Triple Strength

283. New Experiences: Wiremu

This left Umreti and me free to go hunting. Trapping mostly for our wagons and animal business. With a week, we can really get away from the civilised areas. This is the sort of work I like getting back to.

Umreti doesn’t talk much, and it is not just Modrica’s influence. His seizures are less violent and less frequent as Astrid found a healer and alchemist who had a potion that helped. He had to take it morning and night. Astrid was stocking up on it, but it could only be stored for three months before going bad. Ruku thinks he might be able to extend that for a fourth month using his Refreshing Mist Skill.

I helped Umreti with Skills like his Tracking, and he helped me gain the Slingshot Skill, I could easily crack skulls with the power I could put into it. I taught Umreti some basic traps, and he gained the Trapping Skill. Then I taught him to disarm the traps, and he gained that as well.

Umreti taught me Weapon Lore. With his weapon mastery, he knew a lot about many types of weapons, both how to make them and how to use them. This opened my eyes to many weapons possibilities that I had never thought of. I had Metal Shaping Skills. This was no good for cutting weapons, but blunt weapons were basically just lumps of shaped metal. Modrica used a mace from preference, and these days, she liked sharp edges on it to draw blood, but that wasn’t hard. It wouldn’t last as long as a Blacksmith could do, but Modrica was hard on weapons anyway, and I was always maintaining them.

The only Blunt Weapons Skill I had was my Hammer, and it was not even the War Hammer Skill. Making a proper Warhammer was beyond me, but maces and batons were well within my skill set, and I was already thinking about the right alloys that would work best.

Weapons Lore is amazing, and Umreti has it mid-Journeyman, so he knows a lot. Batons are a much-overlooked weapon that is easy to create and good both defensively and offensively. They don’t have the power of a mace, but they are quick, and I have a Power Strike Skill that would work. Adding a leather strap means you are very difficult to disarm, and there is a design with a side handle that adds a lot of versatility, especially defensively. With his skill, you can pick up batons almost anywhere.

A person with the right knowledge is invaluable. Weapons Lore has opened my eyes to blunt weapons, but more than that, it is how almost anything can be a weapon if used right. After a week with Umreti, the skill was almost Apprentice Level. I will have to see what the Lore Society has on different weapons. Umreti mentioned knowing about massive timber constructions that can throw rocks to crush walls. I could create large rocks. It turns out the siege weapon is a specialisation of a Construction Engineer Class. It is good to know, as my Granite Quake only goes so far.

This was a very exciting week away, and by the time I came back, I had Novice Level Blunt Weapons, Batons, and Slingshot. I also had a project. Umreti wants me to make him two different types of whip. One was a short multi-tailed whip with sharp prongs that would catch and pull weapons, armour and flesh. The other was a longer single-tail whip, which had a good reach, and he could keep people at bay with it. They also worked with his Disarm Skill. I told him he needed to teach Tabitha the whip, as I could see her with Shadow Whips.

On day three, we found a cave. The entrance to the cave housed a wolf pack. I encouraged Umreti to see if any were suitable to bond with. While I might have an idea of a bond for him, the choice is his. It is also possible I might be wrong. He shook his head.

I went into action. First, I corralled three pups into a cage of Granite Spikes. Wolf pups are easy to train and make good guard animals. They are always in demand. I noticed one of the females was pregnant, so I tried to capture her as well, but she was a cunning and agile animal and slipped away. We drove the rest of the pack off with fire. There was no need to kill them if we didn’t have to.

I could sense the cave went deeper, so I blocked off the entrance with spikes. And we turned to explore. We would be back for the pups, so we also left most of our gear there. Umreti had a problem in caves. He had Nightsight instead of Darksight. Night sight greatly enhances your vision in low-light situations. In a cave with no light at all, he was blind. He didn’t need much light as his Nightsight was at the master's level, but he did need some light. I created a stone staff with a glowing molten rock on top, and that was enough for him.

