When we got back to the metal safe floor I got to work designing and implementing an antifungal protection cursed item. I ended up using a mix of deep silver, mithril and a finger bone taken from each of my temporary party to create a set of brooches that kept the fungal spores from being able to latch on to their respective owners. The finger bones worked to make it a tightly connected ability to the one wearing it for extra oomph just in case, not that most of them were happy losing part of their fingers even temporarily.-
The only one who didn't hem or haw about it was Ottar who straight up cut off one of his own fingers without hesitation when I said I needed a finger bone. Obviously I regrew the parts I took and even let them see me use the stuff to make the brooches. Sacrificial crafting like this wasn't a favored method of mine but I couldn't say it wasn't without it's merit. With floors no one knew the deal about I wasn't going to pass up any possible boosts to our safety outside of combat though.-
I naturally didn't need the anti shroom protection since my technique made organic sourced matter like this my bitch. It only took me a couple hours to whip up these brooches since the technique for it was pretty straightforward. Additionally my curse-smith DS being as high as it was meant I could craft simple stuff like this in my sleep. We headed down the stairs again with me at the front of the party and other than Ottar who implicitly trusted me and my work the others were cautious about stepping into the barely visible floating spores.-
Once they saw Ottar perfectly fine though they relaxed a bit and we finally stepped onto the sixty sixth floor proper. It was mushrooms for as far as the eye could see. And I don't mean the small kind either but shrooms towering like redwoods with caps that even had small clouds partially obscuring them from sight. The colors were also frankly insane as there were reds, purples, blues, greens, yellows, blacks, greys and colors I didn't even have names for on these shrooms. Did I mention the almost fog-like dust cloud of spores shimmering midair? -
Care to take a guess as to the monsters covering the floor? If the first thing that came to mind was mushroom creatures you are wrong. It was fucking mushroom ZOMBIES. The monsters of the floor were all cordyceps nightmare fuel beasts with milky white eyes if they even had any eyes. The bodies were covered in various types of mushrooms with a single white shroom shared in all of them growing from the top of their heads. I had no idea what the dungeon was high on when it came up with this floor bad someone needs to cut off it's supply, this was not cool.-
Look I'm cool with some downright absurd shit but even I draw the line at zombies. Theres something about the idea of even the dead not staying that way that was deeply unsettling to me. With that in mind it should probably come as no surprise I murdered the shit out of these zombies. The crazy part out of all this was that the shroom takeover had somehow boosted the power of each zombie to borderline level seven. Considering there were shambling goblins in the mix this was a very large boost. -
I would have had to been an idiot if I didn't realize that these things weren't ACTUALLY zombies when they all had the same stats even with their original species having VERY different levels normally. For example the minotaur standing on the same foot as the green dragon, not variants either just normal members of the species. One thing I was conflicted about as we dispatched these shroom husks was that they all had the same drops naturally. That gods damned fucking mushroom growing out of their heads. Something interesting however was the senses of the husks were gone save a select few. -
They were blind and deaf but in exchange they gained some sort of spore perception. I tested this shit. They reacted to any disturbance in the flow of spores in the air. Considering the brooches were killing said spores by the thousands with every step and to them it must be like giant signs all pointing at us in neon flashing lights. A funny thing I discovered was that I could short circuit this sense by wiping out an area of spores around one of the husks. They just kinda froze in place with twitching bodies if I did it as though they had no idea what to do.-
Granted doing this caused the things to gather from across the floor because of the massive disturbance it caused but they just stopped at the empty zones boundaries.
"I can't say I'm a fan of this floor, this is creepy." Finn commented as he stabbed a husk in the stone and the husk next to it didn't react at all when it went poof.
"Are you complaining that it's too easy? Cuz I can totally let the spores fill in if you'd prefer to fight all these things at once." I said and he hurriedly shook his head.