Chapter Five: A New Direction

Arriving back at his spot for his dorm room, Karl started trying to move the rubble again, and he could due to his increased strength stat. The maximum weight that he could lift last time was ten pounds if he put in his utmost effort, but now he has the strength of an average human man, and that makes moving the rubble much easier.

It only took a day to get rid of the rest of the rubble and find the door to his dorm room, which was still holding up even though it has been more than half a year in apocalyptic conditions. Even though the door was fine his room was not, it looked like it had been set on fire judging by the black soot on the ceiling and walls and also by the large hole in the wall leading to one of the other rooms.

Going to the desk that had been burnt to ashes along with all of his art that he had been wanting to sell, crouched down, and punched in the code to the safe, which was 1685, and he opened the safe. Inside the safe was a single piece of yellowed paper that was half burnt away, it was originally supposed to show Earth along with the three "safe havens", but now it shows a single "safe haven".

However the location of it is quite unfavourable for Karl, it was in Greenland, which isn't that far from Canada, but he had to swim across the Hudson and Baffin Bay to reach Greenland. Touching the burnt piece of yellowed paper gently, Karl ripped it up in the next second and locked it back in his safe.

Standing up, Karl walked out of his dorm room and looked towards the gigantic mushroom in the centre of the city that was four kilometres tall and had a stem over one kilometre in diameter, and then he started walking towards it since it was in the direction he needed to go in order to get to the safe haven in Greenland.

After a dozen metres, Karl stopped and turned around, he then headed back to the university rubble pile, and he started sneaking up to the other sporeling. Because it was only 1.5 metres tall, or five feet tall, it was a foot shorter than Karl, but it was significantly heavier.

The other sporeling "he" had killed was incredibly lanky, unlike the one in front of him that could probably obliterate an elephant based on it's physical appearance. It was short and bulky and it could probably kill him with a single smack.

Bringing a sharp metal pipe, Karl walked up behind the short sporeling, he raised his arms, and he swung them straight down into the head of the sporeling... and nothing happened. Instead of falling to the ground and ceasing to move, this sporeling just turned around slowly and looked at Karl menacingly.

Unknown to Karl, you had to strike the core in the centre of their body or chop their head off, not strike them in the head. Hitting Karl with a backhand slap, the creature turned around and looked at Karl, who was flying backwards at a speed that was too fast to track with the naked eye.

Stopping only when he hit a concrete wall, Karl laid on the ground helplessly as a system prompt appeared before his eyes, "You have lost nine points of health, please heal yourself or you will die with the next strike."

Getting up as fast as he could, Karl started running as fast as his cracked bones could carry him, but the sporeling had started charging at him before he had even stood up, and it was upon him in seconds since it is faster then he is.

Swinging it's arms towards Karl, it would have hit him but he dodged, and then he continued running. Running and dodging, thats all Karl did until the sporeling got tired, and because he had spent half a day running around and causing a ruckus more sporelings had noticed him.

Continuing to run and dodge, Karl ran towards the giant mushroom in the centre of the city, which was a few kilometres away. After a few hours of nonstop running, Karl reached the giant mushroom, but tens of thousands of sporelings had noticed him and were chasing him.

Some of the sporelings were a dozen metres tall while a few were over a hundred metres tall. Arriving at the base of the gigantic mushroom, Karl started climbing the mushroom as hastily as he could, and he soon reached a hundred metres up the mushroom.

Even though he was a hundred metres up the mushroom, Karl didn't look around at his surroundings, he just kept looking up towards the cap of the mushroom and climbing. After another ten metres though, he decided to look down, and he would've been scared shitless if he still had the capability to shit.

A few dozen metres below him were the sporelings that were climbing up after him and not far away were the Sporelings that were a hundred metres tall. He has to climb faster or he won't make it high enough to escape the reach of the hundred metre tall Sporelings.

The Sporelings below him looked like thousands of ants climbing a tree, which was quite scary from up close and far away, but the scariest part was that they were climbing faster than him. A few more minutes passed and Karl was another two hundred metres up, roughly three hundred and fifty metres up right now, and the hundred metre tall Sporelings finally made it to the giant mushroom.

Twenty kilometres outside the bounds of the city was a group of Humans riding on ravens that were each carrying a bear sized dog in their talons and a violet mushroom acting as a lantern. There were seven Humans, ravens, and dogs. Each raven had a Human on it's back and a dog in it's talons, and leading the group was Kris and Matthew.

Over the course of half a year they have changed drastically. Kris was now cold faced like a statue, she was wearing armour made from some kind of scales, and a large sword was strapped to her back with straps made from vines.

A tiny scar was on her lips, like she was scratched by a cat or small piece of glass, and it made her face appear even colder, Matthew changed much more than Kris. Instead of having golden blond hair it was now a shining platinum blond, he probably put on 80 pounds of muscle from his original weight of 160 pounds before the attack.

With a body like that you would expect him to also be have a sword, since he was already wearing armour that was bulkier than Kris's, but he had a wand instead of a sword. Matthew used magic instead of physical attacks.

His wand was made out of maple wood, it was shaped like a normal wand used by wizards or magic casters in most other fairytales, and the only difference being that it had a steel core with a sharp metal tip that was attached.

In case of emergency, Matthew throws his wand like a dart after chanting a quick spell that would increase it's speed, and it moves very fast when adding his strength to the equation. Compared to Kris, Matthew has many more scars on his face, but they are all small scars.

