CHAPTER 30: MYCORGLOOM

Cecilia left the ruins of Thalum Aenoth at a fast pace. Even though her mana pool was huge, it was finite, and she didn’t want to risk having too much of it drained before heading towards the lower zones of the Underdark.

The lower you go, the stronger the monsters. Being a limit breaker in the game means that most enemies are small fries for you. But it doesn’t mean that you’ll never find powerful foes that put you at risk.

After all, no game would be fun without enemies that are worthy to fight. As a certain player that spent a hundred thousand dollars in a mobile F2P game can attest.

So, as she descended the countless corridors of the maze called Underdark, Cecilia increased her attention towards her surroundings. Some monsters tried to ambush her, but they were all one-shot.

At one point, she stopped suddenly, facepalming.

"Am I stupid or what? I simply forgot to equip my combat gear!"

In the game she would never take her gear off, and she had some [diamond]-level equipment so good she hadn’t put any specialized equipment for raids in the last year or so. That’s why she didn’t have the habit of checking what was equipped.

But she had been wearing civilian clothes because she didn’t want to attract too much attention in the overworld. She had planned to switch it when she entered the Underdark, but the conversation with Gantz distracted her, and she forgot.

"Well, at least I haven’t had any challenging fights yet... Let’s do it right now."

She was in the middle of a corridor, but she didn’t fear anyone spying on her naked body. She took her dress off, opened the inventory screen, stored it, and then took out her proper gear.

She put on the priestess robe that had a special blessing from Ephemerys herself. It was the secret behind her ’solo any dungeon’ fame, because it cast a healing spell from her spell list automatically every time she was hurt.

In other words, the only way to kill her was to do enough damage to reduce her HP below zero in one blow. Otherwise, all damage would be immediately negated.

Of course, those spells used mana. The robe had its own mana pool, which Cecilia had to replenish outside combat through some rituals, and when it emptied, it could use Cecilia’s own mana.

So the only other way to kill her would be through a battle of attrition that drained her completely out of mana. But that was even harder, as she had several ways of replenishing mana in an instant.

Besides the robe, she was about to put on her Tiara of Intellect but decided against it. Instead, she put on a hat that empowered her minimap, increasing the effective range in which she could see the terrain around her.

Then she wore her sandals, bracelets, one ring on each hand, earrings, and necklace. Though they were less conspicuous than a robe or tiara, they were still shiny and noticeable, giving her nature as MMO items.

Last, she took out the Chrysalis Scepter. It’s a staff made out of polished moonwood entwined with amethyst veins. At its head, a cocoon of translucent crystal floats just above the shaft, its interior holding an obsidian butterfly.

"Last time I used it was in that battle against in the forest near Aberswan. Poor Mutt, the whole scene must’ve been too much for him, so I stored it back again right after the battle... I hadn’t noticed its weight, probably because of how focused I was..."

In the game, items didn’t have weight. There was some feeling of resistance when you brandished stuff around, but it wasn’t real ’weight.’ The feeling of holding the real, solid thing in her hands was something new.

"Good thing I’ve increased all my stats. This thing wouldn’t wear me down even if I carried it for ten hours straight..."

She checked one more time her own stats.

[Name: Morielen Thal’Mor

Race: Dark Elf

Character Level: 3200

Jobs: Priestess (700), Floracrafter (500), Healer (500), Aetherforger (500), Loremaster (500), Enchanter (300), Runecrafter (200)

Nation: Drakestadt

HP: 83,100/83,100

SP: 44,810/44,810

MP: 83,800/91,428]

[Attributes:

Strength: 28

Dexterity: 44

Vigor: 61

Intelligence: 86

Wisdom: 100

Charisma: 90]

"Good. The Tiara of Intelligence allows me to break the 100 hard limit on the mental attributes, but I’m not going to a boss raid today. This is an exploration mission."

Fully geared up, she resumed her march.

:::

"The world really got bigger, huh? If this was the game, I would’ve already reached Mycorgloom a long time ago..."

Though the most prominent landmarks were in the same relative locations as they were in the game, all of them were bigger than in the game, and the space between them also grew.

That’s because the game world is only a scaled-down representation, even in detailed open-world maps. In games, a whole village would have only half a dozen buildings, and a city would be just big enough to house a hundred people at most.

For that reason, the trip to the Mycorgloom ’forest’ took a lot longer than expected. But she was finally here.

"And how the hell am I supposed to find my hidden base in here? Well, one thing is certain: nobody else would’ve been able to find it as well."

The cavern in front of Cecilia was as big as a real-life forest, with the ceiling hanging a couple dozen meters upwards. Towering mushrooms littered the place, blocking the view of further away places.

She took a deep breath and stepped into the fungal forest, with one eye on the minimap and another in front of her.

:::

It didn’t take long for the first grattak to appear.

A four-meter-tall gorilla with four arms and no eyes. It used echolocation and mana sensing to ’see’ the world and was carnivorous. Cecilia quickly used Appraisal on it.

[Nome: Ugh’uk

Race: Grattak

Level: 2918

HP: 100,987/100,987

SP: 120,365/120,365

MP: 87,956/87,956]

"Wait, it has a name? Are grattak sentient now?"