“Shit!” Miri screamed as she and Anne reflexively backed away from the flying creatures.

  The giant foxbats were exactly what one would imagine given its namesake—large bat-like creatures, about half the size of an adult human, with a few fox-like features, such as a coat of orange fur, a pair of pointy ears, and an elongated snout.

  Giant Foxbat

  Level: 9

  HP: 97/97

  While trying to avoid those foxbats, Miri and Anne accidentally stepped on some of the mauve agaric mushrooms behind them—causing a plume of toxic purple spores to burst out from them. This toxic cloud of spores managed to envelop both women as well as a few of the foxbats. Miri and Anne let out a series of hacking coughs as they unwittingly inhaled some of the spores, all the while trying to move away from the spore clouds as quickly as possible so as to avoid getting afflicted by their poison even further.

  Once she got a good line of sight, Miri grabbed Anne and used Traversing Wind to teleport them a good distance away from the toxic mushrooms, after which both of them collapsed onto the ground.

  “Goddamn it…I think I breathed some of it in…” Miri said in between her coughs. Even with just that brief of an exposure, the poison was already starting to affect both of them, making their lungs seize up and their faces purple with sickness.

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  Acting quickly, Anne casted a “Cleanse Poison” spell on both her and Miri, imbuing both of them with a flashing glow of white light that before removing their ailment of poison.

  “Miri, are you alright?” Anne said, helping the redhead up from the ground.

  “Yeah, I think I’m better now,” Miri said, taking several deep breaths as a way to refill her lungs with fresh, oxygenated air. The two then turned to look at the purple cloud of toxins before them, one that some of the foxbats got caught up in, their fallen bodies now disintegrating into glowing pink dust to signify their faux-deaths. “Even so, that sure was a doozy. I thought that by going after one of the riddle runes, we’ll be free from monster-fighting. Or, at the very least, there’ll be less monsters to handle. Guess it’s not the case with this one.”

  “You think you can take out all of the foxbats up ahead?” Anne asked.

  “It’ll be tricky,” Miri admitted. “From what I saw, there’s gotta be at least several dozen of them, plus who knows how many down the other areas. Fighting through all of them head-on is gonna be a pain in the ass, even more so if there are even more of those toxic, spore-releasing mushrooms along the path as well. It’ll be difficult to fight against them while also worrying about avoiding stepping onto the mushrooms.

  “Even if we’re careful, we’re bound to trigger one of the spore clouds. I highly doubt we can hold our breath for that long and your cleansing spell is gonna drain you out of a lot of mana. Giant, ferocious foxbats combined with toxic mushroom spore-clouds…I don’t know if I can figure out a way through it, not an efficient way at least.”

  “Hmm…” Anne said, switching her gaze between the foxbats and the mushroom spores as she contemplated deeply. “I think I have an idea that just might work. What if we don’t have to deal with both the foxbats and the toxic spore-clouds at once? What if we can instead use the toxic spores against the foxbats?”