Rules of Biomancy: A LitRPG Healer Fantasy

Elijah flinched as the detached claw flew by his face. The latest close call, of which there had been many. Nothing he could consider at that moment, however.

'Dawn,' he called, the duck aiding him in commanding the roots to wrap around the legs of the massive beast in front of them. Grace had called it a treant variant, but Elijah refused the idea. No part of the monster's body had anything to do with plants, only fungi and sharpened rock to be seen.

Sharp rocks and cordyceps that killed off the roots faster than Elijah could command more to strike at the beast. This battle of attrition would soon be lost.

Three days of being trapped in this maze had made Elijah get a more pragmatic outlook, though. They had new tricks up their sleeves.

As the so-called treant roared, deadly spores flying out of its maw, it swung its arm towards Elijah once again. This time, it did not see him as an easy kill, and the monster put its entire weight into the blow.

'Now!'

Dawn obeyed. Elijah felt it, as the duck called upon one of her own spells. Plant Storage, to be exact, which allowed her to use her prepared biological mass to repair and modify her own body, or, in this case, to create whips of elastic tendons with a scaled surface. With five meters of length to them when fully formed, they could deliver devastating blows to any normal foe.

And yet the treant was no ordinary enemy. Even as the whip cracks rang out in the air, the sharp noises thundering through the tunnel, the wounds only went so deep into the creature. Each strike peeled off a portion of the fungus-infested bark, but the insides still stood strong.

"Down!" Grace shouted, and Elijah obeyed without a second thought, narrowly avoiding a hail of wooden splinters. She'd spotted what he missed.

Alongside the sound of the treant's legs tearing apart came a growth on the front of the monster's head. A malformed mouth, with misaligned rows of multi-colored teeth, and a spiked tongue that dripped with venom.

The appearance hardly mattered, as the sound which blasted out from the mouth forced Elijah to cover his ears. Even Dawn had to pause in her attacks, as the volume caused the bindings in the whips to tear apart, the plant-flesh leaking from the strain.

Blood likewise leaked from Elijah's right ear, as the eardrum ruptured from the sheer volume. Instincts made him channel Flesh Bond to weave the mucous membrane together again, yet it was a losing battle.

Until Grace, with a snap of her fingers, caused the attack to cease in its effects. The abhorrent mouth on the cordyceps-infested treant still roared, its own body vibrating from the noise, but a translucent field stopped the sound from reaching them.

"Ah, it… It actually worked," Grace could just barely say between the deep breaths, as she held up the effect. "The theory was sound, but I can't believe it."

Elijah could, having listened in on her ravings the previous night about the idea. After a terrible fight against a grouping of arachnids who used sound magic akin to banshees, which caused repeated rupturing of blood vessels and eardrums, Grace had meticulously planned ahead for any future encounter with enemies who had similar abilities.

Still, the ability to nullify the ability momentarily meant Elijah had to make it permanent himself.

Pausing the repairs on his own body, he pulled out one of the drones from his right pocket. The pointed legs of the creatures poked at the skin of his palm, mere touch threatening to pierce through the surface, but Elijah ignored the sensation. Flexing the muscle and taking in a deep breath, he threw the creation towards the treant with all his might.

It latched onto the bark-free area without issue, the treant too focused on its screaming. That didn't last for long, however, as the small drone swiftly cut through the wood and entered the body.

Channeling of [Fungi Bond] has been activated! Current cost: 32MP/sec

'Grow. Consume. Destroy,' Elijah commanded on repeat, gritting his teeth as the distance between him and his creation put a strain on the bond. But he didn't falter. He could feel the effects, feel how the drone's augmented legs tore through the wood. The internal processes specifically designed to replicate its own form, to create others like it, through the material it consumed worked flawlessly. What started as one became two, then four, and, within ten seconds, there were hundreds.

The treant noticed, the screaming turning into roaring as it ripped out chunks of its own body. Even without true flesh and nerves, it could still feel the pain of being consumed. The efforts to save itself was fruitless, though. With the sheer number of foreign entities within the monster, Elijah had gained a lead in one deciding factor.

He now had dominance over the fungi that inhabited the monster. What made up nearly a quarter of the treant's total body mass now sat under his control.

And he would not waste that opportunity.

'Cease to be,' Elijah ordered, mouthing the orders as he clutched at his robe. The treant had spotted his angle of attack, and, though its level of intellect was questionable, instinct still allowed it to fight back somewhat. 'Become nothing. Consume yourselves.'

A final push of resistance blasted through the bond, the treant trying to overwhelm him through sheer fury. It didn't work, causing a desperate final charge towards him, but that mattered even less.

With the legs hollowed out, the wooden body weighed too much, and the limbs crumbled at the first attempt to run. Various forms of dust flew through the tunnel as the body landed on the ground, but Grace stopped any of it from reaching them.

