"Which path do we choose?" the assassin wondered.
"Do you know which path leads where?" Ning asked.
"No," the assassin said.
"Then it doesn't matter. Let's go left," he said and started walking. The rest realized that this was there was no better option so they too followed him.
The hedge maze was made up of mostly vines and shrubs that grew to a tall height. Along the hedge, there were a bunch of small mushrooms growing, which looked out of place for Ning.
He had never seen mushrooms grow in such bright sunlight. Not only the hedge, but even the ground was full of mushrooms everywhere.
"Where are the monsters?" the fire mage asked, and as if by intention, they all heard something stirring.
The bulbous head of the Vileshroom appeared from the ground and pushed itself out of it.
The white body of this Vileshroom was covered in blue dots and its umbrella-like head was mostly red with white dots all around.
"That looks different… and stronger," the assassin said.
"It's bigger too," Ning said, realizing that this was a different monster from the ones they had fought before.
"Yeah… it's more dangerous for sure," the swordsman said as he looked at the shroom's stats with his Observer stone.
"It has 50 STR instead of the regular 40, 30 AGI instead of 20, and 700 HP instead of the regular 500," he said. "And it is Level 15."
"What about DEF and Mana?" the Fire Mage asked.
"Same as the other ones," the swordsman said.
"I'm sure we can beat it then," the ranger said.
The 5 of them immediately used their attacks to burst down over 500 of the Vileshroom's HP at once.
The fire mage used her second spell, an AOE fire skill that dealt some damage to the shroom, while Ning jumped forward to deliver another strike with his spear.
The swordsman followed, attacking the Vileshroom with a slash before the Assassin delivered another attack.
Finally, the ranger shot out her next arrow, killing the beast altogether.
Ning saw the notifications and the small drops he received. The drops were nothing, but the experience he received was nearly 2 times as much as the ones from the Vileshroom outside.
"This is harder to kill, but it does give more experience," the swordsman said happily.
"Yeah," the assassin approved.
"About that… we have a problem," the Fire Mage said.
"What's wrong?" Ning asked.
"It's my mana," she said. "We need to drag out the fights or at least I can't use more than a single skill to fight, or I will waste too much mana for nothing."
"How much mana do you have?" the ranger asked.
"Normally, about 1200, but my two attacking spells together cost about 120 mana. With how slow mana regen is, I will have to end up being useless in most of the upcoming fights," she said.
"Do you not have a wand from the beginner village?" Ning asked. "There was a Fireball skill in there that you can spam."
The girl shook her head and showed her staff. "This staff has 8% Spell Amplification and 14 INT stat. If I give this up, my damage will go down by a lot," she said.
"Oh, I see," Ning said.
"Well, then we will just have to have you use a single spell and keep your mana until we reach the boss," the swordsman said. "We will figure out the rest along the way."
The group left the area and kept on walking through the maze. They saw another Vileshroom crawl out of the ground and immediately they started fighting.
Ning drew a card from his main skill and saw what came up.
[Brilliant Mind: Doubles your INT stat for the next 120 seconds.]
Ning had drawn an Uncommon card, the first of its kind.
'Well, shit!' he thought. For some reason, he had a hunch that because he had pulled a card that needed some luck, the rest of the card he pulled after this would be quite bad. He was sure that with this card, he had used up quite a lot of luck for himself.
"Whatever, activate," he said and the card went into action.
[Fate's Aid (Uncommon) has been activated.]
He also got an increased Critical chance and critical damage.
Ning changed his items around, pulling out the trashy wand since it had a skill that could make use of his 166 INT stats.
"Fireball! Wind Arrows!" he used both skills at once, and together they hit the monster.
[Fireball has dealt 172 Damage]
[Wind Arrows has dealt 3 x 93 Damage]
Together, the 2 skills dealt over 450 damage at once. Now, the monster only had 250 health remaining.
The assassin jumped in at once, dealing over 80 damage by himself, and the Fire mage used her skill to deal another 90 damage all by herself.
The arrow from the crossbow hit the Vileshroom above its eyes, dealing above 50 damage.
Finally, the swordsman also used his skill to attack the Vileshroom at once. He slashed his sword at the monster after using his skill, but he didn't expect the Vileshroom to just die like that.
"What?" he looked confused as the various notifications appeared in front of him, telling him that he had killed the beast.
"But… we barely attacked," he said. "How?"
"I got lucky just now," Ning said. "My skills are luck based and they usually don't deal much damage, but there is a very small chance of doing much damage and I just did that."
"Oh," they all reacted. "You're quite strong then."
"As I said, it is luck based, and I have really bad luck," Ning said. "Anyway, we should keep moving."
"Yes." the Swordsman nodded and moved on. They continued through the maze, but they simply couldn't seem to find a way through it.
They stayed lost, going through the different routes, and killed nearly 25 different Vileshrooms before they arrived at the center of the maze where the boss room lay.
And in that room was the Shroom King that Ning was looking for.
