BECMI Chapter 454 –Fungi Forest Fun Ride
Foot-thick and more branches hit the buzzsaw arcs of force of the Blade Barrier and were sheared through with sounds like breaking bones and chopping meat and screaming unnatural plant life. The carnage above and around us reached truly nasty heights as the spell, buttressed up to IX Valence just to make sure it could stay motile, ripped apart everything in front of and around us that was in range to take a swing at us.
Oh, gods, I did not want to know what the world smelled like right now.
The Avatars behind me snickered and agreed. Sif sniffed loudly, was kind enough not to share it, but just said, “Blargh!” with feeling.
Then we were past the only mu-spore that might have caught us, rains of biological death still trying to wrap us up, infect us, implant themselves into us, turn us to sludge, impale us, poison us, drug us, suffocate us, transmute us, lignify us into mushrooms, and other interesting attacks that made me really, really glad all this stuff had been taken care of on the Other Shore. I could only presume an Immortal immune to almost all mortal attacks had just taken a dislike to the corrupted place and cleansed it off somehow.
Given that it would be an Entropic Immortal, and this place could have been an incredible resource, I had to wonder a moment about WHY they would bother doing such a thing, then glanced in the direction of that glowing not-moon up there and revised my opinion of what it was.
It was probably something from Outside Creation, and if there was one thing all Immortals were supposed to fight, it was those. The thing probably got itself detected, wiped out, and the mu spores that it spread were eliminated as accessories.
Probably gained someone a lot of free Immortal Power. Kind of the reason we were here, after all.
In terms of time and Karma, you couldn’t beat taking care of a place like this, and it would definitely get everyone here over the hump to look at Eternity.
From the outside, they’d barely be gone at all, hardly noticed. Having competent underlings who could manage any crises that came up was a big help, of course, especially with the Markspace to help communication clarity and speed so much.
Now we were going to eliminate things from Outside Creation on an island the size of a small state, and they would use it as their final Karmic load to get past the Apex.
Nation-states and dominions had been founded here and there around the world, as well as to the south of Brightmoor, building and enduring together under mutual auspices and protection. Artifacts had been found and destroyed. Entropic schemes had been nosed out and thwarted with distressing ease and regularity, earning a lot of ire from that vector, a fact which imperiled, invigorated, and inspired their mortal followers to no end.
Given the rewards, I could see why. The Gallivants had some extremely adept and powerful underlings, quietly striving against the control of the Immortals and trying to bring in a better day for all.
I Powered along in a straight line, Wings driving for speed, while massive shrooms and meat trees still lurched into our way, only the fact they couldn’t plant themselves in the road keeping us clear of the thick trunks that the Barrier couldn’t totally deal with. But the things couldn’t touch the road below us, so they couldn’t fall across it and make a barrier, and the Blade Barrier could deal with limb-branches and sinew-vines and the like without too much problem. Bane to Plants helped nicely with that, as did Sanctified Spell’s Holy damage bonus.
I idly noted that Desiccation damage, which did increased damage against plant-forms, was going to be very effective here. It was a high-end counterpart to Force damage in its own way, but ineffective against anything not made at least somewhat of water.
I immediately started working on the requirements for such an adaptation, twelve Shards snapping into existence around my hand and starting to whirl and writhe as I got to work on the effect.
I finally had Perpetual Spell working, and could Cast unlimited Shards. I was very proud of myself for that… except they were EXACTLY Shards as any other mage could cast them. No bonuses to damage, no Boosts, no Kickers, no passives, no anything. Just basic Caster level, mortal limitations on effects, and basic Force damage effects shooting out for independent targets.
I could still change their forms, as in Spellwarp them to a Ray, after Casting. I could also alter the energy type, devolving pure force damage into less pure elemental damage of the various types, which effect I was trying to do now.
They lacked all of the Meta Kickers, Boosts, and passives that I had for my spells in general and Shards in particular, basically solidifying the fact that I had to spend Valences to use uber magic.
But the mortal limit here gave me twelve Shards at 2-7 damage each, which was no small thing if Cast endlessly. It was a mere fraction of what I could do from Valence… but that was fine. I appreciated having an endless autogun effect that never missed, it helped me conserve a lot of offensive ammunition.
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So, I started unleashing them, because I could.
My passives and Kickers didn’t work on them, but Dread’s did!
Reworking Force into Desiccation involved using that force to tear apart water molecules, with just a slight leaning towards negative energy that was counterbalanced with Vivic added on top.
It also meant I ignited all the gore in the air as Holiness fed Vivus and I Infused Bane against Plants into Dread.
The road behind us began to flame unwhite mists, and given how covered it was with fungoid splatter, the vivic flames sped back behind us like ignited gasoline, proving how unnatural the gore was.
Yes, we were going to kill everything here, wasn’t going to be no questions about it.
