Eri returned with the makeshift shirt-sack squirming in his grip, job done.

  He'd gone around yanking shrubs and clumps of mud, stuffing it all into the impromptu terrarium - and then grabbed the blackrot bugs by hand without hesitation, tossing everything into the bag like some skeletal horror show santa, jaw clicking happily the whole time.

  The fabric felt outright cursed to Wade as blackrotten beetles crawled over each other inside, clicking and scratching against the material, strong enough to visibly push against the shirt fabric compared to normal bugs, but not smart enough to start biting through.

  They might not even know they were trapped yet. The skeleton vaulted back over the mithril crate, placed the shirt-sack down, and then proceeded to tie together the sleeves, fully sealing the entire thing.

  Wade didn't dare actually get close to that, blackrot could spread through fabric easy enough if it was pressed or panicked. Technically he had a mithril collar - an actual working one - but he remembered it had odd interactions with internal mana. Selena had said those infected with blackrot couldn't make use of mana anymore at all, which tracked with it being anti-mana. Given he now had a mana crystal on hand, he'd rather keep that option open.

  So he had Eri double bundle it up with another spare shirt, and then set it aside for later, just to make sure nothing bad would happen while they worked on part two.

  "We've got our bait, now we need data." Wade inspected the second Glock from his backpack and checked the magazine before handing it to Eri. The skeleton accepted the weapon, turning it over in his skeletal fingers.

  He clicked his jaw, head slightly tilted at the unique human weapon. What's next boss?

  "You were there with everyone else, you know how these work right?"

  The skeleton did another jaw click. He'd been watching Wade and Leon get all their training on using these weapons. Being mute, and mostly focused with using a sword instead of any other weapon, he'd watched from the sidelines.

  But today Wade needed an extra set of guns going.

  "Here's the plan. You're dead."

  Eri slowly turned his skull to leer at Wade.

  Oh, I am?

  He immediately clutched his ribcage, flailed around as if experiencing a heart attack, spun in a circle, and raised one hand skyward as though dying in agony before collapsing onto the muddy ground, falling to his knees.

  "Oh for chri-" Wade facepalmed. This over-dramatic little git. "I mean you're dead so that thing out there isn't going to be interested in you. That's the important bit."

  The skeleton stopped his dramatic soap opera midway, then turned his skull at Wade.

  Well, why didn't you say so earlier? And here I was giving the best performance of my life, all for nothing.

  "I was getting to that," Wade shook his head, chuckling. "Anyhow, Blackrotten creatures sense living things, right? Heartbeats, meat, something. And they ignore anything that isn't, like the rocks and vegetation here. So to them, you're the same as a rock or a tree. Just part of the scenery. So long as you don't attack them in any way they can understand as an attack, they won't go after you."

  Eri's jaw clicked affirmative.

  "So here's what I need. Get somewhat close to that thing and put one bullet into it. Just one. The creature won't connect the gunshot to you. It won't understand what hurt it. At least not unless you start mag dumping into it."

  The skull leered extra hard, and Wade read bloodthirst in the completely featureless skeleton's grin.

  "And to be completely clear - just fire a single bullet at it. No magdumping. We need the ammo, and we just need a data point before I can work the rest of this plan. Got that?"

  As in Wade needed some math done first. This was a far higher level than Bael, and that meant far more danger. No room for mistakes or misjudgements.

  The skeleton gave a sad jaw click anyhow, but he understood proper research was required.

  Wade pointed up over past the mithril crate, where the massive fungal colony lurked further outside now. Slowly tracing the way to the tower.

  "One shot tells us exactly how much damage a single bullet does. If one bullet takes off half a percent of its health or more, we can do this. If it goes under that number, we should start planning how to run away from this thing instead."

  Or triple down on using up all his resources for this, but Wade felt he still needed them for what could come up next.

  The skeleton gave him a thumbs up.

  "If we can do damage to that thing, come back here, we'll start part two and I need you to deliver a payload first before we start the damage."

  Eri clicked his jaw once, then slung his greatsword across his back and moved toward the door, stepping over the mithril crate with practiced ease, one hand holding the Glock with good trigger discipline. Wade watched him go.

  One bullet. One data point. That's all they needed to know if this insane plan had any chance of working.

  Three modified grenades left, and two standard ones. This thing could and would one-shot them both if he gave it a chance. So he wasn't going to give it a fighting chance at all.

