Chapter Five: Death, Daisies and Daffodils.

Sometime later, Rory was jerked awake when someone shook his shoulder. Stretching his body out like a cat, Rory blearily opened his eyes, revealing a short middle-aged woman who was smiling kindly down at him.

Rory just stared at her gormlessly for several seconds while he fought away the last dregs of sleep.

Shifting uncomfortably under Rory’s gaze, she eventually snapped at Rory, “Quit your staring, boy! I came over here to make sure you were awake. Nearly everyone has left already and you better get yourself moving before you are left alone.” With that, the women turned on her heel and walked away before Rory could ask where everyone had gone to.

Quickly standing up, Rory noticed there were only about a dozen people left in the cavern and they were all moving towards one of the tunnels. Quickly moving to catch up with them, Rory had joined the small group just as they entered the tunnel. This tunnel was markedly different from the tunnel Rory had previously been in. First of all, a small stream that fed into the large pool in the cavern dominated the right side. Secondly, it was much warmer and a breeze could faintly be felt, whereas before Rory would have been cold traversing the tunnels had it not been for his onesie, now he imagined he would have been comfortable even without his onesie as his sole piece of clothing.

After a couple hours of walking, which felt infinitely longer due to the group's reluctance to talk, Rory noticed the tunnel had started to gradually slope upwards and with it, the small stream had disappeared into a crack in the wall. The luminous moss had also become less frequent, giving a lot less light, which resulted in frequent tripping by many individuals.

Just as Rory was starting to despair that he would be trapped underground forever and die of starvation or thirst, the tunnel levelled out and in the distance was light!

With a new hope, the group proceeded with greater urgency and the end of the tunnel gradually grew closer, revealing itself to be open sky, with the tops of trees barely visible.

Reaching the end, the group stood in awe of the vast woodland below them. They had emerged out of the tunnel onto the side of a small mountain a couple of hundred meters above the forest floor with a small, worn path winding down below them. The thick leafy canopy of the forest blocked out Rory's view of the ground below. Various trees towered above the rest, some even reaching as high as Rory stood.

So in awe of the sight of the blue sky and rich, thick woodland in front of them that no one noticed when a thick tree trunk like arm, covered in lesions and dirt, descended from above and plucked out a portly woman from their group. The women’s screams alerted them to the danger, causing the group to turn around in horror as the women struggled in the arms' grasp. The hideous harm was attached to an even more hideous creature.

A being at least twenty feet tall with a humanoid appearance with an incredible girth but with short stubby legs and arms easily three quarters the length of its body was crouched above the tunnel entrance. Boils and lesions constantly erupted, were healed and then developed again on the beast with hair and flesh constantly sloughing off of it, briefly revealing muscles and brilliant white bones beneath before they too healed.

Two small dim-witted eyes stared blankly at its prey as its long arm brought its struggling victim to its face where it opened its cavernous mouth, revealing yellow stained dagger-like teeth with two enormous tusks erupting from its bottom jaw. With a final agonising scream, the women’s head was bitten off, crunched apart it sounded like the breaking of an eggshell, the creature then casually threw her headless body behind it where it was ripped apart by the three similar creatures behind it.

Snapping out of his temporary terrifying fear, Rory started backing away from the creatures, hoping to get away before the creature took notice of the rest of the group. Sadly, that wasn’t meant to be as soon enough, those dim eyes were cast on the rest of the group and its long arm shot out at a new target, its speed seeming to defy its great bulk.

Fear and sympathy raged through Rory as the arm sped towards its next victim and with his strong emotions his blessing of flame responded, fire leapt out of his hands and with Rory quickly bringing his hands up the flame quickly raced to intercept the arm and when the two forces met... nothing happened.

No great explosion or melting of flesh, when the fire met the monsters massive meaty arm, the creatures arm just froze temporarily and after about ten seconds of being engulfed in flames, the monster simply withdrew its arm and stared at it in fascination, turning its arm this way and that, as while it had not been incinerated like with the bat, the small blackened mark on the arm was not healing either.

