Chapter 51: Floral Dungeon Part 12

With their only way out of the room closed behind them Joshua and the rest of the group were forced to enter the room fully and see what was going on. As seasoned explorers at this point none of them got a good feeling about their current situation. Usually when a dungeon started to trap you into a space something was about to go down that wasn't beneficial for the invaders of the dungeon. Joshua calmly looked around the room making sure not to panic at the sudden change. From what he could see nothing else in the room had changed, but that could be a bad thing if there was some kind of trick to the room itself.

"Damn, I guess we can only go forward to the boss room now. We're well rested anyway so it shouldn't be much of a problem." Adrian said with a shrug getting everyone to calm down a bit.

"I don't think that's the case." Henry said with a sigh. He pointed to the large doors that lead to the boss room and everyone turned to look. The fungus that covered most of the boss door started pulling itself off. It was slow at first allowing them to see the metallic door that seemed red tinted to fit with the coloring of all of the fungus in the room, but was noticeably different. It wasn't the door itself that had gotten everyone's attention though, it was the words that seemed to engrave themselves into the metal as the fungus pulled away.

[What lies beyond these doors is the boss that you seek to clear this dungeon once and for all. However there is one more foe you must face to move on to that final step. Within this room there is a hidden enemy that controls all of the fungus that surrounds you. Destroy this enemy and the gate way to the boss shall be opened. Be fast about this, or else you shall perish from the hidden danger that surrounds you. Good luck]

After a few seconds of reading the message it started blinking before disappearing leaving everyone on edge at what could be hiding in the room that they weren't able to find. Everyone took out their weapons and took up a defensive formation just in case they got attacked from any direction. "Now we know for sure that something is up." Aito said as he started to examine everything around them with his enhanced eyesight. Even so he couldn't find anything out of the ordinary.

"Josh can you find anything with your aura sense. I don't know what kind of danger this creature will put us in, but not knowing where it is in such a small enclosure is not helping us." Henry said before another thrumming sound echoed throughout the room causing everyone to tense up and prepare to fight once again. Instead of a creature coming out to face them, they were met with a strange situation where several fungus along the walls of the room started to swell up in size before a red gas started to pour out from them. The gas wasn't coming out at a very fast rate, but because the room was so small it would only take a matter of minutes for the entire room to fill up with the stuff.

Joshua didn't know exactly what was in the gas, but it seemed to mess with his aura sense a bit whenever he spread it out through the gas. The fact that it could affect aura meant that it could have an extremely dangerous effect on their bodies if they came in contact with it. Since the fungi that were spewing the spores and gas were only on the walls around the room they had time before the spores could reach them, but Joshua wasn't just going to wait around for that to happen.

"I'll focus on finding the plant or fungus that's controlling everything in the room. You guys need to figure out a way to keep all of the spores and gas away from us for as long as possible." Joshua said before closing his eyes and spreading out more of his aura so that it could actually survive moving through the spores and searching the walls for their enemy. Even with the extra strength added to the aura Joshua had spread out he could still sense the spores slowly eroding the aura making it hard for him to get a clear picture of the room without straining himself.

Henry nodded before looking around and quickly coming up with the fastest method he could think of to hold off the spores for as long as possible. "Alright Katsumi I'm going to need you to set up a barrier around us just in case any other forms of attack come our way." Henry said as he looked towards the younger Asawa sister.

"My barrier won't be able to hold off anything that travels in a gaseous state." Katsumi said making sure to inform Henry so that he wouldn't believe the barrier could hold out on its own.

"That's fine the rest of us have work to do as well so just focus on setting up that barrier for now." Henry told her before turning to look at Brook who seemed a bit surprised that he needed her to do something. "I need you to generate some water that will dampen the air and make it impossible for those spores to continue to flood the room. I'm sure even in a watered down liquid state the spores will be dangerous to us, but at least then it'll be easier to avoid."

"I see what you're getting at Henry, but we still need a way to keep all of the spores away from us. Eventually the room will just get flooded if we rely on flushing the spores out with water for too long." Aito said as he watched Katsumi set up the large turtle shell barrier that was more than big enough to cover up the entire group.

