risk is too big.
At least, the risk is too big if it''s from this distance, he grabbed a shirt from his backpack and put it between his teeth, if he was gonna get close to this thing he wanted to make sure he didn’t breathe in a bunch of spores.
Then he made his way down the ladder with his gun in hand.
The mushroom had seemingly noticed him climbing down as it turned away from the drone and started making its way towards him.
Jake kept one hand on the ladder, while with the other he grabbed the gun and aimed it at the mushroom.
He waited for the mushroom to get even closer, until it was only a short distance away from him. Its tendrils already reaching out to grab him.
He tried leaning into intuition for some extra guidance, while he kept his hand aimed towards the mushroom, and when he felt his shot would hit for sure, he pulled the trigger.
The bullet launched itself from the gun and flew straight into the mushroom, a few seconds later smoke rose from the hole the bullet had gone through.
And another few seconds later he even saw a flame pop up from the inside, the flame was quickly dying out because of the spilled blood though.
Jake shot two more bullets into the mushroom just to make sure, and he even ordered his drone to start attacking the mushroom once more.
A moment later the mushroom fell down to the ground and a message popped up.
Creeper Cap Level 3 Killed + 140 Xp
Congratulations, you have leveled up to level 2!
Jake smiled at the two notifications, quickly remembered the spores and bit back down on the shirt.
Then some pain hit his hand and he grimaced, apparently the pistol he had bought wasn’t a hand gun. Which meant the blowback from the gun was more than his hand could take without damaging itself.
He really shouldn’t have shot thrice using only one hand, bad idea, he thought as he put the gun away.
Then a strange feeling filled his mind, he suddenly felt a full coming from the mushrooms corpse. Not a physical pull but more like a mental one, like something was trying to attract him towards the mushrooms corpse.
Because the feeling was similar to the warning feeling Intuition gave him, he quickly made the connection that this was also Intuition trying to guide him.
But Jake felt a little unsure about rooting through the mushroom, for all he knew that purple blood was poisonous after all.
Or not, if it was poisonous he was pretty sure intuition would warn him, maybe he just didn’t want to go rooting through a stinky wet dead mushroom and was using danger as a reasonable excuse.
And could you blame him? I mean, nobody would want to touch a big gross wet possibly poisonous stinky dead mushroom and dig through its insides!
Not to mention those creepy slimy looking tendrils, no thank-you, he wanted none of that.
The feeling of attraction trying to guide him towards the mushroom corpse only grew stronger.
“No, I''m not doing it! I won''t!”
It return he felt an even stronger tugging.
“But i really really really don''t want to! If i get dirty I cannot even shower right now, is it that important?!”
He got hit with another somehow annoyed mental tug.
Jake just let out a deep sigh as he took off his clothes as to not get them dirty, and started digging through the mushroom.
He would just need to find a river or spend Mp on a shower afterwards.
Eventually as he dug through the smelly corpse though, he felt something very tough, unusually tough compared to anything else he had dug through.
His intuition telling him this was it, so slowly he started getting the tough thing, whatever it was free.
When he finally dug it out and pulled it from the disgusting corpse, he saw a small blue stone sitting in his hand.
He wiped off some of the blood from the stone and took a closer look at what he had found.
It looked like a tiny, slightly glowing blue stone, its soft light illuminating his palm in a blue light.
Jake stared in fascination at the tiny blue stone, wondering about what it could be used for and why intuition was so pressed on him getting this, when suddenly a message popped up.
Would you like to absorb; minor mana stone (lv3) for 220 Mp?