"We did it," Grace commented, as a final whine left the treant's malformed mouth before it finally perished. "In record time as well, I think."

"It's the first fight where neither of us was scratched," Elijah confirmed, checking himself over. His ears still rang a little, but another minute of fine-tuning the eardrum would fix that. "Good work on the sound field. I knew you could do it."

"Thank you," Grace replied, as she leaned against the wall to get her breath. The remainder of her efforts in the fight seemed to make her body remember the power required to pull off such a feat. "Could we take a breather before we move over to the next one? Standing is becoming a little harder."

Elijah had no problems with that at all. He still had work to do himself, after all, the first order of business being to deal with the constructs he'd thrown at the treant.

Weaponizing the drones had been Grace's idea. A joke during breakfast, when Dawn had commanded the constructs to try replicating her form. That joke had then spiralled into theoretical discussions, testing on how to optimize the duplication pipeline, and what physical attributes were best suited for efficient harvesting and processing of organic materials of various varieties. Elijah hadn't been able to follow along for most of the conceptual design patterns, but when putting it all into practice, he'd regained his footing.

Or, at the very least, he'd come out with something that worked. Maybe he was even a little proud of it, too.

'You, come here. Dissolve, the rest of you,' he commanded, as the three-legged constructs finished off most of the wood from the dead treant. None of them fought his orders, the original happily hobbling over to him while the others steadily began to liquify.

A safety measure to stop any further exponential increases in numbers.

From the schematics he'd prepared, Elijah technically did not need to remove the other constructs. Within a few more minutes, they would self-destruct no matter what, making it impossible for them to spread and destroy the landscapes.

Elijah liked being on the safe side, however.

With the original drone safely deposited back into its designated pocket, Elijah sat down next to Grace to rest his own body. According to his internal clock, it was barely midday, so sleeping was out of the question, but replenishing some of his reserves wouldn't be a terrible idea.

"Pear?" he offered, Grace happily accepting the fruit that had been freshly plucked from Dawn. "We tried adding more iron this time, for better nutritional balance."

"I can taste that," Grace commented. It didn't seem to be a criticism from how she kept on eating, though the lack of variety and her general hunger might've contributed to that. "When we get out of here, do you think the dwarves would cook us steaks?"

"Their Dungeon specializes in exotic beasts, so I don't doubt they have the goods for it," Elijah said. "If all else fails, Aleksi should be able to handle preparing them."

'Can I have a steak?' Dawn asked.

'Wouldn't you prefer a larger cut?'

'But you want me to learn manners. Large pieces can't be eaten with a fork and knife.'

Elijah blinked slowly. If Dawn had started to fantasize about eating with proper manners, maybe they had been down here for too long.

Best not to worry.

Letting his back loosen a little, he steadily got into the flow of replenishing some of the spent concoctions. While most of the potions and pastes couldn't be made down here, Dawn's presence and Elijah's general manipulations through Biomancy allowed him to substitute several steps in the traditional process. Instead of having to extract the liquid from fresh leaves, he could simply augment it in abundance, and, with properties that required heat to manifest, Dawn already carried a processed version in her library of knowledge.

Having a substitute for distilled water still sat out of their reach, sadly, which made some of the more sensitive concoctions impossible. Elijah had already run out of his prepared liquid fire vials, which were incredibly effective against the Dungeon's monsters but likewise so incredibly sensitive when being created. Any additional contaminants in the water used meant violent reactions, and neither Elijah nor Dawn had any ability to extract the heavy metals from what water they could get down here.

But, still, several packets of general-purpose healing paste for superficial wounds and cuts, along with a swathe of general antidotes, poisons, and some minor concoctions to be used topically for numbing pains, were more than within his ability.

Yet… none of these truly carried that deadly edge he sought. No great advantage, which could turn the tide if needed.

For the past two days, Elijah had constantly reminded himself of a certain flower that sat in his own Plant Storage. The Luna Nightshade, killer of demigods and beasts of legend. It was a flower with an incredibly potent ability to stop the heart of any who touched it, and the concentrated version could bring a beast down within half a minute.

Creating such a concentrate wouldn't be possible for Elijah to do without the proper equipment. If he wished for that advantage, another would have to step up.

'I can!' Dawn happily chimed in.

'I know you can,' Elijah said. He'd known for weeks she could. It would barely be an inconvenience for her, seeing as her plant-based body made her immune. Only those constrained to fleshy organs were vulnerable. 'I just need you to promise something.'

'Sure!'

'You will only use it, if I explicitly give you permission.'

'... Sure.'