Taking advantage of the monster's distraction, Rory shouted for the others to run, throwing a quick analyse at the monster. Rory set off, not waiting to see if the others followed him. He ran down the warn path and into the forest with all the speed he could muster.

Spurred on by the sound of crashing undergrowth and an angry roar, Rory didn’t stop for several minutes, taking little heed of the lush plant life beneath his feet or the delicate flowers, whose petals unfurled and twisted to face him as he ran past. Ignoring completely several animals that made themselves scarce as soon as they heard his heavy footsteps thundering their way.

Heaving for breath, Rory eventually came to a stop. Having travelled further and faster than he had in a long time, but now suffering with a painful stitch to his side, he greedily sucked in oxygen as he tried to regain his composure.

A couple of minutes after Rory had regained his breath and after his heart had stopped threatening to rip itself out of his chest, rustling could be heard fast approaching him from where he had come from. Readying himself for whatever new horror presented itself, Rory let out a sigh of relief when the other members of the group came crashing through the bushes and almost collided with him.

Panting for breath, a young man in his twenties in a stained and mud speckled suit exclaimed, “Jesus, man! You took off like the wind! Where did you learn to run like that? Looking at you, I would never have expected that.”

Slightly pissed off at the young guy's comment, Rory almost snapped back at him but caught himself just before, as he was still embarrassed about having run away from the monsters without checking that the others had followed.

Instead, Rory scanned the group and noticed that, apart from the women who had been eaten, no one else had been lost. No one apart from Rory was in a position to keep moving, so it was decided that everyone should rest for a little while before they started to search for the main group. Rory kept watch for the group while they collapsed on the floor to recover.

Thankfully they were unmolested during this time and Rory was able to check his analyse of the monster that attacked them.

Infected Juvenile Cave Troll - lvl ??

Description - Trolls are truly not the smartest of creatures, however what they lack in intelligence they make up with surprising speed, brute strength and a nearly unrivalled regeneration ability.

While not overly aggressive, trolls will not hesitate to kill and eat anyone foolish enough to wonder into their range. This individual is only considered a teenager to its race, not fully grown and has yet to come into its full potential. Juveniles are more prone to acts of trickery and menacing behaviour.

This specimen has been severely weakened by the undead plague. While a troll's regeneration means they will very rarely succumb to undeath, the disease still ravages their bodies and leaves them in a weakened state while afflicted.

WEAKNESS - While trolls regeneration is legendary, it can be temporarily halted by fire. wounds inflicted then bathed in fire will not heal for several minutes, making this one of the most reliable ways to defeat them.

If Rory hadn’t been scared of the troll before he was now, his only means of defending himself had not only been shrugged off so effortlessly by the troll but to discover it was not only a juvenile but also suffering from the plague made Rory terrified to meet a fully grown healthy troll. Not being able to tell the trolls' level also disturbed him as all the bats he had analysed before had shown their levels, but it could just be that the troll was just that much stronger than him.

In agitation Rory twirled the ring he was wearing, feeling every detail as he did so, trying to take his mind off the horrors he had experienced in the last, however long it had been.

Twirling the ring reminded Rory of the function he had not been able to access earlier but now concentrating on the orb he thought of as his Mana it was child’s play to add Mana into the ring to charge it, his Mana supply eagerly responded to the task given to it, rapidly draining his Mana to charge the ring, before he knew it half of Rorys Mana supply had gone and the Mana entering the ring showed no sign of slowing down.

In desperation not to repeat the episode where he blacked out, Rory forcibly removed the ring from his finger, where it landed on the brittle branch covered floor. As soon as the ring left his finger, the draining sensation stopped, and he regained power over his Mana again. Gingerly bending down, Rory brushed his hands over the ring, relieved when this did not trigger the draining sensation again.

Carefully placing the ring on his finger again, all the time being prepared to chuck it off again, Rory instantly knew that the ring was charged 140/1000 leaving him with 64 Mana.

Rory’s rumbling stomach roused him from his observation of the ring and being satisfied that at least now the ring had some charge in it and that everyone had had time to rest, Rory started to rouse everyone else in the group so that they could try to find everyone else or at the least find some food.

