The bear screamed in defiance as it batted away the next wave of small bulbous creatures. Every time it hit one of them, they exploded into red spores that were already covering the whole area in a thick cloud at this point. The bear had tried to run but every time more of these creatures appeared, following it, hunting it and each time it breathed in a large amount of spores.
It took a while longer but in the end it just couldn’t run anymore, its lungs weren’t filling up with air and soon it collapsed to the ground. Its body was shaking as it tried to breath, not able to suppress the reflex. The bear was already surrounded at this point by those small white and red creatures. Their bulbous heads still released more spores every minute until even seeing clearly was getting harder due to them floating into the bear's eyes. The last thing that the bear saw was a taller creature with hair like fire stepping into its view before it died due to lack of oxygen.
Liliane knelt down and patted the bear’s head. She didn’t really like to kill animals that much but she needed more material for her work if she wanted to bring Lily, her corpse rose as she called it and of course Gustave her venus fly trap, back from the grave. They sadly died a few days after coming to the pale forest as they couldn’t handle the spores and the poisoned ground. Only Sylvara, the Ghostflame Treant she created during her time with the elves was still here, she was a lot stronger and could just negate the harmful effects with her magic without it impacting her too much.
With the corpse of the bear now secured they could finally start with reviving Lily, her ability to charm others and create multiple flower men at once was just too valuable to pass up. Of course she would make changes as she now had a much higher level then when she first created Lily. Now she was already in the high forties with both her classes levels.
Her new creation the mushroom man, (yes she is very creative with names), were currently standing in for the lack of flower men. After she was returned to the pale forest from that weird conference thing she started to experiment using her improved skills. It turned out that these spores were not only very deadly but could also be easily changed as these mushrooms were so used to adapting to changing environments. So for this iteration of mushroom men she toned down the toxicity almost to zero and instead focused on reproduction and volume. She wanted something that covered either a wide area or in case of the bear, fill up a large volume.
Now that the material was secured Liliane could finally begin the revival of her first friend, she had saved the seeds of Lily and some roots and with the help of the mushrooms transformed them completely while still keeping the essence of Lily inside. At least that’s what she hoped for as working with biological things can always be a gamble. Without hesitation she walked to the bear’s belly and, using a knife made from wood she had transformed into the proper shape, cut the bear’s belly open a few inches. She grabbed the new core for Lily from a pouch on her belt and ignored the blood that gushed from the wound. She casually shoved her entire arm into the warm body of the bear and moved it around a bit until she found a position she was satisfied with. Finally she activated her magic, her mana draining almost completely before she pulled her arm out and landed on her butt, her legs shaking terribly from mana deficiency. “Time to grow Lily! I know you can do it!” she grinned even though she was sweating and her skin looked a lot paler than usual, she really wasn’t used to the pain that came with burning so much mana at once.
While she waited Liliane checked on her connection to Sylvara, her companion was still on the outskirts of the pale forest constructing, or rather growing, the thorn barrier that cut the forest off from the world. Because while Liliane still wanted to teach “ice boy” a lesson for killing her flower men she wasn’t that angry anymore. She realized it was also her fault, but mostly his of course. When she focused she could still feel a weak connection to him and surprisingly enough it didn’t feel that far away anymore. Still pretty far but less than before.
She snapped back to attention when the corpse in front of her started to convulse, the bear was shaking as something was moving around in its body. Slowly the corpse started to deflate like if someone left the air out from a balloon. When it had shrunk to around a fourth of its former size Liliane stood up and walked over to it, with the help of her mushroom men the managed to drag the corpse to the side.
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What Liliane found made her smile, there rooted in the ground stood a small plant. It only reached up to her knee which was pretty small on account of her own size. It had the general look of a small corpse flower. The seed pod in the middle which was mostly covered by a leaf that had a hole in the middle so it could be accessed, the big round leaves all around it which look especially sturdy. The leaves themselves were colored in a deep crimson with hundreds white spots everywhere. But there was more, the white spots were slowly blowing up and exploding with the same red spores as the mushroom and when Liliane looked she could see the gills you would expect from a mushroom covering the underside of the entire flower, giving it even more stability than it should have otherwise.
The steam was a mixture of red and white with smaller corpse flower-mushroom hybrids growing from it. When Liliane infused it with a bit of magic it moved around wildly, the entire plant more flexible than she expected. The plant exploded in puffs of spores like it was excited to see her. Liliane only smiled as she played with her deadly new companion. Now she just needed to find a suitable host to replace Gustave.
After leaving Lily 2.0 with a large group of mushroom men she sat out to find a new home for Gustave’s core. While Lily stayed mostly the same in terms of her abilities Gustave would go through a big transformation because when Liliane first did experiments she found out that the mushrooms were filled with a reddish super sticky liquid and with Gustave being a venus fly trap she wanted to incorporate that stickiness somehow. So after going around the forest for some time with the remaining mushroom men she found something that would be a good home for Gustave’s core, at least she hoped so.
She had spotted the entrance to a burrow which was at least her height in size. After watching for a while where nothing happened she grew impatient and sent her mushroom boys inside and waited for them to return. What she didn’t expect was that only minutes later one of them would come flying out of the burrow like a baseball, hitting a tree where it exploded in a cloud of red spores and pale mushroom parts.
Liliane grabbed her knife and readied one of her skills, she wasn’t a fighter but she wouldn’t run away from a challenge either. Though she knew that keeping your distance was rather important. She pumped mana into her hand and a purple glow surrounded it, slowly growing in strength. It was a simple sleep skill but she had leveled it a lot since getting it as one of her starting skills.
Moments later a massive badger rushed from the burrow, the remaining mushroom men right behind it. Liliane threw the spell on the badger and jumped to the side as it tried to rush her. Her hand glowed green as she pulled downwards, branches and roots tried to entangle the badger as it hit the tree Liliane had been standing next to.
Then the mushroom men arrived, while her flower men had teeth and sharp root claws. Her new creations were a lot softer due to their nature and lacked a mouth to bite with. Though they had other advantages. They threw themselves on the badger and started to melt into its fur, looking like half melted candles as they stuck to its fur. The moment they were secure they exploded with spores, again and again until the air was thick with them. While the badger managed to rid itself of the roots using its claws, when it turned around to face Liliane one of the remaining mushroom men jumped straight on its face but instead of sticking there it detonated itself, covering the badger in the sticky juice the mushrooms had as their blood.
It ran around in circles, trying to get the glue-like substance off as it blocked its nose. Liliane used a buff skill next and the melting mushroom men grew in size and weight. Making the badger who was sitting on its hind legs fall to the ground. When she was sure it couldn’t stand up for a moment she threw another sleep spell on it. At the same time she pumped magic into the knife and it grew into a proper sword. While approaching from behind she walked along its side and thrust the sword into the badger’s neck.
The monster trashed around and tried to attack her but the bulbous mushroom men sticking to its body made it harder to move by the second. She forced herself to watch the badger bleed out, seeing the light leaving its eyes before she dared to move again. Liliane took a deep breath, she hadn’t even noticed that she was holding it.
Without much hesitation she cut another hole in the badger’s stomach and shoved Gustave’s core inside. She would do anything to survive, never again would she be powerless because now she was the ruler of her own life, to her the system was a blessing she wouldn’t live without anymore.