Currently, Kris's group was scouting out the surroundings of the Safe Haven located in Canada, to find any animals that they could bring back to rear in the Safe Haven. While flying in the direction of the city, Kris raised her clenched fist, and everyone stopped flying forwards.

Pointing towards the city, Kris didn't say anything, she just pointed. Looking over, everyone except Kris, who was scowling, became mystified as they saw a very beautiful sight, a bunch of different colours moving up the large mushroom in the city.

Snapping out of their daze, they became bewildered as realization of what those colours were came to mind. Why were the Sporelings climbing the mushroom, what was up there? "Do you think there could be someone who is being chased and they are climbing the mushroom?"

One of the other people in the group had asked this as they were trying to think of a reason this bewildering scene was happening. "Possibly, but if there was someone there then we should see the Guardian appearing, but it's not."

"Should we go and investigate?" The same person asked, as Matthew was going to say no, Kris responded, "Yes, we should. If it's someone from one of the other Safe Havens then they might be helpful to our Safe Haven if they're strong enough to survive in that city."

Patting her raven's head, which had a blood red feather, Kris started flying towards the city, and so did everyone else. They then saw larger spots of colour starting to climb up the mushroom and the light spots progressively got bigger, not just from getting closer to the city, but because the largest Sporelings were coming out from hiding.

Back to Karl's situation, he had climbed halfway up the mushroom before he decided to look down again, and he momentarily released his grip from the mushroom when he saw what was below him. Large Sporelings that were hundreds of metres tall were approaching the base of the mushroom and they were stepping on other smaller sporelings to reach it.

Gripping on to the mushroom harder then before, Karl climbed even faster then he has ever climbed anything before, he was climbing so fast that it was the same speed as he had been running on the ground, and because he was focused on climbing he missed notifications from the system.

Climbing the last two kilometres in fifteen minutes, Karl reached the cap of the mushroom, and he became lost. How was he supposed to reach the top of the mushroom if he wasn't able to climb on the cap horizontally.

Peering down once more, he saw that there was actually a Sporeling swinging one of it's arms at him. Making a jump towards the cap, Karl stuck his pointy finger bones into the mushroom cap, and he held himself up.

The sporeling attacking him, along with three others, jumped after Karl and fell down to the ground, hitting Sporelings below and causing casualties that had absolutely no effect on the number of Sporelings.

Breathing a figurative sigh of relief, Karl started laughing at the Sporelings that couldn't reach him, no sound was coming out since he couldn't produce sound so his lower mandible was just moving up and down.

Freezing in his laughing motion, Karl started freaking out as the Sporelings had started climbing on the cap after him as well. By sticking their hands to the cap, vines connected them to it and they could climb after him.

It was like they were spiders crawling on the ceiling of a house, but very slowly since it took a few seconds for the vines to grow. Swinging himself, Karl stabbed his feet into the mushroom cap as well, he then removed one of his hands from the cap and stuck it in again, and he moved towards the edge of the cap.

He was a few seconds faster then the Sporelings for each time he completed a cycle for moving, a cycle consisted of moving each hand and foot to a location closer to the edge of the cap, and he was just about to reach the cap's edge when the cap shook.

Looking through his bones, he saw that one of the hundred metre tall Sporelings had reached the cap as well, and it was doing the same thing as the other Sporelings.

Deciding to look down, Karl saw a large pair of eyes staring back at him. The giant Sporeling that was one kilometre tall was standing below the mushroom, ready to climb it, and it did start climbing. When it started climbing the entire mushroom shook, it would be able to reach the cap after climbing for a few seconds simply because it is that large.

Reaching his hand over the edge of the cap, Karl pulled himself up to on top of the cap, but in the process the part of the mushroom he had been gripping came loose and he almost fell. Dangling with a single hand, Karl glanced down to the ground and saw millions of Sporelings, and then pulled himself back up.

Standing up, he started sprinting to the other side of the cap, while running he looked behind him and saw an extremely large hand that looked like it was made from the stem of a mushroom gripping the edge.

He also saw smaller Sporelings starting to run towards him, but he wasn't concerned about them that much anymore. Turning back around, Karl continued running towards the other edge, and then he reached it.

Preparing to climb over the edge, Karl had just gripped the edge when the hand of a Sporeling appeared and tried to grab him. Smacking the hand away, he heard a roar and then saw a Sporeling falling.

Other than the falling Sporeling, this side of the mushroom was also covered in Sporelings, and it had larger ones then the other side. Running back to the centre of the mushroom, he looked at side that he just ran from and then at the side he had climbed from.

The gigantic Sporeling had both hands on the edge and was climbing over. Other Sporelings were getting closer from the other sides, he was completely surrounded. Just as the smaller Sporelings were going to reach him, a giant foot stepped down beside him, and that caused a major accident.

(P.S. Yes I know that Kris and Matthew would have reached him by now, but the reason they didn't will be explained in the next chapter, and I have also received some fantastic news. This novel will be showcased on the fresh stories on the fourth!! I have finally written good enough chapters, so far, in a good enough novel that many people like it even though I'm not advertising it. I used to advertise one of my other ones and the first two chapters of this one, but I didn't get amazing results. I got some views from where I would link the advertisement, but I didn't advertise crazily. Every new chapter I would just send a link in the webnovel discord, which is all I did for advertising. Also without this post script the total words was just over 2300.)