Luckily, one of the people in the group turned out to be a keen gardener, and they were 80% confident that some of the bushes they had passed on the way had been blackberry bushes. With no better options, the group proceeded back in the direction they had come from.

When they arrived at the bushes, a quick analysis of one of the berries after it had been picked confirmed that they were indeed blackberries and, not questioning their luck, they descended on the couple of blackberry bushes like locusts.

Their hunger somewhat sated after devouring the blackberries, Rory and the group carried on the search for the main group. Backtracking on the way they had come in their flight to escape the trolls, Rory came to appreciate just how far he had run in his cowardly retreat. Before the system had arrived, he had been in the worse shape of his life and while his physique had not changed, he was confident he had never been able to run as far as he had just done.

Eventually, they reached the bottom of the slope leading to the mountain. On their journey, they had avoided several man eating plants and a couple of trees with suspiciously animal like growths attached to their bark along. Luckily, they had not encountered anything that wasn’t static. There was no sign of the trolls anywhere they looked. They could not be seen on the mountain and the soft loamy soil showed no troll sized tracks.

Confident now that no trolls were suddenly going to ambush them again, it was easy to make out the tracks of the other group, what with the hundreds of foot prints and the fact that nearly every plant and flower had been trampled in their wake. Several hours of walking later, in which Rory continued to add Mana to his ring when his Mana pool filled, they still had not encountered the others. however, signs of their progress were everywhere. At one point they had clearly been attacked as several cat sized spider bodies laid strewn on the floor, their bodies a ruin due to the numerous and variety of attacks inflicted on them.

Further along the trail, even more bodies were discovered. Luckily, they were always in single numbers or small groups and luckily, none of the bodies had yet to be human. By this time, the sun was getting lower in the sky and Rory and the group were despairing that they would never reach the others before nightfall and none of them fancied their chances of surviving alone in the dark.

When all hope seemed lost, a piercing shriek from a man cut through the forest and abruptly ended. Not knowing what danger the man was in and not really caring as it was their first lead at finding the others they had, they all set off at a fast jog in the direction the scream had come from.

Following hopefully in the right direction the group abruptly came out of the forest and into a clearing, one end of the clearing was dominated by a radiant pond, its waters so clear the light from the sun overhead reflected off of it making the surface sparkle like diamonds, two rivers started and ended at either end of the pond keeping the supply of water to the pond fresh. Beautiful flowers of numerous colours with multiple long green stems stood three feet high and weaved and bobbed in the wind like they were alive, fleshy skin and ripped clothes mixed in with tightly wound green vines...

Right in the centre of the flowers, the main group was located, each wielding various weapons, most held crude branches or stones, but some had knifes, bats and one even had a tripod. The group had clumped together in a rough circle and were waving their weapons at the plants that surrounded them.

Rory did a double take as he realised that the plants were, in fact, alive and were currently attacking the others. From the look of it, dozens of them had already fallen victim to plants and were firmly tied up and in the process of being dragged away, if somewhat slowly.

Rory analysed the plants quickly and was relieved to see that while the plants were numerous, they were all low level, most level one and some level two’s and three’s.

Plantling Drone (flower) - lvl 1

Description - given life by a plantling queen, plantling drones are simple minded creatures and exist only to capture prey that can be turned into a fertiliser. Drones have basic senses and can be easily tricked into thinking that their targets are non compostable. Although a multitude of plantling variety exists, flower plantlings are one of the weakest, lacking many of the offensive and defensive abilities of their cousins, such as bark armour or toxins.

Seeing Rory’s group at the edge of the clearing, several members of the main group shouting frantically for them to help.

“We have to do something!” the women next to Rory all but shouted, practically vibrating in anger. "Look at all those poor people.”

All the women’s anger achieved was to cause a small section of the army of plantling to break off and head towards them, their flower petals acting like little maws opening and closing as they moved.

“shit! shit! Shit! SHIT!” after having had any time, they might have had to plan on a way to help the group ruined. Rory panicked again. A thin jet of flame erupted from one hand. However, the flame, even reduced to the thinnest Rory could make it, still lacked the required reach to hit the plantling.

