Chapter 63: Chapter 59: Forest fire

Disease immunity advanced to level 40

Another two doses of liquid blight, and my disease immunity capped. It seemed that despite the skill names, there was no quantity of levels that would actually render me completely immune to anything, but as long as I didn't drink great gulps of the black viscous fluid, the blight wouldn't harm me any more. Hopefully, the same would be true of the ostentatiously named guidance.

In her eternal quest to eat as many Katie brains as possible, my zombie twin had also obliged me further by whacking me repeatedly with my own femur, evolving my blunt damage tolerance to resistance and capping it at twenty. It proved surprisingly difficult to deal significant blunt damage to myself, aside from flying or running into walls, which wasn't particularly efficient, so I was glad of a training partner.

Evolution conditions met: Blunt damage tolerance ranks up to blunt damage resistance
Clubs, war-hammers, staves or even a fist, plenty of weapons work by subjecting their target to sudden, overwhelming momentum. This skill will allow you to absorb a portion of the impact.

Perhaps I should have had her throttle me too, and see what difference suffocation resistance would make at level twenty, but I'd already done enough skill grinding, and was fed up of all the Katie abuse. If I needed to use the hazmat suit strategy even with level forty disease immunity, I'd need to come back here for another go.

I marched down the stairs, and was happy to discover that despite their immunity to any physical attack, the slimes were ridiculously weak to fire. The briefest burst of flame was enough to kill the things, so I carefully worked my way along the corridor, toasting each one. Roasted slime turned out to be remarkably tasty, and not at all poisonous or diseased. Okay, so they were still pretty darn corrosive, but that was just another bonus.

Evolution conditions met: Corrosion nullification ranks up to corrosion immunity
Though not as common as poisons, some creatures or adventurers choose to use strong acids or alkalis, digestive enzymes, other corrosive agents or even rare decay magic. Just another danger of this world that any adventurer needs to be prepared for if they wish to survive. And somehow you have survived a powerful corrosive agent injected directly into your bloodstream, having your body wreaked by blight, being exposed to powerful decay magic for an extended period, and an acidic slime invading your lungs. You even ingested large amounts of a potent acid, which was not a sensible thing to do even if you did cook it first. For such feats, your nullification has been upgraded to immunity. This skill renders you immune to all but the strongest corrosive agents, and greatly improves your resistance to those that can still harm you.

Apparently, my marathon resistance training session still had a little more in the tank.

I stepped out of the slime-free and only slightly charred passage, and into the open cavern. No, not open. Open was the wrong word. It had been the correct word, but that was before someone had built stonking great rock walls around where my exit exited.

Not all the rock was stationary, either. Some of it was flying toward my face with a significant amount of speed.

I gave my wings a flap and sped toward the roof. I hadn't seen anything in this cavern that could fly, nor any anti-air defences. Even if there were any, the carnes multiformis hadn't known I could fly until ten seconds ago, so they surely wouldn't have brought them. Sure enough, there were no further attacks.

So, who the hell had attacked me that time? It made no sense for them to have been going for a kill; they knew I'd respawn, so if they wanted me gone, they should have blocked the corridor completely, not built defensive walls around it. Not that I should say that out loud, in case I gave anyone any ideas. Presumably they were trying to knock me out again, but which village had it been? I couldn't imagine the second village was happy about me getting cosy with the first, but going straight to an attack seemed like an odd choice. I'd half expected some sort of bidding war, but I suppose they didn't really need my cooperation just to take some blood.

Letting curiosity get the better of me, I dived down from above. Or rather, my control being what it was, or wasn't, I simply stopped flapping my wings and dropped. Giving a large wing beat at wall height, I got a look at my attackers, and saw instances of all four genders. This was a combined assault force? What the hell? I'd only been gone a couple of days. Don't tell me they made peace in that time?!

I took back to the air as a barrage of crystal arrows and rock bullets were launched at me, easily evading them. I seemed to be correct that they had no experience fighting aerial opponents.

Ignoring them for now in favour of subjecting a certain tree to an unhealthy amount of dragon fire, I flew in the direction of the great cloud of miasma that my olfactory perception could pick up even from this distance. I could keep a blistering fast speed in the air, and if only I'd been able to maintain a straight line, I'd have been able to reach my target in minutes. As it was, I soon decided to land, managing the difficult manoeuvre without suffering a single broken bone.

Yes, that might have not been the case without my level twenty blunt damage resistance, but once again, I had the perfectly valid defence that humans were not built to fly!

