Prologue

Her greatest challenge would go to her greatest follower.

In surviving that, Feronie hoped that her follower, her little child from another world, would grow and prosper. They would become the tree growing in the desert, with roots unfathomably deep and stout branches able to weather the worst winds.

Then, once the challenges passed and the rain and thunder of Feronie’s storm came, this one would be prepared. They would be a bulwark, impossible to fell and capable of enduring the worst pains.

First, the challenges. Each harder  than the last.

Feronie would be there, tending to them as a careful gardener, even if it cost her more and more of her dwindling vitality to do so.

The other g ods might revel in their new creations, in their growing power.

Feronie would humble herself for the moment.

Her warrior was growing. But no, Feronie didn’t need a warrior. What she needed was infinitely more precious than that. She needed a paladin, a crusader.

“Do you know what it means to be loyal?

Loyalty unto death is what I need.

But worry not, child of man, it is not your death that I want.

Lead, little one, a crusade of vengeance.”

***

Death Cap - One - Great Choices Barring a Greater Future

I returned to my farm.

I don’t know why, exactly. Maybe it was just a familiar route? I was used to going from the cemetery back to the farm with whatever mushrooms I’d gathered. It was probably some part of my hind-brain that was carrying me over, habit over thought.

The farm was a safe place… or a safe-enough space. It was where I worked, where I grew most of my stock, the place where I was pulling on my bootstraps as hard as I could.

I closed the door behind me and stared at the racks. Dada had built those for me.

My throat closed up again and I took a few gasping breaths as I tried to stop myself from crying again. I didn’t have time for sadness. I needed to be angry. I wanted  to be angry.

Cursing myself under my breath, I moved to the centre of the room and started pacing.

Work. I’d drown the sorrow in work. Work that would let me murder the same people that had taken everything good out of life.

Name: N/A

Race: Human {Common}

Age: 6 Years

Mana: 27/30

Afflictions

- Black Lung {Common}

- Child of Poverty {Common}

Blessings

- Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

General Skills - Level Seventy-Six

- Running {Common} - Level Nineteen

- Knitting {Common} - Level Fifty-four

> [Patterner]

> [Clicky Clacker]

- Basic Poison Resistance {Common} - Level Three

-

-  

No primary class. I’d gotten rid of it hoping for a better opportunity. No, that wasn’t right. I’d sacrificed  it for an opportunity. Agaric Cleric had been a nice class, I think. I’d learned a lot from it. I think I even started to think of myself as a strange cleric of sorts. It was part of my self-identity.

As far as I was aware, people rarely, if ever, changed their class. Maybe once they reached adulthood, but it wasn’t a common occurrence. Replacing a class was essentially taking a big step back in terms of progress, even if the new class was better.

The exception, as far as I understood it, was for times of war.

That suited me just fine.

[The following classes are available!]

[Mechanic’s Child {Common}]

[Feast Maker {Uncommon}]

[Cleanser {Rare}]

[Feronie’s Crusader {Epic}]

[Rot Spreader {Legendary}]

I stared at [Mechanic’s Child] for a long time. The only common class available. It was a link to Dada. Something to remind me of who he’d been, of his legacy.

I dabbed at my eyes with the end of my sleeve. A legacy was well and good. Maybe once everything was done, I’d settle down and try to see if I could make him proud that way. Right then and there, my goal wasn’t the pride of a dead man, it was vengeance.

Skipping [Mechanic’s Child] I looked at the first of my new options.

[Feast Maker {Uncommon}]

Having dedicated yourself to feeding others and providing food for all, you are becoming an expert at creating ample food for every hungry soul.

Class requirements: Provide meals to over a hundred people, grow enough food to feed a thousand, a deep and long-lasting hunger

Class skills: Skills related to growing and preparing meals, [Cook {Common}], [Mycologic Growth {Uncommon}], [Feast Making {Rare}]

Interesting.

And entirely useless to my purposes. I wouldn’t beat my enemies by stuffing them so full that they burst. I could, it would be an ironic death to kill them by giving them the very thing they took away from families like mine, but I didn’t care about ironic  deaths. I was too practical for that kind of thing.

[Cleanser {Rare}]

You have begun to clean away the stench of industrialization, one mushroom at a time. Grow and bring forth the peace of Feronie.

Class requirements: Harvest and grow thousands of plants or fungi that can cleanse the environment, and any illness caused by your surroundings and the pollution within it.

Class Skills: Skills related to growing plants which heal and clean the environment and the people within that environment, [Mycologic Growth {Uncommon}], [Healing Thumb {Rare}], [Blessed Purge {Epic}]

An entire class built around cleaning and healing. I grit my teeth. How long had this option been there for me? I could have healed my lungs. I could have healed Dada’s hand so long ago!

Not that he needed it now. I could live with the pain in my chest.

[Feronie’s Crusader {Epic}]

Rise! Rise, Crusader of Feronie, and spread the enfeebled wrath of nature. Bring glory unto the Goddess of Nature by grinding her adversaries into the dirt where they might serve as fertiliser for a brighter future.

Class requirements: Have experience as a cleric or priest of Feronie, a powerful Blessing of Nature, the attention of a god, a powerful need for vengeance

Class Skills: Skills related to nature and combat using natural means, [Aura of Growth {Rare}], [Blight {Epic}], [Ritual of Sporemageddon  {Legendary}]

That was more like it.

I grinned. The option was far more tempting than the last. No healing, but a couple of skills that seemed actually lethal . And it was a class whose entire purpose lined up with my own.

Feronie wanted a crusader? I didn’t love her, but I could work with her. I think that was good enough.

One class remained, the only Legendary option I had available. My entire body tingled as I opened the screen for that option.

[Rot Spreader {Legendary}]

The need for revenge has grabbed you by the soul, now let your body match your willingness to ruin the world. You will become the living embodiment of plague and rot. Your flesh might melt, your soul might rot, but what few shreds of your mind remain will direct your will to ending those who harmed you.

Class requirements: HATRED

Class Skills: [Blight {Epic}], [Summon Mushroom Elementals {Epic}], [Rot {Legendary}]

I paused.

Not because I didn’t want to take the class, but because some part of me, a loud and tempting part, wanted  me to take this one. It would give me everything I wanted, wouldn’t it? And all it would cost is everything.

But no. I wanted to be able to savour my revenge. I wouldn’t be able to do that if I was some sort of mindless fleshless monster.

There was only one sensible option.

[Congratulations! You have unlocked the [Feronie’s Crusader {Epic}] Class!]

[The following Skills have been added to your repertoire:]

[Aura of Growth {Rare}]

[Blight {Epic}]

[Ritual of Sporemageddon  {Legendary}]

[Because of prior experiences, and because of cross-class compatibility, the following skills are immediately available to you:]

- Mycologic Growth {Uncommon}

- Druid Sight {Uncommon}

- Fungal Grafter {Uncommon}

- Mushroom Magic {Rare}

- Commune with God {Rare}

[You have two remaining Class Skill slots.]

I sighed. I’d get some of my old skills back. That had been a concern. Only two of them though, and there were more than two that I found useful.

Before that, though, I had to know what my new skills did.

[Aura of Growth {Rare}]

By pushing your will and mana into the environment around you, you can encourage the growth of all natural things. As this skill grows, your range and focus will increase, and you may be able to help yourself grow as well.

Category: Nature Magic

That would be useful. Not too dissimilar to my old [Mycologic Growth] skill, but without the restriction and a focus on an area of effect. I’d need to test if it lost some potency in exchange for a wider breadth.

I wouldn’t be picking [Mycologic Growth] as a skill if this was an option. Too much potential overlap. That narrowed down my other choices to just four, which was handy.

[Blight {Epic}]

Your mana and will gains  the tint of rot and death. At will, you can make your presence force sickness, rot, and necrosis onto those you consider your adversary. As this skill grows, so will your range, and you will be able to empower yourself from the natural rot you create.

Category: Nature magic, Necromantic magic

I grinned. Then I gave in to the bubbling in my chest and let out a dark chuckle. Yes, this would do just fine.

Only one skill left. One that I was a little worried about. The way it just kept showing up… it felt a little like Feronie was pushing that option onto any class that could even vaguely accept it.

[Ritual of Sporemageddon  {Legendary}]

Deep within a dungeon you shall dive. There you will plead with your Goddess, and with a loyal heart shall prevail. The gift given unto all sentient-kind will be revoked.

Category: Apocalypse magic, Forbidden

Well… that was incredibly ominous.

The description sounded entirely different to any other skill I’d seen so far. I didn’t know what it even did, though I had an idea.

Dungeons were being exploited day and night, all sorts of resources pulled out from within while the dungeon used the world’s mana to restock itself. It was, essentially, an endless supply of nearly-free resources.

If this ritual cut that off… then every factory that relied on those same resources would have to shut down.

It was like taking the ocean away from the fishing industry.

It started with a giggle.

Soon, it was a cackle.

Yes. Yes, that would work wonderfully.

***

Death Cap - Two - Options Determining Future Paths

I eyed my options one last time.

[Because of prior experiences, and because of cross-class compatibility, the following skills are immediately available to you:]

- Mycologic Growth {Uncommon}

- Druid Sight {Uncommon}

- Fungal Grafter {Uncommon}

- Mushroom Magic {Rare}

- Commune with God {Rare}

[You have two remaining Class Skill slots.]

The choice, in the end, wasn’t an easy one.

[Mycologic Growth] could be set aside without too much trouble. My new [Aura of Growth] skill had a lot of overlap. It was the other four that would be tricky choices.

[Druid Sight] went on my short-list of options. It wasn’t necessarily a powerful skill, but it allowed me to pretty much directly inspect and learn about natural things in a way that none of my other skills did. The knowledge-gaining potential was too much to pass up.

I didn’t have books, reference manuals, or the internet to rely on. With mushrooms, not knowing what you were working with could be a lethal mistake.

So that was a no-brainer option.

That left three choices to pick from. [Commune with God], [Fungal Grafter], and [Mushroom Magic].

[Commune with God] was powerful, I think. But I’d never really used it… yeah, that was one skill I could live without. I bet I could get it back if I tried praying some more. After all, a Crusader was a sort of paladin-esque thing, wasn’t it? And my class directly named Feronie. That would have to be enough.

So, the final choice came down to [Fungal Grafter], and [Mushroom Magic]. [Fungal Grafter] allowed me to combine mushrooms together to create new ones. That was pretty much the entire basis of my success so far. [Mushroom Magic], on the other hand, allowed me to pump magic into mushrooms. I was certain that there was a lot more potential there, I just didn’t know magic well enough.

In the end, greater potential won out.

[Congratulations! You have obtained the Druid Sight {Uncommon} Skill!]

[Congratulations! You have obtained the Mushroom Magic {Rare} Skill!]

[Fungal Grafter] had unlocked when I’d grafted things manually. I could do it again without a skill to rely on.

I nodded and checked my new character sheet.

Name: N/A

Race: Human {Common}

Age: 6 Years

Mana: 15/18

Primary Class: [Feronie’s Crusader {Epic}]

Afflictions

- Black Lung {Common}

- Child of Poverty {Common}

Blessings

- Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

Feronie’s Crusader Class Skills - Level Five

- Aura of Growth {Rare} - Level One

- Blight {Epic} - Level One

- Ritual of Sporemageddon  {Legendary} - Level One

- Druid Sight {Uncommon} - Level One

- Mushroom Magic {Rare} - Level One

General Skills - Level Seventy-Six

- Running {Common} - Level Nineteen

- Knitting {Common} - Level Fifty-four

> [Patterner]

> [Clicky Clacker]

- Basic Poison Resistance {Common} - Level Three

-

-  

My mana had dropped a lot. And my two returning skills had been reset. It… it felt a bit like a punch to the gut to have lost so much progress. But then, I had a lot of new skills, more powerful ones, to work with.

I nodded to myself, then I looked around my farm and got to work. It was idle work. Harvesting what needed harvesting, collecting spores into jars, resetting racks into their place.

The entire time, I started to fiddle with one of my new skills. [Aura of Growth] needed a constant push of mana pressed into it. When I did so, I could feel the air around me… not quite stir. It didn’t shift or move, but the air felt  different. More potent, maybe?

I called it off a few points before bottoming out my mana.

[Congratulations! Your Aura of Growth {Rare} Skill has reached level Two!]

I let out a sigh. Progress. It was like a balm to the soul.

I continued to work. I’d need to sell these mushrooms. I needed funds to do what needed doing.

My plan was simple.

I was going to find out who my father worked for. Then I was going to kill them. Then I was going to find out what I could about those Bluertons, the union-busters. I was going to kill them too. Then, once they were all dead, I’d move on to the next step in my plan. The dungeon. The Ditz dungeon that this city relied on for raw resources.

If I understood [Ritual of Sporemageddon ] properly, it would allow me to destroy the dungeon.

That sounded just fine to me.

The problem was, as usual, my lack of knowledge.

I didn’t know who  owned the factory Dada worked at. I didn’t know where the Bluertons were based. If this was the age of the internet, it wouldn’t be hard to find out who owned what, where they lived, and even how to make a Molotov cocktail to deliver through their window. But it wasn’t.

As I checked on one of my racks (the only fully-enclosed rack I had, since it contained some small puffball samples for future grafting) I considered my options.

Technically, I wasn’t the only one fighting the industrialists. Those nurses and people who had collected the injured… what  had Larry called them? Ratesco’s Union? They were protesting the factory’s conditions too, weren’t they?

Their enemy was mine as well.

I made a mental note to ask Debra what she knew about them. Maybe there was some potential for trade there.

Setting the last rack back into place, I turned and checked on the baskets of freshly plucked mushrooms I had harvested. Two full baskets, almost too much for me to carry on my own. Enough to feed a family like mine for… well, longer now.

I swallowed, buried the pain. I needed anger first.

“Okay,” I murmured to myself.

I looked around the farm. It was probably late out. Time to head back home.

I didn’t want to.

Home was… home wasn’t a nice place. I wanted action , I wanted to do something.

My fists clenched and I buried my face into my workbench. I wanted to scream, but everything felt jammed up in my chest. Nothing would come out. It felt as if the entire world was contracting in at the corners and pressing down around me.

My vision went dark in the corners, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe.

Was I having a panic attack?

Why?

It was such a stupid thing to do. I didn’t have time for that kind of thing, dammit.

My body didn’t seem to care though. My heart raced away, beating all wrong, and I found myself dropping onto my knees under my workstation, arms wrapped around my chest to hug myself.

I cried. I didn’t want to. I’d cried enough already. It was time to act, to fight, to… to do something.

I guess, in the end, I was still just a child.

My mind might have been on revenge, but the rest of me wasn’t ready for it.

By the time I’d calmed down I had… nothing. No plans, no idea of what to do. I was powerless. I was just a kid out of their depth.

The scream I was holding in finally came out of me and I punched the floor until my knuckles hurt.

It was all too much. “Screw this,” I swore. “And screw you, Feronie. I can’t do this. I just… I can’t do this.”

I shuddered while I worked hard to try and bottle everything back in. Then the shuddering stopped and something, something faint and ephemeral, wrapped itself around me, like a warm blanket, a hug. Swallowing, I looked around my little farm, but there was no one but me.

The lone bulb hanging from the ceiling flickered and the sensation left me.

I was a bit calmer, a little bit less… tense.

Had that been Feronie? An apology? Or maybe just… comfort, given to a follower in need?

I wiped my face clean with my sleeve and climbed to my feet. I could do this. I didn’t have a choice.

What I did have was time. Revenge didn’t need to happen immediately. I was a scientist, damnit, if anyone should understand that things took time to realise, then it was me.

So, I’d prepare. If it took a year or two, then so be it. By the time I was ready, I’d be ready for real. I had some funds already. I could scout things out, meet the right people, get the right tools for the job.

I’d start by studying what offensive skills I had. And I needed to re-level my re-obtained skills.

That was something I could start working on right away.

My pain was quenched, at least a little, by determination. My anger was a burning heap of embers, still there to fuel me.

It was time to get serious.

***

Death Cap - Three - Testing the Limits of One’s Capabilities

The following months passed in a blur.

I know, intellectually, the routine was dangerous. Doing the same thing over and over again would just lead to a complacency, to me developing habits that might not help me in the long run.

Still, in some regards, I had no choice.

Mom had to return to work. She said she was fortunate that the girls where she worked pitched in and covered her shift for a couple of days. She couldn’t let them continue to do that. That left the home empty most of the time. She’d complained one afternoon about the bills. We’d have to dip into our savings for a while. She didn’t say how our need to dip into those would end.

We had one less mouth to feed, but the cost of rent was still the same.

So I got back to work, but not as often as I once had. I turned my mushroom-selling into a weekend thing, and I gave up on selling over by the dungeon, at least for the moment.

That left me the other six days of the week to train.

Surprisingly, the first thing that levelled was my [Running] skill. It was likely long overdue, having sat at 19 for such a long time.

[You have unlocked a Sub-Skill!]

[Congratulations! Your [Running {Common}] Skill has unlocked the [Surefooted] Subskill!]

[Surefooted]

You will find yourself tripping less often as you push yourself to run faster. With practice, you will no longer lose your balance and momentum as you run.

A nice little boost. I earned it by tripping over a loose rock on my way back to the farm. I flipped twice before crashing onto my knees and skinning both of them on the messy dirt ground. It wasn’t the best way to gain experience, but it finally pushed my skill up a level, so I couldn’t complain.

Besides, I was young. Were I in my thirties or forties, the pain to my knees would have been abysmal, I knew.

My training didn’t just rely on [Running] though. I had three new skills that I didn’t know how to use yet, at least initially. [Aura of Growth] I figured out early on. All that was left was some experimenting to discover the limitations and possibilities of the skill.

The aura could be projected all around me, and if I just concentrated on using the skill without anything more behind it, that’s exactly what would happen. But that was wasteful. I could burn through nearly all of my mana in the space of five minutes just by passively leaving the skill on.

The effects on the mushrooms growing in my farm were obvious though. They sprouted, grew, and flourished far faster than they would normally. Even with my previous skillset I couldn’t get them to grow quite so quickly.

Once I put my mind to studying the skill though, I discovered that I could more or less vary its strength. It was like having my hand on the tap. I could turn it up or down to control how much would flow out from the skill.

Then, I started to focus on different things. In my mind, the aura came out of me and formed a sort of circle. But my farm was square. I started to imagine it as merely filling the entire room, without any excess leaving, and after gaining a level or two from concentrating on that image, I started to experiment further.

Could I split my aura to only cover half the room?

Yes. Yes I could.

Could I concentrate it all on one, singular fungal body?

Yes, but not easily. And if that body was pressing up against another, chances were the skill would bleed through.

Over the course of two and a half months, I gained two new subskills with [Aura of Growth]. It didn’t quite bring me back up to where I’d been before, but it was getting there.

[Congratulations! Your [Aura of Growth {Rare}] Skill has unlocked the [Shaped Aura] Subskill!]

The first subskill I unlocked. It essentially allowed me to more easily shape the aura. I went from having some mild difficulty pushing the aura into any shape but a circle to being able to push out around the room with only a stray thought.

I couldn’t see  the aura, but I knew where it was, and what shape it had, more or less. What was unfortunate was that I couldn’t feel it interacting with things. Not yet, at least. I was hoping to gain some sort of… malleable radar type of skill, but maybe that would come later.

[Shaped Aura]

You can more easily move and manipulate your aura. With practice, you will be able to move it entirely away from yourself, to bring growth to all that need it.

It was a good subskill  to gain.

[Congratulations! Your [Aura of Growth {Rare}] Skill has unlocked the [Careful Casting] Subskill!]

This one was a little less expected, but no less welcome.

[Careful Casting]

You become more aware of how much assistance all natural things need in order to flourish, and in doing so, are better able to conserve your own strength. Practice will increase your efficiency.

The part that let me sense how much assistance something needed to grow was… extremely vague. Nearly useless, even. I could tell from a look that a mushroom had not sprouted yet, I didn’t need some vague sixth sense to tell me as much. Knowing how much humidity or what kind of temperature change a fungal body needed was nice, but I couldn’t do anything about that most of the time. The added efficiency though, now that was a bonus.

[Ritual of Sporemageddon ] was… an enigma. I was actually kind of annoyed by the skill. It was taking up a slot that I had other uses for, and I didn’t know how to activate it, or what it did, exactly. Still, it was a legendary skill, and I had the impression Feronie really wanted me to use it.

[Blight] was more immediately useful.

It took some focus, and the first time I managed to use the skill properly I immediately doubled over and lost my lunch, but… but it wasn’t something I could ignore, not once I saw what it did.

Using [Blight] on a piece of wood rotted it.

That was maybe an oversimplification, but it was accurate. The wood darkened on the edges, it cracked, and parts of it turned to dust. The entire piece went… almost soggy as [Blight] continued to spread across it. After five minutes of focused use, I could turn a log the size of my forearm into a rotting carcass.

I tried it on mushrooms next, and the effect was similar. The mushroom darkened on the edges and crumbled apart. It wasn’t all terrible though. The samples I tested the skill on tended to flourish once the skill was stopped, something I only discovered when I returned to a mushroom the day after I’d used [Blight] on it.

I needed access to some sort of library. There was so much I didn’t know about how skills worked that I couldn’t learn just through trial and error. Why and how did [Blight] make it easier for fungi to grow on things affected by it? Was the effect some sort of time-acceleration, or was it something entirely different?

Using the skill on metal made it rust. Using it on organics like meat or wood made it rot.

Was it just some sort of… forced oxidation? That didn’t quite match what I was seeing, and things affected by [Blight] weren’t warm after I deactivated the skill, which I’d expect if I was dealing with some sort of forced chemical reaction.

I had… no idea how [Blight] worked.

What I did know was that the skill’s mana cost was prohibitive and it took a long time for it to work. Just rotting through a log took multiple hour-long applications where I had to guzzle down mana-infused mushrooms to keep myself going.

It might have had potential as a combat skill, but for the moment, it was better as a skill used to prepare locations for fungi to grow.

I imagined that combining [Blight] with another attack might make it far more effective. A cut across someone’s skin combined with a light application of the skill would almost certainly leave someone with necrotic skin susceptible to infection.

I continued to prepare for my eventual trip into the dungeon, but the more time passed, the more I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to fight my way through one without a lot of help, or a lot more training.

My skill set just didn’t lend itself to straight combat.

So much for being a Crusader. Where was my heavy plate armour and big two-handed longsword?

No. For the moment, I decided to focus on something else while I continued to practise and learn.

Three months after my father’s passing, just as the warmth of summer started to fade away, I discovered where Ratesco’s Union was holed up, and now I was going to pay them a visit.

***

Death Cap - Four - Ratesco’s Union for the Poor and Enraged

I couldn’t learn too much about Ratesco’s Union. When I asked at the marketplace (usually asking some of the other stall owners that I’d gotten to know, if only in passing) the group was made to sound like terrible troublemakers. Respected, helpful troublemakers.

Asking too many questions always got someone to politely suggest that I stop asking, or else the Bullies might start wondering why I wanted to know so much.

What I did learn could be summed up in a few words.

The Union was a group whose main goal was to help normal people gain some degree of power over the factories that filled City Nineteen to the brim. I thought it was a noble goal, but some people felt that the owners of those factories deserved the share they were getting and more.

Most of their work came in the form of spreading information, some community outreach and money-gathering operations, and they were a counter to groups like the Bluertons.

That was too idyllic, and I was too much of a cynic to believe that the organisation was so charitable. If they were truly out to do good, then they wouldn’t be organised the way they were. They were a mafia, that was the long and short of it.

“You sure about this?” Stew asked as he loitered by the entrance to my farm.

I nodded and checked my satchel one last time. The satchel was a cheap thing I’d picked up at the market. It was made of that same canvas-y material they used to make potato sacks. It was filled with mushrooms, at least on top. The sack had a second pocket within it that took the bottom half of it. There was a little slit on the front for access, closed by a pair of buttons.

That second compartment was filled with [Dead Man’s Cough] mushrooms. One hard squish and the puffballs within would burst, then the spores would come out of the front. At least, that was the idea.  I hadn’t tested it, for obvious reasons. I wasn’t sure if I could even survive that kind of thing.

It was my plan B, if talking nicely didn’t work.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I said as I shut the bag up. The upper half was filled with mushrooms of the delicious sort, rather than the lethal kind. An offering of food.

“I don’t see why you need to go messing with that lot,” Stew said with a shake of his head. “They’re not good news, you know.”

“I know,” I said. “But I don’t think I’m their enemy. Not unless they make a habit of fighting innocent children from poor families. Besides, they helped my Dada in the end. I think I owe them at least a bit of courtesy.”

That was my excuse for now. I’d pop over, see if I couldn’t donate some food to their cause—food being the only thing I could offer—and then I’d ask for information. Simple and easy. The problem would come from maintaining appearances. I needed them to think I was some innocent kid while also taking me seriously enough to listen to me. It was going to be a fine line to cross.

Stew shrugged. “Your funeral, kid,” he said.

We started walking across the city, maintaining the slow pace that Stew was able to handle on his one leg. He had replaced his crutch at some point, the new one was nicer wood, with a metal band around the stump of his missing arm. It worked better than the chunk of wood he’d been using before.

“So, I haven’t seen Debra around in a day or two, she said that she was with you?” I asked.

Stew grinned. “Ah, well.” The man actually blushed. “Debs and I have been spending more time together as of late. I gathered enough coin from working with you to make myself look respectable, then I found a bit of work at the market. Not much, just tending a stall. It’s little, but enough to get an apartment.”

“Congratulations,” I said.

He nodded. “Thank you. It’ll be nice to have a roof when winter comes around. Soon now, I think.”

“And Debra’s living with you?”

His smile only grew. “She is! One of the stall ladies has been teaching her a thing or two about sewing.  It’s not much, but with both of us scrambling for coin , we can keep fed and stock up on coal for the winter. As long as neither of us get sick, we should pull through.”

I nodded. “I’m happy for you,” I said.

“Thank you. And don’t worry. I can still help you with your selling. Better now, even. I’m getting to know the others at the market while I’m there.”

“That does sound helpful,” I said. “Do you know if any of them have kids around my age, or a bit older?”

“Looking for a friend that’s less than a decade your senior?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I’m looking for an employee. I can produce more mushrooms, but I’d be able to do more if someone else was doing the selling. It won’t pay well, but… I could lend out my table and cooking plate, teach someone to handle both, and then they can pay me for the mushrooms to cook.”

“You’ll cut into your profits,” he said.

“I won’t have to work as much in the markets,” I said. “And I think if I concentrated, I could supply two or even three stalls at the same time.”

I’d done the math, even being conservative on sales numbers, the whole thing would generate about the same amount of coin as I was making already. All I’d have to do for it to work was practice with my [Aura of Growth] and I could make enough mushrooms to keep a few stalls going.

Which begged the question: why was food so damned scarce in City Nineteen?

If one skilled six-year-old could feed three families with a tiny farm, then I imagined that a dozen adults with better equipment and training could feed a whole district. Yet here we are, scrounging for every last loaf of hardened bread and can of beans.

Setting up my own little informal business would give me one other advantage. I’d have a reason to meet with the Rats. If they were a crime organisation masquerading as something else, then I was certain they’d appreciate me coming to them to ask for protection, rather than the other way around.

Stew and I chit-chatted and gossiped about a few things as we walked towards the deeper parts of the slums. Further out from the Gutter, there weren’t as many factories, instead there were more apartments, often crammed in even closer together. The exception was along some roads that crossed the city, those tended to be lined by factories and warehouses still.

The arteries of City Nineteen were clogged by industry.

I learned, from Stew, that my dad’s factory wasn’t the only one to try and unionise. A dozen others had protested as well. Some more forcefully than others. Of those, most had outright closed.

It was generally accepted that a factory that was unionised would either shut down immediately, or fold to the union. Some would try to replace all of the workers, but there was a stigma in taking on a job at one of those. It was bad luck.

I imagined that the superstition had something to do with the fired union members sabotaging the machinery before they left.

The Bluertons had been busy. A hundred dead over the course of two or three weeks, some of those amongst their own number.

The past months had been filled with Bully crack-downs across the slums. I hadn’t heard of those, but Stew had his ear closer to the ground.

Apparently some lower-class folk had gotten their hands on rifles, which levelled the playing field a little. That was the last thing the Bullies wanted.

“That’s the place,” Stew said eventually with a tilt of his chin to a building ahead.

It was a warehouse right up against the edge of one of the bigger roads. Horse-pulled carts were trudging past, carrying casks and crates on wagon-back. It was just short of noon, so the city was still quite busy.

That made the half-dozen young men loitering around the entrance of the warehouse all the more conspicuous.

“Walk proud, Stew,” I said.

He chuckled and followed after me as I walked right up and into the warehouse. The guys outside stopped to stare, but we probably fit right in, the way we were dressed.

The interior of the warehouse had been subdivided a few times. There was an office-building to one side, and a few tin shacks had been set up to the other side, with a gate cordoning them off. The central passage was still open and clear though, leading to more stuff at the back.

Someone had left a few rows of hip-high crates out. I could recognise a barricade when I saw one.

“Who’re you?” someone gruff asked.

I turned to the side with a start. I hadn’t seen the man… men, standing in the shadows. They stepped over, coming closer. “Gary asked you a question, kid,” the shorter of the two said.

Blinking, I took in their face and form. They were a bit taller than I was, but not by much, with yellow-ish skin, a hooked nose, and long ears.

“A goblin?” I asked.

And then, before I could blink or gasp, something punched me in the gut and pulled my legs out from under me.

***

Death Cap - Five - Passing as Innocent to Hide the Knife

“Pl-please don’t hurt me,” I whimpered while I worked as hard as I could to get my hands up and onto the face of the person straddling me on the ground. If I could only jam my thumbs into his eyes and rip them out…

“Dregs!”

“Get off!” Stew shouted.

“The kid’s got some fight, why are you all so afraid for  it?” the goblin atop  me growled.

I needed a knife. Maybe one in a sheath around my wrists or something where I’d be able to grab it easily. “Get off me! Please!” I whined.

The goblin turned and stared down at me, teeth set in a dangerous grin. “No,” he said, and I got a whiff of his rancid breath. “You’ve got a lot of fight in you for someone who’s calling out surrender.”

A hand reached down and grabbed the goblin by the back of the shirt and suddenly his weight was off me.

I scrambled back and onto my feet, grabbing my bag as I did. Why hadn’t I brought  at least a knife?

“Put me down, Gary,” the goblin said. “Or maybe you want to feel my wrath next?”

The man I assumed was Gary shook the goblin from side to side. “Shut up, Dregs. What is wrong with you, attacking a kid like that?”

“You heard it insulting me!” he growled.

Gary tossed the goblin down, then pointed a finger at its face. “Don’t fucking move,” he warned. Then, to Stew and I, he spoke a little softer. “I’m sorry about that. You called him a goblin. He’s not. It’s considered a great insult among his kind to compare them to goblins.”

I waited a few seconds, taking in my surroundings. A few heads had poked over the fence to see what was going on, and some of the boys that’d been loitering outside were looking within. I wiped my behind free of dust. “It’s fine,” I said cautiously. “I didn’t mean to insult… him? If he’s not a… you know, then what is he?”

“I’m a hobgoblin,” he said.

I had no idea what the difference between that and a goblin was. To be fair, the only goblins I’d seen were from way off and in the papers, and the latter were usually dressed in some insulting manner.

“Alright then,” I said. “My apologies.”

“You don’t mean it,” Dregs said.

“I don’t,” I shot back. “But my back hurts and you scared a few years off of me, so fair’s fair.”

He grumbled, but a warning look from Gary kept him back.

“You’re not the kid of anyone from here. And I’d recognise any two-limbed man passing by,” Gary said. “What are you here for?”

“I’m not part of your union,” I said. “I’m here to talk with someone responsible.”

Gary hooked his thumbs through his belt. “And what about?” he asked.

I sat up straighter to try and make myself seem a little more reliable. “I’ve started a business here, in the slums, and I’m looking for a bit of assistance. I thought that I’d ask here, since you people know that kind of thing well. And… and I need some information.”

“What sort of business?

“And what sort of information?” Gary asked.

“Are you the one I’d have to talk to if I wanted to strike a deal?” I asked.

He chuckled. “Shrewd one, aren’t you? Dregs, keep an eye on the kid’s friend here. Unless he’s the one we’re dealing with?” I shook my head. “In that case, follow me.”

Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I gave Stew a nod, then followed after Gary as he led me to the right towards the side where a small office section had been built into the factory. It was two stories tall, with a metal staircase on the exterior leading to a landing above. No railings, because no one cared about safety around here.

We clanged up the steps, Gary a step or two ahead of me. He knocked twice on the door, waited, then knocked five times in a quick pattern. It wasn’t quite shave-and-a-haircut , but it wasn’t far from that.

“Is that you, Gary?”

“It’s me, Janet. Does the boss have a minute? We have someone here for him.”

A chain rattled and the door swung open. A middle-aged woman stood there, in a clean and serviceable dress.

There was a small office behind her. Some cabinets, a few shelves. Ugly carpet on the floor and a single desk next to a door leading deeper in. I imagined that that was where the boss was hiding.

