Low-Fantasy Occultist

The air in the depression was nauseating, heavy with mold and darker things. Spores floated in the mist like dust motes, clogging the throat with each breath and threatening to settle in the lungs of anyone foolish enough to inhale too deeply.

Nick didn't give them a chance, circulating wind mana around each of them and creating a pressurized air filter that kept the corruption at bay, all while keeping his eyes locked on the chaotic melee below.

“We need to go in!" Raphael roared, his voice rising above the buzzing drone of the insects. "Malik, Yvonne, form a wedge formation! Split them down the middle! Monte, Terence, watch the flanks!"

The melee fighters took just a few moments to rally before charging forward.

Malik was the first to charge into the front lines of the white mantises, swinging his recently repaired shield like a battering ram and putting his great strength behind it. The impact sounded like a thunderclap, instantly shattering the chitinous exoskeletons of two insects.

Beside him, Yvonne kept anything from taking advantage of his blind spots, carving a bloody path with her greatsword, severing any limb that dared come too close.

Considering they had been trying to kill each other less than two days earlier, their teamwork was quite remarkable to see.

“Open a path!" Raphael shouted, thrusting a hand forward.

The air in front of him shimmered, with light refracting strangely as space itself bent, and a dozen mantises leaping toward the backline suddenly found the distance to their prey greatly increased, their momentum fading in a warped pocket of space, before Raphael clenched his fist.

Space snapped back into place, and the insects were crushed into a paste of white ichor and broken shell, falling to the spongy ground in a heap.

He’s improving at using his spatial magic offensively. It’s easy to see why Tholm thought we needed to handle this alone, though it would have been better not to get caught in the middle of a political firestorm.

Nick watched from the rear, waiting for his moment to act.

[Empyrean Intuition] painted the battlefield with strokes of spectral light, allowing him to see the nervousness of the trapped adventurers as jagged yellow smog, while the aggression of his teammates appeared as fierce orange.

Those are all good and well, but what the hell is wrong with the mantises? The ones we fought in the canyon weren't like this.

They exhibited no individual rage or fear. Their souls were pale, stretched-out things, as thin as spiderwebs, reaching from their bodies to connect with a vast, pulsating network beneath the mycelium floor.

A hive mind, Nick realized, his eyes narrowing. They have been absorbed into a greater whole.

"Behind you!" Tessa screamed, loosing an arrow that pinned a leaping mantis to a mushroom stalk.

Ord stepped in to bash another aside, but the swarm was relentless. For every one they killed, two more spilled from the fungal treeline, showing no hesitation to take over where their kin had fallen.

And then, the dead began to twitch.

A mantis that Yvonne had bisected only moments ago shuddered. Purple, bulbous growths along its severed spine pulsed with a wet, sickly light. Fibrous tendrils erupted from the wound, lashing the two halves of the corpse back together. The creature jerked upright, its movements no longer fluid but marionette-like, driven by the fungus expanding rapidly inside its cavity.

"They're getting back up!" Terence yelled in horror, backing away as the thing he’d just stabbed pulled a knife out of its own chest.

"Physical damage is irrelevant," Nick murmured as the pieces clicked into place.

For the first time in a long while, he ignored the discomfort it caused and examined the dungeon's spiritual structure more closely. He had thought the "Feral" nature of this place was just about wild aggression, but he’d been overlooking the subtleties of the pattern. The wolves hunted in packs. The grumblers and goblins had their tribal hierarchy. The beetles and other insect-like monsters had their hives. And now, the mantises with their fungal unity.

I was fooled. When I confronted the divine will outside Long Reach, I only saw a small part of the whole, the part that resembled the werewolves the most. It makes sense that Feral Gods have multiple aspects, just like their civilized counterparts. This must be a god of connections, of bonds.

And within the esoteric framework of the Sephirot, the step he was currently facing, [Nezach],symbolized Victory, as well as Eternity, Endurance, and the persistence of both nature and desire.

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This fungus was a perversion of that principle. It was a twisted Eternity, a life that refused to end, simply recycling the meat to keep the colony going. It was a stagnant loop.

To pass the test, Nick realized, feeling the sapling rustle in his soul, I have to prove that my Victory is absolute. I have to impose Finality on their Eternity.

"Change targets!" Nick’s voice boomed across the battlefield, amplified by his wind mana. "They are just puppets! Aim for the purple bulbs and cut the connection!"

“Destroy the bulbs!” Raphael acknowledged without hesitation, shifting his stance. He gestured with both hands, and a rift opened above a cluster of reviving mantises. "[Spatial Shear]!"

The rift collapsed, slicing the bulbs cleanly from the insect bodies, and the mantises nearest to it dropped instantly, inert.

But there were too many, and more kept growing in response to the attack. The dungeon's ambient mana was fueling the bulbs’ growth faster than they could remove them.

"I need a clear shot!" Nick shouted. "Pull back! Group up on the adventurers!"

The team sealed the perimeter, forming a tight ring around the five beleaguered strangers. The mantises surged forward in a wave of clicking mandibles and decaying chitin, forcing their way through without any intention of letting them establish a foothold.

Nick closed his eyes briefly, ignoring the screaming instinct that told him to run. He reached out with his mind, grabbing the fear, rage, and desperation flooding the ether, and shoved them into the Shard.

You want to be one? Nick thought, focusing his will on the underground web connecting the monsters. Fine. Feel what it’s like to become one with the ether.

“[Spirit Crunch].”

Unleashing the accumulated psychic weight in a pulse, he hammered the connection between the bodies and poured the screaming terror of dying prey directly into the hive mind, overloading the fungal network with sensation it had not evolved to process.

SCREEEEE—

The sound that tore through the depression wasn't human. It came from everywhere at once: the insects, the ground, and even the towering mushrooms.

Every bulb within a fifty-meter radius exploded at once, and purple sludge poured down like hail. The mantises fell mid-stride, transforming from terrifying undead warriors back into heaps of rotting compost.