Adam
Floof had been gone for a few hours before the first notification popped into my view. Ryzel was dead. Or at least as dead as he could be, given a Necromancer existed. If Ash had managed to recover the body, his death might actually stick. Otherwise, I had a feeling we'd see him again.
The fact that he was dead at all by her hand surprised me. I didn't think they would actually pursue her, given how badly the fight with me and Floof had gone. We had left Ryzel extremely injured, and he didn't exactly seem like a brave man.
That likely meant his boss, probably the Necromancer, had forced the chase. It also meant I was out of time to rest and recover. She may have won that fight, but there were many more coming. If she had managed to make it back to the neighborhood, though, she would at least have the help of Grimbleflork.
While that idea was somewhat of a reassurance in my mind, it wasn't enough to stop me from forcing myself to my feet. The pain had lessened a lot, thanks both to the adaptation and the healing. Despite that, I was keenly aware I was still a broken man, and I was likely about to make it all the worse.
As much as I wanted to give myself the necessary time to heal, this was one of those times where it was important to push through the pain. Floof and I were the most powerful fighters within the neighborhood, and if another attack was brewing, we needed to be there.
Another System pop-up told me Floof had run into his own problems.
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Enemy Defeated
Red FungalCap [3 Experience]
The Red FungalCap gets its distinctive colors from the superheated magma that runs in tiny veins throughout its body. While tunneling through caverns, groups of FungalCaps rely on their red brethren to widen passages using this substance. Due to the time it takes them to regurgitate the magma, it isn't very useful in a fight.
Further Information Locked
Green FungalCap [3 Experience]
The Green FungalCap is covered in a layer of moss that seems to live in a symbiotic relationship with the underlying FungalCap. The moss feeds on the ambient manafires within, while thickening the outer hide of the FungalCap, giving it stronger defensive capabilities.
Further Information Locked
Purple FungalCap [3 Experience]
The Purple FungalCap holds the pack together. It is constantly releasing pheromones that guide the individual members of the hunting pack toward their proper designations. Despite this, the Purple FungalCap is not in any way in charge of the other members. It is just another cog in the group.
Further Information Locked
Orange FungalCap [3 Experience]
The Orange FungalCap is able to release a cloud of spores in order to grow the colony. It will not do so unless a suitable location has been found. Generally, this will require all prey to be removed from a chamber and then for the chamber to be sealed by a White FungalCap, who will remain behind to raise the next generation of brood.
Further Information Locked
Yellow FungalCap [3 Experience]
The Yellow FungalCap has a constant low-level field of static energy surrounding it. It is able to guide this energy into small electrical blasts while hunting prey. For this reason, it is often at the front of the pack, aiming to take down a FungalCap pack’s quarry quickly.
Further Information Locked
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Given the experience totals, that meant they hadn't been overly difficult. But at the same time, there was a lot that went unsaid in those descriptions. If all Floof had encountered was a hunting pack, that meant there were a lot more of them within these tunnels. And I had a strong feeling there were a lot more variations than what he had encountered.
I had fought many organized species that I guessed were similar to what Floof had just found. Virtually all of them had some sort of colonial organization, and there were almost always much stronger members at the center of that colony. The acid slugs were another such example.
Hell, the fact that we had found a second caste-based monster down here led me to believe that the two species were in direct opposition to each other. Though I had no idea which one was the dominant of the two. The brief glance I had of one of the FungalCaps did nothing to help me pick one over the other.
Assuming I understood Floof well enough at this point, and it was hard to say if I did. He was a dog, after all. I had a feeling he'd grow worried about me having now encountered actual monsters in the tunnel.
Hopefully that would mean he was on his way back, as we needed to find our way out of here and there was no way I would leave him behind as I started my search. Not just because he would be much better at searching than I was, but because I couldn't imagine a world where I faced Ash without him. That gave me a little extra time to try to push my body towards one more adaptation that might prove useful in the short term, though it certainly would stretch my recovery time in the long run.
Right now, the damage that mattered the most was my ankles and my knee. I could walk with a broken rib; now, for that matter, I could probably also walk with the current fractures I had in my legs, but I doubted I could run, and fighting wouldn't be easy either. The trip was gonna hurt no matter what I did at this point, so I focused as hard as I could on my internal energies, trying to guide them towards working on my legs and ignoring everything else.
My mind felt like it was trying to grip a wet bar of soap. Every time I squeezed tighter, trying to force the energy where I wanted, it flew from my grasp. But eventually I managed to force enough of the extra healing energy within myself in a direction of my choice. That was all I really needed to trigger the return of another adaptation.
