Tunnel Rat

Cronk started to move toward Milo. Milo was calculating his chances. Time slowed for him as he thought, trying to calculate the creature’s mass and speed and weigh his options. He had the answer immediately

Assuming Cronk had the same density as normal mushrooms, the cap on his head was at least 600 pounds. Cronk had to weigh more than a ton, and with how tough he looked, maybe two. A punch or kick from him would probably kill Milo outright or break enough bones he'd wish he was dead. His danger sense was screaming at him, telling him to run fast. Too bad his carefully planned escape route was closed off. Stupid of him to only have one way to flee.

Through the use of your skill: Danger Sense, and logical thinking, you have assessed a foe and your chances of winning a battle against him.

You have an open tertiary slot. Would you like to gain the skill:Identify? This will give you basic information on foes near your level and the threat level of foes above you. Also useful in determining the nature of objects and crafting materials. Y/N?

Yes! Useful skill; how bad was he outclassed?

Cronk, Guardian of the Cave! Elite level 4 Boss

A large myconian guardian. 8' tall, one ton+ weight. Seismic stomp attack.

You have less than a .01% chance of defeating this foe in a straight-up fight.

Option 1: Stay in a small area to be dug out or buried alive.

Option 3: Play 'dodge tank,’ never get hit, and whittle him down bit by bit.

Option 4: Yell "The better part of Valor!!" and run.

Option 4 was the least likely to get him killed. Milo didn't think too hard about the first three. He ran straight at Cronk and dived between his legs. Cronk’s fist missed him by a foot, but he felt the impact as he rolled forward and sprinted for the other end of the cavern.

Not caring where he stepped stemlings as he ran. Their piercing screams filled the cavern, and several of the smaller guardians popped up and joined the chase. He quickly ran out of cavern to flee through, and the mob behind him got larger with each crushed stemling. But on the left was an opening to another cavern, and he didn’t hesitate head that way. Down a small incline, the tunnel opened up into a much larger cavern dominated by a gigantic mushroom, several stories high, that grew nearly to the roof. Large vines grew up and around its stalk, opening into yellow flowers. All around the gargantuan fungus was a dense bed of mushrooms of mixed varieties.

Cronk was in pursuit, his thunderous steps shaking the ground. Milo decided to stay far away from the big mushroom and hug the right-hand wall. More stemlings were crushed, and more guardians made chase. Milo had a dozen of them behind him now like a small parade. Cronk was at the rear, but the slope down to the bigger cavern gave him some extra speed.

Milo saw an outcropping on the wall! A ledge three feet high jutted out from the wall. Worked stone and timbers showed an opening that looked like a mineshaft. A quick look showed a tunnel running away into the darkness. Milo took a chance and ran in. It offered a higher probability of escape than a cavern full of more mushrooms to chase him. He lost some of his parade; the smaller guardians couldn't navigate the ledge. Their stubby legs didn't jump well. Cronk barely slowed. He plowed into the doorway, knocking out a support beam and shrugging off the small rocks that hit his shoulder. And then the chase was on down the long straight corridor.

Milo passed smaller side tunnels, but they were boarded up. He couldn't afford to stop and pry the boards loose with Cronk right behind him. He kept running. After nearly 200 feet, the tunnel ended in a vertical shaft. Up was the only direction he could go. Milo leaped and grabbed a crossbeam, pulled himself up, and kept climbing. If this led to a cross tunnel, he was safe! No way Cronk could climb this.

Cronk tried anyway. He was a very determined guardian. After tearing down several chunks of wood and some stone, he stopped trying to climb and stomped the ground. Dirt and stone rattled down, and Milo was nearly dislodged off the wall, hanging by just one of his clawed hands. He worried that the idiot mushroom was going to bring the cavern down on both of them! Milo kept climbing, looking for an escape route.

He was five stories up when he ran out of mineshaft. The vertical shaft ended at a horizontal tunnel with nowhere to go. On one side was a twenty-foot by twenty-foot room with a large rusting machine. It was in a state of disassembly; its parts scattered all over the room. On the other side was a 40-foot-long tunnel ending in a very solid-looking cave-in. It would take a long time to clear those huge rocks, and he didn’t have the tools for that job. This passage had tracks going down the center and a rusted minecart loaded with rocks.

Below, Cronk began stomping rhythmically on the ground, raining dust and small rocks each time. Sooner or later, he would either be crushed or trapped. He needed to do something.

Milo immediately got the idea of pushing the loaded cart down onto Cronk. This proved difficult; the wheels were rusty, and the cart heavy. It would take more than a small wererat with 0 STR to shift it. Well, if not the cart, what about one rock at a time? He hefted a large rock, probably about 20 pounds, and dropped it. It hit Cronk on the head, making a dent and bouncing off. The enraged myconian stomped hard, dislodging dust and loose rock, and nearly tumbled Milo into the shaft. Milo doubted he could kill the monster shroom even with 100 rocks, and the mine wasn't going to take a lot more before it collapsed and killed him.

He started cataloging the machinery on the other side. It soon became apparent that it was some type of mechanical hoist used for lifting entire minecarts up the shaft. The cart on the other side had a heavy brace across its mid-point where a hook on the end of a cable could be secured. Sure enough, in the back area, underneath an ancient, rotting tarp, were hundreds of feet of cable. Each cable was made of many strands of fine wire. Milo had no idea what the metal was. The 1" cables were as easy to bend as normal rope but had to be much stronger.