And that response was why Elijah felt so conflicted. Dawn hesitated in her promise because she didn't believe her own words. She felt conflicted as well. Elijah could sense the internal debate in the duck. She would try to stand by her word, to not use this trump card, but to cause near-certain death on a foe with ease was a very tempting tool. And, when faced with choosing between Elijah's demise or another's, Elijah knew that Dawn would choose the latter option.

'Dawn, I need you to understand this more than anything else,' Elijah continued. 'The only method you will be using is direct insertion. I can permit you to coat the tip of the roots in the poison, but I forbid you to ever modify it beyond that. No diluting it, no spreading it out and mixing it with other reagents, and no augmentations to use it as an air-based weaponry.'

A single drop mixed with a mild wind could kill an entire street of people.

'I can do that,' Dawn replied. 'I promise to be careful.'

He could hear more certainty in those words than most before them. Enough to make the terrible decision to call upon the Plant Storage spell. With a small flash of gold to announce the flower's arrival, it sat in his palm. The petals were healthy, the stem was strong, and two new leaves had started to grow halfway up. If given proper treatment and care, Elijah did not doubt the Lune Nightshade would grow double its size within a year.

But this was not the time for such thinking, as he carefully plucked off a single petal before returning the flower to the Plant Storage within him.

Dawn sat ready, happily munching on the petal when he offered it to her. In mere seconds of studying its composition, she could confirm that she could replicate the structure and effects. She even offered to prove it, which Elijah firmly rejected.

'Oh, damn, you killed the treant while I wasn't looking?'

Elijah's shoulders tensed as the careful cleaning of his hands to stop any chance of cross-contamination got interrupted by the loud voice in his head. Grace didn't have the displeasure of the sudden intrusion, but his pausing and the increased density of Mana in the air made it obvious what'd happened..

"Oh, she's back," Grace commented as she went for one of the other fruits Dawn had prepared. "Is she saying anything interesting?"

"Just that she missed the latest fight," Elijah explained, though that made him wonder. 'What were you distracted by?'

'Remember those intruders who were digging through the old collapsed tunnel? They got into the so-called royal section ten minutes ago.'

Oh.

Elijah informed Grace of as much, causing great interest.

'What's happening up there now?' he asked.

'Nothing much yet. They're just standing around and talking right now. Oh, no, wait, the older one pulled out a piece of paper. There's a drawing on it. Somewhat looks like that young Metamancer in your group.'

He frowned. The implications were obvious, and he found no enjoyment in knowing Jack was the target of rogues. And yet, nothing could be done from his side. The Dungeon refused the notion of sending out some form of warning, as it didn't want to 'pick a side.' Elijah thought it a weak excuse, but he had no way to pressure the entity.

"Do you think it's an assassination attempt?" Grace speculated, already going through the worst-case scenarios. "Anybody who knows of an old tunnel like that needs to have access to old registries, and the fact they don't care about anybody else means it's because of what Jack can do specifically."

'They don't want to kill him,' the Dungeon corrected, which Elijah repeated to Grace immediately. 'The old lady they're working for is offering them titles for their families if they can bring the Metamancer in alive, along with several thousand gold coins for each of them. They're not even bringing back that crown. I'm relatively sure that's the biggest reward anybody has offered down here in the past two thousand years.'

So it was a kidnapping attempt. A positive, as it meant that Jack's death wasn't their goal, but still a massive threat to Elijah. At least his heart rested a little easier, knowing they would have to go through Aleksi and Sasha first.

'Uh… how about I just stream over a visual of what's going on?'

After a second of finicking around, where Elijah was presented with colors and sensations he'd never seen before in his life, he suddenly gained the ability to survey the royal section of the Dungeon. It was akin to seeing double, though one side had more than three-sixty vision. Instead of viewing a three-dimensional world projected into two dimensions, Elijah observed reality from all directions.

A dizzying experience, truthfully, that made him happy that he still rested against the wall, else he would've fallen already.

Wait.

His worries about his own body instantly paused as he adjusted to the new way of viewing the world. He could easily spot Jack sitting in the small clearing, transmuting the crown as intended, and muttering something under his breath.

But Aleksi didn't sit beside him. Neither did Sasha. Elijah had to stretch his view of the cavern far until he found the two. Both were almost at the other end of the place, sitting down at a tree stump.

Elijah could see their mouths moving, but the stream didn't allow him to hear the words. Although from how Aleksi looked, Elijah knew that his old friend had had some bad days as of late. The giant with a smile was no more.

'He still thinks we're dead,' Elijah said, as he succeeded in reading one of the words that fell from Aleksi's mouth. 'What drawing did you show them?'

'Oh, that? I haven't gotten around to doing it,' the Dungeon confessed. 'I was going to show off the fight with the kitties, but then you pulled off the trick with the bird, and then the scorpions, and… With so much to take inspiration from, it can be so hard to pick and choose, you know?'

