“YOU IDIOT!” Mall screamed, smacking Quin with the back of her hand.

  ‘Oh come on!” Quin snapped, clutching on the side of his face. “Nobody told me how to use a RuptorShroom! It was an honest mistake!”

  Ardenidi sighed, massaging the bridge of her nose. “Technically speaking, it could be worse.”

  “The Core was already a three star,” I stated. “The Gauntlet of feasting.”

  “Feasting?” Ardendid glanced back up to the monster, with its gaping mouth the size of a house. “That sounds about right. It certainly makes more sense than stairs.”

  “You know,” Dexten started, “You could argue that the process of ascending to different levels is kinda like stairs, so a monster that specializes in getting stronger could conceivably be called the gauntlet of stairs.” He blinked. “Feasting makes more sense though.”

  “That it does,” Ardenidi stated. “Regardless, we’re dealing with what is at least an upper three star, if not a fourth star, both of which would be more than capable of leveling a town.”

  Leo frowned, pulling his broad sword from his inventory. “How exactly are we going to kill that thing?”

  “We need something incredibly destructive,” I stated. “On the bright side, it’s mouth is wide open, so we shouldn’t have any issues getting an attack in.”

  I let the obvious question hang in the air, unanswered.

  What kind of attack could possibly hurt that thing?

  Mall piped up. “Hey, can a RuptorShroom be blown up by RuptorShrooms?”

  Dexten chuckled. “Can a grenade be blown up by grenades?”

  “That’s a yes,” Mall said. “That Core is covered in massive quantities of the deadliest item in the first area. If we could rip one off, twist the cap, and get the Core to eat it, then it’d certainly die.”

  My eyes went wide. “If that thing’s become a walking mass of mushrooms, couldn’t the entire thing explode?”

  The party shivered.

  “It couldn’t possibly do that, right?” Quin asked. “An explosion of that degree would get itself killed.”

  “That doesn’t mean it won’t try," Ardenidi hissed. She adjusted her scarf, tying it neatly so as not to get in her way. “Right now the Core has been forcefully injected with a ridiculous amount of Exp, thanks to Quin, which means that, for the next few hours, it'll be more or less in a trance, unable to process its own power.”

  “Exp poisoning,” I stated.

  “Exactly,” Ardenidi said. “It’s not very smart, but it's very, very strong.”

  “Not to mention intimidating,” Quin said, with a grumble as the Core drew closer. “And it keeps dribbling toxins all over the forest. That can’t possibly be healthy.”

  “So our plan is simple,” I said. “We find a big RuptorShroom, rip it off, activate it, and get the Core to eat it. The Core explodes and hooray we’ve killed a monster way over our pay grade.”

  Irion cleared his throat, shooting a glance at Ardenidi. “We are getting paid for this, right?”

  “Certainly,” Ardenidi stated. “The union will pay the survivors extra.”

  Mall started choking. “Exactly how dangerous is this?”

  Ardenidi looked up at the monster, tall as a skyscraper, rising so high into the air that it blotted out the sun, casting a thick black shadow over the forest. It had no feet, instead sliding forward on a rolling mass of earth and metal, crushing trees, hills, and rock in its path.

  A bead of sweat trickled down her brow.

  “If that thing explodes, there’s a very real chance that it may destroy the entire first area.”

  “So we’ve basically got to save the world,” I said.

  “A fifth of the world,” she corrected. “And a very small fifth…but yes.”

  “Nifty.”

  The Core staggered, seven hundred thousand tons of mass crunching against the forest in a sudden impact, knocking trees up into the air. It forced itself off the ground, rising back up into the sky.

  I brushed the cloud of dust from my face. “How are we getting up to him?”

  “Hey kid,” Leo grunted. “You got a lot of health?”

  “Yeah—”

  An impish grin split across his face.

  “Hang on.”

  He grabbed me by the shirt, arcing backward, foot before him, raised into the air. Then, with a flex and a flick of his wrist, he hurtled a small seventeen-year-old boy into the stratosphere.

  Fortunately I had only a moment to be scared of the height, as the next, I crashed face first into the side of a boulder, on the side of a Core several thousand times my size.

  {Grind}

  [(-50) 205 Hp]

  I groaned, pushing the split halves of rock from my forehead. “I seem to be ramming into the ground quite a lot, lately.”

  Another large, dull object hit the gravel beside me, before brushing dust from her moldy fungal-infested robes. Unlike me, she hadn’t so much as broken a nail on landing.

  “Rough landing?” Ardenidi asked.

  I wheezed. “Did he throw you too?”

  She scoffed. “I jumped.”

  What…

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  I looked over the edge of the towering monstrosity, to the little specks of green that were the trees below.

  My stomach started doing knots.

  “Not the time to be losing your nerves, rookie!” Ardenidi barked. She picked me up, dusted me off, and set me back down. “Now go find some mushrooms!”

  There was another puff of dust, and Sern landed beside me.

  [{Serenity} has wandered too far]

  [{Serenity} has been returned]

  She opened her mouth and little bubbles floated out. Sern giggled, popping a couple of them with her finger.

  I let out a sigh of relief.

  There was a sound like the screaming of an adolescent man, and Quin rammed head first into me, crashing into a RuptorShroom, spilling spores everywhere.

  “Rough landing?” I asked.