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Adaptation
Lesser Specialized Healing
Type
Active
Your body's effort to keep you alive while healing the multitude of injuries you have suffered individually has trained it to better prioritize which ones are most necessary to heal first. This has allowed you to begin to govern where your rejuvenation efforts spend the majority of their energy. Doing this will decrease the rate of healing on any injury. You pull your body's resources away from it and may actually increase the time it takes to be fully healed, should that area worsen from the lack of healing effects. 23/50 Recaptures Unlocked for Lost Hero Progression.
Adaptation Points (125)__________
Before I started further directing my healing, I had another plan for how to use it. It seemed like the perfect adaptation to combine with my Lesser Muscle Control. I had a feeling that those two might just be another synergistic pairing.
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Combine Lesser Specialized Healing and Lesser Muscle Control.
Combination of Adaptations will create a synergistic bonus.
Adaptation Points remaining after combination (105).
Proceed?
Fused Adaptation
Fused Synergistic Chain
Lesser Specialized Healing/Lesser Muscle Control α
Type
Active
Lesser Specialized Healing and Lesser Muscle Control have been fused into a synergistic chain, boosting both of their underlying functions. Now, when active, you may also reduce either of the specialized adaptations in order to increase the other even further. Additionally, the fused adaptation has been typed as synergistic and has gained an enhanced synergistic effect. When energy is redirected from one type of adaptation to the other, it is now increased in effect by 1.5. Doing this utilizes your body's internal manafire and will actively drain the pool.
24/50 Recaptures Unlocked for Lost Hero Progression.
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That was much stronger than I expected it to be. While it still wasn't anywhere near quick enough to heal me fully, it likely would override some of the downsides of redirecting my own body's efforts. Though they did leave me with one more question.
It was a question that would require an experiment to answer. Luckily, I doubted it was an experiment that would make things any worse, especially given the new fused adaptation. It was time to risk pulling some of the runic blade’s energy back into myself.
I pulled the sword onto myself and grasped the hilt firmly in both hands. The goal was to disperse the energy evenly through both of them in an attempt to reduce any further damage to my body. I wasn't entirely confident it would help, but there was a chance that the increased effect applied to the energy I was pulling through from the sword. If it did, this would all be worth it, even if I singed my hands a bit.
The real problem came as I began to pull the energy in. I had to split my focus even further, carefully redirecting as much of my muscle strength as I safely could toward my legs. Then I did the same with all of my other active healing.
My body screamed in pain at the change in focus. It fought hard against me. I wasn't even sure my Pain Tolerance adaptation was working anymore.
The fire in my nerves caused my focus to slip for just the barest second. But it was long enough for me to lose control of the tenuous grasp I held over the sword's energy. For a split second, it flowed uncontrolled through my palms back into my body, passing through every wound I had in the process.
Somehow, the backlash broke two more of my ribs as it passed through them. Another muscle tore somewhere in my side. But for all the horrible new pain, it seemed to gather up that energy from the damage it had caused, taking with it a greater dose of my manafire as it finally reached my legs.
I forced my hands from the sword, cutting off the added mana draw. It was too late to do anything about the damage it already caused as it seared its way through my body. Strangely, my mana channels hadn't borne the brunt of the surge.
That was likely the double-edged sword of what had just happened. The blade's energy had flowed freely through my flesh, damaging parts of my body that I'd already pulled both muscle strength and healing away from. By the time that mana had reached my legs, it was safe to jump into my mana channels without destroying them. It then used all of that energy, multiplied thanks to the adaptation, to drastically increase the healing in my legs.
While it wasn't an experience I would ever like to have to go through again, I would if the need arose. The bones in my ankles and knee were already knitting themselves back together at a speed I had rarely experienced in my long life before Earth. This was closer to a true regeneration effect than just a simple accelerated healing. And learning I could do that was worth the pain of the experience.
It felt like worms crawling inside of my legs as the bones shifted, fragments continued to scrape past each other, shooting new feelings of electricity through my nerves. But within minutes, I could easily stand again. As long as I ignored the fact that it hurt a lot more to breathe than it had before I did this, I could pretend I was ready for whatever we might face down here.
Then again, even wounded, I had the utmost confidence in my own ability to face down anything that tried to stop us. Now that I had access to the Shield mana orb again, I could likely mitigate the problems in my chest, assuming I didn't pierce my own lung by accident.