  The fungal colony ambled forward, tentacles grabbing around the shrubs, easily catching the fleeing bugs that only realized belatedly they were in range of a much larger apex predator.

  As far as the fungal colony had thoughts, they would have been quite annoyed in general. It had had a poor time thus far. The food it had chased down earlier had vanished into mist and essence, leaving nothing to eat at all except fabric.

  Not tasty.

  So it was on the hunt for the other lunch that had scurried off.

  And it was none the wiser for the dead thing racing around ahead.

  Eri turned his quick sprint into a more languid jog, and then a walk. The fungal colony made no motion of care. It focused on sniffing after the tracks of life ahead, and eating anything in the way.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  So long as the skeleton didn't come charging at the colony, it could be ignored.

  Up until the fused fungal colony heard a loud bang, and the feeling of something impacting its side. Nothing that really harmed it, likely a rock falling from some cliff. Those happened here and there.

  It turned its head around, searching for the source of the hit, but found it forgettable as more food ahead distracted it.

  It moved on without care. Smelling meat in the air, tracking where that had scampered away.

  And that meat was currently plotting away behind the mithril crate, eyes focused like a predator's rather than prey.

  Wade watched the bullet hit, and kept his eye on identify the entire time.

  The health bar had flickered on the bullet hit. Hardly noticeable. And Wade tracked exactly how much the System displayed the percentages at.

  In a second or two, the monster had already out-healed it.

  Eri jogged back home, mission accomplished. He vaulted over their mithril barricade, then clicked his jaw.

  Well? Are we going to kick ass or get our ass kicked?

  "We're going to kick ass." Wade confirmed. "One percent damage. That's how much a bullet does at minimum. Could be that you hit a more exposed angle, but looks like you just hit the center mass, so we can assume one percent on average. Which means we should have the damage to kill this thing."

  The problem is that the wiggle room would be real low. If they fucked up any part of the plan or didn't coordinate right, they'd flunk and then be in deep shit.

  On the other hand, not every fight had to be a life or death thing.

  Sometimes, good planning really was good planning.

  Eri jogged out of the building again and this time the monster instantly noticed him.

  Not because the skeleton finally had something on his bones worth eating, but rather because the skeleton finally carried something worth eating: The bait shirt-sack filled with blackrotten bugs in one hand.

  The skeleton jogged toward the beast, his casual stride utterly fearless.

  Because in his other hand was Wade's grenade.

  The skeleton cracked his neck, skull grinning with glee at what would happen next.

  At the right distance, he stopped, knelt down, opened the bag, and shoved that grenade deep inside, right into the mud and bugs squirming under it all.

  If it blew up in his hands, it would do some solid damage, but unlike Wade, Eri's skeletal frame meant everything was quite manageable. No fleshy organs that were sensitive to things like pressure waves, and shrapnel would have a high chance of just going right through him. Even a nicked bone wouldn't be a problem. As long as the skeleton stayed even a few feet away, grenades posed little threat to his constitution.

  So he was the perfect bomb runner.

  When he pulled his skeletal hand out of the bait bag, it only held one thing in the bony ring finger: The safety pin of that grenade.

  Eri rapidly flicked the pin away, focusing on tying the shirt-sack with a swift knot, before getting back on his feet and taking a few quick steps before he hurled the entire bundle right at the monster ahead.

  Dinner time buddy. Eat up.

  The fungal colony tracked the movement. Blackrot. Food. Living things it could consume and grow stronger from. And all flying right at its face, like a free meal.

  But there was no such thing as a free meal. Wade knew that. Eri knew that. And the fused fungal blackrot creature was about to learn that too.

  It did what any bored, hungry creature would: opened its cavernous, unhinged jaws like a hippo, caught the bundle mid-flight, then tossed it upward. With its head aimed skyward, it swallowed the falling bag whole in one motion. Its neck bulged as it forced the entire thing down like a pelican, finishing in one single satisfied swallow.

  Everything disappeared down that gullet.

  Including the grenade that was about to blow.

  Three seconds had passed in between Eri pulling the pin, knotting the bag and tossing it into the creature's gullet. Which meant two seconds left before boom.

  The colony paused, licking its teeth as the inside blackrot began to swarm the beetles all within, crushing them.

  And then it exploded.