"I'll push all of the spores away from us with some basic wind magic. That should by us some time, but we'll need to freeze our surroundings to keep the water from reaching us. Katsumi can use the talisman made from Cinder's blood to do that without too much of an issue. It won't freeze everything in the room, but it should be enough to keep us safe."

Everyone involved got to work on Henry's plan while those that were not just made sure to stay within the barrier. Jayce and Ivan took up positions on either side of the group preparing to use their shield wall abilities just in case Katsumi's barrier was broken through at some point. It would be a last line of defense that could hopefully buy them a little more time. With everything planned out Henry got to work channeling the spell to create a gust of wind that would blow everything away from his location. He made sure to make the center of the spell large enough to where it wouldn't knock anyone outside of the barrier by accident. The moment he cast the spell all of the spores that were starting to drift away from the walls of the room were pushed back and away from the group. This wouldn't hold for too long as the larger fungi around the room would continue to pour out more spores and eventually cover the entire space no matter what they did.

Brook quickly followed up on Henry's actions with a spell that created several large water balls around the group. She forced them out far enough to where they would get grabbed by the gust of wind and sent flying towards the walls. They would then crash against the fungus covered walls and splatter all over the place. The wind would pick up the droplets of water making sure to dampen all of the spores in the air as more and more water was added.

Slowly the room was starting to gain several puddles of water that were filled with spores so they didn't want to touch them if possible. Katsumi quickly tore another talisman that created the small blizzard around the barrier that she had already put up. This froze any water that got close to the barrier keeping any of the spores inside of it from being dangerous to the group. With everything set up the group was in the best defensive position possible to survive the current situation and it was up to Joshua to find out where the enemy was.

Joshua continued to search the room with his aura sense. The fact that most of the spores had been weighed down by the water made it easier for him to search the walls in the room for their adversary. At first it was hard to find anything different as he scanned the area. The spores seemed to come out from random fungi around the room so it was impossible to use any correlation of where the spores were coming from to find out where his target was. So Joshua had to force his aura in deeper into the walls and ceiling of the room to see if he could finds anything that stood out from the rest of the room.

At first when Joshua started this act it was fairly tiring to force his aura through all of the spores and the walls soon after, but once he was able to penetrate through the fungus and dirt along the walls he was able to notice something a bit odd. There were several different root like structures running all over just under the surface of the wall. Most of these roots were extremely small and thin, but connected to each other like a huge network of roots that worked themselves all around the room. These roots were clearly what helped the fungi all over the room cling to the walls or ceiling.

There was another set of roots that stood out on their own even further beneath the surface of the walls. These roots were far thicker and more noticeable. They looked similar to the roots of a plant instead of the thin strings that had made up the roots of the different fungi along the walls. When Joshua started following the roots with his aura sense he was able to see that they all lead to one point in the room. He opened his eyes as he glared in the direction with his aura enhancing his vision.

It had been a couple of minutes since he had started searching for the source of the trap that was trying to kill them and the surroundings of the room had changed. Most of the room was covered in water with wind making it fairly turbulent. All of the water that was closer to the barrier had been frozen solid and Joshua could see the red little specks that were the spores trapped inside of the ice. Even with all of the defenses put up the ice was already waist level at this point and soon the room would be to filled up for them to even move around or escape.

Joshua turned his attention to what he was looking for with aura sense and saw a strange fungus that at first looked similar to all of the other ones that he had seen along the walls, but with his aura sense Joshua could see that underneath the fungus there was a large flower hiding just beyond the wall. It was the only thing different about the entire room so Joshua decided to take a chance. He coated himself in aura before leaping out of the barrier towards the wall that had the flower. His aura protected him from any lingering spores in the air, but it would only hold for so long.

Knowing he was pressed for time Joshua blinked forward directly in front of the spot on the wall he was looking forward and slammed his scale blade into it with his most forceful attack. The aura blast combined with his will created a large crater that shook the entire room and sent dirt and pieces of fungus everywhere. Joshua quickly dashed away from the cloud of dust since it could contain several spores and sent an energy slash directly where he could sense the plant just to make sure it was down for good. Now he just had to see if his plan worked.