If Elijah had the option, he would've considered violence at that moment. Instead, he was forced to assess the situation with a calm mind, while Grace nervously looked on.

"How far away are they exactly?" she questioned.

"Around eight hundred meters in a straight line. A kilometer, if they go to the main trail first," Elijah said instantly, his new sight granting him a near-perfect understanding of relative distances. Was this how the Dungeon always looked at the world? "The dwarves are on the move."

They'd reach Jack in two minutes.

Elijah was powerless. He could only watch on as the group approached and as they began to converse with Jack. He saw how the two who stayed silent subtly pulled out their weapons, how Jack noticed and retaliated.

He counted each piece of fragmentation that flew through the air when the bullets Jack had meticulously made hit the dwarven armor. Elijah cursed their inability to pierce. And when those bullets ran out, the situation only worsened.

"Aleksi didn't hear the shots," Elijah said, glancing at the giant and Sasha as they continued to talk. Any time where eyes weren't pointed at the ground was spent looking at the grey cavern wall. "They won't notice Jack is gone until it's too late."

"Shit," Grace cursed, kicking up the dirt. "We have to do something."

Elijah agreed, but he couldn't figure out what. He couldn't send messages, he hadn't brought any of Vera's paper with him, and Biomancy wouldn't let him penetrate through the kilometers of stone required to reach Aleksi.

But the Dungeon could.

'You said you were going to depict what we did down here, and show it to Aleksi and the others,' Elijah repeated with a venomous tone. 'But you couldn't choose what to show.'

'Yeah?'

'I'm choosing for you,' he continued. At the same time, he saw through the stream how Jack was caught and put on the ground.

'This sounds an awful lot like I'm helping you save somebody from dying inside me. That's not allowed, if you remember.'

'He's getting kidnapped. Not killed.'

'... Fair enough. What do you want me to show?'

'My face, with the words Jack and Verness below it,' Elijah ordered. The latter would only be understood by Aleksi, and hopefully clue the giant in on the sheer severity of the situation.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

'Don't you feel that's a bit self-centered?' The Dungeon questioned, but Elijah could feel that it respected his words. With a rumbling as a warning, the cavern wall in front of Aleksi and Sasha began to partially crumble, leaving behind a colored depiction of Elijah along with the chosen words.

With bated breath, he watched on as Sasha tried to speak, perhaps asking what the words said, but the giant remained unmoving. That is, until Aleksi exploded in movement. Green veins went from unseen to threatening to burst through the skin. In a quarter of a second, the old man had gone from sitting on the tree stump to going full sprint through the forest.

'Okay, I take my critique back. This is worth it.'

Elijah didn't offer a reply, as he watched on. He saw Aleksi take no heed for the trees, going through them whenever they stood in his way. The old man didn't bother with the main road, taking the most direct path towards the small clearing.

That was for the best. The moment he started running, Jack had done something which ended with the man's hand mutilated, and one of the dwarves' hands looking even worse. Going by how deep some of the fragmentation from the fractured gauntlet sat in Jack's arm, Elijah knew that he would have a hard time repairing the limb. And that didn't include the state of the man's fingers, as only a few of them were still attached.

But, regardless, the wounds weren't enough to kill Jack, and there would be no further attempts at hurting the young man. One of the dwarves had barely started dragging Jack away when Aleksi arrived in full sprint.

At the display that followed, Elijah's mind could only match the sight to the sights he'd witnessed in his youth, when managing Castilla's hounds. That inhuman strength, the lack of attempts to defend oneself, and those brutal ways of killing. Elijah knew Aleksi hadn't been filled with bloodlust in the same way as in the past. The veil didn't cover the giant's judgment this time.

This was intentional, and Elijah didn't judge him for it.

Within a minute, all three of the dwarves were dead, their limbs no longer attached to their torsos and their faces frozen mid-scream. Blood pooled on the ground, being absorbed by the earth, but a lot also stained Aleksi's body. When the giant relaxed, letting his arms fall to his sides, the red liquid dripped from his fingers. Elijah wondered how Aleksi planned on cleaning himself up before entering the temple.

Sasha reached the clearing around that time as well, hurrying to Jack's side. Elijah felt some pride when he witnessed how the young woman inspected Jack's injuries systematically, taking care not to stretch any wounds as she got him off the ground and onto the flat tree stump.

The speed at which she went about applying the local sedative to stop the pain, then cleaning out the wounds before applying the general accelerated healing ointments did surprise Elijah, however. While he'd performed each step of the process in front of her several times, he'd never gone out of his way to explain it to her. And the way she wrapped the mutilated parts of the fingers that remained proved this wasn't her first time having to handle a scenario like this.

Where had this talent been hiding?

Elijah wouldn't know for a while, and neither would he know how Sasha and Aleksi handled Jack's treatment, as the stream that showed him the royal section got cut. The show had ended, once again leaving him dependent on updates from the Dungeon.