  Quin wheezed.

  “I assume you were sent to look after Sern?”

  Quin wheezed a little louder.

  “Great.” I handed Sern to him, smiling to Sern and giving Quin a hard stare. “Don’t let her get hurt.”

  “Okay,” Quin whispered, beads of sweat running down his forehead.

  Sern giggled, grabbing his face. She started pulling and pushing it around, so Quin made funny faced.

  “Now where to find a RuptorShroom?” I asked myself..

  Quin pointed to the stalk behind him, but I waved him off.

  “Too small. Remember what we’re trying to kill?”

  “Okay,” Quin grunted, setting Sern onto his back. “How about the blue one?”

  “Blue one—” I cut off, following his gaze to an abnormally small RuptorShroom. Its top was mostly red, except for a handful of blue spots and splotches dotted around.

  “I’ve never seen one of those before,” I admitted. “Are they strong?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Quin stated, wandering over and plucking a tiny little one from the husk of rock. He twisted the cap, then chucked it into the forest. “Bombs away.”

  After falling for a straight minute, the little mushroom bonked against the ground.

  Then the entire sky flashed white, followed by a rush of scalding wind and blue fire, rising with a cloud of gas.

  Sern giggled, leaning into the rush of warm heat.

  Quin and I looked at each other, then to the car-sized blue and red RuptorShroom from which the little itty bitty one had been taken.

  Quin smirked. “Yeah, this’ll work.”

  “What even are these?” I asked, ripping a bit off.

  ~UltraLegendary~

  {Mutagen20358—InfectedRuptorShroom}

  “Don’t screw this up, bub”

  [Useful for killing unnecessarily powerful opponents]

  [Contains (3) ailments and a whole lotta love]

  I blinked. “Well that’s awfully convenient.”

  “You sure have some crazy luck,” Quin grumbled. “So, we’re taking this, right?”

  “I’m taking this,” I said, wrapping my arms around the stalk and snapping it off. “No offense, but you’re not all that reliable.”

  Quin shrugged. “I’ll just watch, I guess.”

  //130 Str//

  Altogether, climbing a monster the size of a skyscraper was a lot easier than I’d expected. So long as you kept your grip and footing, it was just a matter of moving between cracks of dirt and rock, one step at a time. A little tedious, sure, but nothing I wasn’t already used to.

  “Are we there yet?” Quin whined, sweat plastering his hair to his face.

  “You need to build up your strength,” I muttered.

  “Oh I’m sorry,” Quin hissed. “But not everybody has a god-like physique, thank you very much!”

  He rested against a long silver pillar, taking a deep breath. Then he burst into a fit of coughing, hand over his nose. “Augh…what’s that smell?”

  “Neurotoxin,” I stated.

  Quin blinked. “We already broke his neurotoxin core.”

  “One of them. Look behind you.”

  He glanced at the pillar, then back to me, with an eyebrow raised. “What?”

  Some part of his brain processed something, and he checked the pillar again, noticing the black stains on the white metal.

  “Is that a tooth?”

  “Looks like it,‘ I said, setting the mushroom on a piece of silvery tissue. “We’re right by his mouth.”

  Quin shuddered. “We better be getting paid good for this.”

  The mouth of the Core was an ocean of black poison, churning around bone-white metal teeth, each reaching up and around, out of the mouth to gouge into the sky.

  Quin whistled, and the echo rang out around the mouth. “Quite a way to end things off.”

  “Keep quiet,” I hissed.

  “The Core won’t hear me,” Quin complained, though he didn’t protest further.

  I dropped the Shroom into the Core’s mouth. It bobbed in the toxins, before a good kick sent it on a one-way journey, down into the bottoms of the Core’s throat.

  Quin nudged me. “Did you start it?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Of course I did—

  Wait. Did I?

  Did I?

  None of the spots were glowing—

  I bit my tongue and started running, skirting around the edge of the mouth, reaching for the fungus. It had drifted a little closer to the rim, but still too far to grab.

  Instead, I pushed my strength just a little higher, ramming a heel into one of the teeth. They were loose, so that they could be plucked out, like quill. After another solid blow, it was knocked loose, crashing into the black water.

  The whole cavern shuddered.

  I ran along the tooth, snagging the edge of the mushroom and giving it a hard twist, lighting the back of the Core’s throat with blue light.

  Quin grinned like an idiot. “Hey Grind! It’s not that easy to remember, is it?”

  And then the mouth lurched.

  Toxins spat out, hitting me, Quin, and Sern full force, launching us into the sky. Toxin set in, numbing each of our limbs, one after the other in quick succession.

  [NerveToxin XVI applied]

  I tried to scream, but my tongue flopped uselessly, like a dead fish.

  Quin was in better condition, with enough control over his body to cradle Sern. With any luck, she’d survive the impact.

  The wind snarled, cracking the two of us together. Ground became sky then ground again and back and forth and back and forth as we span faster and faster in the air.

  Sern cried out, reaching a hand toward me.

  My stomach flipped over and back over again, until it too went numb, and I lost all sense of direction.

  But before I blacked out, I saw the red and blue mushroom, tumbling out of the Core’s mouth.

  We’d been too slow.

  The Core had woken up, and he’d spat it out.

  And then the mushroom exploded, and the world was erased.