Chapter 164

Kraft sidestepped the approaching host shell with ease; its explosive movement matched that of a living person, but it was blunt and unrestrained, its danger lying in its deceptive appearance and counterintuitive force patterns—only pure reflex could counter it.

Using its own momentum, the blade sliced through its left waist as they passed, splitting half its abdomen in two.

This thing may not conform to biology, but it certainly obeys physics. The cut caused the fungus-filled torso to inevitably tilt left, restricting its movement. He followed through by striking the fungal-connected spine with a counterweight, sending it tumbling face-first before Kup.

"Don't hit the skull—target the legs first."

Without looking back, Kraft charged toward another bloated shell covered in liver-red split-gill mushrooms, using his weapon's reach to shear off half its arm—and unexpectedly saw residual muscle tissue fused with the fungus, stained a rusty brown-black by oxidized iron deposits, utterly incongruous with the yellow-white mycelia.

The mycelial cords woven into muscle fibers seemed to replace nerves and blood vessels, allowing these otherwise dead tissues to be manipulated and exploited when needed, imperfectly mimicking pre-death movements.

To those sensitive to such things, this activity was clearly pathological—and one-time only.

Sudden tension exceeding structural limits, combined with the absence of pain reflexes, caused severed limbs to continue executing incomplete movement commands, worsening damage until they tore themselves apart.

From the standpoint of a normal organism, this was likely an extremely uneconomical strategy.

But its essence is hard to call a shell—or the fungus inhabiting it; it doesn't matter. If one gets entangled by this thing, escape is impossible in a short time unless someone cuts off its limbs.

And if you fail to escape within half a minute, the outcome has already been demonstrated firsthand.

There remains a considerable gap between painful lessons and practical adaptation. Even after being reminded to adjust tactics, habits formed through training cannot be instantly changed.

With no vital organs to target and unpredictable next moves, the most frustrating issue was wearing partial armor but not full plate—useless against this threat, yet slowing movement. Soon, those who reacted too slowly were struck down.

In his peripheral vision, a squire at the battlefield's edge had just pierced the neck of a host shell; the unimpaired shell immediately seized him with its blade, gripping his upper body—protected by chainmail—with rotting-wood arms covered in fungal rings, dragging him to the ground.

A companion shoved forward with a shield, knocking the host shell away, then smashed its thigh with a hammer and turned to rescue. But the shell clutching its target emitted a sound like dry pods bursting—its swollen, mushroom-cap-like head split open, spraying a cloud of dust: deep purplish-red mixed with dark yellow, spreading and fading in the air, rapidly shifting through countless indescribable hues.

The coughing and wheezing triggered by the dust spread in sync with the colors; victims scrambled to retreat, but the nearest shielded squire couldn't dodge in time. After stumbling a few steps, he collapsed, clutching his throat, losing consciousness amid long, futile, gasping breaths.

"Fall back!"

Martin, having successfully severed his opponent's hamstring and shattered the patella to escape, immediately noticed this and shouted a warning.

He felt he'd inhaled some of the dust as he spoke—everywhere, just a trace had already caused a dry, scratchy irritation in his throat. Those who inhaled more severely coughed until their faces flushed red and eyes bulged, but the fungal-controlled shells didn't wait for them to recover; a chain reaction of deterioration erupted in one corner of the battlefield.

The dust particles looked heavy; the cloud they formed spread only briefly before settling and dissipating, limiting their range.

"Cough… cover your face!" Martin coughed out a warning, drew his short dagger, and jammed it into the elbow of the mottled arm hugging him from behind, twisting to sever whatever cord-like thing connected it.

He felt something pressed against the back of his helmet—like a swelling water sack, or an inverted cow's stomach—its bumps and netted folds coming alive, searching the metal for a breach.

Before one of the "sacs" ruptured, Martin held his breath and severed the tendon across the elbow joint, broke free, and hurled the menace toward another同类 charging through a defensive gap.

They collided and fell, their hemispherical caps cracking open to release psychedelic dust, then quickly withered.

Command had largely collapsed; everyone fought independently to create distance. Only now, with a moment to breathe, did he realize their numbers weren't outnumbered.

Based on what he'd seen during the day, those things numbered at least three times their own—possibly more unseen. A full-scale charge would mean certain death.

As it stood, only twenty or thirty mottled shells moved within the camp; most only needed to fend off one, at worst facing flanking attacks, and with mutual aid, they could barely hold.

