Symbiotic: Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Before charging forward, Sara spent a moment to fiddle with how the System Notifications were delivered during combat. She figured out how to have the System stop sending her notifications every time she used a skill or ability of what it had costs and what remained.

Instead, she was able to set the System to notify her only if she dropped below a certain Threshold. She decided to set the Threshold to 25% to start with and see how that went. That should stop her from constantly getting her vision blocked by pop ups, but would still notify her if she few into risky territory. She also learned how to move the Notifications so standard notifications of skill use, microbes harvested, etc., would appear in the corner of her vision, not in the center. She’d leave the center for the big “Danger, Will Robinson!” alerts!

That done, it was time to say hello to the Dungeon Boss and claim herself a Mine.

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Sara continued forward in her crouch, every breath measured, every step deliberate. The passage behind her was narrow and jagged, carved by Greatworm mouths, but ahead it widened unnaturally. The stone smoothed, corners sharpened, the ceiling rising higher and higher until her Sporesight could no longer reach its limits.

She moved forward, careful as a shadow. Her armor flexed silently, the fungal weave absorbing sound, her spear balanced in her grip and shield up and ready against surprise. Then, at last, the System chimed:

[Skill Acquired: Novice Stealth]

Effect: Footsteps lighter, movements surer, noise reduced by 20%.

Sara’s lips curled into a silent grin. She had been hoping for this. Her steps grew lighter, her confidence steadier, as she crept deeper into the cavern. She was not whisper quiet Ninja, \but she was closer than she had been a moment ago.

The space was enormous. So vast she thought Haven Village could fit inside it. Her Sporesight, stretched to its full 100 feet she could manage without migraines, revealed nothing but emptiness. No movement. No glow. Just the endless dark.

Minutes passed. She kept moving, each step slow, soft, and deliberate, her senses straining. Then she heard it.

At first faint, like the crackle of distant glass. Then louder. A chorus of scraping, clicking, skittering. She knew it immediately. The sound of Crystal Crawlers. Not a handful. Not a swarm. Hundreds.

Sara froze, her heart pounding. She had fought Crawlers before, but never this many. The noise rolled through the cavern like a tide, echoing off unseen walls. It was impossible to tell how far they were, but the sheer volume told her enough: more than she had faced in total to reach this place.

Her grip tightened on the spear. This does not sound good.

She inhaled, steadying herself, remembering the painful mental stabs and bloodied eyes and ears. She had prepared for this as best as she could. Better defenses, stronger resistance, higher stats. If the Crawlers tried to claw at her mind, she would endure.

Sara crouched lower, Sporesight sweeping the cavern, waiting for the first flicker of movement. Somewhere ahead, the Dungeon Boss was here. The Crystal Devourer. And its army was already stirring.

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Sara continued forward towards the cavern vibrating buzzing, and quickly began to encounter Swarm after Swarm of Crystal Crawlers. The first couple come at her in separate swarms, easily dealt with by Infested Cloud Strike. But soon enough she sees groups of swarms, and knows that she will drain her resources dry if she tries to strike them one at a time.

[Ability Activated: Infested Cloud Strike x2]

Individually, Crystal Crawlers are weak. Not even a threat. But in the numbers she saw coming her way, and even more she still heard in the distance... Sara did not believe her defenses, her mind could handle it for long. She needed more. She needed to improve.

Sara had cut down the first swarms easily, her Infested Cloud Strike scattering them into twitching fragments.

[Ability Activated: Infested Cloud Strike]

But now she could see half a dozen swarms flying her way, with more skittering in the distance. The air growing thick with wings and clicking mandibles.

She backpedaled, spear raised, armor flexing silently. Her Sporesight cloud pulsed around her, a hundred feet of awareness, but she knew she couldn’t strike them one by one. Her defenses would collapse under the sheer weight of numbers.

The sound of countless Crawlers filled the cavern, a rising tide of chittering chaos. Sara’s mind flashed back to Charlotte’s bug zapper by the lake, the way insects had been drawn in and destroyed. Could her spores do the same? Could she turn her cloud into a barrier?

“Trying is better than dying. No ‘This is your brain on drugs’ commercials today. Let’s do this, team!”, she muttered, forcing a grin through the tension.

Focusing inward to her network as she backpedaled, Sara builds her intent to turn her Sporesight Cloud into a defensive barrier. A way to add the Infection power of her Strikes into the cloud itself. So that anything that came within her cloud’s radius would begin to be eaten away at. And, as it so often had, the network learned to do her bidding. The System responded.

[Network Ability Acquired: Infectious Cloud]

Type: Defensive / Area Control

Cost : Locks 500 microbes per 10'radius of Sporesight Cloud

Effect: Converts inner radius of Sporesight Cloud into an infectious barrier.

• Hostile creatures entering the cloud are immediately afflicted with Infection, taking continuous damage over time as spores dig into flesh and eat at the creature from the inside.

• Infection stacks with Sara’s Infested Strikes and Cloud Strikes, accelerating attrition.

• Cloud remains active as long as microbes are locked; microbes cannot be recovered until deactivation.