'Look at it as a motivator to fight even harder!' the Dungeon explained encouragingly. Elijah couldn't find it in him to match her attitude. 'I mean, you only have one more fight to get through, and then you're done! The rewards will be yours, and you can go back to your boring lives.'

Only one more?

Frowning, Elijah looked through his internal map. For every enemy that had been spotted, he'd placed markers, along with their unique signature so he wouldn't count double. Alongside that, every enemy killed had been greyed out, making it easier to see where they needed to go for the next round of fighting, but… nothing was left. The maze, in all its glory, had almost been fully explored, the converted grass at some point inhabiting every single tunnel.

Which meant that all the prerequisites had been met to fight the boss, whatever enemy that might be.

"Do you hear that?" Grace asked soon after, leading Elijah to believe they would find out the nature of the creature earlier than expected.

Echoing through the tunnels, swinging in pitch and volume, came what Elijah could only describe as the howling of a wraith. It dug into his ears, making the hairs on his neck rise, and the muscles in his body tense, expecting an attack that he couldn't predict.

Yet nothing came.

"Whatever is making that sound isn't nearby," Elijah commented, rechecking his internal map. No new red dot had shown up yet, meaning that the boss would still be a healthy distance away from them. "But, we can't be certain it'll stay in the same area like the others. This is the last one."

"We can never be sure of anything nowadays," Grace muttered, adjusting her stachel before stretching her arms over her head. "Sleep won't come to me when that thing is out there somewhere. If you're done with the resupplying, I don't see why we should wait."

Elijah should've refused at that point. Though their minds ran as high as their stress, resting their bodies was paramount to increasing their chances of survival. And yet, he'd witnessed what had happened above. He'd seen how the days had treated Aleksi, and, despite what he knew to be the safe choice, he still agreed with Grace's opinion.

'Be ready for anything,' he ordered Dawn, who had already settled into place on his shoulder.

With a brisk pace, they walked towards the constant howl. It'd never stopped echoing through the tunnels, whatever beast causing it never stopping for breath. It worried Elijah, since he knew he'd heard howling like that in the past, but he couldn't place where. An herbivore of some kind.

'Why keep making so much noise?' Dawn asked curiously. 'Seems like a waste.'

'Screaming like this has some very specific usages in the world of beasts,' Elijah explained. 'To alert other beasts like them that this area is already claimed, or, in short bursts, it can be used defensively to scare would-be predators away.'

'But which of those is it here?'

'None, I'm afraid,' he guessed. 'This isn't a warning to stay away. It's letting us know exactly where it is.'

An invitation, in the most bestial form possible. It unnerved Elijah, as he knew such an act would require a higher level of intelligence from the boss. Though the Dungeon could implant instincts into the beasts, the creatures needed some understanding of why, when they stepped so far away from the norm.

"Anything on the map yet?" Grace asked, prompting Elijah to check again. He'd glanced at it a minute before, to no avail, and this time proved no different. "You've got a good range on it, and we've been walking for some time now, so shouldn't we have seen something by now? The Dungeon's walls might not dampen sound as much down here as they do above, but that howling hasn't changed in volume for the past ten minutes."

… Shit.

That line of dread that had been running through Elijah finally clicked into place, as the sense of wrong finally made sense. And, as they both stopped in their walking, the distant howling seemed to alter, changing from the wraith-like pitch to something more akin to laughter. Deep, coughing laughter, like something that would've come from a lifelong smoker.

"Elijah," Grace warned, and he was already on it. The map said nothing was nearby. The grass noticed nothing amiss. No temporary detections either, like what had happened with the flying enemies. There was nothing to indicate their foe was nearby. "The direction is changing."

And so it was. In ten seconds, the laughing went from coming from ahead of them to coming from behind. It made little sense. The map didn't show any quick routes to travel to make that possible. Even Aleksi, at a full sprint, couldn't copy that.

Wait, no.

'I thought there was one,' Dawn commented, as the duck swerved her head around. Elijah could only narrow his eyes as he focused his ears on listening to the double-layered laughter. It had split up further, and two tracks of laughter were heard. They were very similar, but the one coming from ahead sounded more distorted, pausing, slowing, and speeding up in random intervals. 'How many are there?'

Elijah didn't know.

His pulse was speeding up.

"We're being toyed with," Elijah cursed, pulling out a vial of fast-working acid. He had no target to throw the concoction at, but his mind felt calmer with it at the ready. "It knows where we are, what we're doing."

Their steps had been quiet. The mannerisms switched up when they stopped walking meant it could either hear the difference, which was very unlikely, or it could see the difference. With the constant noise, Elijah supposed he could make a case for a specialized form of echolocation, but his instincts were denying that idea, and yet that only left one option.

