What looked like mist was actually comprised of minuscule living beings that, despite each having their own body and a bright violet mana core, all shared the same energy signature.
The countless creature formed a single entity that had a hive mind and core.
‘Those are the Fae equivalent of fungi, the Horde. I never believed that one day I would have met them. According to Raagu, not only are they incredibly rare, but they also hold the secret of the white core!’ Athung thought.
The Horde was the next evolutionary step of the fungal creature that Lith had fought back in Kulah. They had access to all elements, not just water and earth, and possessed much more powerful cores.
The Horde’s rarity was due to their inability to give birth to offspring. Once Awakened, a mold could reproduce, but the newborn would be part of the hive mind and body of their progenitors, not a new being.
On the one hand, the phenomenon made the fungi nigh-immortal since a single spore could rebuild the colony from scratch as long as they had enough nutrients. Age didn’t matter because new beings would replace the old ones the moment they died.
On the other hand, it made their race incapable of growing in number over time. The chances for a fungal colony to manage to Awaken was night zero because the process was individual, and the mycetes had to find a way to share the technique before their demise.
Fungi had a very short life span and even Awakening didn’t extend it by much. It made the Horde incredibly rare, to the point that only a handful of them existed on the entirety of Mogar.
The Council had invited them under the pretext of helping with the test and creating an opportunity for the Hordes to spar with their fellow Awakened, but the Council’s real goal was to exploit the test to thoroughly study such a unique race.
Even though the Fungi lacked the white core, their eternally youthful bodies and their ability to coordinate the countless small violet cores that comprised each colony to weave spells of untold power made them into the next best thing.
“Did you see that?” Raagu pointed at the Hordes that were rebuilding themselves and casting a Spirit Magic spell to destroy Athung’s arrays.
“If mastering the vortexes and turning them into auxiliary cores is the secret of the violet core, then maybe turning the auxiliary cores into violet and making them capable of independent thought is the secret of the white core.
“It would explain why people like Baba Yaga survive even with their head and heart destroyed. It’s because they are akin to a Horde.”
“If your theory is correct, then why don’t the fungi have a white core?” Feela the Behemoth was skeptical, but she had shared with the Council her best scanning techniques in the hope to learn something new.
“Because their greatest strength is also their weakness.” Raagu replied. “To go beyond the bright violet, a Horde should merge into a single body and pool up their mana. Being split into countless small beings makes them hard to kill, but at the same time limits their mana flow.”
To prove her point, the human representative zoomed on the Horde that was casting Spirit Magic. The magical strength of a single mycetes was irrelevant, forcing them to assemble in order to conjure any form of magic.
To do that, the mist had to converge into a single point, making themselves vulnerable to a lethal attack.
The now packed minuscule violet cores amplified each other’s mana flow, increasing their individual magical prowess by several folds. On top of that, each spell they unleashed was actually comprised of several small spells, making them hard to defend against.
The Horde in front of Athung unleashed the tier five Spirit Magic spell, Starpath. An emerald stream of light caught her by surprise. It seeped through the defenses that her companions had conjured as if they weren’t there, hitting her full on.
Athung lost her focus and her arrays disappeared. The Horde preyed on every life form in sight to regain their mass without the need to stop their advance.
“How do we fight those things?” Henya asked.
“We don’t.” Athung replied while Temania healed her with her breathing technique. “Alone we don’t stand a chance. To fight an army of creatures we need an army of our own. Let’s go back to the base.”
Unfortunately for her, they found it empty. Aside from those who were already there to rest or exchange goods, the other Awakened had maintained their positions and tried to fight on their own.
Lith was among them. He didn’t trust anyone in the expedition and knew by experience that numbers mattered only if backed by teamwork. A large group of people that fought like individuals would last much less than a small group that coordinated their efforts.
‘Gods, this is Kulah all over again.’ Phloria said via the mind link, recognizing the familiar form of the fungal creatures.
‘I wish. That guy was alone and the fungi equivalent of a magical beast whereas here we are facing their Awakened equivalent of several Emperor Beasts.’ Lith replied while cursing their bad luck.
The creatures seemed to possess both the perfect attack and defense. By spreading thin, they avoided most of his spells, taking little to no damage even from tier five spells.
When they converged into a single point, instead, the Hordes unleashed powerful Spirit Spells that pierced through any defense he conjured. If not for his Origin Flames and the sealed Adamant of the Scalewalker armor, Lith would have already fallen.
‘We need to regroup!’ Phloria said while a blue-colored Horde charged forward in the form of a wave, trampling her tier five spell, Death Bastion, as if the solid rock wall infused with darkness magic was nothing more than a sandcastle.
‘Aalejah or Athung?’ Solus asked.
‘Aalejah.’ Lith and Phloria replied in unison.
The elf’s knowledge and the undead’s mastery over darkness magic were their best shot at getting out of there alive.
‘On it!’ Solus opened a Warp Gate to the undead’s camp, closing it down the moment Lith walked through it.
“What the heck is going on and what is all that fuss outside?” Trevan the Nightwalker said the moment he saw them.
There were too few Hordes to attack the entire Urgamakka so the fungi were taking out the Awakened one group at a time before moving onto the next one, leaving those further from the site of the altar temporarily safe.
There was no time for explanations so Lith established a mind link with Trevan and Aalejah, sharing with them everything he knew.
“You’ve made the right thing coming here.” The elf weaved a portal to the common camp. “Without us, the others have no chance of victory. Undead and Abominations are the natural banes of Hordes since fungi can’t feed upon them whereas the opposite isn’t true.”
“Then what do we need the Warp for?” Lith and Trevan asked in unison.
“We can beat one Horde, but if they work together, then we need both the array field of the camp and the help of the others. Believe me, you have no idea how powerful those creatures are.” She replied.
They got there just in time. The fortress had been under siege for less than one minute and it was already about to fall.