After a moment, Rory came to his senses and cancelled his fire as to not waste too much Mana and frantically racked his brain for a way to best defeat the plantlings. Inspiration came from an unlikely place, the women who had shouted and caught the plantlings attention in her continued anger had picked up a stone and hurled it straight into the mass of the incoming enemy, thudding loudly against their spongy plant flesh but doing little else.

Combining his fire with something that could be thrown would negate his range issue and stop him from having to get too close to those wildly whipping vines. Looking around for anything that was flammable, Rory came up empty with anything that was within reach, as everything was either non flammable or too wet to catch on fire easily. Suddenly Rory remembered his pouch, and the moss contained within, withdrawing a clump of it caused it to appear in Rory’s hand exactly the same as he remembered.

With a brief flare of his magic, the moss quickly caught on fire, turning into a bright ball of destruction. With careful aim, Rory threw the flaming moss ball at the plantlings approaching them. The throw flew true as it sailed through the air where it hit a plantling square in the middle and to Rory’s delight on impact the ball of moss shattered with strands of flaming moss scattering everywhere, consuming the plantling completely in fire and setting several others ablaze as well.

An alien sounding shriek erupted from the plantlings that were now on fire, which caused several things to happen at once. The plantlings currently on fire lost all sense of purpose and instead flailed about in random directions, setting their neighbours alight. The plantlings in the splinter group not currently on fire took action to avoid their fiery brethren. While the main force of plantlings all stopped what they were doing, and charged directly at Rory, even resorting to stopping mid attack and even releasing their victims to increase their speed.

With hundreds of plants now suddenly heading straight for him. Rory got desperate and dumped several dozen balls of moss out of his inventory while at the same time addressing his teammates “I’m going to set these pieces of moss on fire, I need you lot to pick them up and throw them at the plants otherwise we are all going to die!” Rory exclaimed already setting them on fire as he hoped they would follow his lead.

Soon enough, ten balls of fire flew through the air to various degrees of success, unfortunately Rory’s teammates were not immune to his fire like he was and the scorching and painful flames hindered their aim. Just over half the volley of moss hit their targets, taking out another six plantlings outright and setting fire to another ten. By this point, the splinter group of plantlings was dealt with, but the main group was still fast approaching.

Rory realised that they would never be able to defeat the rest of them before they arrived and washed over them, so he dumped out the rest of the moss and quickly set it on fire before quickly walking forward.

Looking over his shoulder, he announced to the others, “I’ll try to draw them away with my fire. Use the rest of the moss balls to take out as many as you can and then try to join up with the rest of them. It might be your only chance!” he walked directly at the plantlings. As soon as he was within range of the plants, fire erupted from both his hands, setting several on fire, but the mass of plants was now too vast and their momentum too great that they simply ploughed through their flaming comrades.

All of this helped to spread the fire and Rory continued to spray his fire at as many as he could, trying to be as economical as possible. Now that Rory was the plant's main attention again, he slowly drew the plants away from both groups, trying to open up a gap.

Spurred on by Rory’s heroic attack, both groups leapt into action. One group scrambled for the flaming balls while the others charged directly into the rear of the plantlings, crushing stems with heavy blows, slicing vines and trampling roots. The plantlings, in their single minded desire to reach the fire starter, ignored the attacks, becoming easy victims.

Rory was oblivious to all of this, as all of his concentration was on controlling his magic and staying ahead of the plant tide. Eventually, the inevitable happened and Rory ran out of Mana. Pushing through the Mana exhaustion, he resorted to kicking and stamping any plantling that came close.

A vine came whistling towards his head, forcing Rory to duck to protect his head but leaving him vulnerable to another vine that slapped across his stomach, ripping a slash in his onesie.

Soon, Rory also ran out of Stamina. Rory had inflicted huge losses on the plants but with both resources depleted he soon collapsed to the floor, fighting with all his might to remain conscious Rory looked on helplessly as the plants waddled towards him and with his last conscious thought he willed his ring to activate. his last sight before his vision fade was of a golden sphere materialising around him.

