Kraft casually sidestepped the lunging host body. Its burst of speed was no less than a living person's, but it was so straightforward that it held nothing back. The trouble lay in its deceptive appearance and the counterintuitive way it moved when exerting force, leaving pure reflexes as the only way to respond.
Using its own momentum, he swept his blade across its left waist as they passed, splitting its abdomen in half.
This thing might not have been biologically sound, but at least it obeyed the laws of physics. The cut made the mushroom-filled torso inevitably lurch to the left, limiting its movement. He followed through by bringing the weighted end down on the mycelium-linked spine, sending it sprawling in front of Kup.
"Don't hit the head. Focus on breaking its legs."
Without looking back, Kraft tossed out the instruction and met another bloated body covered in Schizophyllum commune. Using his weapon's reach to his advantage, he sliced off half its arm. To his surprise, the cut revealed remnants of muscle tissue fused with the fungus. Oxidized iron deposits had stained it a rusty brown-black that clashed with the pale yellow-white mycelium.
The fungal cords woven into the muscle fibers seemed to replace nerves and blood vessels, allowing functional tissue that should have died with its original host to be manipulated and put to use when needed, crudely imitating the movements it had made in life.
To anyone sensitive to such things, the movement was clearly aberrant, and temporary at that.
The sudden tension exceeded the structure's limits. With no pain reflex, the body kept carrying out its unfinished movement even after being cut, worsening the damage until it tore itself apart.
From the perspective of a normal organism, this might have been an extremely inefficient approach.
But it