“Come on in,” Janet said. She invited us into the space, and I found myself a little weirded out. It was a lot cleaner than any place I’d been to recently, shitty wallpaper and all. The ceiling was a bit stained by cigarette smoke, and judging from the ashtray on the desk, that was Janet’s fault, but otherwise the place was spotless. “What do you need to speak to Markham about?”

Gary glanced down at me, and I figured he wasn’t going to help me any more than he had. I took a step towards Janet. “Hello ma’am,” I began. “I’m from Clearford, ma’am, and I’ve recently started my own business. I make, cook, and sell mushrooms. I’ve been considering expanding, and I thought it only fair that I look for some help from my local union.”

Janet stared at me for a moment. “How old are you?” she asked.

I considered lying, but decided against it. “I’m six,” I said.

“And who set you up for all of this?”

“No one, ma’am, I’m acting under my own initiative.”

She looked up to Gary. “Is this a prank?”

“I don’t think so, no,” he said. “Kid’s got gumption is all.”

“And is the kid carrying any weapons?” Janet asked.

“Well, I didn’t look,” Gary said.

“I’m not,” I piped up.

Janet crossed her arms, looking mightily unimpressed. “You know, the Bluertons wouldn’t blink at stooping so low as to send a child out to do their dirty work.”

“I don’t work for them,” I said. I think some of my anger showed because she glanced down at me for a moment.

“Check them for weapons, as you ought to have done already. I’ll speak to Markham and see if he has time.”

Gary shrugged apologetically as he turned to me then got to one knee. I was patted down, which was uncomfortable, but he was professional and fast. He took my bag too, and checked through it. Of course, he found the puffballs I’d stuffed in there, but I don’t think he could tell them apart from any other mushroom.

That… was lucky, probably. What if he could tell that they were dangerous? Then what?

Janet returned from the office. “Mister Markham will be ready to meet you now,” she said.

I nodded my thanks and stepped into the next office. There were two people there. A middle-aged man with a bit of a potbelly behind a big desk, and a second man in plain clothes standing with his arms crossed by the corner. A guard?

“Hello little one,” the man behind the desk said after looking me up and down.

“Hello, sir,” I replied.

He was well-dressed. A button-up and suspenders, with a bowler hat sitting on the edge of his desk to complete the look and a coat hanging from a hook next to the door. “Please, sit,” he said with a gesture to one of the chairs across from his desk.

I sat. “Thank you for having me, sir,” I said.

“Well, Janet said you were interesting, and so far she’s not wrong. So, how can Local Clearford help you?”

I paused. That was the district of the city we were in. I imagined that the union was split up, otherwise it would be far too easy to take it out. “I’m a native from here, and I’ve been looking to start a business. I thought that maybe you could help me.”

“We do give out loans on occasion,” he said, but I was shaking my head already. “Not that, then. I’m curious, what sort of business does a six-year-old run?”

“I sell mushrooms,” I said. “And I grow them too.” I opened my satchel and plucked one out. It was one of the more magical ones. I knew because I’d put it at the very top. It was my nicest mushroom so far.

Markham took it and looked at it from a few different angles. “Impressive, I suppose. Can you grow anything else?”

“Just mushrooms,” I said.

“Interesting. We don’t usually have businesses reach out to us, you know. Most of the time it’s the other way around.”

“I need help, and I need information,” I said. “I don’t earn much besides, only enough to keep my family fed and my little farm going. If I can grow, I can earn more, and then I wouldn’t mind sharing.”

He chuckled. “And you came yourself instead of your father, why?”

“I don’t have a father anymore,” I said.

“Oh, forgive me. The number of orphans in this city is… terrible.”

I nodded. “The Bluertons killed him.”

I think I could have heard a pin drop.

Markham hadn’t been taking me seriously. I knew because now his idle curiosity sharpened, and I almost felt  his gaze on me.

***

Death Cap - Six - Shared Truths as Payment for Trust

“Leave us, for a moment,” Markham said.

“Sir?” the man in the corner spoke for the first time.

Markham gestured towards the door. “I can handle a single six-year-old, I think,” he said. “A bit of trust, boys.”

Gary opened the door to the other guard, and they both filed out of the door. The door shut with a click. I was alone with the man behind the desk.

Markham leaned forwards, hands coming together under his chin with fingers woven together. He stared at me for a long moment, and I had to resist the urge to fidget. “Mister Markham,” I began.

He raised a hand, pausing me mid-sentence. “You said you were six?”

I nodded. “I’ll be seven soon enough,” I said. “Does my age make it so that you don’t want to work with me?”

“The Union has employed the young before. Six… almost seven, is younger than usual, but we have had need of message runners and children can serve as good eyes and ears. The Bullies, as disgusting as they are, tend to be reluctant to harm a child. Class enemies they may be, but they still have a conscience. Some of them, at least.”

I nodded slowly. “That’s good to know,” I said. “But it’s not exactly the information I’m looking for.”

Markham nodded. “Yes. The information you’re looking for. You, a fatherless six-year-old who speaks as if they were thrice as old.” He leaned back, then idly opened one of the drawers of his desk and started to root around in it.

“I’m a bit advanced for my age is all ,” I said. “I don’t have a choice, not if I want to lift myself up and out of the situation I’m in. Can I ask my questions? If any of them are suspicious, you don’t need to answer them.”

“Ratesco’s Union isn’t in the business of buying and selling information,” Markham said.

My stomach dropped a little. Had I been wasting my time, then?

“But, we do know things. And I’m hardly averse to spilling information that the bosses would rather be kept hidden. But before all of that, I’m going to need some of your blood.”

Markham placed a tiny scroll onto the table. It was maybe as big around as my pinkie, the scroll the length of a typical wooden pencil. On seeing it, my heart clenched in my chest. “What?”

“Do you know what this is?” he asked.

I shook my head, though I had some suspicions.

“It’s an identification scroll. Nothing fancy. We make them ourselves, which is… of questionable legality, but the official scrolls are quite expensive for something that can only be used once. These aren’t as good as a Whithallow’s scroll, but they work.” He unrolled the scroll, revealing carefully penned words and symbols etched onto parchment. “A drop of your blood, right here.”

I swallowed. “And if I don’t want to?” I asked. My voice sounded small. I could fill the room with spores at a moment’s notice. I wasn’t without options. But that would be like burning the bridge, then blowing it up for good measure. I’d make an enemy of the entire union, and that was if I got away alive.

“The blood doesn’t need to be volunteered,” Markham said. He flicked his hand to the side and something clicked, another twirl and something metal flipped up and landed on the end of his desk, point-first. A pen knife.

I hesitated, then closed my hands into fists. This asshole. I stomped to the desk, grabbed the knife, checked the edge for any sort of visible oils or liquids, then swiped it across the back of my wrist where the cut wouldn’t interfere with me grabbing anything and where it would be easy to bandage. I let the little bit of blood leaking out of me slip down the outside of a finger, then I brought that over the scroll.

The drop landed on a space made for it on the scroll and was absorbed by the paper.

The writing on the scroll glimmered faintly. I could feel it doing something, vaguely. Then with a slow sizzle, words started to appear across a blank part of the paper.

Name: N/A ERROR

Race: Human {Common}

Age: 6 Years

Primary Class: [Feronie’s Crusader {Epic}]

Afflictions

- Black Lung {Common}

- Child of Poverty {Common}

Blessings

- Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

It stopped there. No breakdown of my class and skills like the clearly more expensive scroll my dad had once used with me.

“Happy?” I asked. “Is that enough proof that I’m not allied with the Bullies?”

I stared at Markham and locked eyes with him. His expression barely changed at all, still all-business, but I had an inkling that he was a lot more curious now. “I suppose that will do,” he said.

I nodded. Then I pushed my mana around and towards the scroll. It wasn’t too far from me, my hand was still right next to it. With a flick in my thoughts, I turned my mana into a weapon and unleashed [Blight] at the scroll.

Making sure to keep my eyes locked on Markham, I was only tangentially aware of what my skill was doing to the paper. I heard it crackle, and when Markham looked down at the scroll, I glimpsed at it too, curious.

The paper looked like it had been left to soak in sewer water, then left out to dry in the sun for a few months. The edges were falling apart into dust and a fuzzy layer of mould was growing in the centre. The staff of the scroll, just a tiny wooden stick, broke with a faint snip.

“Sorry about the mess,” I said. I smiled and pushed some of my remaining mana into [Aura of Growth]. Tiny pinprick mushrooms started to grow from the rotten paper, and the room filled with the faint but pleasant odour of rot.

“It’s nothing,” Markham said. “Though I’ll admit, this isn’t the result I was expecting.”

“I’m certain it isn’t,” I replied easily as I reined  in my skills and mana. I didn’t need to run out here and get the shakes. “Now. I’m here for two things. A deal and information. Can you provide both?”

Markham considered. “The deal first,” he said.

I nodded. “Your people guard my stalls. If you have anyone trustworthy who’s good at selling and cooking, then I wouldn’t mind hiring them on commission. They make half the coin for a day’s sale. I provide the equipment and material. If you want mushrooms for yourselves, then I can provide those at a discount.”

“Magical mushrooms?” he asked.

“Can be done as well,” I said. I gestured to the one I’d given him already. “Those are healthy, and they’ll replenish your mana.”

“What about other magical effects? I know that some apothecaries sell potions based on mushrooms with interesting effects. Fire-breath potions, astral projection, things like that.”

I kept my face devoid of emotions. I didn’t need him to know how much I wanted  those. “If you can get me samples, then I can grow anything. We’ll have to negotiate prices later, depending on a host of factors. But yes, I can become your provider.”

He nodded. “Useful. And you don’t do business with others?”

“Our goals happen to align,” I said. “Your union growing stronger is good for me.”

“Not my union. I’m just a local manager. The Union belongs to no one person, it’s the people’s.”

“Fine,” I conceded. “I want information. On the Bluertons. Their movements, the locations of their bases and hideouts. Names of individual members and so on.”

“What are your intentions there?” he asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. “Their bodies can be used as fertiliser for my next crop,” I said.

He grinned. “A familiar sentiment here. Though we tend to… respect their homes. The union plays by certain rules because the Bluertons play by those rules too.”

Were they playing cops and robbers or were they actually doing anything? “Fine,” I said. “I’ll still want some of that information though.”

“We can provide it. The Union isn’t responsible for the actions of outside actors.”

That was permission to do whatever I wanted. “I want information on the Ditz Dungeon too,” I said.

He paused, then nodded. “You want access to it, or to its resources? We might be able to provide that. Or might have, once. The move to unionise the dungeon’s gatherers went… poorly, this year.”

“Just get me maps and whatever information the average delver  team would have,” I said. “If I need more after that, then I’ll ask.”

Markham nodded along. “That can be provided, yes. They’ll be copies of copies, and some of it might be outdated, but if you’re looking for something in particular, it’ll probably be there.”

He didn’t think I intended to go down myself.

All the better for me.

“I’m glad that these negotiations are going so well,” I said with my most charming smile.

***

Death Cap - Seven - A Glimpse Into the Dungeon

“The Ditz Dungeon,” Markham said as he stood up. I watched him walk over to one side of the room and paused before a tin filing cabinet. He exhaled as he knelt down and opened one of the drawers with a metallic clang. “Let’s see... I think I have... yes.”

Standing, Markham walked back to his desk, but he stayed on the same side I was on. He slapped a folder down onto the desk, then opened it and pulled out a piece of paper. He placed it before me. It was coffee-stained, a printout of a map.

It was all black, the lines representing walls done in white, with a grid over the entire floor.

“First floor,” Markham said. He reached into the breast pocket of his shirt and pulled out a little red pack of cigarettes. He lit one with a matchbook he pulled from his pocket, then he used the cigarette to point to the map. “This is an old one. We don’t do much dungeon-related stuff. Hells, you can keep the maps, we need newer ones anyway.”

“Thank you,” I said. I had to stand on the tips of my toes to see the page. “It looks small.”

“Each grid square is ten or so paces across,” he said. “You could drive two carts next to each other in those corridors.”

“Oh,” I said. “What’s the threat rating mean?”

“I would think that part is obvious. Low means not everything down there will try to kill you. Medium means everything will. High means that everything will try to kill you, and it’s likely to succeed.”

I nodded slowly. Dangerous, then. I knew that much, but it wasn’t bad to have it confirmed. “So, there’s spiders, rats, and spider sheep down there? What’s a spider sheep?”

“Eight-legged sheep. Not actually a threat. If you’ve ever eaten a can of spam made local, then you’ve had some. And it’s spider rats. One thing, not two. Those are dangerous. Or as dangerous as any rat, I suppose. Heard they can grow pretty big.”

“How busy is the first floor?” I asked.

Markham pulled from his cigarette. “Very, I suppose. Traffic in and out, heading to deeper floors all day. First two floors get entirely stripped over the day. Third and lower takes a good while longer to be worked on.”

I nodded. “How deep is the dungeon?”

“I don’t know,” he said, the ignorance easily admitted to. “At least ten floors, maybe more. Most working crews never get past the fifth floor.”

That was invaluable to know. “And the threat rating increases the deeper you go, right?”

“Not necessarily, but as a general rule of thumb, yes.” I think he saw the question in my eyes because he continued. “Some floor’s threat is a non-issue. A floor filled with poisonous fog can be ignored with a decent mask, for example. Some floors only have traps, and sometimes they’re all the same. Dungeons change though.”

I nodded. “Another question.”

“You do seem full of them.”

I grinned. “Thank you! So, when does a dungeon reset?”

“Overnight, usually. Or after a few hours of no one being on a floor. It’s why the dungeon clears out overnight, and why you’ll get fined if you get caught in the dungeon and happen to survive overnight.”

“Right,” I said. I opened the file folder. There were a few more papers, but a glance over them revealed that they were mostly lists of items extracted from the dungeon. Not immediately useful to me, I didn’t see anything I could use. I pulled out the second floor map and stared at it for a moment.

There were the goblins I’d heard about. I took the page and set it to the side after looking it over. The second floor was clearly quite a bit bigger than the first.

“Spiders... various?” I asked.

“Lots of them, yes,” Markham said. “They weave things with these silk ropes that are quite valuable when harvested. And the floor has several small copses  of trees that are cut down and dragged out of the dungeon every day. Wood’s worth a fair bit nowadays, even if it’s just going to be turned to coal.”

I nodded along, filing that information for later, in case it came in handy. I didn’t know if it would, but you never knew what you might need to know.

“Thank you,” I said. I was about done here. I’d gotten pretty much everything I wanted. A trade deal of sorts had been struck, I’d get the opportunity to prove that I was useful to the Union, and I got more information about the Ditz Dungeon than I’d hoped to get at the onset of coming here.

All decent steps forward.

Revealing that I was tied to Feronie wasn’t great, but... well, it was done, and I couldn’t undo it. I raised a hand towards Markham and he glanced at it for a moment before shaking. “Thank you again, Mister Markham,” I said. “Don’t you worry, I’m going to work as hard as I can to make this city a better place.”

A lie. I was going to burn this cesspool down. But I was going to work hard to do it. Flinging torches around wouldn’t help right now, so I still needed to grow stronger.

“Did you get everything you needed, little crusader?”

I considered that for a moment. “One more thing. The Bluertons.”

He shook his head. “You’re going after more than you can chew there.”

“I just want a nibble,” I said with as innocent a smile as I could manage. “Maybe you happen to know where some of them live?”

Markham hesitated, then he raised his voice. “Gary! Janet, you can come back,” he called out.

The door opened a moment later and Gary, the silent guard, and then Janet walked in. The silent guard went back to his corner while Gary looked me up and down, then took in the rest of the room. Was that concern I noticed?

It... kind of made sense. He’d left a child in a room alone with an adult in a position of power. As disgusting as the idea was... well, I would have been suspicious in his place too. He didn’t know that if anyone tried anything with me, I could blight their balls off.

“Gary,” Markham said. “Kid has some beef with the Bluertons.”

“Who doesn’t?” Gary asked.

Janet scoffed.

Markham was a little more professional. “Indeed. I want to see what the kid gets up to. Fill them in on whatever they ask about the Blues.”

“Yes, sir,” Gary said.

I nodded to Markham, thanked him again, then picked the dungeon maps and files off the desk and stuffed them in my satchel. I followed Gary out of the room a moment later. “So, Gary,” I started. “Your friend, Dregs? Will he try to kill me again?”

“No. Not unless you call him a goblin again.”

“He said he was a hobgoblin? What’s the difference?”

Gary grunted. “That’s right. Hobs are born outside of dungeons. Bigger, usually. Smarter too. Technically they’re their own people. They don’t like dungeon goblins. Hate them, really.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It’s complicated,” was all he said. “Most dungeon-caught goblins will be servants at best, factory slaves at worse. They’re kind of dumb though. You need three of them to do the work of one lazy man, and they’ll shy away from anything too complicated. They give hobgoblins a bad reputation.”

I kind of understood. We were dealing with some weird fantasy racism here. I wasn’t sure what to do or think about it. “Well, I’ll say sorry again then. Does he like mushrooms?”

“I don’t.”

I jumped and spun around. Gary and I were leaving the offices. Dregs was sitting by the base of the staircase, hidden in the deeper shadows there so that all I could see of him were his glowing eyes in the dark.

“You scared me,” I said.

“Then grow a spine,” he snapped.

We glared at each other, but I didn’t think it would come to anything.

Gary shook his head and stomped down the steps. “So, the Blues. What do you need to know about those asshats?”

“Where they live,” I said. “Just one or two of them.”

Dregs chuckled. “Oh, you’re vile,” he said. “But the higher ups  here don’t want us doing that kind of thing.”

I frowned. “You don’t know what I want to do,” I said.

“Burn their house down while they’re sleeping?” Dregs asked. “Ambush them in the middle of the night? Eat their dogs?”

I scowled. “I wouldn’t eat their dogs,” I said.

The hobgoblin chuckled. “Bosses all say that if we start retaliating at their homes, they’ll return the favour.”

“Well, I’m not a part of your union,” I said.

Dregs stared off to the side, then he chuckled again. “So you’re not.”

I grinned at him, and he grinned back.

Gary shook his head. “And here I thought you two would hate each other for a while longer.”

***

Death Cap - Eight - Well Shod to Trod a Future Path

I had a lot of things to prepare and... honestly, plenty of time to work on most of them.

First and foremost was my initial expedition into the Ditz Dungeon.

My plan was... pretty much to just walk in. I’d prepare some of my more dangerous mushrooms for the trip, of course, and I’d bring along some basic equipment, but from what I understood the first floor of the dungeon was a busy place.

I tallied up my money, then with a small coin purse (filled with cloth so that it wouldn’t jingle and properly tucked under my overalls) I headed over to the open market near the Gutter to buy some essentials.

The market was a busy place in the mornings, especially since the stalls had just finished setting up when I arrived and the sellers were eager to start selling their things.

The first thing I bought was a good waterskin, something small but made of tough leather that I could tuck under my overalls against my side. Then I bought a better satchel, one with dividers on the inside of it where I’d be able to store different sorts of mushrooms with ease.

I found some small, finger-width glass vials for sale at one table and picked up a few of those. I wasn’t going to bring most into the dungeon. I just wanted them for mycelium growth.

As it was, with Feronie’s Blessing providing ambient growth and all of my mushroom-related skills pushing on all cylinders, I could get some of my faster-growing mushrooms to go from mycelium to mushroom in a little under an hour.

That was pretty great, but it wasn’t going to be weaponizable. Not unless I was prepared to lay traps.

And that’s exactly what I intended to do.

If I was to complete the Ritual of Sporemageddon , I needed to get to the heart of the dungeon. At least, that’s what my skill told me. I couldn’t fight the monsters likely lurking in the dungeon, not on my own, and not with the very small amount of power I had.

My [Blight] skill was scary, but I didn’t trust it to kill something before it killed me. My poisonous mushrooms required breathing or ingestion, and those poisons weren’t instant.

My next purchase was a knife.

You needed a permit to buy a weapon, but I didn’t buy a dagger. Just a knife with a blade as long as my hand which came with a leather sheath. It felt nice to be wearing that, though I wore it under the back flap of my overalls at the small of my back.

I picked up a few more things after that. Two little tins of sardines and a small box of crackers. Luxury food for me. I had mushrooms I could eat but these took up less space in my satchel and left more room for the fun sort of mushroom.

Rope was a must, or course, so I found a decent length of that, then a small bundle of string that I negotiated down to a half-penny from the granny selling it. I considered buying a blanket, but then I could just knit something for myself.

I decided to bring my knitting needles too, just in case. I might end up having to wait for a trap to go off or something while below.

Armour and the like was right out. Not only did no one sell anything proper, the one stall that had that kind of thing for sale priced it way above what I could afford. Besides, the armour I saw was made for grownups, not pre-teens.

There were two more things I needed, two items I couldn’t afford to cheap out on.

The first was a mask.

A few stalls sold cloth masks that were meant to be worn over your face when the smog got bad enough. A few of the nicer ones were padded and had multiple layers, and even inserted cloth that could be removed and cleaned.

I needed something a bit more robust, but there wasn’t anything like that in the market. I ended up asking a nicer older lady at one of the stalls, making up some story about wanting to buy a gift for my dad who worked with smokey stuff. She pointed me to a shop a couple of blocks down that sold working equipment.

I found what I was looking for there. A half mask with a filter right in the middle and some straps to keep it affixed to my face. That cut into my savings a little, but I justified it to myself by considering how much I could use it. It would make my experimenting and working with [Dead Man’s Cough] so much safer.

The last thing I bought blew out my entire budget.

A bell rang above the shop’s door. Inside were a few rows of shelves with boxes neatly stacked on them. The sides of those boxes had a simple image of a shoe printed on them. More images adorned the walls, of happy victorian-dressed women and men in proper suits smiling next to rather tame slogans about different shoe brands.

“Can I help you?” a young man asked. He had an apron on over slacks and a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

“Hi,” I said. “I’d like some shoes, please.”

He looked me up and down, then stared at my feet. I almost fidgetted and hid them, but I resisted the urge.

“I have money,” I said.

The young man frowned. “This is a proper establishment,” he said.

“One that sells shoes, right?” I asked. “Well, I’m a customer. Can you help me or will I need to go elsewhere?

The boy worked his jaw, then he set some tools aside onto the front counter. “Very well, but only because Mister Cobbler would box my ears if he heard I sent a customer off. What do you need?”

“Boots,” I said. “Something tough that’ll keep my toes warm and my feet dry.” I was surprisingly comfortable walking around barefoot all over. And bare feet were cheaper than buying shoes. But the dungeon wasn’t going to be kind to my soles.

“Boots, I think we have something in your size.” He walked across the room to a wall that had smaller boxes. “Come over here, I need to measure your foot-size.”

He had a tape tucked in his pocket. He had me place my foot on a stool, then frowned at it before measuring it quickly. “Wait here,” he said.

I stared at the boxes for a moment. Some had prices scribbled on them, and I winced at the amounts. I could afford it, but it would set me back. My nest-egg back at the farm would be all I had left after today.

The young man returned with a bucket half-full of water and a piece of cloth. “Wash your feet,” he said.

I scowled, but... well, that was only fair.

I did as he asked while he pulled out a few boxes. “Here, these aren’t popular,” he said. The boots he took out were about as plain as could be.

“Then why are you showing me these?” I asked. I slid my foot in. It was a bit loose, but that was probably for the best. I could wear extra socks.

“Because they’re easy to fix,” he said. “And they’re cheap, but are decently well made.”

“Oh,” I said.

I tied the shoe up, somehow the action was still kind of familiar. Then I walked around in a circle. My steps were clunky and loud, and I felt unbalanced. The shoes didn’t have the kind of comfy soles the shoes back in the before had, but it wasn’t too bad. “I guess I’ll take them,” I said.

The boy nodded, then asked that I pay him upfront. I did, taking out coins and paying him with exact change.

Then, to my surprise, he knelt down before me and took my booted foot in his hands. I was going to ask him what he was doing when I felt the boot shift.

He did the same to the other, and after he let go, I tested the boots. They fit perfectly, as if they’d been custom made just for me. I probably shouldn’t have been too surprised. It made sense that cobblers would have cobbler magic of some sort.

Nearly all of my money drained, I walked out of the cobbler’s with my new shoes clunking along under me. Maybe I’d get them shined? That seemed like the thing to do, at least if all the shoeshine boys were anything to go by.

On the way home I stopped by a small street-side stall that sold newspapers and little candies and bought two little chocolate bars and a copy of Delver’s Delight, a periodical that was meant for delvers. The chocolate I’d share with mom, the same way that Dada did with me, sometimes.

The next day would be my first excursion into the Ditz dungeon. For better or worse.

I had a million and one things on my plate, but a ton of them hinged on me being capable enough in the dungeon to hold my own.

How could I light this cesspool of a city on fire if I couldn’t even handle one measly dungeon?

I skipped back home, new boots clack-clapping with every bounce.

***

Death Cap - Nine - Walking With Confidence that Fools the Self

“I’m heading out, mom,” I said.

“Mmm,” was my mom’s reply. She was on the bed, knit blankets pulled all the way up to her chin, body curled up into a ball. She reminded me, in these moments so early in the morning before the world truly awakened, a little of a wounded animal.

Sometimes I’d see her clutching onto one of Dada’s shirts. She’d cry, at night and when she thought I couldn’t hear her.

It was hard to get her to eat.

I... didn’t know what to do about it. To say that seeing her that way made me feel sad would be far too reductivist. I felt something like a wrenching in my gut, a twist around my heart. It was kindling onto the fire burning inside me.

Some asshole had done this to us. The anger, the sadness, the loss, it was all caused by someone’s greed.

I bet they didn’t cry themselves to sleep.

Not yet.

I slipped out of our house and glanced around. The sun wasn’t up yet but it was trying to rise. The slums were a pale blue and wreathed in shadows. In the dawning light of the early morning, a lot of the sins of the slums were masked and hidden away, unseen unless you knew where to look.

I hiked my satchel onto my shoulder until it was nice and snug, then I started my way through the slums.

Today was the day I tackled the Ditz Dungeon. It wouldn’t be easy, but I didn’t expect it to be all that difficult either. The goal was mostly to scope the place out. I didn’t have any delusions that I’d be strong enough to waltz in there and conquer the place on my own.

I’d go in, and then try to see just what sort of growth I needed.

At the moment, I had two open General Skill slots and about... forty skills I could pick up. Most of them were completely useless. I didn’t need [Cooking {Common}] to do my job. Some might be handy. I had acquired [Sneaking {Common}] at some point, and I was tempted to take it.

I could also get rid of some of my other skills. [Knitting {Common}] was still my highest-levelled skill. It was... a bit plebeian, and not exactly helpful for my goals. I mostly kept it because... I don’t know. Sentimentality?

[Running {Common}] and [Basic Poison Resistance {Common}] were both acceptable skills. Running was a bit plain, but really I couldn’t see it not coming in handy. I wasn’t equipped to take on big threats so running away was going to be one of my first options.

I stopped by the husk of that burned down house a block over. It was one of my three extra mushroom-cultivating areas. Places where I could grow things without risking my farm. The house had some plain [Mana-Infused Brown Horse Head]. Those were tasty enough in their raw form, and they provided me with a good boost to my mana. I’d need them just to refill my stores once I got past the mana-sucking surroundings of the dungeon.

I stuffed a dozen or so in my bag and I moved on.

My next stop was in a dirty alley way. A dead-end which led nowhere, and which had a twist at the entrance preventing anyone from seeing inside. It would have been a great hideout for the homeless except for one thing, a large manhole cover with a grill. The stench of passing sewer water was pungent within the enclosed alley. There wasn’t enough wind passing through to wash it away.

Perfect for me.

I tugged the cover off with a length of rope I’d stashed away by tying a  quick knot around the bars of the grill. A ladder was bolted to the walls of the shaft. After putting on my new mask, I climbed down carefully, aware of both my new boots (which weren’t as grippy as my bare feet) and the slime that tended to grow on the bars.

Once at the bottom I stayed close to the walls, avoiding the gurgling stream in the middle of the tunnels until I found what I came down there for.

A whole shelf of the sewer wall was knocked out, bricks tossed aside to reveal the dirt behind. That shelf was covered in large balls, about the size of my two fists put together.

[Dead Man’s Cough] my most deadly creation so far. A kind of mushroom that, similar to the puffball that I’d combined to create it, launched its spores as a cloud when its puffy exterior was squished.

Unlike common puffballs, the spores of the [Dead Man’s Cough] were more than just a mild irritant. They were outright deadly.

The poison wasn’t fast-acting, which was a shame. It would take hours, or even days for them to kill a grown adult. More if they had someone to tend to them, I suspected. It was even likely that with proper treatment, they wouldn’t kill at all.

I picked the mushrooms carefully, choosing those that looked ripe to explode at a moment’s notice. I circulated some mana through them, then inspected one of the better-looking samples.

[Dead Man’s Cough] - Rare

A mushroom filled with highly toxic spores. Inhalation of these spores will cause immediate inflammation in the inhaler’s lungs, followed by trance-like hallucinations and internal haemorrhaging, possibly leading to death.

I’d forgotten about the hallucinogenic properties! Right, those might give me something of an edge against certain opponents. Someone who was tripping out wouldn’t be the best in a fight.

Then again, I wasn’t sure what kind of hallucinations these gave. The kind of hallucination different drugs gave people could be vastly different, from hearing and seeing things that weren’t quite there, to having your senses be slightly warped, to falling into full-on dream-like states where your brain failed to process anything correctly.

Any of those would be nice to afflict on an adversary, to be fair.

I tucked the mushrooms into my satchel, careful to keep them separate from the edible mushrooms.

And that was it. I was as ready as I could be on such short notice and with so few resources at my disposal.

I climbed out of the sewer, then pulled the manhole shut with a scrape and clang.

That was it. Time to face the dungeon.

The walk across the city was quick and easy. The sun was still rising as I moved towards Ditz, and while I saw plenty of workers heading off to their early shift, it was still too early for most. As I neared the dungeon I heard a faint clamour in the distance, six tolls of a heavy bell.

The Ditz dungeon was pretty busy, despite the early hour. The dungeon itself--which looked something like a stack of rocks sitting in the middle of a wide clearing where buildings had either been razed or never built in the first place--was surrounded by tents and temporary installations.

Delvers were congregating together off to one side, different groups under their own banners.

I counted maybe fifty of them in all, men and some few women in armour. Mostly breastplates and the occasional shin and arm-guard. I didn’t see any mages, which I took to be a good sign.

Remembering something I’d heard in the before , I walked straight towards the dungeon, neither walking fast nor slow, and keeping my eyes forward. If I looked like I knew what I was doing, and that I definitely belonged here, then no one would stop me.

The plan worked.

There were a few Bullies near the edges of the dungeon compound, but they were enjoying warm tea from a thermos and chattering with each other. Some foremen were standing around  near the entrance too , but they were busy yelling at workers or chatting.

I walked right past two men with hard-hats on and they didn’t even spare me a glance.

And then I slipped under the huge D above the entrance to the dungeon. I’d made it.

The moment I slipped into the dungeon I felt a strange tingle pressing down around me. It was like the opposite of what I felt standing outside, where the dungeon slowly seeped away at my mana.  The air felt... alive. Every lungful I took felt right  in a way that I’d only felt in my farm when everything was in full bloom and Feronie’s blessing was at its fullest.

I shook the feeling off. It was a distraction.

The dungeon’s entrance was a great big room with stone walls to the sides and a slightly uneven floor. Planks that looked like they’d been moved a thousand times were on the ground, acting as levels and ramps deeper into the room. Above, the ceiling was bare stone, with only a few roots poking out.

The space was lit by rows of electric bulbs hanging from wires that were held up by movable poles.

I’d made it in. Now to see what the fuss was about.

***

Death Cap - Ten - Plunging into the Depth of Ditz

Even though it was early in the day, the dungeon was still relatively busy. I darted to the side and out of the way of a team of delvers heading out of the dungeon. Unlike those outside, these were dirtied and sweaty.

I watched them pass, taking note of their gear. Mostly spears, some with two-pronged heads. A few had long, narrow shields  fixed to their arms.

Now, I wasn’t an expert by any means, but from what I could tell, each delver  team that went down was destined for a specific floor. Stew, who was a delver before he lost half his limbs, said that he’d worked on one of the middle-floors. Five or six or something. His equipment was meant to tackle that floor specifically.

The first floor, according to my dated map, had spider rats and spider sheep.

I continued down along the edge of the room, trying to be inconspicuous while I thought. Spider-monsters were likely smaller, with webs and such. If they could cling to walls and the ceiling, then the spears made sense. The shields too. Maybe spider sheep could ram? If that was the case, having a tall shield to keep safe made sense.

The opening room had two doorways other than the entrance. One to the left and another to the right. The far end of the room was being used as a break area of sorts, with both delvers  and normal workers placing down benches and mobile showers and curtains.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out why. There were probably some sort of more biological threat below, and people who ran out of mana outside would need a place to recoup it without clogging up the dungeon.

That was also likely where guards would be stationed once things started.

The left-side room was a dead end according to my map. I didn’t bother doing any more than glimpsing within it to confirm as much.

So off to the right I went.