Rory jerked awake for a moment, not knowing where he was until it all came back to him. Seconds must have passed as he still felt as weak as an infant and the horde of plants was still all around him and above him. however, now there was a golden barrier saving him from his would be murderers.

The golden barrier had a thin wisp like trail heading into his ring and Rory quickly brought up the ring's charge

Charge 452/1000

Thankfully, the barrier had saved his life and only a couple of points of charge had been drained from it. Watching the charge closely, the barriers charge did not change even with the plants pressed up and on top of the barrier. Even the probing vines didn’t deplete its charge. This status quo remained for several minutes, which Rory took advantage of to funnel what little recovered Mana he had into the ring.

Just when Rory thought he had hope that he would survive, the charge on the ring started to decrease as one, then three, and then more plantlings whipped the barrier with their vines, causing the charge to steadily deplete.

The barrier eventually failed, breaking apart in a shower of golden flakes and several dozen plantlings landed on top of Rory, as they were no longer supported by the golden barrier. Instead of wrapping Rory up to take him captive, the plantlings used their vines to strike Rory and, due to the volume of attacks, Rory was unable to block all the vines.

Slowly, the vines drained Rory’s health, gashes, cuts and scrapes opening up along his body as they took their toll.

All at once, the attacks on Rory ceased and as one, the plants all broke out into a fast shuffle away from Rory, away from the other groups and instead headed towards the edge of the clearing.

After being trampled on by multitudes of roots in the plants mad exodus Rory lay down for a good ten minutes before he even considered sitting up, apart from every muscle and fibre protesting against the slightest movement he was in decent shape, he was crisscrossed with cuts and wounds but none were deep and were healing already.

When he finally managed to sit up, what he saw amazed him. Hundreds of plant corpses littered the clearing, mixed in with the occasional unlucky human body. Whole swathes of grass had now become ash.

People actively searched through the battlefield. They checked bodies for life signs and either killed them or helped, depending on which body they checked.

Seeing that all seemed safe for the moment, Rory checked all the notifications that had sounded throughout the battle.

Ding - you have defeated [Plantling Drone (flower)] experience earned.

Rory received a similar kill notification to that of the bat and plague spreader ones he had received. however, he had not received increased experience as the plantlings had not been higher level than he was.

Ding – your group has defeated [Plantling Drone (flower)] experience earned reduced due to being in a group.

Ding – your group has defeated [Plantling Drone (flower)] experience earned reduced due to being in a group.

...

Ding – your group has defeated [Plantling Drone (flower)] experience earned reduced due to being in a group.

Dozens upon dozens of similar notifications appeared for the plantlings that he and the others had killed. He only received solo experience for the first one he killed and from then on, the experience seemed to have been split between him and the others.

With the vast number of kills came some more levels for Rory as well.

Ding – level 5 Reached – 4 stat points awarded.

Ding – level 6 Reached – 4 stat points awarded.

Ding – level 7 Reached – 4 stat points awarded.

Ding – level 8 Reached – 4 stat points awarded.

Ding – level 9 Reached – 4 stat points awarded.

The prolonged battle had highlighted Rory’s continued small Mana pool, as twice now he had run out of Mana and almost suffered the price for it. Rory had twenty points to spend, and he placed three into Endurance to take it to twenty and to boost his Stamina. With the remaining, Rory placed seven points into intelligence to hopefully increase his fire magic power and the remaining ten into Wisdom to boost his Mana pool.

Status page:

Name: Rory Richardson

Class 1: level 9 - None

Attributes:

Strength: 20

Dexterity: 16

Endurance: 20

Vitality: 22

Intelligence: 26

Wisdom: 32

Available points: 0

Health: 167/220

Stamina: 58/200

Mana: 38/324

Blessings:

Child of flame

Child of lightning

Titles:

Cheater of death

First kill

Prodigy (locked)

Fledgling Mana user

Resistances:

Lightning resistance - lvl 14

Flame resistance – lvl 12