3.08

“What are they gonna do, kill me again?” - The Revenant King on the Revolutionary Forces outside his palace.

I swung my staff behind me, knocking off the corpse, but the digging sensation still remained.

Rain of parasites. Numbers were probably in the hundreds. Parasites in my back. My mana was half spent.

‘Run.’

I grabbed the two mushrooms and turned around. The path was covered in bugs. I wasted half a second before I realised there was no clear way through. Cradling Greenie and Yellow with my arms, I rushed through, ignoring the things gnawing at my feet.

Two bugs landed on me, one on my cap, and one on my back.

I kept running.

One of them latched onto my left leg, another fell on my back. ‘Not yet.’

I hunched down, covering Greenie and Yellow from the barrage on top.

A third on my back, a second on my cap and a new one on my shoulder. ‘Not enough.’

Two more latched onto my right leg.

I reached the exit and jumped through. The sensation of digging now over my entire body. Bark Skin and the Bracken Polypores acted as a buffer, but the first parasites had already made it through. A tickling sensation was inside my back. A small spasm went through me and I couldn’t help but feel a bit giddy.

Some kind of chemical was being released. These things would not only eat me, but they would also make me laugh through the entire thing.

Joy.

‘Nine is good enough I guess,’

I didn’t have much time to consider, the grubs were spreading through me, making my body feel lighter but less responsive. I quickly scanned the surroundings, spotting a decent bench, I dropped Greenie and Yellow there.

“Stay here, if my corpse starts twitching, blast it,” I directed, “I’ll be back in a moment.”

Now to see if friendly fire was a thing.

I took a few steps back and brought my hands to where the bugs were concentrated on myself, then cast Poison Spores with all my remaining mana.

You have died.

I dreamt of an endless black sea. Waters of possibility yet I drifted alone on an island shaped by me but made by someone else's hand.

I woke up to an odd quiet. My first thought upon resuming lucidity was relief that self-damage worked. The alternative would be painful, well, probably not painful, but it would be long and disgusting to think about.

Quickly dismissing a pop up detailing my lost experience, I glanced around. The spawn was empty. Completely so. No one, not even the marks of the previous bloodbath, it was uncanny how little difference there was from the first time I stepped in here.

A world reset? No, more likely just an instance reset. I suppose there were still zones Eve was unwilling to change. Nevermind that, I needed to get going, quickly dusting myself off, I ran towards the direction of my death.

Dodging other players and moving through various terrain left me slightly out of breath, but it only took me a few minutes to get back. I knew I was at the right place upon seeing Greenie and Yellow wave at me from atop the bench.

A few paces from them, was my corpse.

I knelt in front of the body, Greenie and Yellow climbing into the safety of my cap as I did so.

I told the wisps to guard my corpse in the heat of the moment but upon actually seeing it I was puzzled.

Why had this remained when other player bodies just despawned?

The body was fresh, but my clothing, gear, and armour were completely gone, so I guess I can’t use this to dupe items, that would’ve been too easy. The body was completely naked except for a thin film of fungus on the skin, the floppy husks of Bracken Polypores and the bug corpses still clinging to my skin.

It was here I also noticed that my myconid body had no visible genitalia or reproductive organ, something I suspected but never bothered to check.

Prying off a bug, I was rewarded by the sight of several dozen holes dotting my skin and the answer to my question. Well, a theory anyways. Looking into one of the middlemost holes, I saw movement. A parasite was alive and still squirming. Noam lost his whistle thing to another player, perhaps the condition is that the thing had to be claimed by something else before they despawned or was this just specific to parasites like this?

Regardless, the body made the next few steps easier.

“Yellow, Green, I need you two to watch my surroundings and warn me whenever you can.”

Yellow seemed to raise it’s eyebrow at that statement, even though the thing didn’t have any visible eyebrows.

“I am not perfect,” I elaborated, “but I am aware of some of my flaws. Regardless of whether I want to or not, I often become too focused on one thing at a time and lose track of my surroundings,” gently patting Yellow on the head, I continued, “you warning me earlier was good even if redundant at the moment, don’t stop warning me even if I look in control. It’s a good habit because six eyes are better than two,” I glanced at Greenie. “This applies to you as well.”

They both nodded, Greenie made a mini-army salute, though he used the wrong arm. I chuckled slightly at that, but humour quickly fell off my face.

I knew intelligently that those parasites were just following their life cycle. That even if they were designed as a sadistic joke, those things were not to be blamed for their nature. But I would not deny that I would enjoy killing those things in droves.

Ripping off all the other dead bugs, I began growing Sporages on my corpse. I had perfectly fine bait, it would be a shame to not use it.