The cavern was even bigger than the entrance. A huge room with a rent down the middle of it, something which hadn’t been on my map. The sides of the room were all sheer stone with a few mossy patches. A bridge made of metal beams and covered in wooden planks had been slid into place over the gap. It even had rails on the side, something I hadn’t expected to see on what was clearly a mobile bridge.

I moved off to the side, both to be out of the way of a crew walking past and deeper into the dungeon, and so that I could see down the crack.

It was maybe two metres across, with jagged edges. The bit of light from the incandescent bulbs strung across the room didn’t illuminate the bottom of the crack, giving it the illusion of being basically bottomless.

Creepy, but only dangerous in a sort of neutral way, like any other place where you could fall would be.

I crossed the bridge while no one was on it, and came upon  a choice.

There was a path straight ahead, That led down a corridor, then to a few more rooms before it reached the room that led down the dungeon to the second floor. A second path on the right, this time heading towards what should have been the outside  of the dungeon (assuming I hadn’t dropped my elevation that much) but instead kept going for a while.

The right-most path would eventually loop around back to the main path to the second floor, at least according to my map.

I had made up my mind already, before even entering the dungeon.

I went right.

That way led to a warren of smaller and larger rooms, some of which I knew had some sort of water access and spaces where natural things grew.

From what I understood, the main, straight, path took priority when it came to being cleared. It made sense. If they were going to send teams down all day, then they’d need to clear out as deep as they could. Then they could shift their focus to clearing wide.

Someone had definitely sat down to figure out how all of this could be done in as efficient a way as possible.

The next room was more cave -like. This time with jutting stalagmites and stalactites (I could never remember which was which, but fortunately the room had both). They occasionally formed entire columns into which someone had hastily tied some ropes to hold up one of those power cords with lights attached.

I was beginning to wonder if the dungeon had anything worth taking at all when I checked into one of the adjoining rooms. My map suggested that this one had some sort of water feature, and I could clearly hear some water gurgling. The room’s entrance was less an archway and more an s-shaped curve. It was fairly narrow down the centre. The last entrances had been wide enough for carts to pull through, but this one wouldn’t handle two people walking in shoulder-to-shoulder.

I slipped into the next room cautiously, one hand already in my satchel and around a plump [Dead Man’s Cough].

There was a team in the room, four men and a single woman, all in delver’s garb. More interesting were the creatures on the ground around them. A dozen in all, each about as high as my hip.

I gulped. They were rats, certainly, but with longer legs and fatter bodies. Their faces were elongated, to make room for the mandibles under their four beady eyes.

They were about as big as German Shepherds, and I desperately didn’t want to mess with them.

Fortunately, the twenty or so of them in the room were all very dead. Some bisected , some missing their heads, more of them just run through.

The delvers were cleaning off their weapons and checking their gear, the fight was over, from the looks of it.

“Hey, you,” one of them said, the woman.

I jumped when I realized  she was addressing me. I almost ran, but she pointed to me and I froze. “You’re from Erol’s crew?” she asked.

“Um,” I said.

“Yeah, good. Tell him it’s cleared. They can start the harvest as soon as we’re done sweeping. Are the other kids behind you?”

I stood a bit taller, then stepped into the room. I had to avert suspicion. “No ma’am, they’re not here yet, ma’am.”

One of the  delvers snorted. “Ma’am,” he repeated, which set another of them to giggling like some sort of moron. It earned him a swift kick in the shin from the woman. Fortunately for him, his shin was armoured. The clang still sounded like it hurt though.

“Shut up, you,” she said before turning to me. “Gods, they get smaller every year, don’t you?”

“Uh,” I said. “Maybe?”

She shook her head, then gestured around. “Well, this place won’t clean itself. Go get your little friends.”

I finally looked around the room.

It was a tiny paradise. There was a small pond in the corner, feeding crystal clear water into a large pit surrounded by rocks. The water was coming from a crack that ran along the ceiling. It flowed around a few spikes and dripped down with a constant splatter.

The room was alive. Ferns were tucked into the corners and sides, and there were glowing, phosphorescent strips of lichen poking out from dirt patches on the ground.

Most of the light came from some heavy-duty kerosene lamps, but... but glowing mushrooms!

“You going, kid?” the woman asked.

“Um, yes, but I need some samples first,” I said.

“What for?”

I shrugged, feigning ignorance. “I don’t know. Just following orders, ma’am.”

The woman shook her head. “Yeah, whatever. Just hurry. Don’t squeeze the water shrooms.”

Water shrooms? I was practically salivating as I darted to the side towards a nice patch of lichen. It was hardy stuff, sticking mostly to the underside of rocky shelves in the walls and coming down as long strands. I inspected one from up close with my [Druid Sight].

[Blur Glow Lichen] - {Rare}

A lichen found in several dungeons and which will glow when in the presence of mana. Often used by alchemists to create mana-activated potions or lights.

Then I spotted another prize. A fist-sized mushroom that I almost missed. It was a flat grey, the same colour as the stones around it.

[Blackbottle] - {Uncommon}

A mushroom frequently found in humid climes. It will fill with water and when ripe, will burst apart releasing watery spores onto the ground around it. A source of untainted water.

Coming here was definitely the right choice!

I plucked a bit of the lichen after poking it carefully to make sure it was something I could handle. Then I plucked a few of the smaller, less ripe [Blackbottle]. They’d be less likely to burst that way, or so I hoped.

I had no idea what I was going to do with these two samples, but I’d find something!

***

Death Cap - Eleven - Diving Deeper Towards Perils Known

I found a bit of cloth at the bottom of my satchel. A knitting project that I hadn’t finished. Using that, I wrapped up the [Blackbottle] I’d found and tucked it in the bottom of the satchel. I was hoping it wouldn’t burst. I’d tugged a fair bit of its mycelium along too, so maybe I could replant it once I got back to my farm.

I didn’t know what I’d use it for, but there was certainly potential there. Anyway, more kinds of mushrooms would mean more potential combinations, which might give me the edge at some point. All I needed was to luck out a few times to get even more useful mushrooms.

“Hey, kid, you done?” the woman delver asked.

I jumped to my feet, nodding already. “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’m going to go tell the others now. Thank you!”

With that said, I glanced around the room one more time, then darted away. I paused by the entrance to change back to the delver  crew.

“Um. Will the other rooms on the first floor be cleared already?” I asked.

The woman frowned. “No. There’s Lucas’ crew in the forest room. We’ll be moving in deeper once that’s cleared out.”

“Okay, thank you,” I said.

I didn’t stick around to push my luck any more. The delver  crew might start asking questions and I didn’t feel like answering them. The spider rat monsters they’d killed were  also making me nervous. They were frankly kind of terrifying.

Could I take on a whole nest of those? Maybe, if I tossed in one of my [Dead Man’s Cough]s before the spider-rats could react. They looked sort of mammalian, so clogging up their lungs would probably work to kill them.

Stepping back into the previous room, I glanced around and got my bearings back. The way I’d come from was to my right and the dungeon continued onto my left. Frowning, I stepped to the side and behind a small outcropping of rocks--after checking for spider rats--and pulled out my map again.

I was... three rooms from the entrance at the top left of the map. The other passage, currently to my left, was a long corridor that led into a room with those big circles. I had no idea what those were meant to symbolise.

I tucked the map away. My plan was to poke my head into the big room, then continue on through the dungeon for a while. If my guess was right, then the Ditz dungeon crews hadn’t scoured the entirety of the first floor yet. There might be more stuff worth finding down here.

My end-goal was to reach the bottom of the dungeon. That was not going to happen in one day. Today was all about getting the lay of the land and learning what I needed to prepare so that next time I’d be able to go in even deeper.

Plus finding cool mushrooms.

That was a nice bonus. I wondered if there were more. The dungeon was supposed to provide a lot of materials to local factories. Wood and coal and iron and... meat. I paused mid-step. Had I been eating spider rats my whole life?

I considered it, then decided to stop thinking about it. Besides, those cans of meat paste were a rare delicacy that we’d only been able to afford a few times.

The long passage leading deeper into the dungeon was bent in the middle, making it impossible to see the far end of it. Just before that bend was a side passage leading off into another room. I could hear water streaming within, but chose not to investigate. I’d be going that way in a moment, but first I wanted to see what was up ahead.

I came around the bend, then slowed down as I heard grunting out ahead and some men talking to each other.

Moving carefully, I made sure not to stomp my boots down onto any loose rocks as I approached the entrance at the end of the tunnel.

The moment I was close enough to see into the room I froze. My eyes widened, and I felt my jaw going slack.

There was a forest.

An entire forest with great big trees rising up above, the canopy of their leaves so thick and vibrant that I couldn’t make out the ceiling above, though there had to be one. There was something bright and blue above and... and no, there was a ceiling, one entirely covered in glowing moss whose colour mimicked a cloudless sky. The moss was way out of reach. The ground was covered in ferns and some jagged boulders around which the trees grew.

I ducked to the side as I saw a group of men walk by. They were carrying something white and bloody between them. Some sort of monster? I couldn’t make out its features other than it had lots of legs. They swung it to the side and onto a pile that I couldn’t quite see from my vantage.

I ignored them as they went back into the brush.

An entire forest! Inside of a cavern! The trees looked like nothing I was familiar with, with gnarled bark on their sides and stout branches pushing out at nearly straight-edged angles. I took a deep breath, then let it all out in a woosh. It smelled nice. Clean and refreshing. I hadn’t smelled anything like this since... before I was reborn.

More voices came from the woods, and I perked up to listen. “--the lumberjack crews over. We’ve cleared the room. Team fourteen can stay behind for a few hours in case anything else shows up.”

“With normal pay?”

“No, the situation’s clear. No combat pay, not unless they get ambushed. And if they do, it’s their own fault for not clearing the room properly.”

“Yes, sir.”

They were heading my way!

I looked at the forest one last time before spinning on my heel and darting back. It sounded as if the delver crew was done with that room, so they’d be heading back. I didn’t want to be caught in their path.

This time, I dipped into the room where I could hear that stream. There was a bit of a tunnel leading into it, but it only ran for a few metres before opening up onto a room that gave me pause.

So far, the tunnels had either been  lit by incandescent bulbs strung up on movable platforms, or like the forest had come with their own lighting. This room didn’t have that.

It was dark. Cave dark. I couldn’t see the far end of the room, and only a bit of light came in from behind me, around the bend of the tunnel.

Water was splashing by somewhere ahead of me, but I couldn’t see it.

Carefully, I reached into my satchel and pulled out the sample of [Blue Glow Lichen] I’d harvested earlier. The mossy lichen still had some glow left to it, enough to push back the nearest shadows.

It was supposed to react to mana, so... with a bit of a frown, I twisted my mana around my hand and into the little glass vial I’d placed the lichen into. With [Aura of Growth] triggered, the lichen started to glow much brighter.

It wasn’t a flashlight, but it was something.

With the darkness pushed back I was able to make out more of the room. It was long and narrow, or more narrow the forest room had been, at least. There was a passage off to one side that I could see, and I knew there was one at the far end, but it was obscured by the shadows.

I’d need to get closer to see it, but it was right there on my map, and the map hadn’t been wrong so far.

I raised the lichen vial higher. Maybe I’d bring more of these next time, especially if I intended to dive into parts of the dungeon that hadn’t been explored or cleared yet.

A stream ran through the centre of the room, pouring out of a crack along one wall, then across the uneven floor and down into a pit by the far end. My light didn’t go far into that hole, and I had the impression it was basically endless.

I squinted at the wall next to the stream. Were those things next to the water mushrooms? Feeling rather giddy, I started across the room.

Then the things shifted and lifted their heads, revealing  many-eyed faces with mandibles and cruel eyes that glinted in the light from my lichen.

I froze.

The spider rats didn’t.

A dozen of them skittered on eight legs, approaching me even as they moved diagonally across the rocky ground, hissing like alley cats meeting a dog in the night.

“Oh shit,” I swore.

Then I did the sensible thing and tried to run.

That worked for all of a step before I realized  that somehow my boots were stuck to the ground. I half-turned, as best I could with my legs stuck, and stared at the incoming swarm. “Oh, shit shit shit!”

***

Death Cap - Twelve - Picking Whether to Run or Fight

If I couldn’t run, then the entire fight-or-flight equation became very easy to work out.

I tugged my leg up as hard as I could, which did nothing but shift my foot around and make my socks bunch up uncomfortably in my boots. There was some sort of sticky white substance on the ground, I noticed. Just a few lines of it spread across the floor. Spiderweb?

A squeak next to me had me looking up. The spider rats were approaching.

Not quickly. The rats were still smaller than I was, and they seemed somewhat cautious. They spread out in a wide semi-circle, beady eyes locked onto me even as they slunked back into the shadows.

I moved my makeshift lantern around so that I could keep an eye on all of them. I counted twelve. Then I counted ten the second time I tried to keep track of them all. “Oh, come on,” I muttered.

I was afraid, yes, but more than that I was frustrated. This could have been avoided if I had been more careful. If I had gone slower I might have noticed the webbing on the ground. If I had brought better lighting I might have seen the spider rats in the centre of the room. If I had enough power, then this situation wouldn’t even be a concern.

Tossing my lichen vial to my free hand, I opened my satchel and pulled out my mask. I figured I had seconds to act before one of the spider rats decided to make a snack out of me, so I hurried to slip the gas  mask on. It made it so that every breath I took had to be forced through the filters, and then every exhale made the mask warmer against my skin.

I didn’t complain too much. It was needed for what would come next.

“Hey, ratty-ratty-rats,” I murmured. The spider rats ticked and chittered. “Look, food.” I grabbed a [Brown Horse Head] and tossed it out ahead of me. The mushroom bounced on the ground and rolled to an ungainly stop a few metres away.

I waited, aware that the rats were still getting closer. Had some of them moved behind me? Were they using pack tactics? That was just... really rude, actually.

“Not taking the bait, huh?” I asked the spider rats. “That’s fine, that’s fine.” My hand squeezed around a large, puffy mushroom in my satchel, one surrounded by a thin layer of cloth to keep it safe. I pulled the [Dead Man’s cough] out and looked around me for the biggest concentration of spider rats.

It was to my left, partially hidden behind a rock tall enough to reach my knees. Spidery eyes glinted in the dark behind the stone. I pulled my arm back, then threw.

The mushroom sailed across the air about as well as one could expect a mushroom to fly. It flipped on itself, then with a hard smack  hit the side of the rock and burst apart.

In my mind, I imagined a huge cloud of spore particulates rising from the impact zone in a perfect sphere. The reality was a lot messier.

Most of the spore travelled out in a line off to one side, missing everything except for the floor. A few though, burst upwards and hung in the air. There was a breeze coming from the rushing water that had a small dusting of spores travel across the room.

“Damn,” I muttered.

I don’t think I hit a single spider rat. What I did do though, was anger the entire lot of them.

They hissed and spat, and a few of them raced forwards towards me. In a panic, I swung my bag out towards the nearest and it jumped back and out of smacking range.

I pulled out a second [Dead Man’s Cough] then flung it hard against the ground ahead of me. It burst apart, leaving a starburst of spores against the ground but also throwing some into the air. I grabbed a third and squeezed it, the ball puffing out a cloud of swirling spores ahead of me.

A couple of the spider rats were caught in the cloud and they started to hack and cough.

I worked to keep my breathing steady and low, aware the entire time that my mask wasn’t perfect. It was made for someone with a lot more jaw than I had. It wasn’t impossible for some of those spores to sneak in.

My foot suddenly pulled free and I half-stumbled back.

Of course, I immediately stepped into another tangle of web. “Damn it!” I swore.

One of the spider rats jumped, and I screamed like the little girl I was as it tackled me. I batted at it even as its limbs tried to grab at me. Then I got my hands around its torso and pushed it away. Its mouth was open, hissing with mandibles covered in what I could only assume was poison.

I blasted it with [Blight].

The problem with that particular attack was that it wasn’t fast-acting. I saw the magic shove into the monster’s flesh, rotting it away, but it was moving along a millimetre at a time, and each little advance was draining my mana.

But only a little?

The dungeon! There was a lot more ambient mana in the dungeon than out of it. Which meant that I could push out more!

I did just that, firing off a burst of [Blight] all around me that had the nearest spider rats backing off. Then I threw the one that had jumped at me away. It landed on its back, then flipped around.

It’s only then that I noticed the scratches on my arms and sides. Its feet were tipped in nasty little claws that had cut right through my clothes.

“You bastard!” I shouted. I plucked out another [Dead Man’s Cough] and beaned the rat in the face with it.

It squeaked, head jerking back as it ate a mouthful of poisonous mushroom. I didn’t watch it choke to death. Instead I flung another mushroom down at my feet, creating a small cloud around myself. The next one to jump at me would regret it.

Ducking down, I looked at my boots, then the webs across the floor, then I focused. With [Aura of Growth] acting as a sort of aiming tool, I pushed mana under my boots, then switch that to [Blight].

The webs rotted, and just like that my feet came free with a disgusting squelsh.

It would have been easier to take the boots off, I think, but I wasn’t about to leave my boots behind. They’d been expensive!

I started to back up towards the entrance, watchful not to put my foot in more webs. There were a lot of them, but most were thin and probably wouldn’t do much to slow someone down. The spiders spat and hissed, following after me and matching every step I took.

A few had their hissing cut off by nasty coughs, and I saw  a couple of them clawing at their throats near the back of the group.

Served them right.

The moment I was next to the entrance I pulled out a juicy [Dead Man’s Cough] and slammed it against the edge of the exit. A small cloud of dusty spores filled the exit before me, hopefully preventing anything from running after me.

And with that, I turned and ran.

I was not  ready to take on more of those spiders. Not yet.

I retraced my steps through the previous room of the dungeon, following the hanging lights that illuminated the explored sections towards the exit.

Today hadn’t been a waste ... but it wasn’t great. I hissed as I touched my arms. They hurt. The cottony material of my shirt was doing a good job of absorbing the bit of blood but... no, I needed to clean out the little cuts and bandage them.

My hands were covered in spores though. Very poisonous ones. Cursing my poor luck, I rubbed my hands against my pants and continued towards the exit. I came onto the room  with the bridge in the middle. There were a lot more people milling around it now than there had been a few hours prior.

I kept my head down, whipped off my mask to avoid looking too suspicious, and slipped through with a group crossing the bridge in the opposite direction.

I paused on the other side. A man was looking over a pile of crates. Wooden ones, with rope handles on either end. He looked like an adventurer, but his gear was strange. He had armour on, but also an apron and a helmet with a lamp on it. Lots of vials too. What really caught my eye were the piles of dark blue mushrooms in the crates before him.

Moving to the side, I paused for just a moment, then took off running. He barely glanced my way, not until I swept by and filched one of those blue mushrooms and stuffed it down the front of my overalls.

“Hey!” he shouted.

I was already sprinting away.

I couldn’t have the entire adventure down here be a waste.

***

Death Cap - Thirteen - Dusting Off After a Partial Victory

If I was actually  a nearly-seven year old, then I’d probably throw a fit about my failure. It was frustrating, and things hadn’t worked out the way I wanted them to at all.

But I wasn’t. I still had the mind of an adult scientist. An angry, anarchistic one, but still... anyway. I took solace in the little bit of success I had as I left the area around the dungeon and made my way back home and to my farm.

The advantage of hitting the dungeon so early was that it wasn’t noon yet by the time I got back home. I slid my mask off, then checked the filters with a wince. They were filled with spores. Better the filters than my lungs though. I set them aside carefully. I’d clean them later. My clothes too, for that matter, I had a smattering of dust on  me that  was probably slightly lethal.

I got myself a bucket of water, then washed off my hands and face. Just over an hour spent in the dungeon and I was a sweaty, dirty mess. There was webbing on my boots and a couple new holes in my overalls.

Once I was cleaned off as best as I could manage, I cleared one of my workbenches and laid out the rewards for all of my hard work. Other than the experience I’d gained from checking the dungeon out, of course.

First, the two types of fungi I’d picked up in that one water room. The [Blackbottle] I had was a smaller specimen, but it nonetheless had water in it already. I gave it a light shake and watched the liquid within splash around.

There was a lot of potential there. I wasn’t sure what it would be wisest to combine that with, but I’d figure it out. On its own, it was maybe useful as a source of water, though I did have access to some water already.

Did the mushroom leach the water from the air? If so it might be a clever way to control the humidity in a small area.

The [Blur Glow Lichen] had proven useful already. The dungeon--the parts that weren’t illuminated by the delvers already--was a dark and foreboding place. I needed a constant source of light. Having one I could control with my magic would be great, but I’d also need something that didn’t use magic. A lamp of some sort, maybe?

I shifted the two aside and looked at the third mushroom that I’d grabbed. This was the one I’d swiped on the way out. It looked... like a pretty normal mushroom. The cap was slightly wavy, with a deep purple top and a beige-white belly. The stem was squat and fat, with purple stripes running down it until they reached the skirt.

The most interesting parts were the little warts on the cap. They were silvery and, if I wasn’t mistaken, were glowing faintly. Magic?

I focused my [Druid Sight] on the mushroom, eager to learn more about it.

[Purple Capped Night Watcher] - Rare

This rare mushroom is only found in areas with a particular kind of predatory animal, notably creatures who stalk and predate  on others using magical means in unlit environments. While very mildly poisonous, this mushroom allows those who eat it to see in the dark, amplifying natural night vision. Used in several alchemical concoctions.

I set the mushroom down, then, with a firm grip on my self-control, danced a little jig. Magical mushrooms! A rare one at that! Night vision! Magic night vision! I giggled to myself. It wasn’t the magic bullet I dreamed of finding, but there was no way this wouldn’t come in handy!

Oh, I couldn’t wait to combine this with every other kind of mushroom I had. What if I discovered something even more potent?

Once I’d calmed down a little, I set to work, grabbing some old tweezers and vials so that I could carefully extract the spores from the samples I’d taken and place them into some vials I’d purchased.

I fed the result some magic with my [Aura of Growth]. It would take a week or two to get everything growing enough that I could harvest new samples. Then another couple of weeks to try and combine those samples into something new.

Still, it would be worth it.

Which begged the question... should I return to the dungeon?

I’d used up most of the [Dead Man’s Cough] I had, and I was pretty sure I hadn’t even cleared that one room.

I wasn’t nearly as ready as I hoped to be, but... well, maybe that was to be expected. I had come out alive and with a few decent rewards, I couldn’t be too disappointed in my day.

Still, I could do better, and maybe the next time I went down I’d make sure to use every advantage I had. There were two general skill slots still empty, and I had a heap of skills to pick from.

[You have unlocked the following Skills!]

Acrobat - Common

Adapt - Common

Agriculture - Common

Aiming - Common

Argumenter - Common

Baking - Common

Basic Small Blades Proficiency - Common

Basic Dungeoneering - Common

Begging - Common

Betting - Common

Biting - Common

Biomancy - Uncommon

Broadcasting - Uncommon

Building - Common

Calculator - Uncommon

Catching - Common

Chopping - Common

Cleaning - Common

Cleric Craft - Uncommon

Communication Specialist - Uncommon

Colouring - Common

Combat Novice - Common

Cooking - Common

Crawling - Common

Critical Thinking - Rare

Crying - Common

And that was just the first three letters of the alphabet. The list went on for a while. I’d grown used to ignoring it when a new skill pop-up showed up in my periphery.

Interestingly enough, I’d notice some skills disappearing over time. I had [Basic Trap Making] at one time, but now it was gone and replaced with just [Trap Making] at one level of rarity higher.

Was that the path to upgrading skills? I’d need to ask someone more knowledgeable about it before I purposefully kneecapped myself.

I had to create more of a shortlist. The first part of that wasn’t too hard, most of the skills I’d gathered were trash and frankly kind of useless. I didn’t need [Crawling] taking up one of my precious skill slots.

I pulled out pen and paper and made a proper list of the skills that actually interested me.

Critical Thinking - Rare

Druidcraft - Rare

Mana Manipulation - Common

Pathfinding - Uncommon

Poison Handling Expertise - Rare

Social Manipulation - Uncommon

Stealth - Uncommon

Tenacity - Uncommon

Trap Making - Uncommon

I glared at the page. That was too many options. If my goal was only working with the dungeon, then the choices were obvious. [Trap Making] would let me lock up parts of the dungeon and kill enemies without direct combat, and [Stealth] would allow me to get around.

But my life wasn’t all about sneaking into the dungeon, and I didn’t think that the lower floors would be easy enough that I could just sneak past whatever challenges they had.

I reluctantly crossed out [Trap Making]. I could learn how to do that the old-fashioned way. Skills made things easier, but not having a skill didn’t mean that I couldn’t do something.

[Critical Thinking] was tempting. A skill that might directly make me smarter? That would be invaluable in the planning stages. I was, unfortunately, unsurprised that it was a rare skill.

The other skill that I was really tempted by was [Social Manipulation]. It wasn’t a skill that would help directly  in a fight, but... well, there were people in the dungeon that I had to get past. Being able to lie, mislead, and trick them with less effort and more skill would be invaluable. Also, it was a skill that I could very easily use in my day-to-day. I was dealing with people  which meant that I needed to be able to handle them.

It went on my short-short list.

After a bit more hesitation, I crossed out two more skills.

[Stealth] was handy, but it was mostly something I could learn to do myself. I was light on my feet already. Maybe all I needed was to not wear white into the dungeon and learn to move slower.

[Pathfinding] I’d added because it just seemed useful to have, especially if I was going to be navigating without a map, but... well, I did have a map for now. Other skills were more useful.

I stared at [Mana Manipulation] for a long while.

I wanted  that skill.

It was such a cool thing, a gateway to magic, to greater power and potential. But... but magic, I’d learned, required education and resources that I didn’t have. Maybe if I wasn’t born in the slums, maybe if I had a life with more opportunities, but that wasn’t the case, and I didn’t have that kind of luck.

Magic would have to wait.

It wasn’t like I didn’t have my own particular brand of magic to work with anyway.

I wrote my new shortlist and nodded. Now, to pick more carefully.

***

Death Cap - Fourteen - Picking the Best Options for Dramatic Growth

My list, now that I’d peeled off a few more options, was... not small enough to make the choice easy, but it was less cluttered, at least.

Critical Thinking - Rare

Druidcraft - Rare

Poison Handling Expertise - Rare

Social Manipulation - Uncommon

Tenacity - Uncommon

Five big options, three of which were at least rare though maybe I shouldn’t rely just on skill rarity to make my choices.

I tapped the first option, [Critical Thinking] and read over its system-given description.

[Critical Thinking] - Rare

By taking time to think through the issues and challenges facing you, you can better work out the best and worst course of action. Critical thinking doesn’t give you wisdom, it merely helps you detach your emotions from your choices while assisting you in having a more complete understanding of the world.  As this skill grows, so will your ability to think logically.

Category: Self-mastery

Damn, that was tempting. It wouldn’t be immediately helpful, but it was the kind of skill I would have loved to have in my previous life. It sounded like a scientist’s wet-dream, to be able to analyse things without personal bias alone would be huge.

But... as incredibly awesome as the skill might be, it wasn’t immediately useful.

I was still in a poor position, literally and figuratively. I needed concrete advantages to bootstrap myself, and while the skill would maybe allow me to come up with solutions, it wouldn’t necessarily help me achieve them.

This was a great skill for someone who already had some amount of power, who could move pieces on the figurative board and who wanted to climb the societal ladder or who had some way to force change.

I had none of that.

Maybe it would be a skill I could revisit once I had a firmer grasp on the world and more personal power. The truth was, you needed privilege to be able to employ intelligence.

I cursed under my breath, then crossed the skill off my list. It hurt, but... yeah, it wasn’t the golden solution.

Druidcraft was next, and this one seemed more interesting.

[Druidcraft] - Rare

The craft of druids is a vast art made up of many parts, and this skill facilitates the understanding and execution of all those aspects. Druidcraft includes potion making, communicating with nature both physically and magically, and fighting through natural means with natural weapons. As this skill grows so will your expertise with various facets of druidcraft.

Category: Nature magic, Nature crafting

So, this was less of a specific skill, and more of a... generalist one. I hadn’t seen any like that yet, but I imagined they were somewhat common. Skills that helped the skill-haver with a lot of related tasks.

It probably earned its rarity just by being so useful across so many things.

There was a lot of good stuff here, even if I suspected that each one of those things was weaker than a skill specifically designed for that thing would make them. A sort of jack-of-all skill. Potion making was damned interesting. Communicating with nature was... probably not super useful to me, not when I had other skills that might overlap with that. Fighting skills would be nice though. I suspected that they were more about fighting in hand-to-hand or maybe with traps and snares.

I wiggled on the spot, working through some indecision. I didn’t cross this one out. It was a decent-enough skill that had a lot of potential. Subskills tended to come from--I suspected--use, so this broad skill could probably unlock very specific subskills later on which might make up for its generalist nature.

Shaking my head, I checked out the next skill.

[Poison Handling Expertise] - Rare

Handle dangerous materials and poisons with greater ease, while also gaining the ability to craft and cook new volatile poisons. As this skill improves, you will gain a better understanding of the poisoners art and additional resistances to the very mixtures you create.

Category: Poison making, Poison-based combat

That... was really good. The potential subskill  was especially useful. At the moment, my [Basic Poison Resistance] was lagging behind. The only way to level the skill, as far as I knew, was to poison myself.

I was, quite naturally, reluctant to do that.

I could probably dose myself with something that wasn’t too dangerous in tiny quantities to improve the skill, but even that was far, far from tempting.

[Poison Handling Expertise] might allow me to get rid of [Basic Poison Resistance] with a little bit of practice, and practising this skill would be much easier. All I had to do was make and use poisons.

That... was fine by me. I needed more effective weapons anyway. Learning to create better poisons and freeing up a general skill was a win-win.

I circled the skill. I was definitely going to take it. It might take a few months to grind it until I got some sort of appropriate poison-resistance subskill, but that would be worth it.

Although... with the way subskills were based on experience, that did mean I’d have to poison myself... again. Not something I was looking forward to.

[Social Manipulation] - Uncommon

Lie, cheat, misinform and confuse others with greater ease. As this skill grows so will your ability to trick and beguile.

Category: Social skills

I nodded. I not only wanted this skill, I needed it.

My day-to-day wasn’t filled with fighting. I was going to talk to more people than I’d fight, probably. Diplomacy was always going to be a thing. What if I got caught? What if I needed to squeak past someone, or pick out some information that I wasn’t supposed to know?

Right now, I was a--well, maybe not cute, but I was a small and young--child who looked scrawny and weak. That was great when it came to disarming people, but it was terrible when it came to convincing adults to listen to me.

I knew, from bitter experience, that being good at socialising was better for opening doors than any amount of talent. You could get a lot further in life just by knowing the right people. That was as true here as it was back on Earth in my previous life. I’d been passed up for some opportunities and won others because of soft skills.

Yeah, this was staying on the short-list.

Which left one more option to look at.

[Tenacity] - Uncommon

The ability to endure and resist. This skill will improve your willpower and help harden you against fatigue and exhaustion. As this skill improves, so will your ability to push through pain and suffering.

Category: Self-improvement

A self-buffing skill. Nothing miraculous or incredible. This wasn’t some powerful apocalyptic magic, but it might be just as useful under the right circumstances. I chewed on my lip as I considered it.

Tenacity might help me resist the pain of poisons, or endure through my hunger. It might let me work longer hours with less sleep.

Having a strong will wasn’t something to be underestimated.

But, at the same time... no, I couldn’t take this one. I would have to endure things the old fashioned way. The other options I had were just better.

[You have unlocked the [Social Manipulation] Skill!]

[Do you want to add the [Social Manipulation] Skill to your known repertoire of General Skills?]

“Yes please,” I muttered.

[You have unlocked the [Poison Handling Expertise] Skill!]

[Do you want to add the [Poison Handling Expertise] to your known repertoire of General Skills?]

“Second verse, same as the first.”

And that was it. Two new skills. I felt no different than I had a minute before. I had no way of testing my new social skill, but the poison handling one was easier to test.

I walked over to my mask, still lying where I’d left it, and I stared at the dusting of spores on the filter. Squinting at it to better focus, I sort of... metaphorically pushed down my [Druid Sight] and paid more attention to my new skill.

[Dead Man’s Cough Spore]

An inhalable spore that cripples the lungs by attaching itself to the victim’s bronchioli where they then secrete psychoactive hallucination-producing neurotoxins. Can cause bleeding in the lungs and oesophagus . The neurotoxin might, in larger quantities, cause seizures. Spores will germinate in the corpse of the victim, producing more fungi. Irritation is instant. Poison is slow-acting.

I grinned. Fabulous!

I checked my stats and levels, just to see how my new skills looked alongside the rest.

Name: N/A

Race: Human {Common}

Age: 6 Years

Mana: 24/27

Primary Class: [Feronie’s Crusader {Epic}]

Afflictions

- Black Lung {Common}

- Child of Poverty {Common}

Blessings

- Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

Feronie’s Crusader Class Skills - Level Ninety-Six

- Aura of Growth {Rare} - Level Forty-Five

> [Shaped Aura]

> [Careful Casting]

- Blight {Epic} - Level Fourteen

- Ritual of Sporemageddon  {Legendary} - Level One

- Druid Sight {Uncommon} - Level Seventeen

- Mushroom Magic {Rare} - Level Nineteen

General Skills - Level Eighty-Nine

- Running {Common} - Level Twenty-Six

> [Surefooted]

- Knitting {Common} - Level Fifty-Seven

> [Patterner]

> [Clicky Clacker]

- Basic Poison Resistance {Common} - Level Four

- Social Manipulation {Uncommon} - Level One

-   Poison Handling Expertise {Rare} - Level One

Not bad. But I could make it better.