Several lay dead around Kraft. He acted as the primary lure, drawing enemy attacks, using superior timing and spatial awareness to slip past.

Anything passing near him would gain a wound disrupting its balance, causing it to topple—then the squire with the page hammer would follow up, striking the junction between torso and thigh.

The hip joint, stripped of thick fat and muscle padding and weakened by osteoporosis, might not be cleanly severed—but under blunt weapons, it was utterly fragile. Even a miss would shatter the femoral neck, a notorious fracture zone, into an orthopedic nightmare.

Striking deliberately chosen spots was far more efficient than targeting knees; Kup typically needed only two blows to complete the task, and could spare a third to strike the upper limbs, ensuring they couldn't crawl around.

Glancing around, Martin noticed several familiar faces missing from the standing fighters—including a knight ennobled by the duke. The threat of death accelerated observational adaptation: they downed attackers several times their own casualties, yet the enemy density on the field showed little change.

Even with Kraft and Martin swiftly eliminating a few and rushing to rescue others, the pressure eased only briefly before sinking back into suppression.

Their numbers had dropped from twenty to thirty to just over twenty, but the ground was already littered with more corpses—and fresh ones kept appearing.

Kicking aside a crawling host shell, Kraft sheathed his sword, picked up a fallen squire's two-handed axe, avoided the head, and brought it down on the shoulder blade, shattering it along with a section of spine. As Martin prepared to completely chop it apart, he was startled to find the thing had stopped moving.

He'd assumed these things could only be truly killed by burning—but now it just… stopped.

This realization shifted his focus from eye level to the ground: most of the damaged, incomplete fungal-host bodies lay still; only a small fraction still tried to approach the living.

And among those still moving, the common trait was… they could still crawl?

Even with most of the torso destroyed, those still capable of movement crawled on—whereas Kraft's targets, even with hips or arms broken but otherwise intact, were utterly dead.

"Professor! Professor Kraft!" Martin blocked a shell charging from behind a tent, moving toward Kraft—he felt he'd grasped something vital, a hidden pattern behind this bizarre reinforcement tactic, but couldn't spare the focus to articulate it.

These horrifying shells weren't the focus.

"Look at the things on the ground—they're not right!"

Martin trusted Kraft's mind needed no more than a nudge to notice the anomaly.

"Huh?" Kraft answered, dodging an attack, casually severing what appeared to be part of the original quadriceps, then kicking the shell down to Kup.

He only cared about knocking down anything still standing with mushrooms on its head; he felt no pressure—downed targets were handled by others. Only now, with Martin's reminder, did he glance at his fallen foes.

He mentally recorded what he saw, rapidly comparing the crawling or motionless shells amid dust and vegetation, arriving at a highly subjective conclusion.

It seemed their vitality bore no relation to vital organs or injury severity—but instead showed deliberate "selectivity"? Once again, he recalled his initial thought upon first contact.

【This makes no sense for an individual】

Individuals rarely waste their own lives; this held true across all deep-life organisms he'd encountered—they avoided harm or responded to it.

Nothing in their behavior reflected this.

After Kup damaged its hip and shoulder joints, the shell ceased movement—as if some controlling consciousness or soul had deliberately abandoned it.

【This isn't its body】

It isn't a long-dead human, nor fungus, nor a fusion of both—it's nothing. They still faced an invisible, intangible threat, its nature unknown.

From the village direction, another fungal-host shell emerged from the woods. The team seemed to be achieving great results, but in truth, they'd made no progress—repeatedly killing consumables driven by something unknown, and such consumables were still plentiful.

Kraft could afford to stall, but others couldn't—especially knights in full plate, whose stamina would drain faster. Lose this core force, and the line would collapse soon.

Yet its limitations were clear: there was an upper limit to the number of controlled shells, and its behavioral logic seemed rigid?

"Kup, next one—only break the legs!" Leaving more crawlers is better than bringing in new ones; this is all we can try now.

Kraft knocked down a host shell charging at Martin, pinned it to the ground with a borrowed sword, watching it writhe and twitch—unable to free itself, yet not suddenly going still.

Living fungus—this reminded him his first encounter with this phenomenon wasn't today, but inside the duke's lungs.

"Martin, where were those heretics' corpses finally taken?"

"Most were dealt with." Martin was first puzzled as to why Kraft had suddenly brought up the matter of the distant Westmin Castle in the midst of battle, then abruptly froze.

Without the helmet visor, Kraft would surely have seen his face change drastically.

"But I kept a few bodies, thinking they might be useful..."

"Ah?!"