  Wade felt it even from this distance.

  The monster's lower belly distended, ballooning out like a giant liquid squeeze-toy in between fat fingers. It's spine and back didn't break, but the stomach and throat sure did, ripping apart with force the moment it had been stretched too far out.

  Pulverized guts sprayed across the ground like violent vomit. Chunks of fungal matter splattered in every direction, black mist spreading outward as the blackrot entities within panicked. Steam rose from the chunks, most of the insides completely scorched from the contained explosion.

  And the System registered damage.

  The health bar had dropped from one hundred down to thirty nine percent.

  Sixty-one percent damage in one hit. Wade whooped.

  Eri clicked his jaw, getting back on his feet, one hand wiping off bits of blackrotten fungal matter squirming in terror. Immune to both the pressure wave and the bits of blackrot he'd been exposed to this close.

  The skull leered down at the struggling monster, one hand lifting a Glock up with a satisfied slide rack down to chamber the bullet.

  Time for his favorite part in this plan: The shooting.

  The monster staggered on its four feet, head raising back up, jaw hanging loose off a single sinew of charred meat before even that snapped off to the muddy ground, leaving the burned tongue to loll down.

  Wade could see the real shape of the beast now. A massive boar far larger than even a rhinoceros. Too large to have been really trapped by the fungal colony's roots and tendrils, but large enough to become a new host for it. And so the fungus had colonized its back first and slowly ate it from the outside in. Merging together into one being.

  It now had all of its belly ripped apart, ribcage exposed, leaking blood and viscera, steam coming out of it in a cloud. But it turned its head directly at the skeleton, finally registering a threat and bellowed with whatever was left of the ruined throat.

  The health bar began to tick back up, as the blackrot within the creature started the work to repair the damage.

  Wade dodge rolled out of the tower then got back on his feet, the safety pin in his hand. He tried to focus on moving with purpose rather than adrenaline. Follow the plan, don't panic, don't hurry the process.

  His hands moved with far more dexterity than he was used to, fingers threading the pin back into the grenade almost on instinct, neutralizing the danger with ease. Those same hands pulled the Glock out of the holster with equal practice.

  That point in agility was paying for itself. And now he was armed, and had the lightning dodge triggered.

  Twenty five percent of a grenade's full damage in his first shot. And another seven seconds before it faded off.

  Which meant twenty five percent of what he'd seen take down sixty one percent of this thing's health.

  That was going to sting hard.

  The monster started to charge after them, healing back up with each step, health bar going up to forty four percent health.

  Wade fired a bullet straight at the beast. The round punctured through, spreading lightning across its body, zapping it back into the mud with staggering force, the health bar dropping another 15%.

  Twenty nine percent health.

  Nowhere near execution range for one Glock.

  But it absolutely would be for three.

  "Open fire!" Wade called out, and brought out the third Glock out of his holster, aiming both guns directly at the beast in the ground.

  Eri aimed his own Glock, and the two of them began a full on spray and pray assault.

  Wade didn't focus on aiming for any weakpoints, not with dual guns aiming down. He needed every last bullet landing anywhere in centermass, as fast as possible. His main focus was solely on keeping the wild kick from the Glocks from ruining his general aim.

  He put his faith on his extra point in Agility, letting the intuition of where he was aiming his gun go.

  It worked. Every bullet was hitting centermass.

  He wasn't alone in the shootout. Eri was stronger, had only one Glock in hand, and far closer. The skeleton went through his entire magazine far faster without fear of missing a shot.

  The clearing was filled with gunsmoke and bangs.

  Glocks had fifteen rounds inside.

  Each round doing 1% damage per hit. Three guns meant forty five percent damage was cut down from the things health in seconds.

  And that thing only had a meager twenty nine percent health.

  Zapped and stunned in the mud, half-exploded, and then shot up like a mafia hit and run victim.

  The most it managed was to get back on one foot before the torrent of gunfire slammed into it.

  And then it crumpled back down into the ground, blackrot fading away from the corpse, racing back inwards and finding no shelter left anymore.

  Challenge Gauntlet Complete! One storefront coin added to inventory.

  Intelligence has been increased by 1.

  Luck Triggered! Intelligence increased by an additional point.

  Level up!

  THE GAME recognizes your accomplishment. You have eliminated the highest level target within the general area.

  Copper Lootbox spawned nearby.