There was no mask I could make that filtered the seeds in the air while still letting me breathe, so I marched into the pathogenic cloud trusting in my disease immunity to keep me safe. In case it didn't, I activated trigger respawn. I hadn't donned my armour in the first place, not fancying a repeat of the tentacle-infested clothing incident. I kept my nightie instead, which got replaced each respawn, and would hopefully prevent any vines travelling with me.

For now, my new and improved disease immunity was killing off the seeds before they could even germinate, but soon I once again found myself surrounded by drones. This time they didn't move with me, but stood barring my way.

"The wayward child returns," they all said, in perfect synchronisation. "Have you come to submit yourself to me?"

I responded by sweeping my new flamethrower left to right across the row of drones. There were... noises. Wet pops and loud crackling, both overshadowed by an almighty roar.

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"No," I said, before bursting into a coughing fit. I'd pushed my flame breath a bit far there. Worse, the seeds were getting into my bloodstream through my internal burns. I'd need to hurry.

The row of carbonised corpses no longer posed an obstacle, so I hopped over them and continued on my way.

"More secrets. New powers. I will have them," came the voice again, and this time it was coming from all around. The closer I got, the greater the density of seeds in the air, and they were starting to overcome my resistance again, shoots of growth burrowing through my skin.

"Bad children will be punished," whispered the voice, and I felt the tendrils that had already invaded shock my nerves. I paused, expecting paralysis or something, but nothing happened.

"Well, that was anticlimactic," I muttered, resuming my sprint. Maybe it was stimulating my nerves that transmitted pain, and my pain immunity negated it.

"The child still resists. An island, standing alone in my perfect garden."

"Yes, damn right I resist, you fucking rapist tree!"

The tree was in sight now, the branches already above my head. Which meant a bunch of drones were also over my head. I fired a brief burst of flame upwards when one tried to drop on me, resulting in another coughing fit. I probably only had one more shot, and I wanted to use it on the trunk.

More drones dropped around me, so I jumped up to the branch they'd just abandoned with a flap of my wings, running along it instead.

My feet sunk into the branch as a hole opened up in it, before it snapped shut again around them, leaving me trapped as far as my knees. What sort of ability was that? Then a dozen carnes multiformis limbs rose out of it, covered in a layer of bark, movements jerky and accompanied by creaking, and I finally realised just how literally the voice was being when it had said I would become a part of it. This wasn't a branch I was standing on, but former drones, interlinked and so overgrown with vines that I hadn't seen them for what they were.

Now that I'd noticed, I could see that fold in the bark that looked like the outline of a limb, and those bumps over there that could be fingers. Was the entire tree like this? Was it not a tree at all, just a collection of parasitised meat in the shape of one? Could it disassemble and turn itself into a drone army? And now that I'd noticed, proficient empath kicked in too, flooding me with thousands of minds worth of pleasure, letting me know just how good every victim of this plant was feeling, and how much they wanted to do nothing other than remain there, as a part of it.

What they were feeling was secondary to the fact that every single drone that made up the tree's structure was still alive.

What the heck sort of horror show was this?! How many thousands, tens of thousands of the overly limbed blobs would it take to make a structure of this size? And they were all kept alive? I mean, yes, they were all happy... More than happy; completely blissed out. But that was only because they had roots in their brain, or whatever their equivalent was, pumping them full of pleasure hormones and providing direct stimulation to the appropriate nerves.

I was so shocked I'd forgotten to struggle, and the limbs wrapped around me and dragged me further down into the branch, while vines grew up my legs.

"You will become a part of me, as will all life," said every drone that made up the branch, again in perfect synchronisation. That was exactly what it had said using my voice on our last meeting. I felt the heat rise again as the tree started messing with my hormones. To my amazement, it even started repairing the damage to my throat, covering the burns with its own plant-matter.

It... wouldn't be too bad to just relax here for a bit, would it? I'd already activated trigger respawn, so it wouldn't be long. I'd already been caught, so there was no way I was getting to the trunk now. I'd just try again next time. For my remaining time this respawn, I might as well enjoy myself. Disease immunity informed me of the tendrils interfacing themselves to my brain and spine, and as the coffin of flesh and bark rose over my head, I found myself dripping with anticipation.

"Good girl," came a thousand voices all around me, and my eyes snapped open.

In the middle of the pitch black cavern, for a few brief seconds, a fireball bloomed.

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