The whole row of mold zombie corpses inched their way forward—those with legs anyway, if you could even call them that. Weak and thin, those bony legs could barely even support their already skeletally thin bodies. And that was for corpses that had their original number of limbs.

  Amongst the horde was the very same corpse that Colby had kicked just to make sure nothing would jump out and attack him. Apparently, he hadn’t done a very thorough job. At least, that should be the very same corpse. Without any meat on their bones, they all looked the same.

  Basically, that previously four-legged husk of a corpse was now down to three. It unstably hobbled towards him, along with the rest of the horde.

  Despite being dead and having its body desecrated by a piece of mold, that corpse could be considered one of the lucky ones. Others were down more than one limb, some having none at all. Those without pathetically flopped along the rugged ground, moving at a pace that made their more able-bodied peers look like the epitome of speed.

  Colby just shrugged.

  He walked back toward the huge ball of mold and held the torch directly beneath it. Flames licked the dark green surface like the world’s nastiest lollipop.

  As the throng of corpses flopped and hobbled at an agonizingly slow pace towards him, Colby just stood there, waiting. The dark green mold became darker, scorching black as the flames slowly consumed the enormous mass.

  Bit by bit, the cavern grew brighter, illuminated by the growing blaze as more and more of the Myconet burned away. Thick plumes of smoke drifted upwards, curling around the tendrils that suspended the sphere of bold, before spreading out along the ceiling in waves.

  Meanwhile, Colby swung his free arm back and forth, watching the mold zombie thingies creep forward in tiny, miserable steps. Below him, a tendril sprouted from the carpet of mold he stood on. It snaked towards his boots in one last desperate attempt to get rid of its attacker.

  Colby performed the dodge of a lifetime. He took a step to the side.

  And when it went after him again, he took another step to the side.

  After three more attempts at his feet, it was starting to get frustrating. He just wanted to zone out as the Myconet died by his flames.

  Colby’s eyes widened.

  Wait! Why was he killing it? What if he needed even more rennet in the future?

  Curds!

  For something that was supposed to help light the way, it blinded him.

  Colby yanked the [Flaming Saganaki] torch away from the smoldering sphere of mold. It was still on fire, though the flames were starting to shrink. Thankfully, only the bottom quarter had caught fire. The area above, where the liquid membrane remained, was unaffected.

  Good thing he was average height.

  Double wait!

  Wasn’t fire in caves a bad thing? Something about eating up all of the oxygen in the air. Again, he was a cheesemaker, not a cave diver, or even a dungeon diver; he didn’t know these things—he never needed to know.

  Was it him, or was it starting to get a bit difficult to breathe? A placebo? A nocebo—that was a real term. Maybe even a yes-sebo—this was not.

  Whatever the case, he'd better get out of here lickety split.

  Colby was just about to dash off and break his personal record for the running-out-of-a-cave competition, except that there was an obstacle in his way. Multiple obstacles.

  The mold zombies had formed a disorderly line, and because they all moved even slower than an Es-cart-got, they were still crowded around the entrance—and also exit—of the chamber.

  Colby’s mind scrambled. Something he should’ve done when they first appeared, instead of relying on the power of fire to burn his way to victory.

  During his panic, he had come up with an idea.

  The solution to his problem was Fire.

  If the Myconet controlled those corpses, he just had to make it unable to control them. In more concise terms, he was going to sever that connection by burning away the network of mold it had set up.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Colby returned his attention to the huge ball of mold. The flames had finally been put out, causing the cavern to return to its once dull luminance. Somehow, despite being half burnt, the tendrils tethering the Myconet to the carpeted ground of mold still stood strong.

  He held the [Flaming Saganaki] torch to the middle of one tendril. Fire ate away at the dark green line of mold, removing its verdant coloration—scorching it black as night—but not its connection with the Myconet.

  Was his fire just that weak? Or was the Myconet just that strong?

  Colby brought his foot back and gave that line of mold a good, strong kick. The strand snapped in two, separating along the charred patch, and sent a puff of black soot into the air. His already precarious breathing situation was made even worse.

  But if he didn’t act fast, breathing would be the least of his worries.

  Colby ran around the Myconet, disconnecting the tendrils from the carpet of mold beneath it, while flicking his head back and forth just to make sure the mold zombies hadn’t descended on him yet. After the tenth flick, noting that the fastest zombie had only managed fifteen sluggish paces, did he stop bothering to look. Also, his neck was starting to become sore.