***

Death Cap - Fifteen - Visiting the Dregs of Society for a Post-Birthday Murder

I started to graft my new mycelium to other subjects almost as soon as the strands had grown long enough to try.

Unfortunately, I’d discovered a few issues as I experimented with fungal grafting.

First, the big one. While I could graft a hybrid mushroom with a non-hybrid, the results weren’t always great. The non-hybrid mushroom tended to be the most... impactful of the two for whatever resulted.

Second, combining two hybridised strains resulted in a fat load of nothing. Were my hybrid strains sterile? Semi-sterile? I wasn't sure. Maybe if I still had my [Fungal Grafting] skill I’d be able to combine two hybrids together, but as it was, my experiments in that direction were nothing but a waste of time.

Finally, I’d discovered that I didn’t have the time or resources to combine every new mushroom with each other kind of mushroom I had and also all of the previous hybrids. It was going to be an issue eventually, but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon. Just with the newest mushroom type added to my collection, I had literally dozens of possibilities available.

Too many for my meagre farm to support. At least, not while still growing food-mushrooms and running other experiments. Time was also something I had in limited supply. I could find new farming locations, but... well, that would take time too.

I had other things to take care of.

Autumn slowly turned to winter, which had me away from the farm for a little while as things cooled off and my growth was put on hold.

That didn’t mean I was entirely idle.

The day after I turned seven, I was going to commit my first pre-meditated murder.

My first step in that direction though, was getting informed. I visited my farm and collected a bagful of mushrooms of the edible sort. Just a nice mix of whatever I had left over. I hadn’t done much selling in the last couple of months, but that didn’t mean mushrooms would stop growing. If I didn't use the mushrooms I collected soon, they’d go bad.

At that point, giving them away cost nothing.

Of course, I kept a few more lethal samples on myself, some tucked into the thick knit jumper I’d made for myself. It had lots of pockets. And I had a matching scarf and toque. With my nose red from the cold and my freckles standing out, I was probably as cute as a button.

Hopefully that would be enough to distract people from the fact that I was carrying enough poisonous material on me to kill an entire garrison.

I crossed the city at a decent pace. My first stop was the union warehouse, the one where I’d met Markham. My goal that day wasn’t him though, it was one of his underlings.

The union was protected by the usual bunch of ruffians. Young men in ratty coats and mittens hovering around a fifty-five gallon drum filled with scraps of wood and fire. The warehouse doors were closed, probably to keep in whatever heat they had.

“Hey,” I said as I came closer.

A few of the boys looked me up and down, but they dismissed me as a threat almost as soon as they saw me. “What’ch’a want?” one of them asked.

“Is Dregs here?” I asked.

That got their attention. “Yeah," the more outspoken in the group said. “He’s inside. Why you need him?”

“Just need to chat with my favourite hobgoblin,” I said.

“That’s not much of an answer.”

I frowned. I considered the situation. They might well turn me away. I didn’t want to waste too much time though. I had a few options on how to handle this. An appeal to sympathy wouldn’t work. Cajoling young men was worthless. I certainly wasn’t going to try to seduce or s weet-talk them, and they weren’t worth bribing.

“That’s because it’s none of your damned business,” I snapped. “Is he here or not?”

The young man blinked. “Alright, yeah, he’s here,” he said, hands raising almost as if in surrender. His friends laughed at his discomfort, which was my cue to slip past the boys and to the warehouse door.

“Hey, wait, you need the knock,” one of the men said. He stepped over and beat a quick pattern on the door. I tried to memorise it. “Changes every week,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. Of course it did. I couldn’t even complain too much, it was a decent if simple security precaution.

Something clunked on the other side and the door slid open. I came face to knee with Gary. “Hello, Gary,” I said before I slipped past him. The interior of the warehouse was a tiny bit warmer than the outside, though not by much.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said. “Didn’t think I’d see you again.” He pushed the door closed and twisted a heavy-looking latch around to keep it closed.

“I have extra food I thought you guys might want,” I said with a gesture to my bag. “Business has been slow.”

“Uh-huh,” he said before taking the bag. He looked into it, then shrugged. Just a heap of fine, healthy mushrooms, nothing suspicious there. “Might actually make for good stew, I guess.”

“It would. Save me a bowl if they make it now,” I said. “So, uh, is Dregs around?” I glanced across the warehouse. It had changed a little. The barricades were pushed to the side and there were more tables out. A kitchen was set up right in the middle, and a few older women were puttering around in it. Plenty of big burly fellows just sitting around and playing cards or passing the time idly.

I heard a faint scuff to my side and turned to find the yellow-skinned hobgoblin standing surprisingly close. “What do you want with me?” he asked.

“Just to chat!” I said as I pulled down my scarf to reveal a pretty smile.

Gary looked between the two of us, but I could see the moment where he decided that whatever was going on wasn’t his problem. That was for the best, he seemed a little more reasonable, which would make it harder to convince him to help me.

“So, what do you want?” Dregs asked again. He scratched at his chest, sturdy  nails digging into a shirt that was probably white once.

“Got a place we can talk without being overheard as much?” I asked.

He sniffed, then gestured to the side. I followed him. Unlike the last time I’d come here, this time I had a knife in easy reach and more toxic mushrooms ready to pop if someone jumped on me. It would suck, and I wasn’t sure I’d survive my own poison, but at least anyone that attacked me would die too.

Dreg’s idea of a quieter place was under the main office of the warehouse where I’d met Markham. It was pretty dark, with only a bit of light coming in from the other side of the room. A few hallwalls darkened the place even more. Still, there was a straight line of sight to the front door, and I didn’t fail to notice that a pair of rifles were leaning up against the wall.

“So?” he asked.

I licked my lips. “I need information on the Bluertons. The sort that you can only get from a member.”

Dregs tilted his head. “You intend to join them? Humans don’t usually hire kids your age for jobs that will let them keen   in on  things.”

“Join them?” I grimaced. “No, I wanted to question one of them. I know that torture’s rarely effective, but I have a few ideas on how to make it work better. And I have some anger to work out.”

Dregs grinned. “Oh! Well, why didn’t you say so? You’re looking for targets?”

“Exactly,” I said. “Someone the bluertons won’t miss too much to start. I don’t want to do this too stupidly.”

The hobgoblin nodded. “Yeah, I hear ya, kid.” He rubbed his hands together. “In that case, I’ve got my eyes on a few scumbags that the boss said I couldn’t just off. Real dirtbags. You won’t even need to feel guilty about killing them.”

“I wasn’t planning to,” I said. Guilt was an emotion for people who could afford it. I was too poor for that by half. “Got anyone easy? I want to make this something of a practice run. Get used to things, make mistakes now so that I can avoid them later.”

Dregs tilted his head to the side, and one of his long ears twitched. “You know, fresh killers aren’t usually so careful.”

“I’m a different sort of fresh,” I said.

He chuckled, then looked around. “Fine. I want to see what you can do. Follow me, I’ll show you someone.”

I scampered to keep up with the hobgoblin as he stood and took off without waiting. “Wait, who?” I asked.

“His name’s Dogbeater, and there’s not one soul in this shithole of a city that likes the man. You’ll be doing the world a favour, trust me.”

***

Death Cap - Sixteen - A Murder Which is Profitless Does Not Need to be Devoid of Amusement

“So, why do they call him Dogbeater?” I asked as I checked down both ends of the street. Dregs insisted on taking the alleys and backstreets, which was probably wise. There wasn’t nearly as much traffic down those.

“I’ll give you three guesses. First two don’t count.”

I shook my head. “That’s messed up,” I said. “Why do they keep him employed if he’s known for beating up dogs?”

Dregs grinned. It was an ugly sort of smile, with too many teeth. “Because that’s his job. The Bluertons will sometimes have dogs with them when they bust protests. Dogs can chase people down, and they can go low while most humans fight high. Then there’s the mad dogs.”

“I imagine that I’m about to be horrifi ed; go  on.”

Dregs nodded along, as if he expected that. “See. Sometimes a protest is small enough that the Bluertons showing up in force makes them look stupid. They’re all about saving face. And sometimes they need to be... well, they need to make it look like they’re not responsible for breaking up a protest. So they’ll train these big dogs. Give them a few potions so that they can heal over time, make them faster and meaner. Then, they let the dog loose near the protest. Mad dog runs to the protestors and rips a few throats and no one can point a finger to anyone. Just a mad mutt.”

“Holy shit,” I muttered.

“Nothing holy about it,” Dregs said. “Dogbeater’s the one who trains those. No one likes him.” Dregs pointed to an alleyway, and I followed him in. I was... actually starting to trust the hobgoblin, a little bit. He was a loose cannon, but his violence was mostly aimed in the same direction that mine was.

“Right. So how do you want to do this?” I asked.

The hobgoblin looked at me. “This is your show. I’m not allowed to just murder the Bluertons. I’m just showing you the place. Maybe giving you a bit of a hand. You’re a little short to scale a fence.”

I sniffed. “Fine then. Tell me about his place, at least?”

“Don’t know much about it. Just a shack like the rest of you humans live in. Got a place next to it for the cages.”

“Where I imagine he keeps his dogs,” I said.

“Yeah.”

I thought a bit as we walked across the city. Surprisingly, we were heading towards the nicer slums, where the homes were a bit bigger and built more recently.

Eventually Dregs pointed to a building. One story, which was unusual, and with a decent footprint. There was a rusty tin fence around the property with an alley on one side. The home itself wasn’t impressive. Back on Earth it would hardly qualify as a shed, but I supposed that in City Nineteen’s slums it might as well be a mcmansion.

There were skulls hanging off the sides of the fence, one every junction. Mostly dog skulls, a few cats maybe, and others that I didn’t recognize. No one had grabbed them.

“Let’s walk around the place,” I muttered while unwinding my scarf. It would make me a bit colder, but... “Here, put this on.”

Dregs caught the scarf and looked at me. “Why?”

“I’m some random slum kid. Dime a dozen. You’re a hobgoblin. Not as common. If someone reports what they saw, it’ll be easier to find us if they recognize you than me.”

“That’s halfway clever,” Dregs said as he wrapped the scarf around his face and head, turning it into a sort of hood. He tugged up a cloth mask from around his neck and covered his mouth and nose with it.

He looked... like a poorly proportioned child, or maybe a teenager. It would work at a glance though, which is what mattered.

“Does Dogbeater live alone?” I asked.

“He doesn’t have a wife or kids,” Dregs said. “I heard that he sleeps with his dogs.”

I felt a little sick and decided to assume that he wasn’t implying what I thought he was implying. I checked the shack out. It had an angled roof with a single chimney atop it, currently puffing out a decent amount of the kind of smoke that came from cleaner-burning sorts of coal. This guy had a yard  to his house. Sure, his home was made of tin and rust, but he had windows and a roof that looked intact. He was living well.

We slid closer to the wall, and I tried to find a gap in the fence. There wasn’t much though. “I need a boost,” I said.

Dregs didn’t even complain. He got to one knee and cupped his hands together. I onto his hands and he lifted me up until I was able to poke my head over the edge of the fence .

The yard was lined with cages. The biggest was maybe a pace across and half as deep. The dogs within those barely fit. Smaller cages were stacked on top, held in place by twisted bits of wire. Lots of dogs. A few cats... and a few things that I wasn’t sure about. They were furry though. The top of the cages had little sheets of tin to keep the snow off, but that was the only concession to weather-proofing I saw.

Two of the cages had occupants that were clearly dead, just at a glance.

I caught sight of Dogbeater through the window of his home. He was sitting in a big chair, a blanket over his lap. He was reading while a fire burned in a little hearth in the edge of his room.

“I have an idea,” I said as I stepped back and Dregs let me down.

“Oh?”

“He’s using smokeless coal,” I said.

“Pricey,” Dregs said. He sniffed the air. “Can’t smell it either. Odourless stuff. Burns hot. The stuff nice folk burn.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And the kind of stuff that still produces carbon oxides. Carbon monoxide, I think.” I had to use the English word there, which earned me a look from Dregs.

He nodded to me. “You know magic?”

I could see how he might think that. Magic here sounded... well , it wasn’t the local language. “No. This is chemistry. Look, if we block his chimney, not entirely but about halfway, we can fill the house with smoke. Odourless smoke.”

“He’ll sleep himself to death?” Dregs asked. “I’ve heard of folk dying that way. Not very reliable, not compared to a knife in the gut.”

“Yeah, but this is subtle. I don’t need the Bluertons up in arms just yet. If they think Dogbeater here died because he was stupid, then they won’t look at anyone else to blame.”

Dregs grinned. “You’re one messed up kid.”

“Yeah, well it’s their fault. I need some cloth . Tarp maybe. I think we can climb up onto the roof without too much difficulty.”

It really wasn’t hard to find something to clog the chimney with. There was some trash nearby, which included the torn remains of someone’s shirt. Wadded into a ball with a chunk of brick in the centre for mass and it was more than enough. I slid that into my satchel, then moved to the side of the house.

Dregs helped me up again, and I was thankful that I was so light because otherwise there was no way I’d be able to pull myself up.

The big concern was noise. I didn’t need to wake up the neighbourhood, or Dogbeater for that matter. Once I was on the roof, I moved  very, very slowly. I kept low, and regretted not having some sort of stealth skill.

“How’re you going to block it with that?” Dregs asked from right next to me.

I squeaked and the roof clunked as I spun to find the hobgoblin standing right next to me. I hadn’t heard him move at all.

A few of the dogs barked, and I winced as I heard Dogbeater moving around below us.

We waited. The man screamed at his dogs to shut up, and soon enough they did. Then things settled down. I waited another minute past that, heart thrumming hummingbird fast in my chest.

Then, when nothing happened for a while longer, I moved to the chimney carefully. I placed the brick and cloth over the opening, then shifted it around until the chimney’s exit was mostly blocked. Smoke was still pouring out of it, most of the smoke even.

That was fine. I wanted the room to vent most of the smoke, just not all of it. He’d notice if the room filled with smoke, odourless or not.

“Now what?” Dregs asked.

“Now we wait,” I said. I moved back to the edge of the roof, then jumped down onto the top of the fence, and finally on the ground. Dregs did the same, but more gracefully and with half the noise.

I couldn’t remember how long carbon monoxide poisoning took to act, but it wasn’t too long. It was still early evening, so it probably wouldn’t be too weird if we lingered.

So that’s what we did, with only the occasional glance into the home to see how things were going.

When thin tendrils of smoke started to slip out from the poorly joined edges of the roof a while later, I knew the plan was working, at least a little.

***

Death Cap - Seventeen - Needs Must

Dogbeater leaned back in his seat, mouth wide open. He was snoring loud enough that we could hear it from outside. His breathing was fast though, as if he was struggling for air.

“Hmm, looks like your idea worked,” Dregs said. He knelt down and grabbed a pebble, then flicked it over the fence. It clinked on one of the cages and a dog barked a couple of times in alarm.

Dogbeater didn’t so much as flinch.

“Looks like it,” I said. “How do we get into the house?”

“Side door,” Dregs said. “It’ll have a weaker lock, I bet. Did you have a way to breathe in there?”

I shook my head. “We’ll be... well, I’ll be impacted by the smoke the same way he is. I don’t actually know enough about hobgoblin anatomy to say whether or not it’ll be a problem for you.”

Dregs chuckled. “We’re tougher than you lot, but we need to breathe as much as any human or elf.”

I nodded, then opened my satchel and pulled out my rope. “We’ll tie him down as soon as we’re in. I think we can tie him to his chair?”

Dregs nodded. “You thought of everything, huh?”

“No. I thought of a few things. I tried to think of everything while keeping in mind that I’ll fail to notice a lot. Next time I’ll be better.”

He sniffed, then extended a hand to my rope. I gave it over after a bit of hesitation and he started to tie it into a long loop. “Like this,” he said before making a knot so quickly that I had no idea what he’d done. “Actually, just let me tie him up. We’re going to need a gag.”

I cursed, then took off a boot and freed my sock. It had a hole in it anyway. “This’ll do?”

He shrugged, clearly not caring that much.

With Dreg’s help, I climbed onto the top of the fence, then the hobgoblin stepped back and got a running start which ended with him vaulting up the fence and swinging over it, all without making much sound at all.

The dogs barked, louder and more alarmed, once we were in the courtyard. Dogbeater didn’t move though, which was a good sign. I mostly ignored the dogs, though I had [Blight] ready to fire at a moment’s notice, just in case.

Dregs reached the door and tried to open it. It was locked, obviously. “You know how to pick locks?” he whispered.

I shook my head.

He stared back. “Well, why are you looking at me like that?”

“Can’t you?”

“Do I look like a thief?” he whispered. I made a so-so gesture and the hobgoblin growled. “Idiot kid. We’ll have to break in through the window.”

“Wait,” I whispered before touching the door. I looked along the edge of it, taking in what I could. The door didn’t have a locking bar, so the lock was part of the handle. The door itself was all wood, the handle was... brass? Some sort of metal.

I pressed my hand next to the handle and pushed [Blight] into the wood.

“What are you doing?” Dregs asked.

“Breaking the door... but quietly.” I spread [Blight] deeper into the door and then through it and around the handle. After a long two or three minutes I pulled my hand back and took a few deep breaths. That was nearly a third of my mana gone. The wood was rotten though.

With a foot against the wood under the handle, I grabbed onto it, then jerked back.

The handle came off the door--partially. It was enough that the catch didn’t stay in its place and I was able to pull the door open.

The air inside was thick and warm. I put on my mask before pushing in.

Dogbeater had a nice-enough place. It was rough, sure, but he had a proper cot, a sink, even three whole lights. A bookshelf sat in the corner across from his fireplace, and he had a few drawers around with clothes and things in them.

Dregs didn’t gawk. He flicked the rope out and had it lassoed around the man in seconds. “The door,” he said.

“Can’t close it,” I replied. “We need the air.”

“Noise,” he hissed.

I ran past him and to the fire, then shut the flue completely after climbing up onto a metal box full of coal. After closing the fireplace’s door and shutting the smaller vents on the door, I figured the fire would die off in a minute or two.

Then I went to the door and opened and closed it quickly a few times, wafting in big waves of air that cooled the one-room home down.

“There,” I said before I closed the door. “If you feel drowsy or feel a headache coming on, we leave.”

Dregs nodded, but he was mostly fixated on tying Dogbeater’s hands and feet to his chair. He was quick and efficient, using knots that looked like they were meant to be easy to take apart from the outside, which made sense. We didn’t want to leave any evidence.

Dogbeater woke up with a start and I was quick to shove my sock into his mouth while he was still blinking awake. Then I had my knife out and pressed to the underside of his hairy neck. “Move and you die.”

He paused, eyes going wide as he took in the room.

He wasn’t the only one to wake up though. There was a cage by the bed with some creature in it that shifted around at the noise. Had I almost killed a dog? That actually made me feel a little guilty.

“Look, mister Dogbeater, I have questions, and you’ve got answers. This is a transaction, okay?” I asked.

He glared at me.

I glared back. Then I reached into my pocket and pulled out a perfectly tasty mushroom and held it before him. “This is the alternative. Do you know what this is?”

He looked at the mushroom. It had a nice red cap, with a few brown warts on it.

“Mushrooms are really good at absorbing heavy metals. Do you know what heavy metal poisoning does? You do?  Well, let me tell you, it’s a million times worse when the mushrooms are magic. See, the metals are absorbed by your liver which... well, there’s a lot of bottles here. I’m betting yours isn’t in great shape. Then the metals travel all the way up to your brain. In tiny quantities it’s not so bad. Permanent, but not bad. Like annoying little scars. But this--” I wiggled the mushroom. “This makes it worse.”

“What’s it do ?” Dregs asked, honestly curious.

“If Dogbeater here eats this, his mind will stop working so well. Tomorrow he might not remember an appointment. The day after, things like math  might be harder. He won’t forget, not yet, but it’s going to take so much more effort to think. Day by day his memories will slip, his thinking will grow more sluggish and slow. One day he’s going to rest in his bed and just... forget. And then he’ll forget how to breathe and his heart will forget how to beat, and that’ll be it.”

Dogbeater was staring at the mushroom as if it was god. A god that knew all the shit he’d done.

“So, I’m going to remove that sock from your mouth, and you’re going to answer my questions, and you won’t have to eat this. Okay? If not, I get creative. I know of this neat trick, with salt and bleach and vinegar and a spoon. Have you ever hear d of that one?”

He shook his head.

“See, the trick’s easy. I ask a question, and when you lie, I pour salt in one of your eyes. Just one. Then if you lie again, it’s the vinegar . Then the bleach.” I smiled. “Then the spoon. After that, we go to the other eye. Do you have any salt in here, mister Dogbeater? Do you own a spoon?”

He was hyperventilating. I suppose I was supposed to be grossed out by all of this, but I just felt rather numb.

I removed the sock and he let out a pitiful wail. “Okay, now my first question,” I began.

I knew we didn’t have too much time, and I trusted his answers... well , not at all. He didn’t know a lot of things. His part was small and unimportant. He was just the guy who would beat the dogs until they listened or were rabid enough to use.

Dregs asked a few questions of his own, usually when I paused for a little too long. We didn’t need Dogbeater to have time to think too hard.

In the end, I had... not much. “Hey, last question,” I said. “What’s that in the cage?”

Dogbeater looked over to the cage by his bed and grunted. “That’s a Panbadger. It’s magic. They bond with people. Wanted to use it to train since when it’s all grown up it can take out a lion on its own.”

“Huh,” I said. “Have you managed to bond with it yet?” I asked.

He growled. “Little shit keeps nipping at me. Can’t beat the bond out of it.”

I shrugged. “Got any more questions, Dregs?”

“None,” he said with a viscous grin.

“Mask on,” I said. I plopped the mushroom I’d been threatening Dogbeater with into my mouth, then pulled my mask up.

The idiot started screaming at me and pulling against his bonds.

Then I reached into my satchel, pulled out a teeny-tiny [Dead Man’s Cough] and spurted its dust into his face.

Dregs and I watched Dogbeater struggle against the ropes until he went slack, his face an ugly red.

“We need to restart the fire and get the brick off the chimney. We’ll shove one of his shirts in the chimney down here too, fill  the room with smoke again.”

“Sure,” Dregs said.

“Also, I’m taking the badger.”

***

Death Cap - Eighteen - Growth Isn’t Measured Only in Personal Power. Strength Comes in Numbers.

Dregs and I split off from each other a couple of blocks down. “Thanks,” I said.

“For what?” the hobgoblin asked.

I shrugged and gestured in the vague direction of Dogbeater’s place. “The help. That would have been impossible without you.”

He looked at me, eyes narrowing. “No. It wouldn’t have,” he said. “Invite me along next time too. This was fun.”

I watched him trundle off without a care in the world, then I turned on a heel and continued on my way home. It was still early afternoon. The sun was hidden by the buildings rising around me, but the light was still strong.

It felt as if it should have been later. Assassinations were things of the dark. Midnight events. They weren’t supposed to happen while the sun was still up.

“What do you think about all of this?” I asked my new companion as I raised its cage.

The creature within looked at me with dark, beady eyes that still felt intelligent. The badger was probably young. I didn’t have a frame of reference for badger ages, but this one had out-sized paws, like a puppy or kitten might have, and its head was big enough that... yeah, I just assumed it was relatively young.

It was still rather large. The cage was as long as my forearm and the badger, from the tip of its nose to the end of its tail was longer than that. It had to curl itself around to fit. Black fur with white streaks, and a yellow tuft of hair atop its head, ears, and right over its sternum.

It was kind of cute. Or would have been if it wasn’t so mangey.

[Druid Sight] was a skill that I’d mostly used on mushrooms and fungi so far, but it wasn’t made just for that. It worked perfectly fine on animals too.

[Panbadger]  - Uncommon

A magical species of plain-dwelling badger known for its ferocity and aggression. Frequently seen hunting down predators much larger than itself. Omnivorous, the panbadger will eat meats as well as nuts, truffles, mushrooms and insects, some of which it will hunt and bring back to its bond-partners. A panbadger can form a bond with anyone it cares for, including members of other species. Bonds are for life, and for that reason they are often trained as exotic guard animals for the scions of nobles and magnates.

Did I grab the badger because I wanted to try bonding with it?

Yes.

Did I also take it because it was kind of cute and I didn’t want it to die in that house?

Also yes.

The badger watched me carefully as I grabbed the scarf Dregs had returned to me and wrapped it around its cage. It would be less suspicious that way. It was possible that a few people knew that Dogbeater had this little guy (girl?) with him. I didn’t need them tracing it back to me.

If things worked out, I’d have a new pet. Better than a guard dog, even.

I hummed to myself as I returned to the farm, taking a circuitous route that allowed me to work off some of my nervous energy.

I had, of course, just murdered someone. I think I was supposed to be wracked by guilt about it. In the movies there was always vomiting and crying and all that kind of nonsense. I never really understood that. You didn’t cry when you smacked down a mosquito, why would you feel any different about a person that you didn’t care about.

We arrived at the farm and I unlocked the door, flicked on the light, then set the badger down onto my workbench. “Hey, uh, I realise now that I don’t actually know how to handle having a pet. So... yeah, sorry. Here, you might like the taste of this?”

After rooting around the farm for a bit, I returned with a few different sorts of edible mushrooms, then I poked them through the cage under the watchful eye of the badger.

Once I backed away, the badger approached and sniffed at the mushrooms.

It ate the magic-filled one first, which I took as a good sign if the creature was meant to be magical in one way or another.

“So... if I let you out of the cage, will you jump on my face and rip me apart?” I asked.

The badger chewed through a mushroom while eyeing me suspiciously.

“Right,” I said. This would be more complicated than I initially expected it to be. I’d just have to be careful. Maybe I could make a spot for the badger. Dogbeater had a yard. I bet that was where he trained his dogs.

I imagined my new buddy would appreciate being able to stretch their legs.

Also, I needed a larger cage. I... had a bit of money. I could afford that. I rubbed at my temples. “God, I am stupid,” I muttered.

For a moment I froze as a warmth shifted through the room and settled across my shoulders. I swallowed. Right, the farm was blessed by Feronie. It wasn’t impossible that mentioning gods of any sort would attract her attention to the place.

Also, did the warmth mean she agreed with me? Because that was kind of a dick move.

Shaking my head, I checked on the badger again and saw that it was looking at me in a new way. Confused instead of suspicious. Had it sensed that? It wasn’t implausible. It was an animal, Feronie was a nature goddess. There was something of a link there.

I didn’t think I could pray for better animal handling skills though, so I just poked another magical mushroom through the cage. “If I can’t make you like me through magical means, I’ll do it the old fashioned way,” I said. “By feeding you until you’re fit to burst.”

A problem for another time. I settled my scarf over the cage, turning it into a bit more of a darkened cave for the badger. Did badgers live in caves? I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend some of my limited money on a book about their habitats, but it was an option, if that kind of book even existed.

I could ask around for an animal handling specialist, but I had the impression the locals would point me to Dogbeater or someone like him.

“Right, right,” I muttered as I checked my farm. It was still cool enough that little was growing. At a guess, it was only barely above freezing at night. I couldn’t prepare much then.

Going to the dungeon again was stupid. I wasn’t ready for it. Not yet. Once I had a few better mushrooms I’d maybe try a second time. The last time had netted me a couple of handy shrooms and a harsh lesson.

Next time would go better, now that I knew what to expect.

Which left me with... not much to do but practice. [Blight] had gone up a level today. I think using it on the door was a creative enough use of the skill that it gave me more experience than normal practice, which was neat.

I placed a few old logs onto the ground in a tin box and then stood at the far end of the room. I raised a hand towards it, then paused. I had an audience today.

“So, the idea here is that I can turn my mana into... I guess it’s [Blight] mana? I’m not sure. It might be that the mana is necrotic mana and that it’s being used to cast [Blight]. There’s a lot more I don’t know than I do,” I told the badger who was still looking. “Now, I can’t push my mana out that far. It’s... sticky? I don’t know how to describe it, but I can’t control it that way. [Aura of Growth] on the other hand, does let me push my mana out much further, though I think just sustaining that part of the skill does use up some mana. So if I combine the two...”

I focused, then used my aura to send my mana across the room as a long tendril. I couldn’t see it, but I... more or less felt where it was. It was like a very poor proprioperception. I’d thought of using it as a sort of radar, but that would take a much larger manapool  and a lot of focus to achieve even minimal results with.

Once the aura reached the log, I shifted my mana to cast [Blight].

It wasn’t just [Blight] though. The normal aura stayed on too.

The wood rotted on one side, parts of it blackening and turning soggy. At the same time, the mould already clinging to the wood started to grow much faster.

Soon, a chunk of the wood’s side peeled off while a thick coat of mossy tendrils grew outwards to cover almost the entire log.

I stopped, panting hard and ignoring the start of a headache. My mana was getting low. “How long do you think that was?” I asked the badger?

It just stared at me.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I said with a swipe at my brow. “Way too slow to kill anything.”

***

Death Cap - Nineteen - Testing Potent New Combinations

It took another couple of weeks for the mushroom’s I’d collected and grafted together to start showing results. When the day finally came I rushed back to the farm, practically skipping on my way back.

I, of course, had my badger with me.

At some point it just became a habit to carry the panbadger  along wherever I went. Mostly that was between home and the farm, which was a safe enough route where no one really bothered me.

I don’t know how long it would take to bond with the badger but... we weren’t quite there yet. My thumb still had a bandage wrapped around it from where the little bastard had grabbed on and refused to let go. He had these nasty little teeth.

The poor badger wasn’t nearly as obstinate as I was though, so if he thought I would stop trying just because he was a little nippy... well, maybe eventually. I think he was mostly getting used to me though. He didn’t growl as much and the look on his face wasn’t quite as distrustful.

Also, he was getting fat.

I couldn’t let him out of his cage yet... I didn't think. But I was going to do it anyway. We’d try it in that little burnt-down husk of a house I was growing some mushrooms in. If he wrecked the place then it wouldn’t be a big loss. And if he ran away... well, my mom complained about him a lot. He did stink a bit.

Arriving at the farm I set the badger down atop my unfoldable cooking table. I hadn’t been using it rec ently, so I was glad to have a use for it again.

I set up my workbench, which mostly just meant that I cleaned it off with a smidgen of rubbing alcohol and a rag, then I placed a tray atop it. After that, I collected the results of my experimentation.

Of the nineteen combinations I tried, ten survived. That was... a bit unfortunate. Most (though not all) of those that had failed were the mushrooms which were combined with the [Blur Glow Lichen]. It seemed as if there was enough of a difference between a mushroom and a lichen that combining the two wasn’t working out.

I supposed it was like trying to breed dogs and cats together. Both were mammals of about the same size, but they had enough differences between them to make crossbreeding impossible.

Something to keep in mind, but not a big loss in any case.

Opening a notepad, I checked off the list of surviving specimens.

Combined Fungi:

Blackbottle X Brown Chanterelle

Blackbottle X Beige Puffball

Blackbottle X Purple Capped Night Watcher

Blackbottle X Horse Head Mushroom

Blackbottle X Horse Pop Mushroom

Blur Glow Lichen X Green Spirit Mould

Purple Capped Night Watcher X Beige Puffball

Purple Capped Night Watcher X Horse Head Mushroom

Purple Capped Night Watcher X Horse Pop Mushroom

Purple Capped Night Watcher X Dead Man’s Cough

My successful combination rate, I noted, was a lot higher on average when the combined specimens didn’t already include a merged mushroom.

“Well, no dilly-dallying,” I said.

I picked up the first new creation in a gloved hand and inspected it. The [Blackbottle] mushroom was interesting mostly because of its ability to collect water. I inspected one of those, just to have a fresh frame of reference.

[Blackbottle] - {Uncommon}

A mushroom frequently found in humid climates. It will fill with water and when ripe, will burst apart releasing watery spores onto the ground around it. A source of untainted water.

The mushroom itself usually looked like a rock, with a very short stem and grew to be sort of squat and fat.

The mushroom that combined the [Blackbottle] and [Brown Chanterelle] looked the same, but brown.

[Brownbottle] - {Uncommon}

A nutritious mushroom frequently found in humid climes . It will fill with water and when ripe, will burst apart releasing watery spores onto the ground around it. A source of untainted water. Its meat is nutritious and healthy, though the stem will contain the impurities filtered out of its water.

Well... that was useful. I could probably create a mana-infused variant of it. Bring a few of these along and I basically had a pre-made meal.

Just in case, I gave the [Brownbottle] a bite and regretted it immediately. It tasted fine. Nothing special, really. The problem was the gush of lukewarm, mushroom-flavoured water that spilled down my front.

“Damn it all,” I swore.

The badger made a noise that was too close to a snicker for comfort.

I didn’t throw the mushroom away. It could still be useful. If I was going to be diving deep into the dungeon then... yeah, I’d need a source of water and food and this was both. All I had to do was carry some spore samples and... basically learn how to make the mushroom grow way, way faster.