About twenty metres in the cave narrowed to be unpassable, but I could sense it went further, and my Treasure Sense was tingling. I used Granite manipulation to create a crawl space for us, and on we went. I could sense some rock elementals congregating nearby, so I figured there would be some Spiritual Material, like when we found the Blacksteel ore back before we got to Jern. Back then, it was Tabitha and her Intimidating Aura that kept them away while we mined. Tabitha was not here, but I am certain Puia will have no problems clearing the area. I just don’t want him to turn everything into molten rock.

It looked like we would have to move away from the cave to find the treasure buried in the rock. I started making a tunnel to the left and sloping down. I could sense a cavern opening up ahead. A large cavern. I angled the tunnel to come out about two body lengths to the side of the wall of the cavern to give us some visibility out over the area, as well as making it marginally more difficult for something dangerous to get us. I created a small platform for us to stand on.

The cavern was large and lit in a blue ethereal glow. It was about fifty metres across where we had entered, but it stretched away on both sides further than my senses could reach. My Farshigh, Telescopic sight and Darksight were no use as the cavern twisted and weaved away into the distance, and it wasn’t a consistent width, narrowing and widening, which blocked the sight lines.

The glow came from a mass of mushroom-type growths that were everywhere. The ones on the floor were generally larger and taller. Some were taller than I was. The ones growing on the walls and ceiling were smaller and more the size of a normal mushroom. There was a lot of moisture in the cave. The walls were wet, and there was a lot of moisture in the air.

What concerned me was the air was filled with tiny spores. The larger spores also glowed blue, like blue sparkles floating through the cavern. It was very beautiful. I also couldn’t help thinking it also looked dangerous.

Umreti joined me on the ledge, and he looked entranced with the view. It was very beautiful.

Then, it occurred to me that we were breathing in the spores. I grabbed a spare shirt, ripped a strip, covered my mouth and nose, and handed it to Umreti to do the same. It is like he didn’t see me and only had eyes for the cavern or, more specifically, the blue mushrooms. I had an ominous feeling here. I nudged him and then punched him lightly to get his attention, and he eventually looked at me.

“Cover your mouth and nose. You are breathing in the spores.” He followed my example. Then I had another thought, “Put energy through the Cleanse Poison Enchantment. This is a poison or drug of some kind.” He nodded and seemed to come more awake.

I looked at my status to see if anything had changed. My Poison Resistance was so high it takes a lot to level it, but resisting a new type of poison is one way to do that. It had gone up a level, but more surprisingly, so had my Mental Resistance. A poison that affects the mind? I had never heard of such a thing, but that is the only logical conclusion. Any outside attack on my mind would have hit my Granite Mind Wall, so this is an internal attack through poison.

I lightly punched Umreti again to get his attention. “This poison is attacking your mind. Concentrate on your Mental Strength and resist. You should get the Mental Resistance Skill.”

Umreti had always struggled with Mental Skills. He still didn’t have a Mental Shield despite weeks of training with Ruku and myself. He was very frustrated by it. I could see a look of concentration on his face, so he was trying. I think he was concentrating on that so hard that he stopped channelling energy to his poison-cleansing rune. I watched him carefully while making sure I was also resisting any influence. Suddenly, his face cleared up, and he grunted in satisfaction at his success.

I tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Poison,” as a reminder, and he restarted channelling the cleansing rune.

“Poison and Mental Resistances are increasing,” he said.

He was right. My Mental Resistance had gone up again as well, even with my high poison resistance. Some of it was still getting through. I indicated for us to retreat, and we backed into the tunnel. I created a thin Granite Wall to block the cavern off.

Umreti looked at me inquiringly.

“It is definitely a monster,” I said. “It is the fungus, I am sure, as they are all connected. That means it is huge as it fills the cavern and stretches beyond my senses' range.”

“Destroy?”