"Grace," he said, speaking quietly but firmly. "As fast as you can, I need you to do a sweep of this tunnel."

Her eyes widened, understanding what his words insinuated, but her experience kept her calm. With a firm nod, Elijah watched as she took a deep breath before adjusting her footing. From an outside perspective, who hadn't seen the way she worked before, it would be like a simple adjusting of how she stood, but in truth, it was an indicator of the intricate web of mana veins surrounding the Wind Mage's Core being activated to their fullest.

"Now."

All the loose dirt, save for the portion just around them, flew from the ground as the harsh winds cut through everything. Damaged chunks of the stone walls left their place; it became impossible for Elijah to see more than a meter in front of him, and, despite all of that, the distant laughing didn't cease.

In fact, it only strengthened in volume, the harsh winds somehow amplifying their effects. Elijah knew how impossible that sounded, yet he couldn't reject what he heard. It invaded every thought he had, an endless distraction that couldn't be culled.

"It's here!" Grace shouted, but he didn't listen. "Elijah, it's— Duck!"

Shock superseded instinct, and it was only Dawn physically forcing him to the ground that caused fangs the size of his fingers to miss his face.

'Stop being stupid!' Dawn shouted inside his mind. Elijah frowned, wanting to reply, but the laughter dulled his every thought. 'No laughing! Action! Act! Stupid!'

He didn't think to dodge when Dawn's beak rapidly approached his nose and bit down hard. The sound and pain of cartilage cracking tore Elijah out of the fog forced upon him. With curses not suited for any ears, he shook his head, Dawn losing her grip and falling onto the floor while he looked up.

The horned skull of an elk met his eyes five meters above him, radiating laughter that didn't carry the same influence as before.

What did inspire fear in Elijah was the monstrous amalgamation of half-rotting carcasses behind the skull. It had to weigh several tons, with the layers of mushrooms that sat on top of the fused flesh that made up the body. Elijah could see patches of fur, teeth, and eyes of countless different beasts. The fangs of the panthers, the white feathers of the birds, and even the hairy legs of arachnids, all squeezed together into one singular creature.

Even if the skull didn't contort in the physical sense, Elijah felt it smile at him.

The massive limbs, which had allowed it to settle on the invincible roof of the tunnel, released, causing it to fall downwards. Grace shouted with a hoarse throat, calling upon the summoned wind and throwing the massive boss to the side.

A creature of several tons, thrown as if it were one of the panthers from days before.

Elijah knew what he'd see before his eyes could focus on Grace's hobbling form. Blood ran from her eyes, her ears, and the mumbling from her lips went unheard. With the strength he barely had, he ran to reach her before she fell, holding her up while calling upon the earth as well.

'Go,' he ordered, sending out swathes of Mana as if he had endless reservoirs. It was an awful strategy, in terms of long-term success, but Elijah refused to spare anything if it meant he had a chance of helping her. "Grace, I need you to blink for me."

One of the eyelids twitched.

Good enough.

Dual-Channeling of [Breathe Life] and [Plant Bond] has been activated! Current cost: 89MP/sec

Pulling on his own knowledge and the additional depth of understanding from the Breathe Life spell, he modified his robe to grow a concentrated version of a Phoenix Fruit. The normal variant needed weeks to go ripe, and the effects from consuming needed ten minutes. Elijah forced it to work within three seconds, concentrating the active ingredients into a fruit the size of a small grape.

"This will hurt," he warned, ignoring the attempt at a mumble as he squeezed it into Grace's mouth. He didn't bother making her swallow the juices, as the thin membrane under the tongue allowed plenty of it to enter her bloodstream. And with it so close to her mind, the hellfire concentrate travelled quickly, until—

"Fuck!" Grace shouted, eyes wide and clutching at her head, wide awake and in ignorance of everything close to pain. "Elijah, you piece of—"

The laughter of the boss increased tenfold as Elijah felt the backlash of the roots trying to hold it in place twenty meters away. Dawn guided each tendril, making them shoot through the rotting flesh, but it didn't care as it continued to approach them.

They were outmatched.

'Dawn,' he said, feeling regret for calling upon a certain trick so quickly. 'You have my blessing.'

That he would stoop to using the Nightshade poison on the same day left a bad taste in Elijah's mouth, but there was little alternative.

'Got it!' Dawn replied, not carrying the same weights, as she called upon a dozen more of the roots to strike at the boss. Yet her eagerness to strike seemed to tip it off. Before, it had simply ignored her attacks, more than happy to ignore the removal of rotting flesh from its sides, but the new wave of strikes was dodged.

A side-step of a dozen meters in a second. The elk skull twisted around to look at the roots. It knew.

The laughing stopped.

"Can you keep it in place?" Elijah asked Grace.