  Finally, the last strand connecting the Myconet to the carpet of mold beneath it had been severed. One by one, the moldy corpses fell limp once more.

  Not all of them.

  About three-quarters of the corpses still stood—or flopped.

  There were still tendrils on the ceiling that suspended the Myconet. The connection of mold snaked its way towards more of those mold corpses than Colby had realized. And there was nothing he could do about that.

  It’s not because he was short; it's just that the ceiling was way too high.

  Sure, a [Flaming Saganaki] [Cheese Shot] might work, but there was only one small problem. Cheese was what he was good at. And making good cheese took time, something he didn’t have at the moment—as slow as those corpses moved.

  Mozzarella was fast; he had made it innumerable times, he could even do it with his eyes closed—which he did because he had to focus on his Core. Anyway, point being, halloumi took much longer. Compounded with the fact that he was stressed beyond belief, it simply wasn’t viable.

  But all of that burning hadn’t been pointless. The fallen corpses had created a zigzagging path to the exit.

  All he had to do was avoid the moldy obstacles as he made his grand escape. And just for some extra protection, a set of cheese armor materialized over his body.

  It was the same set that he had used during his escape from the LeMonkeys. It was also covered in dirt, leaves, and weird stains. Not to mention the sour odor it exuded. He would’ve liked to blame the LeMonkeys for that one, but he was pretty sure the cheese had just gone bad.

  Some protection was better than none, so Colby just ran. With the torch held up in front of him, he sprinted around the mold zombie corpses, giving them an extra wide berth. The corpses he ran past came to a clicking halt, slowly turning—or flopping—towards him.

  Maybe he had been overreacting. They didn’t seem like that much of a threat, other than their horrible, disfigured faces invading his dreams tonight. Maybe even for the next week.

  Finally, he had made it out of the chamber.

  Yet, the chamber suddenly seemed like the better place to be in.

  Moldy corpses filled the passageway. Those whose connection with the Myconet had been severed lay limp on the ground. The other mold zombies did not care. They trampled over the corpse as they approached him.

  But sometimes it pays to respect the deceased.

  The trampling moldy corpses lost what little balance the Myconet could puppet through their beyond exhausted body. They plummeted to the ground, bones breaking and snapping. But they still trudged after him, flopping along the jagged floor. Only for the trampler to be the trampled. Like the corpse they hobbled over, they were crushed under bony foot, and the cycle repeated itself.

  In theory, it was amazing how the mold corpses were taking themselves out for him. In reality, they were inadvertently creating a mound of death that would trap him in the chamber.

  Colby held out his hand and aimed right at the center of the horde.

  Congratulations! [Hard as Cheese] has reached Level 3!

  A [Hard as Cheese] [Cheese Shot] hurled towards a particularly bony corpse that looked like a LeMonkey, except all shriveled up and baguette-less.

  His cheese hit the corpse right where its stomach should be, knocking it back a couple of paces. That was it. That was the strongest move he could currently muster, and all it did was push a corpse back a bit.

  If cheese didn’t work, there was only one last option left.

  Run and pray.

  Colby sprinted towards the slow, stampeding horde of corpses. He took advantage of the tramplers becoming the trampled. The multiple crushed bodies underneath provided a strong foothold for him to leap off, vaulting over the horde and onto the next stepping stone of trampled, as he played the world’s worst game of hopscotch.

  Towards the pack of the horde, where the corpses thinned out, leaving only the slowest of the slow, Colby picked up speed. That didn’t mean he was out of the clear, just yet.

  He bent and twisted his body as he ran past them, their slow movements not a match for his speed, much less his flexibility. Colby contorted his body in ways he never knew were possible, creating brand new yoga moves with each dodge. At one point, he performed his impression of a bracket. For some reason, he did square brackets and even curly ones.

  He knew his mind was flexible, being able to come up with all sorts of weird ways to solve problems, but he never realized how flexible his body was.

  Eventually, Colby made it out of the cave.

  Miraculously, he was unscathed, minus the putrid cheese armor that clung to his body. Panting, he turned around, making sure that none of the mold corpses were after him. Even if they were, he couldn’t tell because he was too fast—realistically it was because they were too slow.

  Now that he had secured the rennet, all he had to do was filter it and make sure it was food-safe, then he could finally start making his cheese again.

  Just one last step, before things could go back to somewhat normal.