“I am not sure we can. Fire is probably the best, and with all the moisture in there, you would have to keep it burning. You couldn’t light it and leave. Puia could turn the cavern into lava, but who knows how far it goes, how big it is? It may be like the Sand Elemental I found, where the core was split into small grains and distributed around it. There probably are multiple cores or core parts.” I stopped to think.

Umreti spoke again, “Use for training?”

He wanted to use it to train his resistances. That is smart thinking. It is dangerous, but we can probably manage the danger now we know about it. I nodded, “For a short while. I will also collect a sample so we can identify it, and I can draw a map of what I can sense to mark the location. Then, we can block it off and leave it alone. I am sure there will be a lot of people who will want to come and study it. A drug that attacks the mind is going to be hard to resist.” If it goes so far, it may have already been found through another entrance. I guess one of the good things here is that Fungi only grow in very specific conditions. I doubt it would survive outside a dark, moist environment. I wasn’t planning to take that risk, though.

I created another wall further back up the tunnel I had dug. It was unlikely spores had reached that far yet, and we can cleanse this part of the tunnel when we leave. I then reopened the entrance to the cavern, and we went out onto the ledge. My aim was to get as much information as I could before we left.

I used all my senses. The spores were thicker as you got closer to the centre of the cavern, meaning the concentration of the drug was stronger there. It was testing my Poison Resistance here at the outer edges, I am not going to test it further in the cavern. My Lava body would resist, but I didn’t see the point of going further in. I tried to see if the spores were coming from all the fungi or just some of them, but I couldn’t sense that well. Thermal Sensing was saying the Fungi were only slightly warmer than the temperature of the rock. I used Telescopic Sight to zoom in on one of the larger fungi to see if I could see anything extra, but it just looked the same.

Granite Sensing and Spiritual Sensing were telling me the Fungi were changing the rock. It was being infused with Spiritual energy. That is what would draw the Rock elementals here. I couldn’t tell what the rock was becoming; I probably needed to be closer to the centre. I crouched down to touch the stone and let Puia sense it. I got a pleasant sensation through the bond. This was new to him and was one of the reasons he bonded with me, to sense new rock. He couldn’t tell me what it was or what it was changing into, but he could tell me it was only young yet, probably less than five hundred years. Not yet formed properly. Then, he did something I did not expect. He moved into the rock and melted a large section. It was like he was absorbing it.

I reached down and encased a group of small fungi in granite, and I included some of the rock they were attached to as a takeaway sample. But I could now sense something was different. I think Puia’s actions had been noticed.

I had been watching Umreti and myself closely during this time. I rechecked my Status, and Poison Resistance had clicked up again and Mental Resistance twice. It was time to go. If Umreti ran out of Spiritual energy, he could not empower the Poison Cleansing rune.

The spores were getting thicker. I indicated to Umreti that it was time to leave, and he nodded.

We backed into the tunnel, and I closed it properly this time and burned any spores by turning them into lava. We got back to the other wall I made, and Umreti and I stripped off all our clothes and gear. I would treat them with fire as well. The clothes would not survive, but the weapons should. I am OK at manipulating heat but not up to Kelda’s standard. I burned it all with lava and Thermal Manipulation (Mineral). Umreti’s resistance was not at my level, so I was careful, but he still got burned. Fortunately, he had the Revitalising Rune from the Flesh Enchanting, and I think he levelled more Resistances. He was a tough orc.

When I was happy, we made our way back to the cave where we had left the pups and most of our gear. I made new packs and trousers from some of the hides we had gathered. They would get us home.

By the time we got back, the pups weren’t the only animals we had collected. We were quite burdened down. One of the local animal Trainers immediately made me an offer for the wolf pups. I gave people a new first look at them, including Nne and Jack, but Nne wasn’t compatible, and Jack was too low-levelled in his mental Attributes. A wolf might be suitable in a few years for him. He was disappointed but also motivated.