Chapter 9 – When the Fiend Stirs

“Don’t these need to be buried?”

“I’m not a plant.”

Did people in this world truly not know the difference between plants and fungi?

The pack Puffcaps had carried every Ember Gnat carcass and fragment of larva back to the Mycelial Garden.

Ember Gnats relied on Agility and Dodge rather than physical resilience. A hit from Spore Cannon or the armored cap of a Puffcap rarely left an intact corpse.

Their remains now lay in an even layer across the Nursery. Hyphae had already begun to sprout from the first load.

Decomposing a monster carcass provided Evan with both skill proficiency and mana. A single Ember Gnat held very little mana, but there were hundreds of them.

Evan intended to spend every bit of that mana on new Puffcaps.

Through natural mana absorption, the Mycelial Garden could support roughly 300 Puffcaps. A hundred belonged to the logistics group and kept the garden functioning. Only the remaining two hundred were available for combat.

This time, Evan planned to exceed the limit and produce 400 combat Puffcaps at once. He would commit all of them to the Earthborer hunt.

If too many survived, he could always reduce their numbers afterward. Maximizing the chance of success mattered more.

There was no second Ember Gnat Nest nearby to provide so many nutrients so easily. If the hunt failed, Evan had no idea when he would be able to assemble another force.

“Evan, look! I think I gained a new talent!”

Elara had conjured a Water Serpent nearby. Evan had watched her use the spell during the battle. Calling it invincible would be inaccurate. Calling it useless would be much closer.

Its range was short and its power poor. Even a direct hit had failed to kill an Ember Gnat. Its sole advantage was that the caster could adjust its course after launch, but Elara’s dreadful control had somehow turned even that into a liability.

Compared with Ice Blade, the spell was hopeless.

Elara seemed to have reached the same conclusion. After using Water Serpent twice at the beginning of the battle, she had abandoned it.

Now, however, the conjured serpent moved gracefully around her, coiling like a small guardian.

That was far beyond Elara’s normal ability. Evan immediately opened her Status Panel.

As expected, she had reached LV30. Even the small share of XP she received from hundreds of Ember Gnats had raised her by two levels.

A new Permanent Effect had appeared: [Favor of the Elemental Spirits: elemental spirits assist with spell control].

“Try attacking that rock with Ice Blade.”

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The target Evan selected stood three hundred yards away. When they first encountered the Ember Gnat scouts at the same distance, Elara’s Ice Blade had missed by an absurd margin.

“What? All right, I’ll try.”

Evan knew the spell had gone wide the instant she launched it. In flight, however, the blade miraculously corrected its course and clipped the corner of the rock.

“I... I hit it!”

Even Elara sounded astonished.

If her initial aim had not been quite so terrible, the spell might have struck the center. Correcting such a wild shot enough to graze the target was impressive work by the Elemental Spirit.

Evan also noticed that the Water Serpent remained active while Elara used Ice Blade.

Was this something like assisted control by artificial intelligence, except the Elemental Spirit performed the work?

So Elemental Spirits actually existed in this world. Until now, Evan had assumed magic was simply magic.

He had learned something else as well. Humans, like Evan, naturally gained a compatible Permanent Effect or skill every ten levels. His Spore Cannon and Mycelial Network had appeared the same way.

Elara called such abilities talents.

Apparently, the process was not unique to him. Humans had it, and other species and monsters probably did too.

There was one difference. Perhaps because Elara could not see her Status Panel, her talent had been granted automatically. Evan was offered a choice of three.

He glanced at his current level, LV44. His next selection was still some distance away.

* * *

Evan spent the following days consumed by the enormous project of expanding his army.

The good news was that Cognitive Coordination, stagnant for ages, finally reached LV6. Without that improvement, Evan could never have controlled so many Puffcaps at once.

Even with the upgrade, he had no attention to spare for conversation.

Elara did not mind. She had become obsessed with exploring her new talent.

The Elemental Spirit did more than correct trajectories. It made Illumination follow her automatically and allowed Refracting Water Mirror to defend in every direction at once. In general, it used her spells far more skillfully than she did.

Purify and Mire showed no change. The Elemental Spirit did not enhance a spell’s innate power.

Days passed. Just as every preparation neared completion, a tremendous mana fluctuation rolled in from beyond the Mycelial Garden.

“Evan, what happened? Why does everything suddenly feel so oppressive?”

The disturbance resembled the distant aftershock of a massive earthquake. Even Elara, who lacked Mana Sense, noticed it. Evan saw waves of mana surging through the region, one after another, churning his awareness until he felt ill.

He checked the scattered surveillance growths outside the garden. The small clusters could not provide vision, but they did sense fluctuations in nearby mana.

Evan quickly identified the direction of the disturbance.

It came from the Magma Fiend Lair.

Once he knew the source, he relaxed. He offered the frightened Elara a few words of reassurance, then returned to the final stage of his military expansion.

That did not mean he felt no fear of the Magma Fiend. Quite the opposite. It was the strongest monster he had discovered, and he monitored its movements constantly.

If it ever began traveling toward the Mycelial Garden, Evan would gather everything he could carry and flee at once.

Fortunately, that had never happened.

From his observations, the Magma Fiend was a recluse.

Evan remained rooted because movement was inconvenient. The Magma Fiend simply seemed too lazy to bother. Soaking in lava apparently satisfied most of its needs.

A recluse could still leave home. Evan had recorded three previous outings. Each had produced mana disturbances across the surrounding region, just like the one today. He suspected the creature had gone to fight.

He did not know where it fought or what opponent could challenge a Magma Fiend. The region Evan had explored was tiny compared with the vastness of the Deep Strata.

His original escape plan had depended on one of those absences. He would seize the opportunity to cross the lair and reach the upper stratum.

It was a dangerous gamble because he had no way to know when the Magma Fiend would return. The shortest recorded absence had lasted only a few hours. The longest had been perhaps three or four days.

That plan had wagered his life, which was why he replaced it with the Earthborer tunnel.

Evan could only hope the Magma Fiend stayed away long enough to avoid disrupting the hunt.