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The road led up to a tunnel leading into the mountain. That tunnel was completely blocked by an avalanche torn out of the rock above it by acidic volleys and brutal roots and tendrils wrenching apart the stone needed to block it.
They couldn’t touch the road, but they could certainly grow over the rock that was covering it, and they did, with the biggest puffballs you could think of. The things were already bloated and ready to burst, with tendril-stumps pointing our way prepping to launch.
Well, all I had to do was pop the various tendrils as we came in, and I had plenty of missiles to do that.
Streaking radiant missiles in disjointed hues blasted into various thick mushroom rinds and twitching polyps waving about, detonating and blasting the water about them into ash, instantly collapsing the fungal matter into dust without any respect for its toughness.
One volley, two as I approached, drawing attention from up above, where a Topped Comet Cluster was slamming down from the heavens like a silver-shot anthem of doom.
Plants are wet and don’t take well to being flash-frozen, especially with Banefire and Holiness really stressing things out.
The massive puffballs detonated a wee bit early, acidic and explosive spores bursting right into the ultracold and freezing solid even as they were thrown violently in all directions, not accidentally ripping apart the frozen solid tangle of organic matter and roots they were sitting upon, fracturing and shattering and splitting open like overripe peaches under the combined forces of magic and chemistry doing Weird Science research together.
The sphere of Horrid Wilting reached out and smashed into the mass of it. Ice evaporated within and without the roots, and the whole face of the mounds of fungi just instantly crashed down into dust as the water was sucked out of them, not incidentally exposing the whole pile of stones heaped up on the roadway leading into the peak.
Stone I could work with.
The Blade Barrier that even now was chewing through the last limb-branches and sinew-vines parted before us and set up around the tunnel entrance, peeling back and away and then collapsing tightly behind us to cover the entry as more organic volleys blew apart the stones loudly about it. But the winds were blowing back and past us, and the gouting clouds of spores and worse things didn’t make it after us as I Shaped the blocking stones into a continued arched and braced tunnel, barely slowing down as we reached the side of the plateau inside a Do-It-As-You-Go passageway, which abruptly widened into a wide and fungi-free tunnel heading up the side of the plateau.
“There was no road like this leading up to the plateau on the Other Shore,” I finally commented. “The landscape was also far more broken up and altered, the plateau being more collapsed and rougher along the sides.”
Our collective Hexar Shields were still protecting us in case of ambush, but I had slowed down considerably, allowing us to study the sides of the place as we zipped up the tunnel with ease and without interference.
“This is machine-bored,” Sif murmured as I slowed way down, Dirre extended from her hand and touching the sides of the tunnel blade-on, easily carving through the stone like wet cheese. “It’s not Shaped by magic or hand-carved.”
Well, that was an interesting detail.
Everyone slowly stowed their Hexars, the Shields folding back into neat triangles and being stowed back in their Masspacks as the others all turned over and sat up from their prone positions, looking around in interest.
The road below us was actually glowing with natural bio-luminescence, a detail lost outside under the light of the not-moon above.
“That’s some very advanced boring technology if they can do that without support arches. But isn’t it lacking for ventilation?” Dame Adama asked with the eye of a siege engineer.
“It’s not made for rapid vehicle traffic. It’s only wide enough for one vehicle at most. This was set up basically for foot traffic. I imagine most vehicles were hovercraft or used anti-grav and didn’t have to contend with a tunnel,” Thor commented, setting foot on the ground and looking down, then up, before reaching up with Mjolnir to tap the roof twelve foot up. “Buried monoline under the road there, and inside the ceiling there. Magnetic guidelines, possibly, might have had a trolley system shunting things up and down through here, and they stopped working at some point, or were abandoned?”
“Given the time that has passed, that is very likely. Technology, especially high technology, often isn’t made to span thousands of years, unless it is specifically designed to do so,” I agreed.
“Perhaps a quarter-mile to go before the surface. I suggest freshening up and making sure we have nothing clinging to us before we proceed to whatever is keeping these fungi off the top of the plateau,” Chardon suggested with his nose in the air, and everyone laughed and agreed.
Prestidigitation cleaned off any lingering seeds or spoors or droplets of anything that had gotten past our protections, little poppings indicating where things had been caught by the magic and were disposed of by the magic. We all took drinks just to clear out our noses and throats from the lingering odors and taste of the rather low oxygen air, then strolled upwards with sighs and Lightfoot that could handle the incline without too much complaint.
Sif saw it first, Thor next, then Helos, Lunia, and I. There was a light shining into the tunnel’s exit from outside, and not at the angle of the moon.
The stone was also discolored there, and the road of mu-hide ran right up to the end of it before stopping, revealing an indentation worn into the stone and some pitted duralloy sunk into it there.
“Something is beaming a rather intense ultraviolet light, about equal to an equatorial sun, on the top of the surface here,” Lunia stated with absolute authority on the matter of sunlight.