Chapter 180: Mad Science (Patreon)

Coop stifled his celebration after handily defeating the mushroom boss. For a moment he was on the verge of forgetting the purpose of his trip into the caverns, giddy with his exploits against what had, on paper, seemed like an oppressive opponent. But conquering such a challenge hadn’t been the reason he was exploring the dank darkness in the first place.

A High Priest of the Cult of Chakyum was supposed to be making the cave system their sanctuary. As he shook off the dust that clung to his sweat coated skin, he wondered if the local intel had been incorrect. He really doubted that the mushroom would have been content to share its domain with someone else. Perhaps Tzultacaj and Juliana had mistaken the exploits of the mushroom for the actions of the Cult.

Before he made any hasty judgments, he checked his notifications. They had been flooded with afflictions during the fight, but there were other messages interspersed among the debuffs that he hadn’t had the opportunity to observe.

[You defeated Elite Sporeguard (Level 317)]

[+3767 Basic Credits]

[+1 Essence of Corruption (Uncommon)

[Congratulations! Your profession has leveled up!]

[Congratulations! You have leveled up!]

[Settle the Infestation (62/200)]

…

[You defeated Elite Sporeguard (Level 317)]

[+3842 Basic Credits]

[Congratulations! You have leveled up!]

[Settle the Infestation (168/200)]

…

[You defeated Fairy’s Inkcap (Level 317)]

[+40053 Basic Credits]

[+1 Mycelial Dream Thread (Unique)]

[Congratulations! Your profession has leveled up!]

[Congratulations! Your profession has leveled up!]

[Congratulations! You have leveled up!]

[Congratulations! You have leveled up!]

[Quest Complete! Settle the Infestation]

[You have a new quest!]

“Oh…” Coop muttered as he filtered through the notices. He dropped to a squat as he realized he was going to need a minute to parse the information that had been waiting for his attention.

There were several surprises hidden between the fungal infections. The first was that he had stumbled upon another Infestation quest. This one was identical to the quest he had received on the oil platform where the Zombie Lord had established his domain at the start of the assimilation. The Elite Sporeguards were similar in quest function to the Elite Zombies from back then, and the Inkcap Mushroom Boss was the Zombie Lord’s Captain all over again. After defeating a few hundred of the Elites and completing the first task, he was presented with another branching quest that allowed him to settle the Infestation through elimination or cultivation, just like the first time around.

“That means there should be a Zombie Lord equivalent around here.” Coop mumbled to himself. “Bet there really is a High Priest lurking in the background...” Coop squinted around the chamber, but still didn’t see any obvious ways to continue through the cave system.

As far as he understood the rules, it seemed possible for powerful individuals to strike out in unclaimed territory. Once they established their domain, the system designated it as an infestation, providing quests that encouraged more conflict. The Primal Constructs were the obvious beneficiary, with established Field Bosses initiating infestations where they were uncontested, but the Zombie Lord had managed to do the same thing with the guidance of his Breathless faction. It seemed like the High Priest had done the same with the linked sinkholes and the super powerful Enthralling Mystic Mushroom. If the undead could figure it out, why not others?

If an Infestation was allowed to linger, reinforcing its territory over time, it could evolve into a Hive. Felrog the Soul Snatcher had managed to establish a Hive right beneath Ghost Reef’s fort, creating the Infestation early enough that the civilization shard hadn’t had the opportunity to expand its secure territory. As far as Coop could tell, the advancement provided progression to the minions inside the territory, but little else. It was possible that the Hive beneath Ghost Reef had been crippled by the close proximity of the civilization shard along with Jett’s diligent culling, so Coop wasn’t ready to write them off as innocuous, and there was no evidence that a Hive was the final form of the arrangements.