With some effort and limited mana, I could probably make a mushroom grow in under an hour. Pretty good. But not good enough.

I shook my head. A problem for later.

The next surviving sample was the combination of [Blackbottle] and [Beige Puffball]. The result, somewhat predictably, was the [Black Puffball].

[Black Puffball] - Uncommon

A common sight next to stale water and other humid detritus. The black puffball is an edible mushroom in its early fruiting stage which grows into a ball filled with spores in a muddy goop that are released on impact. Not very nutritious.

I... had no reason to continue cultivating this one. I took note of the mushroom and its properties, in case I ever wanted to breed it once more, then made a final note to dispose of it later.

There would always be more failures than successes.

The next was more interesting. My first combination using the [Purple Capped Night Watcher] that I’d stolen.

The mushroom was smaller than the [Blackball] with a more purplish colour to it and a few lighter spots on its surface. It seemed to glow a little from within.

[Blackbottle Night Watcher] - Rare

A rare mushroom not found in any natural environment. This small, edible mushroom contains a basic alchemical reagent that allows the consumer to see in low light conditions. Can be used in several alchemical concoctions.

“Oh, yes,” I said as I brought the mushroom closer. I used my ne w [Poison Handling Expertise] on it, just in case, but it came back with nothing. Not poisonous, then! I had a proper, usable magic mushroom!

It wasn’t insane, but the utility couldn’t be denied!

I squeezed it a bit, testing its hardness, then gave it a sniff. It smelled nice enough, and didn’t burst apart at a light squeeze. This would definitely be added to my kit.

Feeling pretty great about myself, I moved on to the next! It was an ugly, lumpy mess of a mushroom that looked like it was drooling a little.

[Black Horse Head] - Common

A nutritious and water-rich edible mushroom. Mostly tasteless. Commonly found next to locations where bodies were buried.

The only interesting thing here was that the result was {Common} instead of {Uncommon}. So rarity could degrade under the right circumstances? Interesting. Otherwise, not the most useful find.

The last of the results from combining [Blackbottle] mushrooms with anything else looked... a little strained, actually. The mushroom was all black, with a few bands of lighter grey. It looked as if the entire thing was straining against itself. I’d been pretty careful with that one so far. It was the result of combining with  my [Horse Pop Mushroom] which was a kind of mushroom which contained methane and which was mildly toxic.

[Bottle Pop] - Rare

A mushroom which fills with flame-proof spores, water, and methane, each within their own separate sacs within the fruiting body. On receiving a strong enough impact, the mushroom explodes, lighting itself on fire and spreading its hardened spores out around it to penetrate nearby materials. The spores are mildly poisonous. The fumes created by the explosion are mildly toxic.

“What the hell,” I muttered.

It was a bomb. A bomb mushroom.

That should absolutely not be possible. At least, not naturally. I shook my head and set the mushroom down carefully. I would be putting this one outside soon. There were a few abandoned homes nearby, some had windows. Maybe I could hide behind one to see what kind of explosion I was dealing with here?

Yeah, that was probably for the best.

Could I use this as a weapon? Yes. Should I?

That was... probably a no? Maybe?

It had its place, and I’d rather have it than not, but I couldn’t see myself being stupid enough to use close-range explosives as my primary means of defending myself.

Another kind of mushroom to keep an eye on. Which only left five more to poke at.

***

Death Cap - Twenty - Further Developments in the World of Lethal Fungal Bodies

The next pair of mushrooms weren’t mushrooms at all.

The only thing my lichen had successfully paired with was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a sample of mould I had to retrieve from the cemetery where I was growing it.

The combination here was... interesting. Lichen aren’t a singular body. They’re symbiotic matter composed of multiple forms of fungi or algae working together. Lichen is probably one of the most interesting living things someone could run into. At least, on Earth. This world had magic, so who was I to point to this one thing and say it was the most interesting?

It was hard to classify a lichen at the best of times because of the nature of the stuff. I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to grow much more of the [Blur Glow Lichen] I had initially. The fungal body part of it died without the... what I suspected was an algae?

I needed to get a microscope at some point. And maybe a reference manual or five.

[Green Spirit Mould] was a kind of mould that reacted to spiritual energy by glowing green. It was mossy and thin and rather fragile, and I had no real use for it. The Farm made the moss glow very, very faintly. It reminded me of those glow-in-the-dark stickers that were all the rage in the early 2000s back on Earth. That wasn’t enough light to see by.

The [Blur Glow Lichen] had a stronger glow, but only when there was mana around for it to absorb.

Combined, the two created a new form of lichen.

[Green Burn Lichen] - Epic

A form of lichen which spreads rapidly and which glows brightly in the presence of mana. Too much mana though, and it will set itself alight, spreading the spores of its fungal form around. It will also ignite on contact with spirits with a spiritual flame that is harmless to flesh but dangerous to spiritual bodies.

I didn’t know what to think of that. It was strong... but against a single type of adversary I had never encountered and which I gathered was very rare.

My first ever {Epic} rarity item and it was kind of useless.

I grabbed a chunk of the lichen, which tore up a bit like paper, and pushed some mana into it. Then I flinched back. It was like staring into a powerful flashlight. I think I even saw through my hand from the glow. Then it lit on fire and burst apart. Like lighting paper on fire, but faster.

In his cage, my badger growled in protest. “Yeah, sorry,” I said.

So, it glowed really bright. That was something to keep in mind. It was glowing just sitting on the tray, I assumed from the ambient mana in the room.

At the very least I could use it as a passive light-source in the dungeon. Maybe... maybe as an ignition source too?

On a whim, I found a small metal bowl and set it on the floor, then with my face turned away, I sent some mana at it from a distance. I started to increase the amount of mana I was pumping into the lichen bit by bit. The glow filled the room with bright green light that went brighter and brighter until there was a hiss and the light dimmed

The bowl had a tiny fire in it, green flames which petered out after a moment.

I tossed some cloth over it and put the bowl away. Interesting.

Maybe I could combine this with some of the more explosive mushrooms I’d discovered? The [Bottle Pop] seemed dangerous now, but if I could combine them with some of this lichen which would allow me to set off the explosion on command... and from afar? Or better yet, from behind cover?

Oh yeah, I liked the idea.

Growing the new lichen might be tricky, but I’d see what I could do. I didn’t need much for my purposes. Enough to fill a couple of vials that I could use as lights and some more for other uses.

The next few mushrooms to look at were the combinations with the [Purple Capped Night Watcher]

The first was a hybrid of the aforementioned and my trustworthy [Beige Puffball]. It resulted in a purple mushroom not dissimilar to the original [Beige Puffball] in size and shape.

[Purple Starball] - Uncommon

This magical mushroom unleashes clouds of glowing spores that, if inhaled, will cause a mammal to have vivid visual hallucinations.

Not terribly useful, that. Also a downgrade in rarity. But hey! Maybe I could use this on myself to progress my poison resistance. It didn’t sound too harmful, and I could use it to disable someone non-lethally, or at least confuse and disorient.

It had a niche use, but then so did most of my mushrooms. I was collecting a lot of niche-use samples.

The hybrid of  [Purple Capped Night Watcher] and [Horse Head] produced a [Purple Horse Head]. It looked like the [Horse Head] but with purple gills beneath the cap.

[Purple Horse Head] - Uncommon

An edible mushroom which gives the eater a slightly improved ability to see in low light conditions. Otherwise nutritious.

That was it. Not super impressive, but it wasn’t a complete failure. I could eat one or two before a dungeon run, and if the effects lasted until it was entirely digested, then that was a small boost to my perception that might come in handy.

The next two would be more interesting. They were both hybrids of already-combined mushrooms which had managed to survive the hybridization process. Both of the samples had grown slower than I’d find ideal, and a few of the mushrooms had grown wrong and died off early, but it had worked in the end.

[Faerie Fire Cap] - Epic

An exceptionally uncommon mushroom once cultivated by the fair  folk. This mushroom is explosive, and on bursting will release magical spores which will attach themselves to the nearest source of mana and burn with bright purple flames. Once used to prevent invisible intruders from entering sacred groves.

I clapped like a little girl who’d just been shown a magic trick. Mostly because that wasn’t entirely inaccurate.

I didn’t know how the magic fire worked, and it would need some testing, but I was entirely here for it. My second {Epic} mushroom seemed super useful. If it stuck to magical things then was it more powerful against them? Was this going to specifically stick to living things?

That needed investigating. Though without me being the magical thing. Maybe I could get Dregs to help me with magical tests? I was sure we could find some... appropriate volunteers. I needed to know where the magical spores of this mushroom rested on the sprinkler-to-napalm scale.

I had one last mushroom sample to check out. The combination between my most dangerous mushroom and some [Purple Capped Night Watcher].

[Dead Man’s Choker] - Rare

A mushroom filled with toxic magical spores. Inhalation of these spores will cause slight  inflammation in the inhaler’s lungs, followed by visual hallucinations.

I frowned, then checked on the description for my normal [Dead Man’s Cough].

[Dead Man’s Cough] - Rare

A mushroom filled with highly toxic spores. Inhalation of these spores will cause immediate inflammation in the inhaler’s lungs, followed by trance-like hallucinations and internal haemorrhaging, possibly leading to death.

The new mushroom, the [Dead Man’s Choker] seemed pretty much worse in every way, except maybe that the effect was magical in nature? I grabbed some cloth, put on my mask, then snuck out of my Farm for a bit. Just long enough to pop into the nearest alleyway and purposefully burst the [Dead Man’s Choker] within the cloth. Then I collected some samples of its spores and brought them back.

My [Poison Handling Expertise] skill would come in handy here. It was meant for just this kind of thing.

[Dead Man’s Choker Spore]

An inhalable spore that irritates the lungs by attaching itself to the victim’s bronchioli where they then secrete psychoactive hallucination-producing neurotoxins. The neurotoxin might, in larger quantities, cause seizures. Spores will germinate in the corpse of the victim, producing more fungi if the victim is magical in nature. Irritation is instant. Hallucinations can last several hours.

I shook my head. The poisonous effect was, in fact, a straight downgrade from my other mushroom’s. I pouted at the loss, but it wasn’t too big a deal. I’d gotten at least three usable mushrooms from this whole thing.

The [Brownbottle] could serve as a new dungeon-ration. The [Blackbottle Night Watcher] I would keep to have some night-vision options. If I could develop some alchemist contacts, then they might be worth something. The [Bottlepop] was literally a shrapnel bomb. There was no way I wasn’t going to use that, if only carefully. The [Green Burn Lichen] could serve as a new light source  and anti-spirit weapon, and finally the [Fearie Fire Cap] was, maybe  a magic napalm bomb.

Not a bad haul, over all.

I reached over to the [Purple Starball], grabbed some of its spores, then after checking to make sure they wouldn’t harm me too much, I turned off the lights and poisoned myself.

The shit I did for just a bit of improvement .

***

Death Cap - Twenty-One - On the Importance of Names and Companionship

The next couple of months sort of just... flew by. I split my focus three ways. One part of that went to preparing for a busy spring of selling mushroom skewers. Another part was focused hard on practising. And the last bit was focused on my new badger friend.

As winter started to approach its end I started to focus my farm on food crops once more. I needed money, and that year was going to be a huge one for me, I could feel it. I used some of the money I’d set aside to buy oil for my burner and a shiny new plate for my table. I was considering commissioning a new one, but... well, it was expensive, and the table I had was made by Dada. It had its own worth.

That was mostly an idle activity. Growing, ensuring that the mushrooms I was tending to were in good health, a bit of pruning and some careful breeding.

Mushrooms weren’t plants. The methods used to breed them, though, were roughly similar, at least the broad strokes. I was using those same techniques to try and get... not new  specimen of mushrooms, but healthier ones with properties that I found more desirable.

That was a pretty time-consuming task, but it made my main source of income and my primary weapons better by tiny increments. They might pay dividends later too. If I had a healthier strand of a mushroom and tried to make it a hybrid with something else, then some of those good genes might carry over.

Other than that, I spent a lot of time with my badger.

Nearly a month after having him, I let him out of his cage.

The badger stayed inside the open cage for a long while and I let it. When it snuck out, of course, it immediately zipped across the room and bit my ankle.

“Ow! You shit!” I shrieked as the panbadger darted around my farm. I chased after it, which proved somewhat difficult when the thing was small enough to pass under my workbench and mushroom racks.

Still, it had spent a long time in that cage, it wasn’t in the greatest of shape.

I caught it eventually, grabbing it by the scruff, which was great until it spun around on itself and started to claw and nip at my hand.

“Stop it!” I shouted. “You stupid thing! I should have left you in the cage! Do you want  to go back in there ?”

The badger paused and stared at me with angry, beady eyes. It didn’t  like that idea.

“I swear on Feronie, I will shove you back in that box and drop you off at the seediest pet shop I find if you don’t behave,” I warned.

The badger went loose, but it still looked at me with suspicion. So I placed it on my workbench and watched it scurry to the far end. It hissed at me, but didn’t seem quite as hostile.

“Look, I want  to work with you here. I’ve been lugging around your cage since forever now, I’ve been feeding you, and I’ve picked up your own weight in excrement already.” The last had served as fertiliser, but it was still a bit gross. “I can’t go on doing that if this whole thing will be one-sided. So, I’m going to open the door. If you want out, leave. If you want to stick around, then that’s cool too. No more cages. Just me and you.”

The badger glared at me even as I crossed the room and opened the door of the farm and gestured outside.

Then, in a few quick bounces, it jumped down from the workbench and out the door.

I was honestly floored.

The little shit, I’d fed it for over a month!

I spun around, lips pursed and cheeks puffed out. “Fine then,” I said.

The badger stared at me from the middle of the road.

“Don’t get run over,” I warned him.

He continued to stare at me, then looked around, at the expanse of the city. Then, slowly and somewhat reluctantly, he walked back over and slunked back into the farm.

I blinked. Were badgers like cats, or was this something else?

We looked at each other for a while, then I sighed and squatted down in front of the panbadger . I let him sniff my hand for a bit, a little wet nose poked at my knuckles. “Alright then,” I said. “If you’re not going to leave, then you don’t have a choice. You’re going to have to deal with being my friend. I don’t have a lot of those, and I’m warning you, I’m pretty high-maintenance.”

The badger allowed me to carefully pet him on the head, but only a little before backing up.

I closed the door, then backed up a smidge, giving him some space. “Alright. If you’re going to become my friend then I’m going to name you,” I said, ignoring any amount of hypocrisy in those words. “Uh... you’re a bit of an ass, so names like Fluffy and Snuggles are right out.”

He hissed at me.

“Hissy?”

He hissed harder.

“Alright, not that,” I surrendered. “What about... I don’t know, something easy? Bob? No? Alright, well... Anklebiter?”

He considered that one.

“No, that’s too long. Nibbles? Yeah? Too easy? How about something a bit edgier then, like Eyenibbler? Make you sound real tough for all the lady panbadgers out there.”

He seemed to like that name.

“Okay. I hereby dub thee, Sir Eyenibbler the Terrible.”

I wasn’t expecting to feel anything from that, but there was still a spark and the air in the room suddenly felt tight  in a way that was hard to describe. It  only lasted a second, and it seemed almost entirely centred  around the badger.

We stared at each other when the effect ended. “I’m still calling you Nibbles,” I told Nibbles.

He grumbled about it, but didn’t bite me so I figured it was fair.

Nibbles and I entered an uneasy relationship after that. I shoved the cage away, which made him pretty happy, and then... that was it. He allowed me to pet him, but only a little, and only on occasion, usually when he’d just eaten enough that his little tummy was distended and he couldn’t be bothered to fight off my questing hands.

I learned a lot about applying bandages to fingers, because the little bastard liked to live up to his nickname.

At night, he’d follow behind me on the way home, never straying more than a pace or two and occasionally hissing at the alley cats and rats who darted away at the sight of him. I think he liked that.

The rest of my free time was spent on training. I ate mildly-poisonous mushrooms and learned that the best way to handle those was to tie myself to a chair first. It prevented some of the vertigo and when I vomited it was only in one corner of my farm instead of all over.

Poisons were more fun when used on others.

Other than that, I practised with my aura, with my blight skill, and more passively with all of my other mushroom-growing skills. That resulted in a few improvements and a few important milestones.

[Congratulations! Your [Blight {Epic}] Skill has unlocked the [Persistent Death] Subskill!]

[Persistent Death]

Your Blight’s magical effects sink deep into living matter and remain there, active until the living passes  away or endures through the Blight.

That made my [Blight] skill last longer against living things without  me using mana on it. Basically, if I hit something with [Blight] it would do an amount of damage equivalent to the amount of mana I poured into it, but over time, and without the mana cost. That was kind of nuts, but the duration was very long. Hours long. So it wasn’t spectacular at killing anything quickly, just at making the pain last longer without me spending mana on it.

Still, a nice effect, and I bet it would stack well with future things.

[Congratulations! Your [Druid Sight {Uncommon}] Skill has unlocked the [Druid’s Sense] Subskill!]

[Druid’s Sense]

You have gained a heightened sense for an area’s attunement, or lack of attunement, to nature.

That was the same as the last time I’d gotten [Druid Sight] above level twenty.

[Congratulations! Your [Mushroom Magic {Rare}] Skill has unlocked the [Super Shroom Zoom] Subskill!]

Now this one was different, and a godsend.

[Super Shroom Zoom]

All fungal bodies will grow at an increased speed as long as you are directly applying magic to them.

I could grow a fungus from mycelium to mushroom in an hour or two with this one. Faster if the mushroom in question was a fast-grower already and the conditions were decent.

That meant that if I went for a long dungeon dive, all I’d need to do was keep some spores on me or some starter growth and I could replenish my stock in an hour or two.

The rest of my growth was all in my general skills, which didn’t make it any less interesting.

***

Death Cap - Twenty-Two - Keeping an Eye on Progress Towards a Better Tomorrow

While my class skills were progressing nicely, my general skills were leaping ahead. I don’t know if it was a matter of greater ease, or just because it was easier to practise most of them in my off time or  as a passive thing. In either  case, I was levelling those skills faster, though not insanely so.

[Congratulations! Your [Knitting {Common}] Skill has unlocked the [Resizer] Subskill!]

[Resizer]

Your exceptional experience with adjusting and modifying garments allows you to resize them with greater ease.

That was useful, in a sort of tangential way. It wasn’t going to be useful forever though. It basically allowed me to fix my clothes so that they continued to fit with only a few hours of work.

Hey, I was growing. Not fast, but it was happening. I think I might have still been short for my age, but that wasn’t too surprising with the way I’d skipped a few meals.

[Congratulations! Your [Basic Poison Resistance {Common}] Skill has unlocked the [Mana Bleed] Subskill!]

This one had me both giddy and very much not.

[Mana Bleed]

You will naturally leech away the mana from negative magical effects pushed into your body, subsuming it for your own use and weakening the effects.

Most subskills had come from something I’d done or practised, even if it was just once or twice. At the moment, I was dosing myself maybe once a week with some of the weakest poisons I had in tiny amounts.

It had led to stomach troubles, spending more time on the bucket than I wanted, and lots of sweating and some visual hallucinations from one particular mushroom. I didn’t dose myself with the same mushroom twice in a row, that way I left myself more time to heal between effects.

I didn’t need to ruin my kidneys from repeated exposure. Small damage with time to heal wouldn’t lead to long-term permanent damage. Or so I hoped.

This hinted that some of the poisons I’d been taking were magical in nature which... actually, it made sense. I was using my aura to feed the fungi which were growing in my Feronie-blessed farm. Of course they were a little magical.

My next subskill, unlocked from my [Poison Handling Expertise] skill, was a little more optimistic.

[Congratulations! Your [Poison Handling Expertise {Rare}] Skill has unlocked the [Iron Lunged] Subskill!]

[Iron Lunged]

Your body and natural magical affinity are attuned to poisons you have grown and created, conferring a major resistance to aerosolized poisons and a minor resistance to injected and contact poisons.

I was (a little) immune to some of my own poisons! The day I got that subskill I ate a larger-than-usual dose of a poisonous mushroom and spent an hour vomiting my lunch out into a bucket.

That was... actually, probably a good sign. That same dosage pre-[Iron Lunged] would have put me down for a day or two.

I still had to be careful with poisons, and it didn’t help with poisons not of my own devising, so I couldn’t just get rid of [Basic Poison Resistance] yet. Still, I think the two skills were stacking in this instance. Maybe at some point I’d be able to stand in a cloud of my own lethal poisons and breathe it all in like a warm summer breeze. But that wasn’t today.

Disappointingly, my [Social Manipulation] skill hadn’t gotten strong enough to give me a subskill. It was too bad, but it was going to grow a lot more once I got back to selling mushroom skewers.

Name: N/A

Race: Human {Common}

Age: 7 Years

Mana: 32/36

Primary Class: [Feronie’s Crusader {Epic}]

Afflictions

- Black Lung {Common}

- Child of Poverty {Common}

Blessings

- Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

Feronie’s Crusader Class Skills - Level One Hundred Thirty-One

- Aura of Growth {Rare} - Level Fifty-Five

> [Shaped Aura]

> [Careful Casting]

- Blight {Epic} - Level Twenty-Two

        > [Persistent Death]

- Ritual of Sporemageddon  {Legendary} - Level One

- Druid Sight {Uncommon} - Level Twenty-Seven

        > [Druid’s Sense]

- Mushroom Magic {Rare} - Level Twenty-Six

        > [Super Shroom Zoom]

General Skills - Level One Hundred Thirty-Nine

- Running {Common} - Level Twenty-Eight

> [Surefooted]

- Knitting {Common} - Level Sixty

> [Patterner]

> [Clicky Clacker]

> [Resizer]

- Basic Poison Resistance {Common} - Level Twenty-Two

> [Mana Bleed]

- Social Manipulation {Uncommon} - Level Nine

-   Poison Handling Expertise {Rare} - Level Twenty

> [Iron Lunged]

That was some pretty decent growth, I think. I bet there weren’t many seven year olds who had as impressive a set of skills and levels.

That didn’t matter. What I was trying to do didn’t take my age into account.

With a shake of my head, I picked up a satchel full of mushrooms and slung it over my shoulder. “Alright Nibbles, I’m heading out to the dungeon again. Wanna come?”

Nibbles, who had been acting a little nicer in the last week or so since I’d named him, hesitated for a bit before jumping up onto me and scurrying up to my side. He wrapped himself around my neck, which wasn’t as comfortable as I would have thought. His fur was itchy and his little paws ended in nasty claws. Still, he was kind of cute. I knit him a Peruvian-style beanie.

With a sackful of mushrooms on one side and my table and burner on the other, I headed out of the farm just before the crack of dawn. It was a chilly morning, with the air cool enough that every exhale came with a wispy plume of steam.

I didn’t like being up so early, but I needed to set up before the divers really started to work on the dungeon. Well, no, I could have set up at any time, the way their shifts worked there would always be people leaving. I just wanted to spy on the early-morning activity.

I didn’t carry much by way of change, but I did have a few coins to use as bribes for the local Bullies if they poked around before I had time to cook up any mushrooms.

Crossing the city was a bit of a chore. I had to stop a few times to catch my breath. My new [Iron Lunged] skill wasn’t an instant-cure for my unhealthy lungs, and I wasn’t so strong that I could carry everything with ease. My muscles were going to be sore the next day.

Actually, that was something I was planning on fixing soon. Not so much the muscles (though I supposed that I had some free time that I might as well use for exercise) but the lungs. If I made enough money I could stop by one of the big apothecaries to buy something for my lungs.

On arriving at the Ditz dungeon I found it about as busy as I could expect it to be for the hour. Lot of independent groups setting up, a few lazy bullies yawning over drinks they were sharing from metal thermoses and foremen yelling at workers who were clearly still weary from the hour.

I focused on the delvers . They had the good  gear and were the ones who really dove deep into the dungeon. Now that I knew a little more about it, I could guess at why the different groups had such different loadouts. Clearly some of them were ready to tackle entirely different sorts of trouble.

There had to be guides or some sort of system in place to tell them what to expect. The delvers had too many members from too many different teams going to too many different parts of the dungeon for them not to have some sort of organisation system in place.

I just had to discover what it was and how it worked, which I realised was a tall order.

In the meanwhile, I found a spot close to where the delvers were set up and placed my table down. I made sure it was out of the way so that no one would bump into me and give me an earful about setting up there, but it was still close enough for the smell to carry.

Nibbles hissed as my burner lit up. “Shuck you, or I won’t give you any of the leftovers,” I warned as I tossed a bit of butter onto the plate and then some chopped garlic.

Soon enough it was sizzling and the air around me stank of garlic. Then I added the first set of skewers down and waited for them to warm up.

It took less than a minute for the first customer to show up. A few coins clinked into the purse tucked under my jumper and I grinned. Things were starting off pretty well.

Of course, City Nineteen being what it was, that’s when I got a surprise, though I wasn’t sure if it was unwelcome.

A group of kids wandered over my way. They were a bit older than I was, and scruffier. I was worried they might be coming for trouble, but I had a few ways to defend myself and if I called the bullies over, they might well side with me.

Then I recognized one of the kids at the same time as they recognized me.

“Uh, hi,” I said.

So much for an easy morning.

***

Death Cap - Twenty-Three - Placing a Bet on Those Who Might Help

“You,” she said, a finger pointing right at me. “I know you.”

“Yeah,” I replied. I was actually kind of surprised she’d recognize me at all. The last time we’d seen each other was... years ago. She couldn’t have been much more than two or three years old. Now she looked like she was nine or so.

Bet, a girl whose last name I didn’t know. She’d taught me the [Running] skill once, and helped me get a hang on how to read. We had spent a few weeks playing together when I was still working past the baby stage.

Me remembering her wasn’t all that impressive. The other way around though... “Hey,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

She was in overalls and a pale blue shirt stained with dirt and grime at the cuffs. The shirt was two or three sizes too large for her. So were her boots, I noted idly.

“I work here,” she said. “For Bloomsbury.” She turned to the other kids, then made a shooing gesture at them. “I know them, they’re nice. Can you tell the foreman that she’s allowed?”

“Is she?” one of the other kids asked.

Bet shrugged. “Does it matter?”

That seemed enough for the others. I had the impression that they’d let a lot of things pass if it meant sticking it to this foreman Bet mentioned. If he was anything like what I imagined, then I could see why. Kids worked at the dungeon. Well, they worked everywhere in this crapsack world.

Somehow I didn’t expect to meet one that I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn’t make a point to stick around with people of my own age. They were loud and stupid, and I had things that needed doing that weren’t helped by their presence.

Bet had been nice though.

“You sell mushrooms?” Bet asked the obvious as she took in my little set-up.

“Yeah,” I said. “Been doing it for a year or two.”

“Who do you work for?” she asked.

I laughed. “Why? Looking for a job?”

She shrugged. “Always.”

I blinked at that, then looked past her shoulder. A couple of delvers were heading over. I waved Bet closer, then pulled her to my side and pressed a skewer into her hands. “On the house. Give me a minute.” I smiled at my customers and jumped into my normal pitch. Soon enough, I’d cleared out my rack and was setting up new skewers of mushrooms. Bet watched me the entire time, like a starving hawk watching an injured mouse.

“Who’s your boss?” she asked.

“No one,” I said.

She blinked. “Huh?”

“So, what do you do?” I asked.

“For a living?” she asked right back. It made something twist in my gut, hearing that. She was what, ten? Nine years old? No one that age should be worried about working for a living. She should have been out playing, getting her knees scuffe d and running around. Instead she was talking about making a living.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I said, I work for Mister Bloomsbury. They’ll hire anyone.” I nodded, but I think she caught on that  I wanted more. “We go into the dungeon and collect small things. Plants, some smaller bodies. The older kids get knives and cut off spider webs. Mostly we just toss things into carts then pull the carts out. We get one pence a shift. Morning shift and afternoon shift.”

If I sold eight skewers I was making more than her for a full day’s work. “Is it worth it?” I asked.

She shrugged. “It’s work. A little dangerous, but if you do good you can get scouted to join one of the bigger crews. They go deeper, but get paid better.” She nodded to one such crew walking by. They were all adults, and their uniform pretty much just included a dark blue jacket that they all wore with a badge on their chest. The same sort of folk I’d seen carrying out entire trees from the dungeon. “They get a shilling per shift, three shifts a day.”

They were making a little more than what I’d likely make, unless I got lucky. But the work, I imagined, was more dangerous. Nothing about dungeon work was safe.

“It’s better than being in a factory,” Bet said. “If you’re a girl, when you get old enough, some foremen will sell you off..”

I spilled my container of oil on the ground and ducked down to pick it up before I could spill too much. It was cooking oil, so not a big loss. I’d just need to ration it for the rest of the day.

The news was... unsurprising.

“Why are you working here? Wasn’t your dad an accountant or something?”

Her expression darkened. “I can go,” she said.

“No, wait,” I said. “How many days a week do you work?”

“Six,” she said. “We get one off a week. To rest.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Now you work three for me.”

“Huh?” she asked. But there was a glimmer of hope there.

I gestured to my set-up. “I grow my own mushrooms. If I’m here selling them, I’m not at the farm. So you’ll sell them for me. Three days a week. Call it... three pence a shift, but only one shift a day.”

“That’s still more than I make now. But the rest of the week?”

My gut churned some more. “You can stay and keep working for Bloomsmury or whomever,” I said. The reality was I couldn’t afford to keep her working six days a week, or even five. And, more disturbingly, I wanted to have an eye in the dungeon, and Bet here could be that for me. “Can you take today off?”

“Foreman won’t be happy,” she said.

“Tell him to talk to me then, if he’s so unhappy,” I growled. “I pay my union dues. You can tell him that, too.”

She bobbed her head. “I’ll be back.”

I watched her go, then refocused on my work. I’d just made an employee. Great. Maybe if I found another growing location or two I could start producing enough that I could keep the mushrooms sales up constantly? That had been my plan before, and I could almost manage it. With more time on my hands... yeah, that would be doable. I grinned at the next delver to come over, traded a few compliments and dropped a few more halfpennies into my purse. Then I plopped a mana-shroom into my mouth and chewed. I needed to keep my mana supplies up.

Bet could be a huge help. Not just in securing a steady income for me (which I needed) but in scouting the dungeon. Could she list off all the products they pulled from the dungeon? If so, were any of them interesting for me?

Last time, I’d found two decent mushrooms and a magical lichen. What else was in the depths of Ditz?

Bet returned, then paused to pant next to me. Her breathing was rough, worse than mine even. It had that bit of wetness to it that was clearly not a good sign. “I can start now,” she said. “You don’t even need to pay me the first day.”

I pulled out enough halfpennies to make up a shift’s pay, then shoved them into her hands. “I’m going to give you a uniform next time, okay?” I could afford some synthetic yarn, and it wouldn’t be hard to knit something up. It was finally a practical use for the skill. “Now, pay attention, this is the ideal oil-to-garlic mix. We don’t want to use too much oil, but garlic’s as cheap as it gets, so don’t worry about that.”

Bet was a quick learner, and within half an hour she was tending to the skewers with minimal fuss while also paying attention to the clients who came closer.

“Thank you,” she said after looking at the two halfpennies a client had given her. She gave them to me with the barest hesitation. Her previous work probably never had her handling the money she was earning from her boss. I’d maybe have to pay her more, to keep the temptation away.

“You’re a friend,” I said. “I still have [Running] you know.”

Bet laughed. “Me too! My dad wanted me to get rid of it, but then... well, yeah, then it came in handy in the dungeon a few times.”

“I bet,” I said. I eyed her from the corner of my eye. The morning continued, but soon enough I was out of oil and my mana reserves were starting to dwindle a little, so I started packing up while showing Bet how. “Come on, I’ll show you where my farm is.”

I nibbled on another mana-infused mushroom, one of the last things I’d cooked, then I handed one to Bet and another to Nibbles.

She made a pleased noise as she ate. “Thank you,” she said again. “But, um, can I ask a question?”

“Sure.”

“What’s that? ” she pointed to Nibbles on my shoulder.

I laughed. “Don’t worry about it! Now come on, I want to pick your brain.”

“You want to do what?” she asked.

***

Death Cap - Twenty-Four - A System Built by the Lowest Bidder, for the Lowest Bidder

I didn’t bring Bet back to my farm, mostly because I wasn’t an idiot.

It’s not that I didn’t trust her. It’s more that I had a healthy sense of paranoia when it came to people who weren’t me. I was in the business of basically toppling society, or at least killing off some of the more problematic elements of it while being tied to a goddess who was, for the most part, unpopular.

The chances that Bet was religious enough to care about that were slim, but not nonexistent. The more she knew about me, the more of a threat she was.

What kind of awful world was this where I couldn’t trust a ten-year old because a slip of the tongue might lead me to an untimely death?

The problem was that I wanted  to trust Bet. She’d been something of a friend, once, and I desperately needed more of those. Right now I could count the people I trusted on one hand with digits left over. One of those was a semi-rabid badger and another a hobgoblin that may or may not be an assassin.

So I brought Bet to an abandoned building not too far from my farm. It was a location I was considering using if I expanded my farm. A place where I could grow nothing but food mushrooms.

“Okay,” I said as I pulled out a long, thin vial filled with [Green Burn Lichen]. I shook the vial while pushing some mana into it, creating a vibrant green light which I set atop an old table. “This should do for talking, yeah?”