"Maybe," she replied through gritted teeth, leaning against the wall while raising one arm. At once, the wind began to pick up again. "Make this quick."

He would try.

Putting a hand onto the earth, Elijah assisted Dawn's onslaught, making the movements of the roots faster and faster. Each of the barbed tips was coated in that deadly poison, promising a swift death to whatever it reached, yet the boss avoided each of the strikes. It stayed off the ground, lunging between the walls and the invincible ceiling at speeds it wasn't meant to possess.

'We need to hurry,' Elijah told Dawn, increasing his own output. His Core cursed his name, body lashing back at him, but he couldn't care right now.

One second of everything.

Dual-Channeling of [Accelerate Growth] and [Plant Bond] has been activated! Current cost: 145MP/sec

A tenth of his total reserves, all spent in one second, but he regretted nothing. Doubling in speed and numbers, the roots became impossible to avoid, especially with Grace's efforts to slow the beast. They hit the pulsating head of the boss just below where the elk skull sat. Several drops of the poison were pushed into the flesh before the roots were torn apart. Elijah felt blood from his mouth join the current flowing from his broken nose. He didn't care, grinning through it all.

But then, as he stopped the outputting to give himself a reprieve, that damned laughter began again.

'How long until it dies?' Dawn asked, retreating a few steps, when the boss fell onto the ground with a loud boom. The distance between it and the group was less than thirty meters. 'It looks alive still.'

'I'm not sure,' Elijah confessed. Any beast of blood, with a heart still beating, would die in a minute's time, but the effects were meant to be shown before that. Especially when such large amounts had been used, and with the direct insertion into the flesh, it would have to be even faster. 'No reason not to be on the safe side.'

With a trembling hand, he pulled out the drone in his pocket, throwing it at the boss. It made a small effort to dodge, but a small burst of wind adjusted the construct's course and allowed it to safely land on the giant torso. In a second, it had dug under the flesh that served as the boss's skin.

Yet, still, it kept laughing.

Keep the pressure.

Channeling of [Fungi Bond] has been activated! Current cost: 20MP/sec

'Devour, multiply, and destroy,' he ordered, granting it energy to feast on while it got its bearings. Yet the bond began to grow harder to keep up soon, requiring Dawn's help as Elijah watched the laughing boss.

The parts of the head that had been pierced by the poisoned roots fell off, splashing on the ground like liquid.

"What—" Elijah began to mutter, before a cloud of purple fog sprayed from the elk skull. A royal purple, identical in color to the petals of the Luna Nightshade. "Field, Grace!"

Elijah thanked the gods above that she didn't hesitate, as the cloud hit an invisible wall a meter away from them. He might've survived with some minor side effects, but a single inhale would've meant the death of Grace.

"If you begin to run empty, wrap the field around just you," he ordered, happy to take the chance with himself. "Keep yourself safe."

The chance that the same wouldn't count for him had grown in the past seconds, as Elijah began to feel a pressure bubbling from his Core. Not the pressure that came through the low reservoir of Mana, though that could also be felt, but the pressure of the Fungi Bond fighting him.

No… The boss was fighting him through the bond. Like the treant, it had understood his strategy of devouring from within, yet the tree monster had done nothing in comparison to this abomination. It didn't try to cut the connection and stop the drones from consuming the flesh, but instead tried to use the connection to get at Elijah.

'Can't hold it,' his robe said. It had been given the necessary systems to hold together the bonds with the fungi, but Elijah could feel it as the intricate weaving slowly pulled itself apart. 'Too much. Too many. Growing. Stop it. Can't stop it. Please—'

The voice became too garbled for Elijah to understand, as the primitive mind fought for cohesion. A losing battle, one that would soon be lost, and with it, the load would be pushed onto Elijah.

How many of the drones had been made through duplication? He counted hundreds.

Too dangerous.

With a swift hand, Elijah cut off the connection to the fungal hivemind, refusing to—

What.

The bond didn't fade. The upkeep still flowed from his Core.

No.

Elijah repeated the action, ordering the Fungi Bond spell to cease, to be destroyed, but it didn't obey him.

Stop that damned laughter!

It didn't stop.

'The end comes,' the half-shattered mind warned, before going silent, the last breaths of its existence being spent trying to endure for as long as possible. It knew its fate and what would happen to Elijah soon.

'Disappear!' Elijah shouted through the bond, but the drones did not receive his message. The amalgamation laughed even more, the half-mouths on the rest of its body joining in. An entire choir of ridicule, counting down his imminent mental collapse.

Something had to be done. Another layer to protect Elijah. What? The robe couldn't handle the pressure, and he'd spent hours on it. To repeat the process would require at least half that time, and he had… ten seconds at most.

Something already attuned to me, with enough intelligence to have the setup imprinted, and with enough staying power.