The fact that the Cult of Chakyum appeared to have initiated an Infestation made him wonder about the Envoy’s apparent lack of interest in settlements. According to the Ghost Reef residents’ reports, the man had been cagey about his home base, but maybe he had been sincere about lacking a headquarters with his association finding settlements unimportant. Perhaps they were banking on claiming territory through this alternative method, but Coop couldn’t figure out how that would help them ‘win’ the assimilation. The Primal Constructs would surely take the planet if that was the Cult’s victory strategy. Maybe there was more to their strategy that he hadn’t discovered yet.

Coop had yet to experience anything beyond a Hive, and even that had been overshadowed by the siege event. However, Camila’s family and the Sapphire Armada’s Viceroy, Hali, had each described a zone of extreme danger north of the Orlando settlement. The independent accounts from two different perspectives were enough to convince Coop that something was brewing up there. Coop strongly suspected that whatever came after a Hive had already developed in that region.

“Something else to take care of.” Coop predicted, moderately interested in what he would find should he make it that far. The first Infestation jump started his progress in a way that he wouldn’t forget, so maybe a more mature version would grant him even more boons to carry his faction forward.

He put the idea of future adventures aside, recognizing that he had yet to completely deal with the current Infestation, but even before that, he had progressed enough to pause and take note.

Tallying up the levels gained from the Elite Sporeguards, he had mixed feelings. The fact that the enemies he had been fighting were twice his level meant they should have been worth unbelievable amounts of experience, but he suspected there was something funky about how the system calculated their contributions. Either there was some experience smoothing that would prevent powerleveling by scaling the gains down to a certain threshold or the fact that they were all a part of one being diminished the results, but nowhere near enough to make it seem like he only defeated a single enemy. Coop wished he could get a full accounting of the system’s assessments, but judging by the way Garod had discouraged him from over analyzing the damage calculations, he suspected he would just be confused if he sought clarity. He would need to defeat more enemies that outleveled him in similar ways to collect enough data and draw his own conclusions. In any case, he counted nine levels from the Elites and four levels from the boss itself.

Thirteen levels in a matter of hours was nothing to be disappointed about, but Coop was greedy for stats. He also received three profession levels from scavenging the Sporeguards and four more profession levels from the boss. He wouldn’t look down upon the material rewards either. The highlight was another Unique item called Mycelial Dream Thread that had appeared in his spatial storage along with a bit more than 900,000 Basic Credits.

[Status]

HP - 14040/14040

MP - 17827/26580

Class - Revenant (Level 170)

Profession - Scavenging (Level 122)

Affinity - Spectral

Race - Human (Rank 1)

Faction - None

Strength - 75 (+2658)

Agility - 75 (+1329)

Body - 75 (+1329)

Mind - 2215 (+443)

Intelligence - 75 (+2658)

Acumen - 75 (+1329)

Unallocated - 0

Titles - Champion III, Haunted, Ethereal, Reaper, Slayer VII, Dauntless, Stacked, Defiant, Siegebreaker, Mindbender

Skills (Active) - Invocation, Presence of Mind, Fog of War

Skills (Passive) - Mind Over Matter, Adamance, Practical Application, Arcane Comprehension, Clarity of Purpose

Quests - Settle the Infestation II, Fortune Seeker (18/50), Upgrade Town to City

Basic Credits - 4,592,601

The burst of levels combined with the few he gained from the Ruin Nebula Field Boss and granted him enough progress that he didn’t need to feel guilty about the days spent traveling through the jungle. He felt pretty confident that he had made up for any ground lost to the others on the leaderboards with the contributions from the mushrooms.

Coop stood back up and took another look around the room. The walls remained sturdy, but the ceiling was cracked and missing chunks in large spaces, especially beneath the center of the chamber where the mushroom boss had appeared. The floor was another story. The mushroom boss had been hiding beneath a layer of stone, bathing in the groundwater that flowed underneath. When it climbed into the chamber, after Coop had exposed its hiding place, it destroyed most of the surface. Rocks jutted out and small canyons formed, exposing an underground river that had been diverted by the mushroom’s bulk.

Coop’s Fog of War had diminished so that it only remained within the individual chamber, but it was enough for him to confirm that there were no other exits besides the path that he had arrived on. However, his mists couldn’t penetrate the water, and there had also been pools at the edges of the room, glowing a radioactive green that he had been inclined to avoid.

