Mushrooms that where magic

Currently, Eric was outside the camp looking for plants to dye his newly tanned hellcat pelt. Because of the many odd jobs that he's done over the years, he had a large collection of random skill ringing in from woodworking to dressmaking. Dye making and use was one of these many skills, he was by no means an expert but he could make useable dyes and change the color of something if need be.

Currently, he was looking for any flowers of similar plants that had blue, black, or purple coloring as he liked these colors. He would also need something to bleach the fur as using blues and blacks would cancel out the yellow in the fur, creating an even deeper red color, which he didn't want.

As he was walking through a clearing he saw a small patch of deep blue flowers that looked similar to sunflowers. However, as he walked closer to his soon-to-be new dye, the bushes at the edge of the tree line began to rustle. "if your another one of those cats I'm not in the mood to fight, I already kicked the shit out of two things today and I don't feel like doing a third."

doubting that whatever was in the bush could even understand him Eric thought he might as well try. What he didn't expect though was mushroom people to walk out of the bushes carrying makeshift spears and bows. They looked like big mushrooms that grew stubby arms and legs that barely worked. They had small best eyes at the front of their caps and thin slits on their stalks that he assumed were their mouths.

'huh, magic mushrooms, literally. That's new' deeming them, not a threat he continued to walk over to the flower patch, that was until a small arrow flew over at him just to bounce off his skin, not even leaving a mark. "ya know, I was just gonna cost that cat for dinner, but some mushroom stew doesn't soul all that bad."

Looking over at the mushroom things Eric raised one hand with two fingers pointed up before a small orb of black energy began to form before turning into a needle-like shape. Pointing his raised fingers the needle shot forward and pierced the head of the mushroom that had shot the arrow at him. A split second later the mushroom fell to the ground, dead.

This was one of the uses of black magic. although it was well known for curses and the like, it was one of the most effective forms of combat magic. Because it didn't have any set form and had a natural accruing destructive effect, it was very dangerous when used as a form of attack.

Take the needle that Eric just made, for example, using a 5:1 ratio of mana to demonic energy and shaping it using black magic the outcome was a high power and high penetration spell that had a very low cost compared to its effectiveness. The downside of black magic was that unlike other forms of magic commonly used in combat such as fire or earth which would give you an inherent resistance to them. The destructive properties of black magic meant that it wouldn't distinguish friend from foe, patently harming the caster hence why it was not commonly used for active combat.

Eric sidestepped this problem by simply concentrating the spell on a single point, such as the needle he made. Back to the now terrified mushroom people, after setting the effectiveness of his first 'spell' Eric raised his hand before several more needles formed in the air. He didn't need to have his hand or point at the target but it helped in the visualization of the spell. The way he would cast and use a spell was by imagining the energy flowing in a certain way to get the desired effect. The way he imagine it for the needle, was the energy condensing into an orb, before elongating into a fine point. By raising his hand it slowed him to imagine the energy flowing from him into the air before condensing into an orb, and by pointing at what he was targeting it slowed him to imagine the needle shooting towards the said target.

Pointing at the mushrooms, the ready-made needles shot over and priced each one through their heads, killing them on the spot. Walking over he grabbed some flowers t turn into dye before picking up one of the mushrooms and heading back to camp.

Meanwhile, at camp, asies was getting his now broken nose treated. As this was happening he was yelling at his guards "I do not care if he beat me in a 'fair dual' I want him dead! No one will even know seeing as he's out of the camp and even if they did what would they do? I'm the son of a duke. So go out, and kill him!" "Young lord, even if we did go and kill him, what would we do after? Many of the slaves already know what happened and even the camp guards saw it." glaring at his guard asies simply said "Then we will kill the slaves and silence the guards, no one will care if some slaves die and we just need to pay the guards or threaten their families if that doesn't work. I can have anyone else knowing that I was beaten in a fight by a slave."

As this was going on Eric had just gotten to his tent and was reading a tub of water to make the dye. He made the tib from some bones that he 'found' and the water was just a little bit of mana, didn't even count as a spell. Grabbing the flowers he picked off all the petals and set them on a flat surface to dry out. He kept the seeds to snack on later And kept the stems for later but kept one of the leaves to chew on in his mouth, similar to a piece of straw. After the petals dried out he ground them up into a fine powder and mixed it into the water.

Once the water was a dark blue color he made sure that it was properly mixed before grabbing the hellcat pelt and soaking it in the dye water. After it was properly dyed he set it up to dye, once this was done he dipped it back in the dye water and repeated the process until the pelt was a deep nighttime purple due to the mix of red from the pelt and the blue from the dye. While this was being done he made a makeshift weaving loom, once it was ready he grabbed the flower stems and drew out some of the fibers from them before weaving them into a thread. After getting the thread, which had a natural deep blue, and dyed pelt he made a small sowing needle from one of the hell cats' bones and began to make a coat for himself.