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There were also a number of pulleys and double pulleys that looked like they had been put together to raise things up while the mechanical engine was being repaired. Try as he might, he couldn't figure out what powered it, and he had no idea how to repair it. Some of the linkages looked like real-world mechanics, but a lot of things appeared to be some sort of magical engineering system. He wanted to know more.

But first, he had to deal with an overgrown fungus. He went back to the first plan of dropping a cart of rocks on it. Over the next two hours, he repaired and set up the pulley system so that he would be able to drag the cart back to the edge of the shaft. Then he'd need to hook it up to the overhead system, lift it up off the tracks, and drag it into position. Cronk seemed to have settled down to a half-hearted stomp every half-hour or so.

One of the problems he ran into was the length of the cables. He didn't need several hundred feet, but he had no way to cut them. The best he could do was coil up all the unused length into a large pile. When he finally had the system set up, he got to work. Instead of trying to move the cart 40 feet with one Milo-power, he would use the pulleys to do the equivalent work of moving 640 feet of rope with 16 Milo-power. Each heave-ho on the cable moved the cart barely an inch, but the important thing was that it moved.

The cart was about two feet from the edge when Cronk once again got bored and let loose with a series of seismic stomps on the ground. Milo’s exertions and Cronk’s stomps had slowly loosened a certain rock near the edge. Milo was pushing against the rock for leverage when Cronk sent a small shockwave up. The combination was enough to send the rock down into the shaft and Milo onto his back. The 50-pound rock hit Cronk on his cap and sunk in deep, doing some damage. Enraged, the monster stomped again, looking up at the violator of the cave. He added another couple of stomps for emphasis.

Several things happened, starting with the whole shaft groaning ominously. Next, the large coil of cable started to slide toward the edge. Milo had just staggered up and tried to stop the cable by stepping on it. This just ensured that his foot was in a loop of cable as it went over the side, jerking him off his feet and dragging Milo along with it. Milo found himself hanging by one foot about halfway down the shaft.

The angry mushroom man looked up at Milo, and their eyes met. Cronk smiled as he went to grab the cable. Milo just managed to get his foot out of the loop before the line went taunt, and Cronk heaved. Milo held on for dear life as Cronk jerked and pulled on the rope, trying to dislodge him. Milo didn't like this at all, and when he got the chance, he leaped to the side of the shaft when a large boulder offered a decent handhold. Looking down at Cronk, he saw the myconid guardian was no longer pulling on the cable. It had gone slack. He knew what that meant, and it was bad!

Cronk had managed to pull the ore cart to the edge and then pull it in. The cable fell and pooled in loops around Cronk's legs as a couple of tons of steel cart and rock sped towards him. Milo hugged the side of the shaft and felt the ore car just miss him. He wasn't in the clear, though; the rock he was on shifted a foot, nearly coming loose from the wall, and pitched him into the shaft.

From below, he heard a huge bellow of pain and the strange sound of something heavy hitting a much softer material, somewhere between a 'splat' and a 'sploosh.’ A large mass of smushed shroom parts spattered against him in mid-air, and a second later, he landed feet first on something soft and spongey that didn't quite break his fall. The air was full of mushroom spores, and he was splattered in the gooey remains of the Cave Guardian. He staggered a bit away from the impact site and started cleaning himself off. While Cronk had looked gnarled and dry on the outside, his insides were wet and yucky. Milo found out the hard way how tough it was to keep his fur clean.

Congratulations! You have singlehandedly slain Cronk, Guardian of the Cave, by cheating with physics!

For slaying Cronk, Guardian of the Cave, a level 4 Elite boss. The normal reward of 10 Enhancement Points is increased to 20 since you accomplished this without the help of a group.

You have earned 500 Boss experience. Boss experience may be divided as you wish between the skills used to kill the creature. An equal number of experience will be awarded to the stat associated with the skills chosen.

Skills used: Mechanic, Fleet of Foot, Acrobatics, Climbing, Trap-Making. (I’ll give you the crafting skill: Trap-Making for free, you earned it.)

The following Enhancement skill lists are available to you: Generic, Scout, and Racial.

The Myconid Collective has taken notice of your actions. Your status has been updated from annoying to minor threat.

The little myconians had given him ten experience each. Five hundred was a lot, although he was limited to where he could put it. And bonus points? He checked, and he had a new tab labeled ‘Enhancement.’ But this wasn’t the time to sit and do research.

Just to be on the safe side, Milo downed half the tonic Harry had given him. He was a bit light-headed after that fight and had inhaled a lot of spores. He searched the area where Cronk and the ore car had met up. Rocks and ore were scattered everywhere, but some of it was still in the cart. Three large fist-sized chunks caught his eye. One was steel colored and looked to be solid metal; the other two were ruddy red-gold. He used his new skill to find out that they were chunks of Dark Iron ore and Deep Copper ore. There was also a mining pick that had been covered by the ore that looked to be in good shape. The pick would come in handy, the ore he tossed into his backpack.

While gathering some of the ore, he found a strange ball of vegetable matter. It was hard, heavy, and shiny. It was identified as "Earthen Heartshroom.” Such a handy new skill! That also went into his pack. After all of that, he was too tired to continue. It was time to log out and see what was going on in Section E. He could also look at the forums to see what some of these things were. Getting back to Harry could wait for a bit. The last guy was nine years late, and Milo doubted another day would matter.

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