The groundwater had been at approximately the same level in every single sinkhole, and the final cavern was no exception. The main difference was that the rocky ground had covered the water beneath, which was where the Enthralling Mystic had been growing. As Coop made his way toward one of the perimeter ponds he watched as water rushed through the rubble of the torn up floor.

“Hm..” Coop mumbled as he noticed something.

The way the water flowed into the rocky underground was too consistent to simply be filling the void left by the exit of the mushroom. It was like the water was draining into an even larger space after an obstacle had been removed. Coop thought it was a promising lead, so he circled the battlefield until he found a sloped waterfall leading into the darkness of a lower level with enough of a gap for him to fit.

He glanced at the glowing green pools, then back into the darkness where the underground river flowed. Neither prospect was particularly appealing. A brief assessment of the perimeter mushroom pools revealed nothing of interest. If there was an underwater passage to more caverns, they weren’t revealed by the curtain mushrooms. After circling the chamber, he returned to the newly exposed rushing water in the middle of the room.

Coop sighed to himself, summoning his spear and considering how he would navigate a waterslide into the abyss. If he went deeper underground, he would lose confidence in his ability to dig himself out in the event of a collapse. The previous caves had all been separated from the surface by a thin layer that frequently had gaps in the ceiling. If it all came down, he was sure he was strong enough to dig his way out, and if he got stuck or lost, he expected his spear throws to be plenty strong enough to clear the way back up. Going deeper underground was triggering alarm bells in his head.

“I dunno about this…” He expressed doubt to the audience of moths while testing the water with the spear tip. It was almost lonely without the voices taunting him in his head.

He tilted his head back and forth as he tried to think it through. If he went too deep, there was a real possibility of being trapped, and he really didn’t like the idea of being crushed beneath a mountain of earth. What if he simply got stuck? Would he just linger there forever?

“Yikes.” He shook his head at the thought of being buried alive with immortality in the mix.

Coop’s hesitation didn’t last when he recalled Tzultacaj and Juliana’s mission. They had been on the hunt for the priest in order to free people that were kidnapped and meant to be sacrificed. Coop squeezed his spear and took a deep breath, resolving himself to finish the job as lives were potentially on the line. He needed to see the mission through. If he ran into more problems, he would solve them. If they were difficult, he would work on them one step at a time.

With that final thought filling him with purpose, he didn’t let himself stall. Coop jumped into the water, splashing into the cold and sliding further into the dark.

Coop’s eyes were as wide as saucers, but the limited light made judging distances impossible. He stifled a shriek as the water took a winding path that dragged him deeper, twisting and turning so that he lost his sense of direction. The water would speed up, pulling him deeper into the earth before leveling off and pooling in pitch black chambers as it filtered through narrow passages. Coop bounced off stone walls that had been smoothed by ages of rushing water until a final drop left a lump in his throat. He anticipated a collision and did his best to prepare, but was saved by a deep, ice-cold pool.

Before he sank to the bottom, he swam up, toward an orange tinged surface. The final pool was enormous, with dozens of waterfalls scattered along the edges, similar to the one that Coop had emerged from. When he reemerged his sense of smell was bombarded by a horrifically strong scent of decay. He involuntarily dunked his head back underwater in a futile effort to escape the stench, almost preferring to drown than inhale it again. As he swam toward the shore he refocused.

The next time he brought his head above water, he did so slowly, trying to stay as quiet as possible. He was prepared for the smell this time, but it still slapped him in the face. With watering eyes he carefully observed the dry area. Water filled the center of the chamber with a proper river entering from one side and exiting another. Both tunnels were filled with darkness, but were large enough for boats to safely navigate. A large wooden dock had been built off to Coop’s side and held a series of torches that chased the darkness away. Each flame left a trail of black smoke in the humid air as the burning contested the dampness. Soggy wooden platforms covered the exposed rock on the dry land and were lined with wooden crates, old barrels, and scattered supplies bound with frayed ropes. Physically, Coop thought he had found himself inside some kind of underground smuggler’s den, but the smell was what defined the place.