Bet looked around, but there wasn’t much to see. The room had a few broken bits of furniture--including some stools that I picked through to find two that were intact--but little else. “What is this place?” she asked.

“It’s nowhere. Which is why I thought it’d be a nice place to chat!”

“Oh,” she said before accepting the stool I offered her. “It’s not in the best part of the Clearford district.”

“No part of the district is the best part,” I said. There was only terrible and worse, but it was home all the same. “Okay, so first things first.” I fished through my purse and pulled out the money I owed Bet for a day’s work. “Here. For today.”

Bet took the coins, stared at them, then nodded. “Thank you.”

So, she didn’t pry open a gift horse’s mouth. That was probably good. “Now... as I said, I need someone to work for me setting up and selling mushrooms. I might be able to help you a few times, but I also need information.”

“Do you work for the union?” she asked, somewhat suspicious.

“No. I just pay my dues and keep on their good side because that’s smart business. I also bribe the bullies whenever they come poking around. I’ll go over that with you before you sell skewers on your own. It’s just good sense to give the bullies a couple of free samples without making it look like you’re paying them for anything. It keeps them off your back and if something goes wrong... well, they’ll look more favourably over someone who gave them free stuff, you know?”

Bet nodded. I was probably wasting my time, explaining bribery to someone from the same slums as me. “What kind of information did you need?”

“The dungeon,” I said while concocting a lie. “My business is all about mushrooms. I can grow them fairly easily. I know there are a few kinds of mushrooms in the dungeon that are rare and valuable, for alchemy and stuff like that. They’re potion ingredients. I want samples of them so that I can grow my own.”

It was a decent lie, I thought. It neatly explained why I had to go down into the dungeon without making my delving seem malicious.

Bet frowned, and I could see the gears turning. “Can you sell them for more than the amount they cost when taken from the dungeon?”

“Probably not,” I said. “I’ll need to undercut the... well, whoever  sells what’s collected in the dungeon.”

“But they get the mushrooms for free. Or nearly. They need to pay people like us to go get them, but that’s it.”

I nodded. “Mostly, I’m thinking about providing some... light competition for them. If they get... say, a thousand mushrooms from the dungeon a day, and it takes me a month to grow a thousand, then I’m not going to outsell them. But, I can still make money with that thousand mushrooms.”

Bet nodded. “Okay. I guess that makes sense. But why do you want the mushrooms from the dungeon?”

“What do you mean?”

“They sell them, right? To potion-makers. Can’t you buy a few from them?”

That wasn’t incorrect. “I’m planning on doing just that, yes. But I... well , I want to keep things discreet, so I need to sell mushrooms that could conceivably have been taken from the dungeon. I don’t want people thinking that I’m growing them in secret.”

“Oh, okay,” Bet said.

I held back a sigh. That excuse was so full of holes. Though, it did remind me that I had to try to buy some better mushrooms. It felt a little cheap to just walk into a store and walk out with valuable mushrooms, but maybe I could abuse this world’s capitalist system a little for my own benefit.

“I’m also,” I continued, “thinking of maybe funding my own gathering and delving team one day. Maybe. I don’t know exactly what kinds of permits you need, but that’s a problem for later. I need information about the dungeon long before I can plan something like that. Which is where you come in.”

Bet nodded slowly. “I’ve been in the dungeon, but never too far.”

“How deep?” I asked.

“Only down to the third floor.” She reached over to her arm and touched her bicep. I hadn’t noticed it before, but there were a few marks s e wn  into the fabric. Three yellow lines, arranged horizontally, then a small G next to them.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s the way you know how far in someone  can go. Or how far they were trained to go. Um, it’s rare, but sometimes the foremen will ask you to go deeper than that, but then they need to pay you an extra halfpenny for every floor. It’s more dangerous the deeper you go, so no one wants to volunteer.”

“I see,” I said. “Can you tell me about the dungeon then?”

“I’m not a delver, so I don’t fight the monsters  or anything. I just help collect the stuff, and I’ve only been doing it for a few months. It’s... dangerous, even if it’s the least dangerous thing to do.” She looked a little haunted, saying that. “I saw a boy once, the delvers  missed one of the spider rats, and it cocooned him. He was still alive but he couldn’t move. The spider rat bit him in the back of the neck, in the spine, and all he could do was breathe while he was eaten.”

“Fuck,” I muttered.

What kind of depraved asshole sent kids down into a place like that?

What kind of idiot was I that I wanted to sneak in as a child myself?

I shook my head. Needs must. “What do you pick up down there?” I asked. Half to change the subject.

Bet started to list things off, and I soon realised  that I wouldn’t remember a tenth of it. I found some scraps of paper in my bags and something to write with and gave it to her. She thanked me and started to list things in an orderly fashion.

“Your handwriting’s pretty ,” I said as I watched her go.

She paused mid-scratch. “Thank you. I wanted to be a librarian, before .”

I didn’t know   before what , but I imagined that it wasn’t pleasant.

Soon she handed over a list, ordered by dungeon floors. “I put things that they find on that floor that we don’t take. Um, stuff like trees and minerals and stuff like that. Those are different companies. I think, but I’m not sure, that gathering different resources is based on contracts. Whomever can gather them cheapest gets to do the gathering, and the people who take those contracts pay out the delvers to clear the rooms.”

“So... the chain goes something like... a factory needs wood, so it sets a bid for providers, the lowest-cost provider gets the contract. They in turn set a bid for a gathering company, who in turn set a bid for delvers. In the end the factory gets what it wants for the cheapest cost possible?”

“I think that’s how it works, yes,” Bet said. “Companies will, uh, pay each other not to have to go gather things on the lower floors. But some things only show up on those floors, so the people who gather trees from the bottom, for example, their company is splitting the cost for delvers with another company.”

I cursed in the back of my mind. It was the lowest bidders all the way down.

***

Death Cap - Twenty-Five - When Things Go Well, Prepare for Trouble

In the next couple of weeks, I started to concoct something of a plan.

Bet was an excellent salesgirl. I set her up near the  dungeon and watched her go. It took a bit for her to work past her initial jitters, but after that, she was on fire. She knew people, both with the gathering teams full of kids, and with the other gatherers. That helped her get to know others, who in turn treated her fairly well.

When a few foremen came to poke about, Bet pointed them out to me and I smoothly offered them some free supplies.

There was one dicey situation where this bigger man came over and started talking about how much we were making and how we ought to ‘share’ it with him. I was considering dropping a Dead Man’s Cough on him when the bullies showed up and intimidated him away.

Bribes were worth it, sometimes.

So, after a few trips to accompany her, I let Bet take care of things on that front herself. I needed to up the production in my farm, but that was the work of an afternoon or two. Soon I’d be able to keep someone like Bet going every day of the week without a hitch.

With a few days to prepare, I’d be able to supply a second seller, which meant it was time to start expanding. Stew helped me find a carpenter who could build a table like the one we were using, and the old man who sold me my first lantern was overjoyed when I ordered two more and enough oil to last a month.

I still had money to spare after all that.

Some of it went into our home, buying a few things that were nicer. More padding for the cots we had, nicer furniture and the services of a chimney sweep, which as it turned out we desperately needed.

My mom seemed to appreciate the changes, and it gave her a bit of energy to clean the house up some. I offered her a job selling skewers for me, but she turned me down. Technically she earned more than what I was paying Bet already, and the work she did was probably lower risk, in some ways.

So, some of my problems were fading while others, unfortunately, grew.

The big issue was dungeon-related.

I couldn’t dive into the Ditz dungeon and hit the bottom floors. Not without a lot more experience, a lot more gear, and maybe some outside help. But, what I could do, was hire a team to go down for me.

That was a complicated option, but it was an  option. It required a lot of money and some contacts in the right places, but delver  teams could just be hired out. If I got one to lead me to the bottom of the dungeon, then that was it, I could do the ritual and then... then we’d see.

Sitting at the workbench at my little farm, I ran through the numbers. I didn’t know the cost of a delver  team, but I could guestimate  it. Based on how much surplus I was making from my little business at the moment, it would take four years to earn enough to hire a middling team to escort me down.

That was a bit much. I wanted revenge now, not in half a decade. More, if anything went wrong and I needed the funds to help. I had no safety cushion, no insurance, and nothing to fall back on.

I rubbed at my nose and tried to ward off a headache. There was a solution here to all of my problems, but it was out of reach. I could either dismiss it, try to find another solution, or I could try to solve the problems with this solution.

Problem: I didn’t have the money to hire the people I would need in order to reach the bottom of the dungeon.

How could I solve that?

I leaned back, then tossed my pen onto the table. “Guess it’s time to do more crime,” I said. “Come on, Sir Nibbles, we’re going to go see the union again.”

Nibbles stared up at me from where he’d rolled into a ball, then with a surprisingly quick motion, he jumped onto my arm and clawed his way up to my shoulder where he wrapped himself around my neck.

I hissed and rubbed at my arm. “One day you’re going to break skin and then I’ll get some messed up infection and lose my arm,” I muttered. “That’s the same day that I’ll eat badger soup with my remaining arm.”

Sir Nibbles hissed back, and it sounded an awful lot like laughter.

I grabbed a few things, filled a satchel with some edible mushrooms that were past their prime, then slunked out of my farm and across the city.

Keeping my head down, I made sure to walk fast and not attract any attention. There was a particular way of walking that was common in the slums, a hunched back shuffle that was surprisingly quick and told anyone that looked that you weren’t interested in their business as long as they didn’t get into yours.

With the pace I set, it didn’t take long for me to reach the warehouse where the union was holed up. It had the usual assortment of young men hanging around, but they were busier today than usual. A long cart was stationed out front, and they were loading boxes into the back of it.

I paused a bit to the side, where I was sure I wouldn’t be in anyone’s way, and just watched for a moment until I spotted someone familiar walking out next to a pair of young men who were listening attentively.

“Hey, Gary,” I said.

The young man turned and spotted me in a blink, then he smiled. “Well, if it isn’t mushroom... person.”

“Person?” I asked.

“Uh, well, yeah,” he replied before squinting at me. “Say, this might be a little strange, but are you a boy or a girl? We have something of a betting pool going.”

I made a disgusted face at him. “I don’t think it matters, either way you’re way too old for me.”

“What?” he asked.

A few of the boys overheard and started to chuckle.

“No, I wanted to know... you know, what’s in your pants.”

“I’m wearing overalls,” I pointed out. This was fun! “Also, that’s a little rude.”

“That’s not an answer,” Gary snapped.

I shrugged, then reached into my overalls and pulled out a mushroom. “Mostly it’s fungus.” Gary looked at me askance, and it was everything I could do not to laugh. “Hey, I came here to chat, and I have some food to drop off. Did the last mushrooms I brought serve?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, the cooks loved them. We had soup the next day. It was pretty good. Thanks for that.” He half-turned and gestured the boys on. “Who’re you looking to talk to? Dregs? I don’t know what you two got up to last time, but he was in a good mood for a week, which is concerning.”

“We just went out for a walk,” I said.

He didn’t believe me, and he wasn’t going to push because I don’t think he really wanted to know. With a nod of his head he gestured into the warehouse and I followed him in. They were moving, it seemed, the dividers going down and everything being packed up.

“What’s going on here?” I asked.

“We’re changing locations,” he replied. “It’s just sensible. We’ve been here too long already. New place means that the bureaucracy needs to play catch up. You won’t believe how often the bullies will hit a place we occupied six months before, just because the people behind the desks are seven layers deep into the paperwork and a year behind.”

“Huh,” I said. That didn’t bode well for the smooth running of the city. Not my problem though. “Anyway, I didn’t come over just to feed you guys. I had a request of sorts.”

He nodded. “What are you looking for? The union can help with a bunch of things, but we’re in the middle of something right now, if you can’t tell.”

I nodded along. “Yeah, it’s nothing too urgent. I’m looking for work.”

He frowned. “Your little mushroom business not  working out?”

“Oh no, it’s going really well. I meant more... the kind of work that gets Dregs excited.”

He eyed me. “You know what you’re asking?”

“Yes. Are we going to do that thing where we use euphemisms  instead of saying things like assassinate, murder, or whatever?”

Gary shook his head. “I don’t know if you’re a boy or a girl, but either way, you’re one scary kid, you know that?”

I grinned, then grinned harder when he shivered.

***

Death Cap - Twenty-Six - Crashing the Party Before They Crash the Party

The plan, or at least the objective  was simple.

Ratesco’s Union had started moving smaller things to their new headquarters already, but the big move wasn’t going to happen for another two days. That was when things would be more or less official. That same day, a bunch of union big-wigs were going to pop up and have a big meetup at the new headquarters. It was, from what I understood, a sort of twice-yearly event that was pretty important.

The bullies, of course, wanted to crash it.

The way Gary told it, the last time there was a big move they’d ended up arresting two of the mid-level bosses on the way over on spurious charges and caused a disturbance. It was one of the reasons they’d put off the current move.

So, the  union was willing to pay me to ensure that the bullies were too busy to even think of causing that kind of trouble.

The way he put it, they were hiring a bunch of non-union street folk to cause some trouble. Break windows, start a few brawls, and generally send a message to the cops that the union could cause lots of trouble if they actually wanted to flex.

They’d pay a shilling for every bully taken out of action, which Gary had very carefully reminded me meant ‘busy’ not ‘dead.’

Dead police were bad. It would break the tenuous non-aggression agreement the union and the city government had.

So, for distracting one officer I’d get the equivalent of twenty-four-ish mushroom skewers sold. That wasn’t too bad, but it didn’t beat a day’s work. If I wanted to earn more with this mess then I’d need to distract at least five, maybe six officers. More, because I was taking a day off to plot my operation.

The rules were simple:

No killing

No maiming in a permanent fashion

No destruction on a grand scale

So I couldn’t just light a big factory or two on fire and call it a day. That was unfortunate, it would have been easy.

Still, I had other ways to cause chaos. Non-lethal but exceptionally chaotic methods.

I had, in my possession, two mushrooms that I thought could work wonderfully to cause some mischief.

[Bottle Pop] - Rare

A mushroom which fills with flame-proof spores, water, and methane, each within their own separate sacs within the fruiting body. On receiving a strong enough impact, the mushroom explodes, lighting itself on fire and spreading its hardened spores out around it to penetrate nearby materials. The spores are mildly poisonous. The fumes created by the explosion are mildly toxic.

And, of course.

[Purple Starball] - Uncommon

This magical mushroom unleashes clouds of glowing spores that, if inhaled, will cause a mammal to have vivid visual hallucinations.

Bombs and powerful hallucinogens. With some of my [Green Burn Lichen] acting as a fuse I could create natural explosives that would spread fire and confusion to anyone within reach.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an arsonist in possession of explosives must be in want of chaos,” I said as I knitted together a very thin net which could hold the three fungi together. It was a somewhat unwieldy package, but it would do.

By the time evening rolled around I had several bombs ready.

Sir Nibbles and I went out with one of them, a short walk to a corner of the city where there was a large sewer entrance. The pipe was wide enough that I could walk into it, and open to the air. It also stank to high-heavens, so even the more desperate of the homeless stayed away.

I set my package down, then left the area and hid behind some abandoned metal drums. It took a bit of finagling, but I managed to reach the package with my aura, then I pushed some mana into it.

The explosive started with a mean hiss, like a cat met in a dark alley. Then, a loud bang!  

It was just a bit louder than a backfire, but I found that I’d probably been covering my ears for nothing.

With my mask on--and a bandana over Sir Nibble’s lower face--we exited our cover and checked on the damage.

It was actually quite pretty. The [Purple Starball] left a cloud of glowing spores that danced in the air like those sparkles in a firework show. The ground next to the initial explosion wasn’t quite scorched, but it was marked by the bang nonetheless.

I waited for things to settle, then picked some samples of the spores.

The [Purple Starball]’s poisonous spores were the first I checked.

[Purple Starball Spore]

This spore, once inhaled, will break apart in a mammal’s respiratory system and in doing so will release magical neurotoxins into the victim’s bloodstream. These will directly affect the eyes and the brain’s visual centres, causing the victim to have vivid and realistic visions based on recently-seen elements.

I’d dosed myself with this one a few times. The hallucinations weren’t too bad... they just made it feel like I was moving backwards through time, as if my vision was rewinding. The colours were all wrong, and the perspective tended to warp though. It made me terribly nauseous, and I only used it while sitting down and concentrating on staying still.

[Bottle Pop Spore]

A mildly poisonous spore that, on contact with the dermis, will slowly leak into a victim’s bloodstream. The poison causes intestinal distress and cramping, as well as sudden bowel evacuation.

I didn’t want to talk about what happened to me while testing this one on myself.

The bullies tended to wear bright blue britches. I giggled to myself, imagining them repainted  a whole new colour from within.

I decided that the test was a success and headed home for an early night’s rest. I’d need as much sleep as I could get for the next day.

I left home at the crack of dawn. The Union was going to start the final part of the move at around ten, which gave me a whole three hours to get so many bullies confused and busy that they wouldn’t be able to even think of interfering.

Honestly, if I had it my way, I’d drop one of my new toys into the bully changing room while it was still full. I bet they only had one or two toilet stalls in there.

I wasn’t actually stupid enough to attack their headquarters though, which was in a much nicer part of town. Instead, I had to be a bit more conservative  and cautious. If I, at age seven and a bit, had skills that allowed me to use magic and do some pretty incredible things, then an adult with bully-training and years of experience would be leagues ahead of me.

So I had to balance risk and reward.

My first thought was to set off the mushrooms while next to patrols. It was moderately safe, since I could trigger them from afar, and it would be easy to get away afterwards if I positioned myself well.

But the rewards... I'd hit what... two of them? They usually went around in pairs. It was better than any other idea I had for the moment.

I’d need to find or buy a slingshot, and then I’d need to practice with it.

I gathered all of my mushrooms, then placed them in a large bag before heading out. I needed a name for them too. Stink bombs? The people hit by them would certainly stink afterwards. I ran through a few names until I realized  that I was spending more time on that than on actually thinking ahead. “Fuck it, purple fart bombs.” The plan was juvenile enough as it is, why not go all the way.

My first strike had to be my best one, which is why, after some consideration, I decided to leave the slums I lived in to visit the slightly nicer slums next to the Gutter.

The bullies almost all lived in a part of the city I’d never visited. From what I understood, it was the middle-class area, and it was far safer and nicer, though it was still kind of terrible. They had tiny apartments stacked atop each other there too, but the walls were made of brick and they had proper heating and power and even water.

When the bullies did come to the worse slums, they tended to do so reluctantly. And that would be their downfall.

I grinned to myself, then pulled up a bright blue bandana to cover my lower mouth. My shirt and overalls were plain and common enough and covered in a small coat I’d knit together. I also had a ratty cap on to cover my hair. I could ditch most of my outfit in a moment’s notice, and then my otherwise eye-catching hair could serve as a disguise. That was the idea, but I wasn’t sure if it would work on people who had criminal-catching skills.

I shook my head and focused. I was nearing the Gutter, and out ahead of me, on the corner of one of the busiest streets where five roads met in a mess of traffic, was a very popular stall where the local bullies gathered to refill their tea before the morning began.

Today, they’d regret being so predictable.

***

Death Cap - Twenty-Seven - Running Fast Enough to Avoid the Consequences of Your Own Actions

Walking up to the bullies and dropping a bomb at their feet would be the height of stupidity. Instead I observed from afar. The first couple of bullies to arrive waited and chatted with the stall-keeper, an older gentleman who probably didn’t have any thief problems judging by how chummy he was being with the police.

They stepped aside to let another gentleman order a warm drink. Bullies had priority in the line, but they weren’t the only customers. The stall had a tin roof and a big rack at the front that sold newspapers.

I squinted at it, then had an idea.

It was moderately high risk, but not impossible to pull off. “You’re going to have to stay here,” I said to Sir Nibbles as I grabbed him by the middle and placed him on the ground of the alleyway.

He looked around, then back up at me.

“Yes, really,” I said. “I’ll be right back, okay? Keep this safe.” I left my bagful of mushroom bombs next to an over-full dumpster, and Sir Nibbles climbed atop it. If anyone tried to grab my stuff, they’d have to deal with him first. Or he’d just let them take it for a scratch to the chin. The little asshole was too much like a cat sometimes.

I fished out a few coins from my pockets. I hated the expense, but I’d be making so much more if it worked that I couldn’t afford to hesitate about it. Then, before I left, I fished out one of my mushroom -filled nets and stuffed it down the front of my shirt. It gave the impression that I had a bit of a belly.

Good. That might actually help in this case.

With money in hand, I loitered by the entrance of the alleyway until I saw the two bullies by the stall being joined by four more.

Six targets. That wasn’t too bad.

I had no idea how many bullies there were in City Nineteen, but they were common enough. Maybe one or two for every thousand people? The city had a pretty big population for what it was. It needed a constant influx of people to keep everything going.

Skirting around some traffic, I crossed the road towards the stall and then skipped the line waiting for the old man’s attention and headed right for the rack of newspapers. It was literally within five feet of some of the officers.

“Hey, kid!” the old man said as I knelt down before the rack. “This ain’t for gawking.”

“Oh, sorry sir!” I said. “Foreman sent me to grab his paper!” I fished my change out and slapped it onto the counter.

The coins disappeared in a blink and the old man returned to serving folk their tea and coffee with a grunt. That worked for me. Now I was just some brat doing a shitty chore, nothing worth paying attention to.

The rack was built as a set of angled shelves where the newspapers were sitting for people to grab them. I dropped to one knee and picked up a copy of the newspaper on the bottommost row. It was a less popular tabloid paper. The Economist’s Gazette. Not exactly riveting morning reading, but probably important to this world’s equivalent of a stock broker or whatever.

I made a show of unfolding the paper as if to check if it was the right one, then I nodded to myself and started to fold it back up.

My free hand reached under my shirt and shoved my mushroom payload into the bottom-most shelf. I angled some of the papers up to hold it in place out of view.

That would severely limit the explosive range, but needs must and all that.

I turned and darted off to the back of the line, paper in hand, then took my place just before a man in a suit and tie arrived. He gave me a look as if I’d just crawled out of a septic tank but didn’t comment.

People in City Nineteen, at least the well-bred ones, made a point of not commenting. The queue was a sacred thing, not a place for gossip and complaining.

I closed my eyes and felt the direction of the wind. It was coming in from one side, pushing towards the stall and heading towards where the bullies were gathered.

Perfect. I was going to wait until I was closer up to the front of the line, then detonate it. Then I saw another pair of bullies arriving. One of them had golden insignia on his shoulders and his hat was both taller and more ornate.

I saw a chance, and I took it.

Moving my magical aura as quickly as I could, I snaked it along the ground, around the line, then into the newspaper rack just as the sergeant was moving to the stall to chat with the old man. He had a metal thermos in hand, raised as if to give it over.

My mana touched the [Green Burn Lichen] and everything happened in a flash.

The bang was a lot louder when it wasn’t covered by a cement tunnel and I wasn’t around an intersection. Bits of torn up newspaper and one of the shelves flew off into the air even as a cloud of glowing purple motes rushed out and up.

Someone in line shouted, and I took that as my signal to run.

I wasn’t going to gawk with my mouth wide-open like some idiot. The moment the echoing retort of the mushrooms going off was done I was zipping across the street. I’d managed to time it so that I slipped between a car and a horse-drawn cart whose horses were panicking from the sudden noise and screaming.

Pushing my [Running] skill, I slipped into the alley where my stuff--and Sir Nibbles--was waiting for me and started to pick it all up in a hurry. “Let’s get a better vantage,” I told my badger.

We reached the end of the alley where a fire-escape led up towards the flat roof of one of the buildings, then we climbed. Or rather, I climbed and Sir Nibbles hung onto me.

By the time I got onto the roof and moved to the edge to see what was going on, a good  three minutes had passed and the situation was calming down.

There was still some spore dust around, but a couple of street-sweepers were picking it all up with long brooms and what I suspected were some sort of skills.

A fresh batch of bullies had arrived and were taking care of their comrades and some of the civilians caught in the blast. I grinned at the sight. Three of them were on the ground, twisting and turning, while the other three were sitting on a bench and looking out of it.

The sergeant was bent over double, clutching at his stomach while someone--a nurse?--checked on him. Judging by the shading on his pants, my mushrooms had done their job.

Sir Nibbles chittered and I nodded along. “We did good. That’s... at least six of them out for the count. We’re net-positive for today. But... yeah, I still have a heap of mushrooms.”

Just then, I noticed a bully wagon screaming into the intersection. It was one of those nicer motorised vans, with the driver sitting at the top above a big boxy carriage-like space that opened up to disgorge half a dozen bullies all at once.

“Oh, now that’s a beautiful opportunity,” I said. How had the bullies contacted each other so quickly? If it was a skill, then there wasn’t much I could do about it, but if it was a piece of technology, then I really wanted to know.

I glanced out and down the street and noted a second bully wagon coming down. This one was longer, with an open rear. I could see half a dozen heads covered in those familiar helmets bobbing along in the back.

They’d be passing right under me.

“Oh, oh this is too easy,” I muttered as I opened my bag.

The traffic had jammed up on the road below, but a few of the newly arrived bullies were working on untangling the mess. Those that I’d blasted were being tended to and were chugging down potions while others watched on.

Of course they had potions that could get rid of my poison effects. I should have figured as much. The good thing was that they didn’t seem to carry them as part of their normal kit. The potions  were stored in one of the wagons.

I unpacked a few mushrooms and waited on the edge of the roof while the second bully wagon crawled along.

Then, right when it was passing below, I tossed the mushrooms down.

I didn’t even need to trigger them magically for them to burst apart. The first two burst too soon in front of the wagon, the third smacked the side next to the driver and burst apart uselessly, but the fourth, oh the fourth landed right in the back as if guided by divine chance.

The bullies looked at the mushrooms held together by a knit net for all of a second before it exploded in their faces.

I cackled.

Then I noticed that a few of them, those outside the blast radius, were looking up at me.

“Time to go, Sir Nibbles!” I said as I scooped him up and ran.

***

Death Cap - Twenty-Eight - Discovering That You’re not as Special as You Think is an Important Growing Moment

I ran across the rooftop, then jumped off the back of it. It wasn’t too big of a leap, the alley below was barely a metre wide. I wouldn’t have been able to lay down flat across the width of the alley if I tried.

It still felt like I was jumping over a chasm, and if I wasn’t in such a hurry I would have climbed down and found another way around.

Right then, my job was to get the hell away from this part of the city. The further from the crime scene I was, the harder it would be to track me. Even if they had magical skills, I suspected that changing clothes, reducing my magical use, and staying away from the area and any bully’s notice for a while would help a lot.

I didn’t hear of the bullies catching many criminals in the slums. Sure, they strutted around and kicked down a door or two, but I knew some of my neighbours were thieves and they were more likely to be brought to justice by an irate neighbour than by the law.

So, I was pretty confident that I’d be safe in the deeper slums if I could just get there.

The moment I was on the other rooftop, I jogged over to the edge and looked around until I found a fire escape. It didn’t reach the roof, but it did reach the top floor, so I sat on the edge of the roof and scooted off and fell a few feet onto the topmost platform of the escape. It creaked and clanged, and I was a little worried before it settled.

I climbed down the escape, only to realise that it stopped a floor off the ground above a large stinking, wooden dumpster in an alley. There was a wall, made of old wood and rusty tin,  behind the dumpster. I made sure to jump clear of the wall and landed with a hard omph.

“Good thing I’m not thirty years older, that would have been hell on my knees,” I said to Sir Nibbles.

He chattered  something, then hissed while looking out towards the end of the alley.

“There they are!”

There was a bully at the end of the alley. A big blue bastard who immediately took off running towards me. He had the normal bully gear on, but he also had a long baton in one hand and a metal shield with the city crest in the other, like a thicker, smaller riot shield. His entire lower face was covered in a gas mask with two large filters.

“Shit,” I cursed as I spun around and scurried up the wall. The edges bit into my hands, but I was lucky enough that they didn’t cut.

The fall to the ground on the other side was rough, ending in a poor roll  that made it so that I had to untangle myself to get to my feet. At least I had a wall between me and the bully. I darted to the end of the alley and looked left and right, trying to decide how to get out of the area fastest while losing my pursuit.

Then the wall in the centre of the alley exploded apart as the bully ran through it, shield-first. There was a faint glow clinging to him. A skill?

I didn’t stick around to ask nicely and darted left. At the first intersection I turned, then turned again on the next only to grab the corner and pull myself back when I noticed it was a dead end.

Couldn’t get trapped in a dead end.

I continued to run. If I was getting lost, then they would too. I ran through my options as I continued to move ahead. I had a couple of mushrooms on me. Nothing lethal though. I rooted through my satchel for what I had left. One knit-together bomb, a few other mushrooms. [Purple Starballs] wouldn’t help. That bully was wearing a mask. I had to assume the others would be doing the same.

The [Bottle Pop] I had might work. It was explosive enough to maybe throw a bully off his stride, and it worked on skin contact.

Had that bully back there’s entire face been covered? I had caught a glimpse of his mask, since it stuck out a lot, but not his entire face. I doubted they’d be covered from head to toe, and my [Bottle Pop]’s only needed skin contact to work.

But they didn’t work well in tiny quantities. The amount of contact they’d make would only give the nearest bully a bit of cramping. I doubted it would even slow them down at all.

No, I wasn’t equipped to deal with the current situation. If I had to deal with bullies actually trying to hunt me down, then I wanted... maybe some sort of acidic spore or fungi? Something fast-acting. I’d need something that could obscure the area too, maybe a smoke-bomb like mushroom. Some [Dead Man’s Cough] wouldn’t hurt either, especially if they had anti-poison potions of some sort to deal with the threat my mushrooms posed.

I was not ready for this.

I cursed as I came around a corner and found two bullies chatting with each other. A pair being lazy? They were wearing their masks around their necks, so I tossed my [Bottle Pop] ahead and detonated it between them, then shot by and through the cloud while shielding my face with my arms.

Some of those spores were going to touch my skin. Fantastic. That's all I needed on top of everything else. Though my poison resistance skills would counter some of it.

The bullies shouted behind me, so as I neared the next intersection I flung a [Purple Starball] out and let it spew its load of spores across the path. If they ran through that without masks, they wouldn’t be an issue.

I took more turns, entirely losing any sense of directions as I pressed deeper into the city. I was running out of ammunition, and for that matter, I was running out of breath.

Then I saw a dead-end alley with a large sewer grate in it, and I nearly sagged with relief.

Pulling the grate off was a challenge, but I managed thanks to strength lent to me by desperation. I climbed down the rungs, then stood in the open sewers, fighting for breath and trying not to faint at the constant stench.

I ripped my hat off and tossed it into the flow, then equipped my mask before tossing off my coat too. “In the bag,” I ordered Sir Nibbles, who was more than happy to escape the smell of sewers for the smell of earthy mushrooms in my satchel.

The sewers mostly lead to the Gutter, so I went against the flow while trying to keep a decent pace and avoiding the smaller off-shoot tunnels in favour of staying in the larger ones.

No one popped their head in, and I didn’t run into any bully patrols.

Either they didn’t care to follow me down, or they’d lost track of me at some point.

How bad was my situation? I... wasn’t sure, but it wasn’t ideal. I’d need to keep my head low for the next while. I was partially disguised, but I didn’t trust in my abilities there.

The big problem was all the evidence I left behind. They’d be on the lookout for someone who was small and used mushrooms as weapons. That could be traced back to me, maybe.

I was small and sold food mushrooms, but maybe that was close enough to get them sniffing around.

“Fuck me,” I muttered. I soon found a familiar section of the sewers and headed homeward.

At least I’d done my job and distracted the bullies. No one would be able to claim otherwise. Between those having bowel issues in public and those hallucinating, they’d certainly gotten a carton’s worth of egg to the face.

Which didn’t bode well for me, actually. Embarrassment was easy to forgive, but hard to forget.

I pulled out of the sewer, then just stood on a familiar, quiet, street. What was I supposed to do now?

I didn’t want to head home stinking the way I did... so I went to an abandoned place I knew where I could access some running water, then, over the course of half an hour, I washed myself off with freezing-cold water that stank of rust.

My clothes, of course, were probably ruined.

And I was starting to feel the unfortunate gurgles that came with contact with [Bottle Pop] spores.

The union was going to owe me so much money when this was over.

***

Death Cap - Twenty-Nine - Success Begets its Own Unique Form of Reward

I planned to show up at the new Union headquarters the next morning, but I wasn’t going to be stupid about it.

First, I dressed entirely differently from the day before. Or as different I could afford on my budget of nothing. I knit a cover for my satchel to make it look different, this one with little flowers on it and all, and I knit myself a shirt with a long hem that looked a little bit like a dress.

Tying my hair back in a long braid and forgoing any hats left me looking like a proper young slum girl from one of the nicer parts of the slums.

The next time, I’d dress like more of a boy, to obfuscate things even more. Maybe I could set up multiple recurring disguises that I could switch between? One for business, one for murder?

I liked the idea.

Sir Nibbles did not like having me place a bonnet on his head, but he endured that because otherwise he’d have to hide in my satchel the entire time.

