Looking into the ashes of the now burnt down log; Poe felt a weird mix of emotions. Maybe it was because of the description from the inspect skill or maybe it was something else.
"Poe! You have been staring on that place for long enough now… Let's go~! New, stronger monsters await us! There should also be lots~ of delicious things inside the mushroom forest"
Hearing Ivy, Poe ignored her for most of the part. Only focusing at the mention of delicious things. Feeling himself getting fired up, Poe turned towards Ivy, before standing up and making his way towards Lucia waiting at the outskirts of the mushroom forest.
"Do we go now?"
Lucia asked as she looked at Poe coming over.
"Yes"
Saying so, Poe and Lucia made their way into the mushroom forest with an excited Ivy following them.
Walking in the mushroom forest, it was not long before Ivy spotted a monster.
[Walking mushroom (red), lvl 7]
Well… at least it was a monster…
The little mushroom slowly moved closer, Poe really wondered how it was even able to stay up and move with such small tendrils acting as its arms and legs, but then again, Poe did not really mind it, as it looked extremely cute while moving towards them.
Ivy, who was now standing beside Poe, also looked spellbound at the cute little mushroom moving closer and closer.
The cute little mushroom slowly got within 5 meters of Ivy and Poe, as it slowly started using what looked like some kind of magic.
Poe quickly retreated towards Lucia, as he got ready to attack the little mushroom whenever it attacked.
Ivy on the other hand ignored the little mushroom using magic and moved towards it at lightning speed.
The little mushroom was around 50 centimeters tall. The little tendrils moved around everywhere as Ivy, who suddenly appeared in front of it, lifted it into the air.
"C-cute~ I will name him Mushy!"
Ivy said while swinging the poor Mushy around in the air.
The little mushroom had no chance to react, as it suddenly found itself swinging in circles. The poor mushroom soon found out that, it could not use its strong tendrils to break free from Ivy's grasp.
Poe and Lucia watched on speechlessly as Ivy started to play around with the little mushroom.
Sadly, for Ivy the little mushroom did not seem to like the idea of being swung around and played with by Ivy, its poor tendrils was already about to break after being swung around by Ivy.
"Reeeeeeee!"
The little mushroom let out a high scream, as it started moving so much that Ivy lost her grip on it, making it fall onto the ground.
"MUSHY! NOOOO! ARE YOU OKAY?"
Ivy shouted worriedly as she was about to pick up the little mushroom, when she suddenly heard a soft muffled crackling sound around her.
*rustle*
Poe and Lucia had already moved away from Ivy the moment they heard the little mushroom scream, but they did not get far before they saw what made the earlier rustling sound.
[Walking mushroom (red and white dots), lvl 14]
[Walking mushroom (yellow), lvl 6]
[Walking mushroom (purple and red d…
[Walking mushroom (blu…
[Walking mushroom (brown with red stripes and yellow dots), lvl 27]
Walking mushroom in all kinds of colors slowly showed themselves from behind the surrounding mushroom trees everywhere around Poe, Lucia and Ivy.
"L-Lucia…!"
Poe panicked as he looked at several hundred cute mushrooms slowly showing themselves turned towards them with hostility.
Ivy also seemed to have seen that they were in danger and had already appeared besides Poe and Lucia looking greatly conflicted whether she really needed to fight the cute mushrooms in front of her.
"M-Mushy…"
Ivy looked helplessly at the little mushroom named Mushy getting up and running towards the other walking mushrooms giving out a feeling of a little girl running crying to her parents after someone bullied her.
Looking back towards Ivy, the little mushroom looked at her with fear and started tugging one of the bigger walking mushrooms with its tendrils.
[Walking mushroom (imagine many different colors and patterns here…), lvl 39]
Poe was really doubting whether his inspect skill was growing lazier as time passed…
[Inspect has reached level 4]: The ever growing world will show itself in front of your eyes in the form of simple to understand sentences! You will start to understand things you never knew about before!
Seeing this Poe was stupefied for some time. What does those descriptions have to do with explaining the ever-growing world in simple words? It was clearly just being lazy… This skill really was-
[Inspect has reached level 5 due to a special reason]: The brain of lesser beings will have a hard time comprehending the wonders of the endless universe. Raise your intelligence and wisdom to start understanding the world. + 1 INT and WIS.
This skill was clearly insulting him!
Poe started grumbling quietly about the lazy and rude skill, but before he could start to voice his complaints, Lucia brought him back to reality again.
"Poe! We need to get out of here now!"
Lucia said as she looked at the mushrooms in front of them, the size of their croup had grown from around a hundred to several hundred already and was still steadily growing in numbers.
Other than that, there were several walking mushrooms at level 30 and above. The walking mushroom besides Ivy's former pet, Mushy, was at level 39! A completely strong existence four levels above the giant worm they faced back in the desert!
The level 39 walking mushroom alone would be a threat to all of them, let alone when there were dozens of walking mushrooms at level 30 or above. That was not counting the several hundred other walking mushrooms slowly joining their friends.
"L-let's leave…! Now!"
Lucia said as she started running, grabbing Ivy and Poe on the way, dragging them with her.
"REEEEeeeEEEEeeeEEEEeEeeeE"
"REEEEEEEEEEE"
"ReeEEEeeEeeeeeee"
"REeEEeEEeeeeEEEEEEEe"
The walking mushrooms all let out ear piercing scream as they charged towards the direction Lucia, Poe and Ivy ran.
Sadly, they only had small cute tendrils for legs, making them quite slow. Only the ones above level 30 could barely move at a speed that was the same as a normal humans walking speed…
"I-I only wanted to play with Mushy…"
Ivy's heartbroken voice was barely discernible between the walking mushrooms loud screams, as the three soon disappeared into the mushroom forest.