A conduit.

Dawn? No. Elijah preferred his fate over that, and the bond between the duo delved too deep to protect his mind, regardless. It had to be mindless, like a piece of his body, but distinct enough to be separated in an instant.

…

Elijah knew what to do.

'Dawn, keep me alive,' Elijah requested, as he mouthed a quick apology to Grace on the chance this didn't work.

With a heavy heart, he brought out his dagger. The blade was sharp, more than enough to cut through the fabric covering his chest.

"What… what are you doing?" Grace questioned, but Elijah couldn't answer. Holding his breath, he cut into the side of his chest that had been converted into plant matter. He and Dawn had worked for months to transform it into flesh, but the distractions had luckily stopped them from completing the job.

He groaned in pain as the blade got through to the rib he'd chosen. It was centermost in the converted area, closest to the original plant composition, and completely infused with Elijah's essence. A perfect connection to him, better than any bond with plants could normally have, but still distinct enough not to directly bind with his consciousness.

'Separate,' he commanded, thanking the world he knew the active ingredients required to numb nerve pain. With the ligaments and muscles freely giving up the rib, Elijah pulled it out of its place. From the blood loss and the loss of self, for that matter, he nearly collapsed then and there, but the threat of what failure would bring brought him back into focus. Dawn kept her word, keeping him alive with her tendrils. He had to do the rest.

So little time left.

Dual-Channeling of [Breathe Life] and [Plant Bond] has been activated! Current cost: 174MP/sec

Dawn supplied most of the energy, as Elijah began to run dry. He barely noticed, as the rib straightened, widened, and grew in length until it went from the earth up to his shoulder. At the top was a spiraling pattern, which continued within the structure all the way down.

A protective pattern, each additional loop increasing the potential exponentially.

Even with Breathe Life running through his mind, letting him see what mortal minds weren't meant to understand, he barely grasped his own actions. As if a hand guided every stroke, he carved every symbol into what was now a staff. They glowed a dangerous green, calling to him with his own voice.

But would it be enough?

'I'm sorry,' his robe said in a quiet tone, before the abyss opened up to swallow Elijah.

But Elijah didn't budge. His mind screamed, he screamed, and the world filled with that laughter, but his grip on the staff didn't waver. The glowing increased, the final symbols finishing with the settling, and then the world seemed to explode in the light.

'... It's quiet.'

Elijah heard no reply to the comment, as he slowly blinked. The laughing, the screaming, the streaks of pain all seemed so quiet now. They were still there, in the distance, but they didn't have the same hold over him.

How strange.

Blinking again, he knew that the action had no impact on his physical form. He felt frozen in time, in that instant, where the wave of a thousand constructs flowed over to his controls.

But they hadn't truly landed yet, still approaching him. In whatever mental manifestation he stood in, they hadn't reached Elijah. They would, soon, but the choice would be his.

And he made the choice to redirect them, away from his mind and over to the staff that his right hand clutched so fiercely.

'Are you sure?' A thousand voices asked.

'Yes,' Elijah replied. The thousands of small minds didn't question him further, making no attempt at resisting him. They accepted his reality. 'But the rest of you haven't.'

In the far distance, the laughing had turned to him, the multitude of other minds that made up the boss noticing his redirection. He felt their fury, as their attempt to lengthen his torture and enjoy his death had failed. Elijah had been toyed with. They could've killed him a hundred times over, but their arrogance and sadistic nature had overruled efficient action.

No more.

As the sensation of blood dripping from Elijah's face strengthened, time picked up again. The laughter had stopped, the howling had stopped, and with that came the shriek of a childish mind that had been denied its fun.

Half-broken limbs were used to sprint towards them, more of the purple fog flying from the elk skull, but Elijah did not blink.

It had grown confident. It had allowed the drones to consume. They had a greater mass than the boss itself.

And with that, Elijah could say one word.

'Detonate.'

All obeyed within half a second. The torso burst first, the rotting flesh sliced open from the pressure in a hundred places, before the thinner limbs began to outright split into pieces as the fused bones couldn't hold it all together.

Five meters in front of them, the boss roared.

Elijah made his best attempt to smile, his flesh having a hard time obeying his words.

'A death worthy of something like you,' he commented. The boss heard, roaring one final time before the elk skull cracked, becoming dust in mere seconds. '... Dawn, please get me and Grace the healing pastes and concoctions from my bag. They should be on the top-right side.'

Half-conscious, as he stumbled over to sit beside Grace, who had already collapsed from exhaustion due to the phoenix fruit concentrate running out of steam, Elijah briefly noted the Dungeon trying to talk to him. Maybe she tried to congratulate him. The thud of half a dozen books popping out next to Elijah certainly seemed to indicate that.

He couldn't find it in him to care, as he tended to Grace's wounds.