When his eyes landed on the source, he had to fight himself from retching. Rather than a smuggler’s den, this was a laboratory of disgust, and the owner was fretting over what seemed like biological experiments. Coop drew himself out of the water, staying silent other than the quiet dripping that barely overcame the flickering sounds from the torches, and obscuring himself by staying off the wooden planks. Following the perimeter of the landing, his head was even with the boardwalk. He listened carefully, watching the person in a stained white coat as they frantically shifted from one subject to another.

“No… No!” The mad scientist mumbled and shouted with a shrill, panicked voice. Coop was sure they were both the High Priest of Chakyum and the final boss of the Infestation, but they were not what he had expected. He had imagined another creep, like the Envoy, but this person was a small woman with tangled brown hair sloppily tied up, wearing a white lab coat that, while dirty, belonged in a sterile building rather than a dank cave.

“Why is this happening?!” She screeched as she kicked at one of her subjects. “Not yet! Not yet! They aren’t ready!”

Coop was close enough to understand what she had been working on and he felt a fiery anger deep in his gut. If there had been any opportunity for a peaceful resolution, it was gone the moment Coop witnessed the High Priest’s crimes. Even compared to the Zombie Lord, this person was actually evil.

“My babies!” She cried as she caressed a shriveling mushroom cap that had emerged from her tests.

All along the platform were mushrooms. They were eerily similar to the Fairy’s Inkcap that Coop had defeated on his way down. They were all connected by a series of roots that extended up along the back wall and into the ceiling. Coop would take a bet that they were all one and the same. These were extensions of the mushroom boss. The scientist had been cultivating the enormous Mystic, feeding it experience, elevating it to its extreme level.

The roots were tinged black and decaying, obviously dying without the primary body to sustain the smaller offshoots. At the end of each root was a mushroom cap. They were wilting despite the scientist’s frantic efforts. Most were the size of small animals, but a few were tall enough to seem like they could develop into tree-sized colonies. What horrified Coop was the substrate that they had been growing from.

They were growing out of human bodies.

[Oathsworn Human (Level 76)]

[Fey Master (Intelligence)]

[Chosen of the Darkdawn Circle]

[(Cultivator)]

“Not ready! Not ready!” She shouted in between muffled grunts as she dug her hands into the rapidly decaying mushrooms. “Not ready!”

Coop wasn’t impressed by her level, but it appeared that she was doing some kind of ritual. The Envoy hadn’t been at an extreme level until after he had committed to oppressing Ghost Reef. It was possible she was preparing to do the same.

Coop rolled onto the wooden platform and stood up to his full height, still dripping cold water that splattered onto the dry planks. The High Priest was too distracted with her failing project to notice his presence. His ethereal spear was at the ready anyway, while his shield solidified in his offhand. He threw the spear low and hard, primarily intending to interrupt her ritual, but if she died from the force of his blow, he wouldn’t mourn.

A moment later, she fell to the ground with a gurgle. Spear carved straight through her and Coop resummoned it as he stomped forward, done with subterfuge. The Oathsworn rolled onto her back and coughed black blood. Her arms were covered in black gunk all the way to her elbows from digging into the mushrooms, and even worse, her lips and cheeks were stained with the same decayed mushroom soup. She had been frantically eating the dying mushrooms that had been growing from the cadavers. Coop clenched his jaw tight, utterly disgusted.

“Not… ready…” She coughed.

“Where is Chakyum?” Coop demanded, leveling his spear at her face.

For a moment the panic left her face and she started to smile, showing blackened teeth. “Everywhere.” She stated gladly before coughing more blood. “He is death.” She added with a sigh.

Coop finished her off, not interested in a protracted interrogation. If the Priests of Chakyum were committing similar atrocities, he would need to hunt more of them down. He would get proper answers eventually.