I also, of course, carried enough lethal mushrooms to wipe out a city block. [Dead Man’s Cough]’s under my clothes and different poisonous mushrooms tucked away wherever I could stuff them.

If someone smacked me around, I’d release entire clouds of lethal spores with every fall. Hopefully that would be enough to dissuade anyone from doing anything stupid.

My big problem was... well, I was worried that I’d done too good of a job the day before with the bullies. They probably weren’t happy with me, understandably so, and it was possible there was something akin to a bounty out for my head.

I was putting a lot of trust in the animosity between the Union and the bullies.

Once I was all geared up, I made sure to give my mom a quick kiss on the cheek before heading out. She was busy preparing for her own day at the factory, though she did pause to say that I looked nice.

I ran over the gains I’d gotten the day before as I crossed the slums. They weren’t too numerous, but they counted for something to me.

[Sprint]

You conserve stamina better while pushing yourself to move faster. As you   practice  you  will gain speed and endurance and become a better runner.

That was just useful. It wasn’t incredible, it wasn’t Earth-shattering, but it did something simple that I needed help with and made it easier. When I tried to move fast I found it easier and less tiring. Less didn’t mean not at all, of course, I couldn’t go too far without running out of breath still. The skill didn’t make up for bad lungs.

A few other skills had jumped up a level or two faster than they should have otherwise, but even that accelerated growth wasn’t that noticeable in the grand scheme of things.

Or maybe it was.

I’d done a week or two’s hard work in one afternoon. Maybe it was using skills in new ways, or maybe it was just the challenge I faced and risk I took that helped me get ahead. Either way, I would take the growth I got and be happy about it.

Name: N/A

Race: Human {Common}

Age: 7 Years

Mana: 33/39

Primary Class: [Feronie’s Crusader {Epic}]

Afflictions

- Black Lung {Common}

- Child of Poverty {Common}

Blessings

- Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

Feronie’s Crusader Class Skills - Level One Hundred Forty-Three

- Aura of Growth {Rare} - Level Fifty-Seven

> [Shaped Aura]

> [Careful Casting]

- Blight {Epic} - Level Twenty-Six

        > [Persistent Death]

- Ritual of Sporemageddon  {Legendary} - Level One

- Druid Sight {Uncommon} - Level Thirty

        > [Druid’s Sense]

- Mushroom Magic {Rare} - Level Twenty-Nine

        > [Super Shroom Zoom]

General Skills - Level One Hundred Fifty-Three

- Running {Common} - Level Forty

> [Surefooted]

> [Sprint]

- Knitting {Common} - Level Sixty-One

> [Patterner]

> [Clicky Clacker]

> [Resizer]

- Basic Poison Resistance {Common} - Level Twenty-Four

> [Mana Bleed]

- Social Manipulation {Uncommon} - Level Thirteen

-   Poison Handling Expertise {Rare} - Level Twenty-Five

> [Iron Lunged]

Progress was progress. I liked it when the numbers went up.

The new Union Headquarters had to be some sort of factory once. It was a much taller building, sandwiched between a cannery and a place that stank of burnt rubber. The front had a normal entrance on one side, and a loading dock on the other with a rickety ramp leading up to it and stagnant water collecting at the bottom.

It was all tin and red brick, with the word ‘WEDMOND’S’ in faded paint on one side.

A few carts were still parked out front, with some union guys unloading a few smaller items one at a time with a distinct lack of urgency.

I was spotted on my way over. One boy tapped another, pointed at me, and his friend jogged into the union building. By the time I was nearing it, Gary was walking out to greet me. “You made a mess of things,” he said.

“Usually we start with ‘hello’ or maybe ‘good day,’” I said. “Maybe even a compliment? I dressed up to come here, you know?”

“Uh-huh,” he said, his arms crossing. “You know, when I told you to distract the bullies, I had something less explosive in mind.”

“The union put a cost per head and set out some clear rules. I didn’t break any of them while maximising the amount of money I could make. I don’t see what’s wrong,” I said.

He rubbed at his face, which only spread the bits stains on his dirty cheeks around. “Fine. Come on, Markham wants to chat.”

I worked to hide my nervousness as I followed him into the old factory. It had a decently open floor space which was already being subdivided into different areas. Sleeping quarters, kitchens, a place to eat. The usual set up. The offices were on a floor above, with a wide window that could overlook the factory’s main floor.

“What was this place before?” I asked.

“ Machin e shop. They made parts. All the equipment for that’s been sold off though. We’re renting it for the next six months, if we even stay that long,” Gary said.

“Are the bullies likely to oust you?”

He sniffed. “They’d love to try. But no, you might have kicked the hornet’s nest, but they’re not after the union about it. I think Markham’s actually pretty pleased with the entire thing.”

“Then why the greeting?” I asked.

He glanced my way. “Because you put yourself into way too much risk just to play a prank on some assholes who aren’t worth the time.”

I blinked. Until then I hadn’t considered Gary much of a person at all. He was a contact at the union who was occasionally helpful. But he actually seemed to care for my well-being. That was a little heartwarming, actually. “Thanks,” I said before stepping past him. We’d reached Markham’s office, or his secretary’s in any case.

Janet smiled at me. “Mister Markham’s expecting you, go on in.”

I nodded and slid into the office. It was more spacious than his last one, with that window into the main factory really helping to make it feel bigger. But it lacked a few of the amenities he had. No carpet, for one thing, just a wooden floor that wasn’t varnished and which probably collected dust like nothing else.

Markham was behind his desk, looking at me with his hands linked over his mouth. He waited until the door was closed before addressing me. “How much did Gary promise you?” he asked.

So it was straight to business. “One shilling per bully taken out,” I said.

He nodded, then opened a drawer on his desk and pulled out a purse. I watched with my gut churning as he pulled out shilling after shilling and stacked them on his desk. “Here’s thirty,” he said. “We don’t have an exact number, but I think this is a fair amount.”

That was over seven hundred mushroom skewers worth.

But it was given too easily, which meant I could ask for more. “What are the impacts of this going to be? The bullies, I mean.”

“They aren’t happy about it, obviously. Seven of them shat themselves in public. A couple had to be hospitalised. And one of them ran into a horse-drawn carriage and punched the horse’s lights out.”

I blinked. He said that without a hint of humour, but his eyes gave him away. He thought the bullies looking like idiots was great fun. “I’m happy things worked out, then,” I said. “You know, embarrassing the force so thoroughly should come with a greater reward than just this.”

He sniffed, then tossed his purse back into his drawer. A moment later he pulled out a single coin and placed it next to the others. It was bigger. “Those mushrooms you used, can you produce more, and can anyone use them?”

I felt a shiver run down my spine. That was a very dangerous line of questioning.

I would have to tread the rest of the conversation very carefully.

***

Death Cap - Thirty - Sealing a Deal for a More Profitable and Violent Future

“There are a lot of factors to keep in mind with that,” I said.

I buckled down and tried to tune everything but the conversation out. This could be trouble . If the Union wanted my mushrooms, that was fine. But there were two  big, distinct issues that immediately came to mind.

First, if they wanted weaponized mushrooms or hallucinogenic ones which they could sell as drugs, then there was a very real possibility that those same mushrooms would quickly be turned illegal. I’d read a few passages in some newspapers about how some nearby cities were trying prohibition, to little success. City Nineteen hadn’t been hit by that yet, and it was possible we had fewer puritans here.

But getting high on mushrooms was not seen as publicly acceptable the way getting a pint at the local pub was.

The second issue was more personal.

If I was the sole provider of something, then I was suddenly a lot more precious to the union. Me. Personally. A single small child with very little in the way of effective defences or contacts  outside of the union.

It wasn’t hard to imagine them locking me away in some damp underground farm with orders to produce metric tons of whatever mushroom they ordered me to for no pay and less privilege. Would I be able to escape that kind of situation?

Probably, maybe. If they underestimated me. The problem was that they knew I wouldn’t mind stooping to murder to get away, which meant the base-level of security they’d probably place would be pretty high.

Markham needed an answer beyond just that, and I couldn’t pause for too long.

“Mushrooms are temperamental. Dangerous, even. Some require a very specific environment to grow in. I can manage what I can because I have the time to move around and explore and find good growing locations across the slums. Usually, trying to grow mushrooms in captivity results in lots of dead fungi.” All true.

Markham nodded. “If we were to ask for a number of mushrooms then?”

“It would depend on what kind, and how much,” I said. “Do you mean the mushrooms I used on the bullies?”

“Yes, those,” he said. “What were they? From the reports, they caused digestive issues, gave the men who inhaled them hallucinations, were explosive, and had some sort of mana-absorbing quality.”

A what? That last one wasn’t something I was aware of. Which mushroom caused that? The lichen, maybe? It was meant to absorb mana to ignite, maybe... but then I didn’t know how the bullies discovered that. The  lichen should have exploded along with the rest.

“That wasn’t a mushroom,” I admitted. “That was two mushrooms, a lichen, and some netting made of knit yarn.”

“Pardon?” Markham asked.

“Three different fungal bodies tied together,” I said. “One was an explosive with the diarrhetic effect. Another was an aerosolized magical mushroom which causes hallucinogenic episodes when inhaled. And the last was a lichen which interacts with mana. I used the last to ignite the other two.”

Markham leaned back in his chair with a creak, his eyes never leaving me. “That is rather terrifying, you know.”

I frowned. “No, it’s really not. Those three were picked for their non-lethality. That was one of the rules, wasn’t it? Don’t kill the bullies. It would have been infinitely easier to just wipe them out, at least until they started to whip out masks and antidote potions.”

Markham nodded. “Not antidotes. Those are generally specialised potions. The bullies carry a few long-lasting potions on them which allow them to endure pain and heal faster. It has a number of other positive, if temporary, health benefits. And some strong downsides.”

“That’s good to know,” I said. “Now, on the subject of selling mushrooms... I’m willing. In small batches. If you tell me what you’re looking for, I can help better. Most of the fungi I’m growing are edible, as you well know.”

Markham shifted a paper closer to the centre of his desk, squeezing it out from under a stack of other papers. The newspaper? Had my attack shown up there? I wouldn’t have expected it to. News that made the bullies look bad didn’t show up often. “We want these ones, the three you used on the bullies. How much can you get us by the end of the week?”

“Knit-up sets like I used? I can get you... I guess five by the end of the month.”

“The month?” he asked.

“Do you think mushrooms pop up instantly?” I asked. “They’re not plants, but they still take some time to grow.”

He looked confused for a moment when I said they weren’t plants, but he disguised it a heartbeat later. “I see. And how long would they keep for?”

“Ideally? If you have something to keep them dry and cool, maybe a week at full potency.”

“So, not a weapon that can be stored for later,” he muttered.

“I’m afraid not. But there are some other potential things that you’re not considering,” I said. I grinned, time to play the salesperson now that I’d shot down his previous ideas. “I have one magical mushroom with minimal side-effects whose powder, when eaten, allows you to see in the dark as if it were day.” A gross exaggeration, but not too far off.

Markham’s bushy brows rose up. “That is interesting.”

“I can, in a limited fashion, grow mushrooms in captivity. It’s risky, with a high chance of failure, and they need time to grow and I need time to study them, but if the Union wants anything in particular... well, I’m aware that alchemists use mushrooms for all sorts of effects.”

Markham shifted slightly in his seat. “I’ll consider that. The low-light-vision mushrooms could come in handy in a number of situations.” He reached into a drawer again and placed two more shillings atop the others. “Bring one, powdered, to Gary. Please label it and include what information you can. If it proves valuable, we might purchase more in the future at which time we’ll discuss value.”

I nodded. I doubted I’d be getting a shilling per mushroom, or even per gram of powder, but... well, it was maybe another passive source of income, and I wasn’t going to say no to those. “If that’s all you needed me for?” I asked.

“That was all, yes. Don’t spend it all in one place.”

I smiled my more beatific , child-like smile. “I won’t!” I promised before stepping up a n d scooping all the coins off his desk. I placed one in a purse by my waist, the rest was split between my satchel and a pouch hidden under my clothes which had some loose yarn to keep it from jangling.

With that done, I practically skipped out of the room. I was filthy, filthy rich!

No, no I wasn’t. I needed every halfpenny for a number of projects. Getting to the bottom of the dungeon wouldn’t happen easily, but it would happen, and it would be easier with the money I now had.

I met Gary outside, and nodded to him in greeting. “Things go well?” he asked.

“I got a talking-to, but he paid up.” I pouted. “Mostly. I didn’t get what I expected to get.”

Gary sniffed. “He can be cheap, but he’s better than the assholes running the factories,” he said.

I nodded along, content that the lie had passed. One didn’t show off wealth unless one wanted to lose it.

I left the Union’s new headquarters and headed towards the deeper end of the slums... for one block, then I took a sharp turn towards the Gutter and the nicer parts of the city. After cutting across a few streets and avoiding one entirely because there were some bullies patrolling, I reached the Gutter, then merged into the traffic heading northwards.

I crossed the gates into the Mistbacks quarter. The apartments were nicer here even than the nicest of the homes in the slums, and the Gutter didn’t smell quite so rank, though there were plenty of factories along the edge still. I didn’t dare cross the bridge over to Pearl Alley. That part of the city was firmly middle class and they’d smell the slums on me in an instant.

My goal was a shop that I’d heard about but never seen. Arthur’s Alembic. Alchemical Supplies for the Rarified Gent.  The store was a singular building. Two storeys, with only slightly dirty windows and a front plastered in ads for every sort of vitamin and supplement and wonder drug that guaranteed big muscles, a slimmer figure, and functional genitals.

I was there for something else, of course. I finally had the money to spend to just buy raw ingredients. It might cost a bit, but I knew I could just outright buy the very materials that I had been scrounging for.

Soon, soon I’d have so many powerful mushrooms that the city itself would tremble!

Or maybe all they’d have were some mushrooms that cured  erectile dysfunction.

I was ready to find out either way.

***

Death Cap - Thirty-One - Arthur’s Alembic. Alchemical Supplies for the Insane Mycologist

Arthur’s Alembic. Alchemical Supplies for the Rarified Gent . I thought the name of the shop was a bit of a mouthful, but that seemed to be in vogue when it came to store names, at least from what I’d noticed.

I pushed the shop’s door open a little, noticed the bell mechanism above, then slipped in side-ways without opening it enough to make them jangle. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to make noise as it was... well, I was hoping to not make too much of a fuss. This wasn’t a candy shop, someone my age didn’t belong in here.

The smell hit me before anything else. I wasn’t quite sure how to describe it, but it made an old memory flash to the forefront of my mind, of one of those make-up and perfume kiosks in a pharmacy somewhere, where seventy-year old ladies would chatter together next to huge displays of colognes and perfumes.

This was different, of course. There was certainly a perfume-y smell  or five, but there was also some more earthy tones, as if someone had emptied an entire spice cabinet onto the floor.

The shop was a claustrophobic mess of shelves and tables with glass domes covering all sorts of strange items. From glass ampules of brownish liquids to what I recognized as old medical kits.

If there was a system to the way the shop was organised, I wasn’t privy to it.

I walked over to one table filled with angled tin boxes with glass covers. Each box had a few dried herbs within, their prices written on a bit of paper next to the names.

The numbers had me wincing. Two shillings a gram for... Dried Dragon’s Hibiscus? Even looking at the stuff was straining my budget.

I backed off and started to move deeper into the shop. I was looking for something specific. Maybe one day I’d have the resources to gawk at all the neat equipment they had--even if it all looked horribly anachronistic--but that wasn’t today.

The back of the shop had a long counter behind which sat rows and rows of bottles on shelves. That, at least, reminded me a bit more of a pharmacy back in the before . The ads plastered to the walls were a bit dull, and there was more wood than plastic and stainless steel, but the idea was still present.

I hadn’t found any mushrooms so far, which was annoying. The place had a second floor, but the stairwell leading up was blocked by a length of velvet rope and I wasn’t sure if I could just go up there. It didn’t help that the upper floor was dark.

I moved around the ground floor some more, but my search proved pretty fruitless. The signs out front hadn’t been wrong, this place mostly dealt in tinctures and poultices and other household things. One section had cleaning supplies!

What good was bleach and lye to someone like me?

Sighing, I looked up at a whole rack of ladies hygiene products and grimaced. I had a lot to say about the world I was from, but at least consumerism was good about one thing, and that was advertising stuff. I don’t think they could make things less appealing here.

I moved on. I didn’t have to worry about that kind of stuff for a few years yet. Something to look forward to, I supposed, and all the more reason to look for magical solutions to all of my mundane problems.

“Oh?”

Suppressing a jump, I turned to find a middle-aged man staring at me. He wore clean slacks and a button up, with an apron over his front which had a few pockets sewn into it for some tools and notepads.

“Hello, sir,” I said. I didn’t want to look suspicious, or out of place, so the best thing I could do was look as if I belonged here. “I’m presuming you work here. Are you Arthur?”

The man shook his head and smiled. I think I landed on a familiar topic. “I’m his son, actually. Terrence Arthur.”

“Hello, Terrence. Wait, your family name is Arthur?” I asked. I think he wanted to get my name out of me there, but if given the opportunity to talk about themselves first, people tended to do so.

“It is! Strange, I know,” he said. “Now, how can I help you?” He glanced at me, then at the nearby rack of hygiene products and it was obvious he was making a concerted effort to be the friendly professional.

I casually stepped away from that section. “I’m looking for some materials,” I said. “Specifically, mushrooms.”

“Mushrooms?” he asked. “Oh! We do have some herbicides. Did your parents send you here for gardening supplies?”

I shook my head. “No, but thank you. I’m genuinely looking for mushrooms.”

“Mushrooms.”

I nodded. “Or any other sort of fungi,” I said.

“Little miss, I don’t think you’re looking in quite the right place,” he said.

I pouted. “Yeah, I figured. Do you know where I could find that kind of thing?”

Terrence quirked  an eyebrow. “It would depend, I suppose. The marketplace has all sorts of delicious mushrooms you can eat, I’m sure. I would strongly advise against picking random mushrooms up . Some of them can be quite dangerous.”

“I know,” I said. “Look. I’m an herbalist. It’s my class. And I’m looking for mushrooms that have already been plucked.”

“An herbalist, huh? Well, I suppose that would make someone curious. A bit young for a trade like that, aren’t you?”

“Is there an age?” I asked.

He actually nodded. “Yes, obviously. If you wish to join the Alchemist’s Guild then you must be in your majority. Though they do have probationary and junior members from the age of thirteen and up. I’m guild accredited, of course. The pharmaceutical arts share much in common with alchemy, though some members of the Guild of Practical Medicines disagree.” He shook his head, as if he’d just noticed he was rambling. “Anyway, come back in... a decade or so.”

“I can pay,” I said. “Look, I don’t need a million samples, I don’t even know what you have.  Can you at least show me your stock?”

“You wouldn’t be able to buy it without a guild permit,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “I know how bribery works. Now, seriously. I don’t need the freshest materials either. I’m just looking for a few effects in particular.”

Terrence crossed his arms. “You’re lucky I don’t have any other clients or I’d have you out already.”

“But you don’t,” I pointed out. “It’s midday, and my coin spends as well as anyone else’s.” I reached into my pouch and pulled out a few coins. I made sure to have the two pence on top of the small handful I showed. It probably wasn’t too much for this guy, certainly less than some of the items I’d seen, but he didn’t know that it was all I had. “Fancy permit or no, coin is coin.”

Terrence narrowed his eyes at me for a long time, then he started walking to the back. “Follow me,” he said.

He undid the velvet rope leading up the stairs and I followed him to the shop’s second floor.

This one was a lot more spacious, with every wall covered by cubby holes that had little cases in them. Those cases had designs on their sides. Etchings of flowers, of animal parts, and most interesting of all, of mushrooms.

The back wall was strange, a big wooden contraption that I only realized was a massive passive cooler when I got closer.

“How is all of this organised?” I asked.

“That’s something you’d learn while going through the process of getting a permit,” he said. “Here, these are the fungi, most are powdered, of course.”

“Do you have any that are sold whole?” I asked.

“Whole? Why would you want that? The guild makes a point of discovering which part of a plant has the most potent effects.”

“Yeah, but it’s the spores I want,” I said.

He looked confused at that, but then he rose to the challenge and pulled some boxes from their cubbies. “I think this is all you’ll find that isn’t chopped up and cleaned.”

I had a whopping three options placed before me, boxes with labels on their sides that, when opened, revealed mushrooms sitting in little glass jars.

Stockholmes Flesh Eater, Finnegan’s Stinker, Seb’s Bells  read the boxes.

I picked the first, the Stockholmes’ Flesh Eater and inspected the little glass vial it was contained in. The mushroom wasn’t anything special, a small grey button-shaped thing with some faint white markings on its cap.

[Ghoul Button Mushroom] - Uncommon

A mushroom that grows on flesh, though it prefers the flesh of undead creatures and will grow with startling speed on those. If consumed whole it will make the eater more resistant to necrotic influences.

“Oh, now we’re talking,” I muttered.

***

Death Cap - Thirty-Two - Life Gives your Great Rewards and Greater Challenges

“You recognize it?” Terrence asked.

“No,” I admitted as I lowered the  [Ghoul Button Mushroom]. Actually, that brought up a question. “Why is it labelled as a Stockholmes Flesh Eater?”

“That’s its name,” he said.

“I have an identification skill that’s giving me a different result.” Telling him that much didn’t seem like too much of a risk.

“That’s normal then. The name on the label is attributed to the person who discovered or pioneered a use for an herb or fungi. It’s a great honour to be one of those though it is of course quite difficult.” He pointed to the other two boxes, specifically at the labels. “Alchemists, potion makers and herbalists will usually memorise these names, especially since different skills might give the same plant subtly different names.”

“How different?” I asked.

“Some skills would call what you’re holding [a mushroom] and leave it at that,” he said.

That made sense. I’d keep using the names my [Druid Sight] gave me for my own use though, seeing as how that was what I’d used so far, and I didn’t care much for some stuffy academic’s honour.

The [Ghoul Button Mushroom] didn’t seem immediately useful to me. I don’t think the Ditz dungeon had any undead to worry about. It was possible that some combination of this mushroom and another one of mine would lead to something good, so if I could afford it. “How much are these?” I asked.

“Three halfpennies per hundred grams,” he said.

That wasn’t much at all, really. “I’ll take two mushrooms please. Fresher is better, but I mostly care about the cap.”

He nodded and went to the front only to return a moment later with a few brown paper bags and some tongs which he used to pluck the mushrooms out of their case. He put that onto a scale which ticked up. Then he wrote something down on a sheet of paper next to the scale. A receipt?

I checked the other two mushrooms while he worked. I didn’t want to waste his time.

Finnegan’s Stinker--which was quite the name, was next. They were rather small, reminding me of puffballs but without the size

[Skunk’s Lament] - Common

A small mushroom that, when squeezed, releases a cloud of minuscule spores which emit a potent foul odour. Has some use as a revitalising reagent.

“Need to be careful with those,” Terrence said. “They stink. I won’t have you driving out clients because you miss-handled them.”

“No worries, sir,” I said. Of course I wanted some. The spore dispersal was similar to my best, which meant a whole new round of new, potent weapons. “I think I’ll take three of these, please. Do you have something less squishable than those bags?”

“Good idea,” he said before he fetched a little cardboard box. It was meant for something else, but it would do.

I checked on the last of the mushrooms. This one was labelled as Seb’s Bells. I vaguely recalled Seb being a god of one sort or another. I couldn’t recall of what though. The mushrooms were rather small, with a thin but long stem and a head that looked like a delicate bell in beige and white.

[Healing Chime] - Rare

A small mushroom that accelerates healing when eaten raw.

That was the entire description. It was enough to have me salivating. “Oh, these are brilliant.”

“Hmm? Oh, they’re quite popular. Not as potent as some other alchemical ingredients, but from what I hear they are more stable,” Terrence said. “One pound each.”

I baulked at the price. A whole pound. Each? They were minuscule! I wouldn’t be getting many spores from even one, and I couldn’t know if I’d be able to make them grow at all.

But then... healing.  

There were so many ways I could use that. And if they were worth so much, there could be an aftermarket. And what of the combinations?

It wasn’t the perfect weapon I was looking for. I had come hoping for something to counter bullies, or which could chew through armour, but I’d take healing if I could get it.

“Fine. I’ll take one,” I said.

He took one out carefully, and placed it in a paper bag. I took my stuff and after waiting for Terrence to pack away the boxes, followed him back downstairs. “Anything else?” he asked.

“No thank you. Though... do you  think I could have a list of the powdered mushrooms you have? And do you have the contacts to get samples of them in their raw, unpowdered forms?”

He sniffed. “Little miss, I’m doing this against my better judgement already. You don’t have the papers to be buying  what you’re buying already.”

“Right, sorry,” I said.

He tallied things up at the counter and I went over the math myself. He was honest, at least. It really hurt to fork over the coins to pay for everything, but I did what I had to. Then it was off to head back home.

I didn’t quite run home. There was nothing like someone clutching a bag and looking eager to set off every mugger within ten block’s instincts on edge. Still, I might have walked a bit faster than usual on my way back to the farm.

As soon as I arrived I let Nibbles out of the bag, then set to work.

The [Ghoul Button Mushroom] was easy to extract spores from, and under a slight but continuous push of my aura, the spores started to flourish almost as soon as I placed them in their own vial.

That was good, because I ran into immediate trouble with the [Skunk’s Lament]. The mushroom must have been squished a little while I moved because on opening the box a small puff of spore dust escaped and immediately filled the farm with a nauseating scent that made roadkill skunk smell like roses.

I suppressed my gag reflex even as my eyes watered, and Nibbles just outright lost his lunch on the floor next to me.

Working fast, I plucked some spores out, shoved them into a vial, then reclosed the box and ran out of my farm.

Two hours later, after walking around the block a few times, I discovered one new advantage to that particular sort of mushroom. No one wanted to be on the same street as me, not even the seediest, most disgusting people living in the slums.

I wouldn’t be able to grow those in my farm, not if a tiny spritz from one mushroom was enough to make the place smell like death rotten over  for  hours. I’d have to find a place nearby to grow them. I... could use the mushrooms as a security measure. They would certainly work as a deterrent against the average person.

Unfortunately, they were working to deter me at the moment.

I opened the door to my farm and sniffed around. The smell had faded, a little, but it was still lingering like a bad after-taste.

I’d have to see if dusting the room out would help. The smell came from spores after all, and those were just particulates.

I cursed my own stupidity. I shouldn’t have opened the box in my farm. I was too excited about the [Healing Chime] to think straight. Nothing I could do about it now. I cleaned up as best I could, leaving the door open a crack to let in fresher air.  

Then, once everything settled, I pulled out the bag with the [Healing Chime] and all the tools I’d need to extract its spores.

I went very carefully, taking my time and moving as precisely as I could. Still, it wasn’t easy. The cap on the mushroom was tiny, and its bell-like shape made reaching the underside where its spores were hidden difficult.

Grabb ed  a few, I filled three vials with different starting elements in each. Some rotting meat, some old wood, and some cloth. I hoped one of those would be good enough for the spores to settle on.

Then I was left with a tiny mushroom, gutted of its spores.

I shrugged, checked it with my poison-based abilities, and when those came back blank, I tossed the mushroom back and chewed on it.

With how poor my health was at the best of times, that could only help. I sealed the vials, then placed them on a rack where I’d be able to observe their growth.

The [Healing Chimes] were my hail-mary. If I could start growing these, then a lot of things would get a lot easier. Selling them as-is could be profitable. The Union would certainly be interested in healing, even if it turned out to not be super effective.

I sat down on my stool, then welcomed Sir Nibbles onto my lap where I scratched at his rough bristly fur. “Things might be going okay,” I said to the badger.

With a bit of luck, things would only get better for me.

And a whole lot worse for the rest of the city.

***

Death Cap - Thirty-Three - Playing by Your Own Rules

Things were growing pretty well. With Bet taking care of selling my mushrooms I had a lot more time to spend on the farm, which meant more time draining my mana to push for faster growth.

In the two weeks since I struck a deal with Markham, I had delivered two batches of mushrooms to the union, earning me a tidy little profit. I hadn’t revealed that I’d be able to produce healing mushrooms yet. It had taken until that very day for the [Healing Chimes] to mature.

For such tiny mushrooms, they certainly took a long time to grow.

Maybe that had something to do with their potency. There had to be some sort of magic at work with the way they functioned. Just ‘healing’ someone wasn’t a thing. The body was a complicated mess of interlocked systems, redundancies, and inefficiencies that somehow all came together to keep a person thinking... most of the time.

I was more than a little curious as to how the [Healing Chime]’s healing mechanism worked. Were there side-effects? Was it rapid cell growth to promote healing? If so, was there an elevated risk of cancer or more rapid telomere degradation?

I started to stock up some money to find some texts about it. There had to be something available out there.

In the meantime though, once I had a few [Healing Chimes] I could start testing them. I didn’t feel noticeably different after eating a single one the other day. Maybe that only counted as a microdose? Maybe that had healed something that was such a minute issue that it didn’t make a noticeable difference to me?

The other mushrooms were growing at a much more satisfying rate, though the [Skunk’s Lament] were being grown elsewhere, in one of the abandoned homes nearby. I’d have to grow any hybrids there too, which was annoying, but manageable.

I was humming to myself (Some earworms from the before were still stuck with me, even after so long away. I could probably mumble through the entirety of Bohemian Rhapsody if I wanted to) when there was a knock at the door.

Bet was due to arrive at about this time. In fact, she was a tiny bit late by my estimates.

I put a mask on and grabbed some [Dead Man’s Cough] in a small leather sac, ready to be squeezed into the face of anyone hostile on the other side of the door. Sir Nibbles stood up.

Paranoid I might be, but it was for some good reasons.

I opened the door and found Bet standing outside, alone, as she should be. She was hunched over, breathing hard. It was clear, at a glance, that she was injured and in terrible shape.

“What the hell happened to you?” I asked.

Bet stumbled in, and I tossed my sac aside and ripped my mask off to steady her shoulders.

“Hey, hey, okay, come here. Nibbles, off  the chair you lout. Sit, sit.” I guided her onto my stool, then ran over and poked my head out of the farm, looking for trouble. Seeing none, I closed the door and turned back to Bet.

First, I had to put my feelings aside. It wasn’t time to panic. Triage things. She was hurt. Gash on the forehead, a hole opened on the knee of her pants where she had scraped some skin. There were more injuries than  that, but she was hunched over and I couldn’t see them through her clothes.

Then I noticed what was missing.

“Where’s the table?” I asked.

Bet sniffled. She looked up to me. Someone had hit her eye. It was turning blue already. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I... please don’t fire me.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” I said. I rushed over to the tap, grabbed a bucket, some cloth, and some lye I used to decontaminate stuff. “Stand still. Breathe in as best you can.” I filled a bucket with water, then tossed in a sprinkling of lye and mixed it with the cloth before returning to her. “Where’s the worst injury?”

It was hard to coax her into allowing me to help, but eventually she gave in. I wasn’t taking no for an answer, and while her pitious moans when I applied disinfectant on her open cuts made my heart strain, it didn’t stop me.

She’d been kicked in the sides a few times. I was pretty sure she’d broken a rib or two, judging by the discoloration on her torso and the pain on touching  her. Fortunately, her lungs were about as fine as could be for someone living in the slums. It didn’t feel like her ribs had shifted too much. A clean break, maybe?

I hoped so. There was no way we could afford any sort of medical help.

She had some nasty bruises on her arms and one of her wrists looked like it had been dislocated, then shoved back into place. It was swelling and she was clearly favouring it. Her fingers still moved, and weren’t numb.

I bandaged her up as best I could, staunched  the bleeding after disinfecting it, then I pulled out a box and sat across from Bet. She was still taller than me, much to my slight chagrin. It wasn’t important.

“Here, eat these,” I said. Three [Healing Chimes]. It was about a tenth of what I’d managed to grow. I could give her a dose every day until she felt better. It might help, maybe.

It would lose me some profits but... Feronie-damn  it, she was a child . A hurt child. That took precedence over my own profits.

Bet chewed carefully, and I noticed another bruise forming on her jaw.

“Who did this?” I asked.

She didn’t know it, but I was asking her to point me to the person I’d kill next.

Bet sniffled again, but refused to cry. She looked angry too. That was fine. If she wanted to cry, she’d cry, and if she wanted to be angry, then she’d be angry. As long as I got my names and she felt better, it was all well with me. “There was four of them. Boys. Older boys. They stopped me on the way here and said they wanted the money. I said no, and then one of them pulled a knife.”

I cursed in the back of my mind. “Just random thugs then?” That would be a pain in the rear to track.

She shook her head. “They were dressed good.”

“Dressed well, how?” I asked.

“Not like us,” Bet replied. “Not like proper slum clothes. They were a bit dirty, but they... just weren’t from here.”

I kinda knew what she meant. There wasn’t a dress code to the various slums, but there were differences. We mostly got our clothes third-hand or from one of the local general stores. Those were fed by local factories, which made their own sorts of clothes.

Our part of the slums were overalls and big, thick shirts. Closer to the Gutters and they had pants, belts, and thinner shirts. By the Ditz dungeon they had overalls too, but they were usually green rather than blue.