Range: Scales with Sporesight, and microbes locked by use (currently 100 feet max & 500 microbes per 10')

Duration: Sustained while microbes remain locked

“ANOTHER 500 microbes locked?”, Sara growled quietly at the realization this would reduce her usable network by fully a third! But seeing the wall of mind hungry bugs rushing towards her made the decision an easy one. “I guess I’m a little late to the party to say no.”

[Network Ability Activated: Infectious Cloud]

Her Sporesight flared. The section of spore cloud nearest her thickened, glowing faintly green, threads of fungal resonance weaving into a lattice of invisible fire. The first Crawlers hit the edge of the cloud, and immediately convulsed. Their dying shrieks stabbing into her mind like needles as her Infections Cloud, her bugzapper, ate them alive. Their crystalline shells darkened, spores burrowing into seams, tearing their lives short as small delicate crystal bodies dropped to the floor and went still.

Sara stood her ground, spear steady, watching as dozens of Crawlers dissolved the moment they crossed into her radius. The swarm faltered, their numbers breaking against the invisible wall even as her mind was stabbed by spike after spike of pain. Not nearly as painful as the Crawlers Mental attack, but the sheer volume threatened to overwhelm her and she felt her thinking and reaction times slow.

[Ability Activated: Repair Self] Mental Faculties Recovered.

Painful, but she could take more than they could dish out. And her Sporesight had become a weaponized barrier, the Infectious Cloud a living bug zapper. Not allowing the swarms the time or ability to truly assault her mind.

The cavern echoed with the shrieks of dying Crawlers, their bodies collapsing into shards. Sara exhaled, a fierce grin spreading across her face. “That’s more like it.”

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Sara took a brief moment to allow her Spore cloud absorb the half dozen Swarm piles, pleased to see that each Swarm fed her network 425 microbes rather than the 150 that they used to. Maybe she could avoid being completely drained by the swarms after all. Even though just their death screeches were enough mental damage for her to require healing regularly. If she could kill them from further away she could reduce or eliminate the damage. But she just couldn’t talk herself into expanding the radius further at 500 microbes per 10 feet. Not when the big bad boss was still up ahead somewhere. “Probably right in the middle of his big bad bug army. That’s where I’d be if I didn’t hate bugs so much. Great in a lab. Bad in your hair!”

Making certain she was topped up and ready to go, “Network Capacity”, she requested.

[Current Network Capacity: 2000 of (2000) 3000]

“Oof. 1000 locked. That hurts. But, Brightside, Sara. Still got 2000 microbes worth of fun to play with. Let’s see if more swarms want to play catch. Cause it’s in infection… You catch an… Never mind, Sara. Sheesh. No sense of humor.”, she joked to lighten the mood and ready herself to dive headfirst into more bugs than a Florida summer.

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The cavern seemed endless, a storm of wings and shrieks battering against her senses. Crystal Crawlers swarmed in waves, their bodies shattering against her Infectious Cloud, their fragments piling at her feet. Each time her mind throbbed from their psychic scratching, she whispered the command: “Repair Self”.

[Ability Activated: Repair Self]

Vitality Restored. Mind Stabilized.

Then bent to absorb the swarm piles, microbes flooding back into her network. It was a cycle: Infect, heal, consume, advance, repeat. Straightforward, but migraine inducing, like fighting through a nightmare that refused to end.

Minutes stretched, and to her battered mind they felt like hours. Her Sporesight swept ahead, but the sheer density of Crawlers blurred everything into chaos. Then, at last, she saw it.

Through the storm of glittering wings, a glow pierced the dark. A Spire of Crystal, tall and jagged, radiating pale light. And beside it, dwarfing the large spire, guarding it, was something far larger than any swarm, or even Greatworm.

Sara froze momentarily at the sight, hazy in the dim light and viewed through hundreds of swarming Crystal Crawlers. The creature was massive. In shape, it looked like a Crystal Crawler, but scaled to monstrous proportions, its body the size of a two story house. Plates of jagged crystal jutted from its carapace like fortress walls, its mandibles gleaming with shards sharp enough to split stone. Every movement sent tremors through the cavern, wings beating like thunder.

The Crystal Devourer. Dungeon Boss.

Sara steadied herself. She whispered another heal, topped off her strength, then bent to absorb more of the shattered swarms littering the ground. She left dozens untouched around and behind her. Emergency meals for when the fight grew desperate.

Her spear hummed in her grip, armor flexed silently, spores pulsed around her. She pushed forward, step by step, through the shrieking chaos, eyes locked on the glowing spire and the monstrous guardian before it.

The swarms parted slightly, as if bowing to their master. The cavern shook. The Crystal Devourer raised its head, mandibles clicking, wings spreading wide. Its roar was not sound but vibration, a psychic shockwave that rattled the stone and clawed at her mind even from the distance.

Sara gritted her teeth as they vibrated with the roar, Sporesight flaring. “Alright, big one,” she muttered, voice low but steady. “Let’s which one of us is a bite more than we can swallow!”

And with that, she charged headlong into the storm, toward the final dungeon battle.

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