Even in an area where the underground is basically one large environmental hazard, some creatures will find a way to survive. Though at first Jason thought it was the roots attacking him. Then the ends of the "roots" split open and revealed a nasty maw filled with needle-like teeth, all pointing back at a sharp angle.

While Jason didn't put it past NeoRealm to have plants with teeth, it seemed quite a bit more likely these were some form of worm and going by the split mouth, they're an interesting breed. Everyone's seen a giant worm with three or five mouth flaps. Scifi and fantasy works have been filled with them. These worms, however, went with septuple symmetry.

Each of the seven sections of the mouth looked more like tentacles than Jason was comfortable with, but that's just something that comes up now and then. At least they didn't seem quite as mobile as a classic tentacle. On the other hand, it was still more than able to take him by surprise with a couple worms popping up directly under him.

Jason ramped up the Energy cycling through his feet to ramp the traction up so even as the ground tilted he kept his footing. Not that he stuck around long, using the tilted ground he jumped away from the churning ground. Though on the way out, five worms try to grab onto him. Well, "tried" is too weak of a word. Three of the worms technically get their jaws on him.

However, before they can sink their fangs in Jason channels a body blast through his legs. With that, the five worms are sent flying, their bodies leaving the ground and revealing that it isn't actually five separate worms. Rather, the five bodies all connect, forming a sort of worm hydra thing. Oh, and there were two more heads attached to it. So yeah, the septuple symmetry thing goes beyond just the mouth.

Jason then does a quick scan of the battlefield and it looks like there are seven monsters as well. More annoying, though, is the fact that the three heads that got blasted didn't look all that harmed. If he had to guess, this was likely more of a starfish situation than an actual hydra. At least the hydras he is familiar with, there might be some out there that keep their brains in their bodies instead of heads. It would be a sensible alteration.

Not that Jason thinks these monsters are necessarily packing an actual brain. At the very least, they're not using all that many senses. They might even be limited to some sort of tremor sense because they had no clue where he was until he hit the ground. Once he does, though, the hydra worms charge at him as their bark-like skin begins to ooze a slimy substance.

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Jason makes a pained face as whatever that ooze is, likely won't be coming off easily and is probably going to be splattered everywhere. Worms don't exactly suffer too much from a cut or two and given the form factor, Jason would even be willing to bet that a misplaced cut would increase the number of enemies to fight. Though he does wonder how that would affect the monsters.

After all, when a starfish or worm gets cut in half irl, it takes a while to regrow into two creatures. With magic and a super charged regeneration factor? The System could in theory support the worms to infinitely reproduce. It wouldn't, but it could.

For now, though, Jason is going to go for bludgeoning attacks. A convenient thing seeing as most of his attacks fall under that category, he is just going to have to avoid pokes and knife hand strikes. In fact, as he observes the hydra worms charge at him, he decides to go for more diffuse strikes as the segments of the worms reminds him of certain starfish species that can purposefully detach an arm or two to escape predators.

As it is, Hp kind of makes targeted damage more of a method to debuff enemies. Jason, himself has even started to move toward being a literal bag of hit points. He had literally just spent a bunch of time pondering the subject and right here an interesting case study popped up with one simple question.

What happens to Hp when you detach a damaged limb that was meant to be detached?

Some things are obvious enough. If you take off someone's leg and the leg was broken, they no longer have a broken bone, "missing" being somewhat of an overriding factor. However, what if you did all the damage to that leg and then pop it off?

If that person was down to one Hp because you kept hitting that leg, the rest of their body should be fine in theory. So while the leg might have taken a lot of damage, it isn't like losing a leg would instantly put you at one. Would the loss of that leg refill your health? Maybe it would take the last point and kill you.

Then the hydra worms reached him and there wasn't any time to think. Though he did notice an odd feature. The seven heads didn't connect to a proper body like a hydra or a starfish. Rather, they were attached to something that looked like an open wound.

A strange feature that would have to wait as he hops back to dodge multiple thrusts. Though any piercing damage would be the secondary problem as that clearly wasn't the intent. Instead of closing their mouths, the seven mouth parts folded all the way back. This was clearly meant as another method of grappling Jason. That or if it got a good piercing attack, maybe some organ extraction.

An unpleasant proposition, though Jason is uniquely in place to avoid such results in theory. The only question being how much the System would disagree with him on if he had organs anymore, so he really didn't want to test it.

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