It was subtle, and it wasn’t perfect. After all, we weren’t wearing what we were by choice. Still, there was  a pattern to it, one I had sort of just picked up without meaning to. When I went to the market I could tell more or less where someone was from by their threads alone.

I grabbed some paper from my workstation and a pencil. I rubbed the end on the edge of my desk, shaving some of the wood off to make writing easier. “Describe them,” I ordered. “Every last detail you remember. But.. if you can, tell me which detail you’re certain  of and which you’re not.”

Bet nodded. “What will you do?”

“Get my money back, then some,” I growled.

Sir Nibbles made that strange laughing sound of his.

Bet gave me what details she could. These boys were all older than us, but they were still boys... technically. Teenagers might have been more appropriate. A few had cigarettes. They all wore coats and, importantly, had shoes.

“What were these assholes doing so far from home?” I muttered.

“Mugging me?” Bet said, but her voice was so low I almost failed to hear it.

That was... plausible. “You’re taking the week off,” I said.

“I can’t... I mean... sorry. I can take extra shifts at the dungeon, um, will you ever do this again? Need me?”

I glared, but not at her. Then I stomped over to one of my racks, shifted aside some particularly vile mushrooms, and plucked out a few coins from a sac surrounded by fungi. “Here’s your pay for the week, and then some. Take a shift or two off. Rest. We’re going to be working extra hard next week. Oh, and I’m giving you some more mushrooms to eat, you will  eat them on the days and time that I’m writing, or else I’ll find out and be cross.”

While I plucked some [Healing Chimes] and wrote her a note on when to take them, I stewed on all the terrible, terrible things I would do to the people who’d hurt one of my employees and taken my stuff.

I was pretty sick of people in general, but those who took from me most of all.

***

Death Cap - Thirty-Four - Asking Pointed and Harmful Questions

I visited the union, but this time the only mushrooms I had on me were those I always carried for protection.

The new union building was, inconveniently, a good ten minutes further away than the last, which left me with some time to think.

Bet didn’t deserve what happened to her. She was just a kid doing a simple job. By that same token, I didn’t deserve to have my stuff taken from me. That table had been made by my dad and... well, I didn’t need more reasons to despise the people who had mugged my friend and only employee, but I was certainly finding plenty.

The guards lingering around the entrance let me in with a nod, then I started looking for Dregs.

I found the hobgoblin sitting near the kitchen area. He had a stool that was a bit taller than the others, to accommodate his height, and was blowing across a steaming bowl of some sort of stew. I sat next to him. “Think I can get some of that?” I asked.

He glanced at me, then back at his food. “Yeah, sure. Hey! Martin, a bowl for the brat.”

One of the guys in the kitchen waved a hand our way without turning back to see us. I took that as a maybe.

“What you here for?” Dregs asked.

“Not in a small-talk kind of mood?” I asked.

“In an eating kind of mood.”

That was fair. I let him have a spoonful before I asked my question. “I’m looking for someone to help me find a group of muggers hitting the slums. Think you can help me?”

“Hmm, maybe,” he replied. “Union doesn’t do much of that sort of thing. Protection rackets, collecting union dues, breaking knees for coins, sure. Mugging though? Union’s fighting hard to make sure people like them. Can’t have people like you much if they know you’ll turn around and take their purse the next time they’re out.”

“That makes sense.” The union was in a PR-war with the industrialists. There was plenty of anti-union propaganda around, and it probably didn’t help that the union really was a corrupt mess.

Then again, the industrialists were openly corrupt as well, and clearly didn’t care about the people working themselves to death in their factories. The union didn’t have to do too much to look like the good guys when their opponents were so sickening.

“What would I need to do for you to tell me where to find a specific group of muggers?” I asked.

Dregs shrugged. “Doesn’t sound like any of my business. You don’t look like you got your teeth kicked in. What’s the story?”

“I hired a girl, ten years old, a good worker, to sell my mushroom skewers for me. They robbed her, beat her, then stole my stuff,” I said. I think some of the anger bled through because Dregs gave me a look.

Then the chef placed a bowl in front of me. Smaller than Dreg’s, but still full to the brim with stew. He tossed in a spoon with a plop, then walked back to the kitchen.

I brought the bowl closer to the edge of the table, then sighed as I had to kneel atop the stool I had to be tall enough to eat. I ignored Dreg’s chuckles as I ate.

“So, it’s revenge?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yup. Simple as.”

“Don’t think I can help you,” he said.

I shot him a look, spoon clinking against my teeth. “Why not?”

He raised his hand, three fingers raised which he dropped with each point he made. “Don’t know the folk you’re looking for so I won’t help there. I’m on duty, so I’m too busy. I don’t see taking out a bunch of street trash as all that exciting.”

“Well, shit,” I said. “If it wasn’t for this stew  coming here would've been  a waste.”

Dregs snorted. “Fine, I can give advice, at least. Do you want to send a message here?”

“A message?” I asked.

“Make it so that the next idiots who want to mug one of yours knows better.”

I considered it. It was possible. I could do some nasty  things to someone with some of my mushrooms. They’d be a ranting, hallucinating mess of a person before their heart or brain gave out. If I made it public, then news would travel as it did in the slums. It might save me trouble later.

It might also make things worse. The bullies knew about me. Or kind of did. This would be me shouting on the rooftops about a strange child with mushrooms that could mess people up. They’d have to be morons not to put one and one together and reach two.

“No, I think I want this to be a bit more subtle. These muggers are from the nicer parts of City Nineteen,” I said.

“Ah,” Dregs said. “We have some union people in all the parts of this shithole city,” he said. “I can maybe talk to some people about it, but you won’t get an answer quick-like.”

“Alright,” I said. “Well, it’s okay. I have other avenues of inquiry.”

“Heading out?” he asked.

I snorted. “Not before I finish this. Free food, Dregs. You don’t say no to free food.” There was even some sort of meat in this. I silently prayed to Feronie that it wasn’t spider  rat and ate until my bowl was clean.

Dregs took off to get back to work before I was done, so once I was finished patting down my stomach I placed the bowl in a large tub for dirty dishes, then made my way out.

If I couldn’t find an answer with the union...

My next stop was the marketplace. Not to buy anything, but to visit some old friends. “Hey Stew,” I said as I came to stand in front of a stall. It sold household stuff. Towels and doilies and racks to fix onto the walls and little tin pantry boxes to store crackers in and whatnot. “I just ate your namesake, it was nice.”

“Hey!” Stew said. He looked to be in a good mood. He had replaced his crutch with a newer, nicer one, and while his clothes weren’t exactly the height of fashion they were clean and serviceable. “Been a while. I was worried the slums might have gotten you.”

“Not yet,” I said. “How’s Debra?”

He nodded. “Good. We’re both working now. Still staying together. I know it’s inappropriate, but it’s just for a while longer. He grinned. “I’m getting a ring.”

My eyebrows shot up and I smiled right back. “Congratulations!” I said. “I’m happy for the two of you. Will you be having a big wedding?”

He laughed. “I’ll let her handle that part. My job’s just to find the ring and the courage to ask.” He practically glowed, and it was undeniable that he looked leagues better than before. I wondered for a moment if there was anything I’d ever be able to do about his limbs but... I was probably getting far ahead of myself. “What brings you here? I don’t see your stall.”

“I’m not here for that,” I admitted. “I was hoping I could pick your brain. You might have heard some things while around here that I have a serious need to know.”

He shook his head. “You know, I almost forgot how weird it is to talk to you. I’ve met other kids, some your age, some older. None of them quite  as sharp.”

“I’ll take it as a compliment,” I said while pitching my voice to sound more childish.

Stew told me he’d be busy for the next hour, but he had a few minutes off after the lunchtime rush. I ended up waiting for him behind the market, in one of the linked warehouses where goods were stored. No one bothered me, though maybe that was because I recognized nearly everyone I saw, if only by sight.

“So, what’re you wanting to know?” Stew asked.

“Muggers,” I said. “They’ve been causing me trouble. Not locals. These are guys from somewhere else. Mistbank, the Grove. I just need to know where they’re staying at.”

“That sounds like trouble,” he said. “But I think I know who you’re talking about. Five, maybe six guys? Younger men?”

“Sounds about right,” I said.

“Yeah. I’ve heard a few stories. Guys getting hit on the way back home from the market, a few customers on the way over too. They don’t stick around the same place two days in a row though.”

“Smart,” I muttered.

“What’s really strange is the number of them. Muggers usually work alone. Maybe two guys. This is a lot more complicated than that,” he said.

He might have been onto something. Still, it didn’t change what I had to do. “Is anyone else looking for them?” I asked.

“As a matter of fact, yeah,” Stew said.

“Oh?” I asked. “Who?”

“An old friend of yours.”

***

Death Cap - Thirty-Five - Information in any Conflict is Key to Victory

The easiest way to get in touch with Eight-Three-Eleven would have been to reach out to her church. She was an avid servant of Galen, and that should have made it easy to find her.

The problem was... well, I didn’t trust the Church of Galen. I didn’t trust any of the religious organisations in City Nineteen. Other than Eight-Three-Eleven and maybe a few other followers of Galen, I didn’t exactly see many folks of the various cloths out on the mean streets actually doing anything to help.

They could preach all they wanted. What I cared about were their actions.

Which meant I had to find out where Eight-Three-Eleven was hanging out on my own.

That took all of two hours.

As it turned out, someone going around the slums, helping people here and there and generally being a bit nosey was noticeable. I only had to ask a few of the better gossips in the marketplace then follow their directions towards one of the soup kitchens on the edge of my part of the slums.

Eight-Three-Eleven was right there. She’d replaced her red poncho for an apron and was smiling as she filled bowls up with some colourless gruel for a host of impoverished and homeless people.

I hesitated near the entrance, then stepped around the line and headed towards the counters. Someone protested that I was skipping, but then someone else told them to shush up. I guess being a kid gave me a free pass for cutting into the queue.

“Hey!” I said as I got closer to Eight-Three-Eleven.

She glanced up, then smiled. Or I assumed she did. She had her mask on, so I had to go by the crinkling in the corner of her eyes. “Hey, it’s you. Were you looking for a meal? If you get in line now there should still be some left by the time it gets to your turn.”

I shook my head. “I’m okay,” I replied. It actually hurt a tiny bit to refuse food, but I really didn’t need it. With my mushroom farm going I had a decent supply of stuff to eat and I could afford the occasional can of stuff for me and my mom. “Hey, when you’re done, can we chat for a minute?”

“Sure,” she said. She waved me off, and I walked over to the back of the room where I found a place to sit. I slid my hand into my satchel and rubbed Nibbles atop his head. He hissed, but soon gave in to the scratching.

The little pest. He was like a cat, but infinitely worse with the way he pretended not to want affection at all, but then turning  around to crave it. He did like it when I went out for walks. He’d stick his snout out of the side of my satchel and sniff at the air.

I waited patiently while the crowd continued to grow. After an hour it finally dawned on me that it wouldn’t ever thin out. These were people coming in from across the city for a meal because it was free, even if it was nothing more than watered down gruel with nothing for flavour.

Did the place run all day?

I was brought out of my thoughts when Eight-Three-Eleven stepped closer. She was adjusting her poncho and was smiling. “So, what did you need me for?” she asked.

I stood up, rubbed my hands on my thighs, then grinned back. “Just needed to know a few things, thought you might be someone I could ask about them, seeing as how you’ve got your feet to the ground and all.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” she said. “I have an appointment in a bit, care to follow me?”

“Sure,” I said. “Where are we heading to?”

“Not too far. Just a clinic I help at sometimes.”

“Do you help at every clinic and volunteer place?” I asked.

She made a so-so gesture with one hand, then paused near the exit to heft up a wooden box. The girl was strong, I noted idly. “Nearly. Places that are endorsed by the church of Galen get a write off on their taxes. But to prevent that write off from being abused, a member of the church, in good standing, needs to work there at least once a week.”

“So... you run around, do a day’s work here and there, and keep everyone running?” I asked.

“It’s not always fun, but some of these places really need that little bit of a boost. I get to help by being there once a week, and they get to give a little less to the tax-man when he comes around with his bull-- with his officers to collect. Some places, like the kitchen, are barely able to run as it is.”

I nodded. “That's genuinely kind of you.”

“I’m just doing what Galen would be proud to have me do,” she said with a bright grin. “You know, you’re pretty outgoing yourself. You should come to the church, I’m sure you’d love some of the more down-to-earth sermons.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, which was shorthand for ‘not even if the sky was on fire.’

“I don’t imagine you tracked me down to compliment me on trying to help people,” she said. “What’s up?”

I frowned, then started. “Have you heard of the muggings lately?”

She frowned. “I did. They’re getting pretty bad. The soup kitchen down on Strata street had their food shipment hit. Four, maybe five guys, in nicer clothes than usual. They took the food and we found most of it dumped in an alley nearby. I guess they thought it might be more than just root vegetables and oatmeal.”

I grimaced. “Right. They messed with one of mine too. I’m looking for them.”

She glanced down at me. “What for?”

“I don’t like what they’re doing,” I said simply.

Eight-Three-Eleven didn’t say anything for a little bit, and I let her stew in her silence. Finally, we came to a stop in front of a place that felt familiar. A small rusty clinic. It wasn’t until I read the sign with the name of the local physician that it clicked. Doctor Livalis, the same man who’d patched up my dad’s hand a long time ago.

“Galen... isn’t unfamiliar with violence. We have his mercy to give, after all. But we don’t... seek that violence, you understand? We give it to those who are asking, we don’t encourage people to take it.”

“I think I understand,” I said.

“I can’t just tell you,” she returned.

I met her eyes. “Eight-Three-Eleven, how many more are going to lose a meal because of them? How many more kids are they going to beat? You know the bullies won’t act. But I’m not a bully, and I can.”

“You’re a little young, aren’t you?” she asked.

I laughed. “There’s no age in the slums,” I said.

Eight-three-Eleven shifted the weight of the box she was holding. “What will you do?”

“I don’t know yet. But knowing who I’m dealing with and where they’re staying will be a big step towards me finding out,” I said.

She hesitated some more, then nodded. “Next to the Wade factory, on Ninth. They don’t stay in this district much, but when they do, I think it’s around there. They have... a clubhouse, I guess.”

I grinned. “You’re a lifesaver,” I said.

“I really hope so. Be careful, alright?”

I nodded. “I’ll be careful, promise,” I said. Then I ran off back to my farm to   gather enough explosives and poison to wipe out the population of a small town.

My goal was to take the muggers out without ever being in any danger myself. This wouldn’t be all that different from fighting the bullies, only this time I had more than an afternoon to prepare.

That, and I wasn’t under any restrictions but my own. No rules about not going lethal, or only using harmless poisons. I hefted a plump [Dead Man’s Cough] and grinned as I placed it within a knit net with a [Bottle Pop].

I’d start, of course, by preparing my payload. Then I’d prepare the terrain.

Sir Nibbles chittered, and I rubbed him between the ears. “Don’t worry, you can come along too. If you’re nice, I’ll even let you take a bite or two.”

I prepared some non-lethals as well, just in case. What if they had hostages, or there were innocents around them? No, I couldn’t afford not to bring a way to take them out without harming them.

On the flip side... I was left with a number of explosive mushrooms, so I strapped them all together, then, feeling a little more creative, I placed a few in a large glass jar and added some of the little nails I used to make my racks in the spaces between the mushbooms.

“That’ll do it,” I said.

***

Death Cap - Thirty-Six - Laying Out the Trap Long Before it’s Set

I didn’t just rush half-cocked at the muggers with bombs and poison and an angry badger. No, I took a day to walk around the scene. I think burglars called it casing the joint? I’m not sure if it counted, but that couldn’t be too far from what I was doing.

First, I checked the place out properly.

The muggers were staying in a thin sliver of a warehouse on the second floor of one of those big complexes where dozens of homes and factories all got squished together. It couldn’t have been all that big. I stayed on the ground level, where an open gutter pipe ran through the middle of the street and ensured that things stayed quiet.

The muggers came in from their day’s work at around noon. They left just a few hours later.

The next day I snuck over in the early hours of the morning and saw them arriving an hour or so after sunup. They wore nicer clothes on arriving, then when they left to do their dirty work, it was in rougher, but still nice, rags. The kind of stuff a hard working slum-dweller might wear.

So, they had a schedule of sorts.

The warehouse only had one window, on the upper-most floor, and it was blackened by soot and stains. I didn’t think I’d be able to fling anything through. Besides, the glass breaking might alert some folk to come out and see what was up.

I didn’t want people to see me.

The result of my work was fine, but I didn’t need more rumours about a pint-sized mushroom-using person travelling about.

While I waited in the stink of the gutters for the muggers to come and go, I ran through all sorts of different plans. Some were  elaborate, others just simple. Toss in a bomb through that window. Maybe lock them in and light the place on fire. Wait for them to step out, then hit them with some spore clouds.

In the end, my final plan was relatively simple, but it would take an hour or two to realise.

I started by lugging some supplies over to their warehouse once they were gone for the day. I stashed them in a large rotting box on the lowest level. The entrance to their part of the building was on the second level of the catwalks which turned the slums into a vertical jungle, so it wouldn’t be hard to grab my supplies once I needed them.

Then I spent half my mana on their door, pushing [Blight] into the padlock they used until it was unlikely that they’d be able to unlock it. Just in case, I brought some wood glue along and spilled some of it into space between the latch of the lock. Just a smidge of it, but enough to gum  up  everything inside.

Then I left, had a nice dinner with mom with some cans of spam-like meat and beans I’d bought for the evening, and had a nice sleep. I did mix in  some chopped up [Healing Chimes] into our supper. I couldn’t tell if they were having an effect or not, but they were edible and tasted decent enough, so I didn’t see the harm in sharing them with my mom.

The next morning I was back at the warehouse bright and early, with a tarp to disguise myself below their doorway.

The five arrived half an hour earlier. One, a tall, lanky fellow wearing pants that were a bit too short for him and left his ankles exposed, tried to fit a key into the lock. It didn’t fit, obviously.

“C’mon, Joe, you daft idiot, do I need to explain how keys work?” one of the bigger boys asked.

“Shut up, William,” Joe snapped. “Lock’s all jammed up.”

“Show me that.” Another one of them stepped up and fiddled with the key and lock. He swore under his breath, then tugged at it a few times. “Joe’s right.”

“Or maybe you’re both idiots,” William muttered.

“Averell”, the one at the door said. “Can you break the damned thing off? I’m starving.”

Averell,  who was a short guy with a red jacket and cap on, stepped over, grabbed the lock, then frowned. A moment later something crunched and the lock cracked open. “There,” he muttered.

One of the others grabbed the lock, examined it, then shrugged. “Right fucked,” he said before pulling his arm back and throwing it hard into the distance. The others chuckled and soon they filed in.

I waited.

It took a while for them to get going. I couldn’t tell the time, exactly, except by the movement of the sun, but it felt like forever in the moment and a blink as soon as it passed.

They left, in different clothes and with chains and bats and the kind of jostling I’d expect to see in a bunch of idiot frat boys out for some fun. I could almost believe that they were harmless, then Joe laughed. “Ah, man, I can’t get the scream of that lady out of my head. Whaa! Whaa!”

“No way, the way her legs bent, it was gross,” William said.

I kept my peace and waited until they were well and truly gone. Then I snuck up with my box and set it down. I probably  had plenty of time to work, but I didn’t want to risk it. So I hurried. They’d made some half-assed attempt to relock the door, with a long bolt running  between two links of the chain, but it was poorly thought out and easy to undo.

The interior stank of sweat and mould and clearly needed some cleaning. There were some couches, a few chairs, and a stove in the corner that rested unlit. They had a bathroom near the back, and some shelving and cubby holes for materials and clothes.

It looked more organised than I would have expected. Dark, though. They had two kerosene lamps on tables, and a string of lightbulbs hung from the ceiling. I didn’t dare light any of those, so I popped a [Purple Horse Head] for the low-light vision and got to work with what light I had.

I checked for traps first, then placed my box inside and  then  closed the door until I could only stick my hands out. Then I redid the bolt from the interior. It took lots of sweat and cursing my lack of finger-strength.

It would have to do.

I prepared the room, then found a place to hide. Using the old adage that ‘no one looks up’ I snuck up to the rafters and sat down next to the greasy old window. It let me see outside so I’d maybe see them coming, and I’d be out of immediate melee range when they entered.

I set Sir Nibbles down, then placed a cloth mask over his face before fixing my own on. He did not  like the mask. He also didn’t remove it. Smart little badger.

Fortunately, the time passed quickly. The boys had a couple of literate members, judging by the few books I found. None of them were particularly interesting, but I did find a biology textbook which was laughably inaccurate. The page on female reproductive organs was, of course, earmarked and bookmarked.

I sighed, but leafed through the text anyway. It was a decent refresher, even if it was mostly wrong in a lot of ways. Old memories were coming to the surface as I read, and it was strangely nostalgic.

Then the door jiggled and I carefully set the book down, made sure my mask was on snug, and touched Sir Nibbles to wake him up from his nap.

Below, the boys entered the room. One of them flicked on the lights. They didn’t bother with the lamps yet, which was great.

“Gods damn, that was a long day,” Joe complained.

One of the muggers whose name I didn’t know, but who seemed strangely familiar grunted in approval. “Long day, good pay,” he said.

They had a sort of coffee table in the centre of the room, and I watched them toss their winnings down one by one.

There were lots of purses, and a few small odds and ends as well. Maybe mugging was a more lucrative business than I thought.

“Hey,” Averell said. “Who moved my textbook?”

“Probably you,” another said.

“Shut up, Jack, I was the last out, I saw  it on that table,” Averell replied. He stomped over to the wall with the cubby holes and smacked a shelf, which was notably not a table.

“You’re losing your mind. It’s all the gutter air,” Jack said. He walked to a wall, shifted the couch there aside, and revealed that one of the tin panels was just for show. They had a little stash back there, with a proper safe. Jack fished a key out from his shirt and opened it. “Joe, start counting, need to add it to the books.”

That was enough for me.

I flared out my aura and speared it out across the room towards the couch Jack had shifted.

Joe spun around and looked up, right at me.

A mana-sensing ability?

I didn’t give him time to sound the alarm before I pulled Sir Nibbles back and pushed mana into one of the couch’s cushions. My aura was straining to reach that far, but it didn’t matter.

It was time to set off my many surprises.

***

Death Cap - Thirty-Seven - Slow and Careful Preparations are Rewarded with Quick Victories

The cushion exploded with a burst of spore-y shrapnel and then a cloud of [Dead Man’s Cough].

I shifted my aura towards the door, to a box they’d left next to it. It exploded apart as well, releasing more spores into the room.

That wouldn’t be enough, of course. Each [Dead Man’s Cough] only had so many spores, and the warehouse was relatively large and my dispersal wasn’t perfect.

Which is why I had brought a lot  of mushrooms.

Three more bursts came from near the ceiling, and soon the room was filled with [Purple Starball] spores and even more toxins from my [Dead Man’s Cough] mushrooms hidden in the rafters.

Now that they were appropriately distracted, I reached over to the copper wire of the lights, grabbed a rusty old pair of wire cutters I’d found and wrapped in plenty of cloth, and I grunted hard as I snipped the wire.

The room, of course, went dark. To the muggers who’d just been outside it might have been debilitating.

To me, the chaos was beautiful.

Of course, it wouldn’t last. While Jack went down coughing, hands grabbing at his throat, the other boys weren’t so unlucky. A couple of them had pulled up their shirts and were covering their mouths, while somehow Averell was just outside of the area my mushrooms were in when they went off and was spared from the death cloud.

I pulled something out of my bag. That jar filled with nails and explosive mushrooms. The jangle had William and Joe looking up, and they caught sight of me through the thin haze of spore dust in the air just as I tossed the jar over to them.

In mid-air, I filled it with mana, then I reeled back, taking Sir Nibbles with me so that we’d be behind some partial cover.

There was a loud bang , much louder than the previous ones, as if someone had just dropped a stack of bricks onto the ground.

One of the boys started screaming, but I was more concerned with the nail that appeared in the ceiling right next to me, planted in the wood point-first with a thump.

That was dangerous. I made a mental note not to be within the fragmentation range of any explosives I set off in the future. That could have hit me somewhere important, and then I would have been in all sorts of trouble.

I glanced over the edge again. The boys had taken that blast full-to the face, but it seemed as if their clothes were enough to stop most of the shrapnel from penetrating. Unfortunate, but not too surprising. The force pushing those bits of glass and metal around wasn’t that concentrated.

I’d work on it.

In the meantime, they were all now covered in little scratches and cuts. William, who had covered his face with a scarf to keep the spores off, had lost the scarf and was now wheezing on all fours.

Jack was just dead. He’d slipped to the floor, face tinted an unhealthy blue shade. One less concern to deal with.

“You’re dead!” Joe shouted up at me. He grabbed a shirt off the back of a chair, flicked dust off of it, then tied the clean side over his lower face as a sort of makeshift bandana. He jumped up and started to climb up the wall to reach me, using the wooden beams in the walls as handholds the same way I’d done to reach my spot.

I hesitated for just a moment before I decided to focus on the last few mushrooms I had hidden in the room. My aura whipped around, activating more mushrooms which popped and filled the room with even more spores. They wouldn’t be as effective now that they were covering their mouths, but some of them would work with mere skin contact and if the spores got into their open cuts then they might work even better than they did through the lungs.

Joe’s hand grabbed onto the edge of the beam I was on, and I scurried back.

His head moved over the edge, eyes burning with anger and the promise of violence. He had a nice gash on his forehead, and a little cut high on a cheek that was oozing blood out slowly. “Come here,” he growled.

“No thank you,” I replied.

Then I blasted [Blight] at his face.

Almost as soon as the magic touched him his wounds turned a sickly white on the edges. More importantly, the shirt he was using as a bandana started to go threadbare and the bit of colour dyed into the cloth was washed off.

Joe reached over and tried to grab at my foot. Instead, he got a face-full of Sir Nibbles who darted ahead so fast he was nothing more than a hissing, angry blur with scything claws that scratched and tore at Joe’s face.

I felt my gorge rise as one of the boy’s eyes was ripped out of his face. I thought I was inured to violence, but that was a bit much.

Joe screamed as he lost his grip on the beam, only catching himself at the last moment while Nibbles backed off. The man was hanging off with one hand holding onto the wooden beam, the other was touching his face.

Obviously, I stomped on his hand with the edge of my boot.

His grip slipped, and he fell down to the ground with a hard crash. It wasn’t a deep fall, so I doubted it did more than bruise him.

Glancing over the edge, I took in the state of the other boys, then whipped out my Aura to touch them all while turning it to [Blight] on contact. It would worsen any wounds, maybe speed up the rate at which they passed, though I doubted it a little.

My magic was woefully slow to act, and while infected injuries could be lethal, they were lethal over the long term.

Joe groaned and rolled to his front, then he looked up, one eye glaring at me. His bandana had fallen down to rest around his neck.

I flung a [Dead Man’s Cough] at him from above and it exploded against his face with a very satisfying whump . He rolled back, choking for air.

Sir Nibbles and I stayed where we were while the boys grew slower, more sluggish. Averell was the last to go silent after a good three or four minutes of struggling. I think he’d been hit by more [Purple Starball] dust than anything else, so the other poisons took a long time to take him out of the fight.

Of course, I wasn’t so stupid as to just jump down without verifying anything.

I waited another five minutes, hoping that the kerfuffle  hadn’t called too much attention to the warehouse. I doubted the boys were quiet neighbours, so some banging and shouting would probably be dismissed as normal.

Five minutes of no-movement was a decent indicator that everyone below was dead. It also gave the spore powder time to settle into a fine dusting over everything. Still... I tossed some [Bottle Pops] next to everybody and let them bang apart.

When none of them moved after that, I just waited another minute for things to settle once more, then I made sure Sir Nibble’s mask was well fixed to his face, and I made my way down.

I needed to clean the crime scene, at least enough that no one would know that mushroom-based poisons were involved.

The obvious solution was fire, but fire was overly destructive at times. This building was connected to dozens of others, and people likely lived nearby. So I went to the washroom, found some clothes and plugged the drains.

I went around picking up the biggest chunks of mushroom I could find, then I flushed them down. Then I opened the taps and let the flooding begin.

The muggers had a few weapons around. Knives and bats and such. I spread them around. The room already looked like a fight had taken place in it, more weapons around would point towards those being used.

It was a little grisly , but I stabbed a few of the boys and left the knives there . Anyone looking quickly would assume that this was some sort of retribution or a reverse mugging.

Then, finally, I checked the safe behind the couch.

It wasn’t much of a safe, just a rusty old thing. That didn’t matter when I started pulling out the contents.

Coins. Entire pouches full of coins. Most were just stacks of halfpennies, but one had nothing but shillings and another, smaller bag had a couple of dozen pounds in it.

There was some jewellery too. Nothing too intricate or beautiful, but some silver brooches and brass earrings with little bits of quartz or other semi-precious stone embedded into them. “This is a real jackpot,” I said.

Sir Nibbles sniffed. He didn’t care.

“Alright, but if you don’t want a share, then that’s on you,” I said as I scooped everything up into my satchel. Water was starting to wash across the floor in a slow, seeping wave, some of it bloody, a lot of it brown with dust.

I grabbed both kerosene lamps, tossed them onto the couch hard enough that their containers broke, then I lit a match.

The place was filling with brackish smoke as I left.

Hopefully, the fire wouldn’t spread too much.

***

Death Cap - Thirty-Eight - The Quiet Sort of Hectic Before the Unquiet Action

The next week was filled with a sort of quiet but hectic energy. I had more money on me than I’d ever had before, and I honestly didn’t know what to do with all of it.

I had plans, of course, but while I was richer, I wasn’t rich enough to pull off all of those plans. I had to sit back, pick one or two, and go with those.

The biggest priority, at least to me, was the Ritual of Sporemageddon .

It was a big deal. I didn’t make a big fuss about it, but my dreams were increasingly vivid, and the phrase Feronie had once uttered to me was always on the tip of my own tongue. I felt a sense of urgency  that pushed me to work harder.

I talked to Bet a few more times, and was happy to see that she was recovering just fine. The bruises disappeared over the course of a week, and even her worst  injuries were faded and easily forgotten. She was either in better health than I’d expected, or the [Healing Chimes] really did work as advertised.

With a bit of poking around at the market, I found a man who did some carpentry in his spare time, and he made us a new table.

It was a shame that I couldn’t find the one my Dada had made for me. Those muggers had probably ditched it, thinking it wasn’t worth anything.

The new table was, much to my silent chagrin, much better than my old one. It folded into a sort of large briefcase-shape and weighed  a fair bit less. That was important when the ones carrying it around weren’t very big or very strong.

I fit a replacement burner into the table, then sent Bet off to work once more, which she was more than happy to do.

There were rumours in the streets about what happened to the muggers. The general consensus was that karma had, for a rare moment, actually worked in the little people’s favour. No one seemed to want to dig too deeply into who was responsible, which was fine by me.

If a bigger gang from the nicer parts of the city was responsible for this little crew, then they took the message sent by losing five of their guys as a warning and kept away.

Once life resettled into something resembling normalcy, I patiently waited for all of my new hybridised mushrooms to grow. It took another week.

I collected the mushrooms from the new fungal growths, starting with those combined with the [Skunk’s Lament]. Those I exclusively grew outside of my farm. The stench that lingered around them, even when they weren’t in full bloom, was just nauseating.

The original mushrooms were growing well, and I had successfully combined them with every mushroom that I’d tried combining them with. They took well to hybridization.

The issue was... well, the original strain was too potent, maybe.

[Skunk’s Lament] - Common

A small mushroom that, when squeezed, releases a cloud of minuscule spores which emit a potent foul odour. Has some use as a revitalising reagent.

The mushroom stank. I was hoping to use it as a sort of potential replacement for my [Beige Puffballs], essentially turning any hybrid into another explosive spore mushroom, but so far that wasn’t the trait that carried over.

Combining it with my common [Horse Head Mushroom] which I still had plenty of, resulted in something called the [Horse Dropping Mushroom]. It was large, flat, coloured a mottled brown and stank of horse droppings. Very potent horse droppings.

[Horse Dropping Mushroom] - Common

An edible mushroom which can sustain itself next to fresh manure. Has a strong flavour, and little nutritional value.

I refused to taste it.

The combination with the [Dead Man’s Finger] which was mostly an insecticide but which had resulted in my most lethal mushroom with another hybrid gave me a long, stem-like mushroom which gave off a pungent scent.

[Dead Man’s Gas] - Common

A powerful insecticide that, when flowering, will release an odour that will attract insects while killing them slowly. Will use the corpses of insects to spread.

Again, not super useful. It might have been if it was odourless, but it smelled like... like its name described. Honestly, I was starting to regret spending any money on the original sample.

The combination with the [Beige Puffball] wasn’t all that bad.

[Brown Puffball] - Common

A common sight next to manure heaps and sewers. The puffball is an inedible mushroom which grows into a ball filled with dust-like spores that are released on impact or from strong winds. The spores are a mild irritant. They carry a faecal smell which wards away fungivores.

That... might lead to another option when it came  to explosive mushrooms in the future. I wasn’t sure I wanted to work with it for that long though.

In a vain attempt to get something useful out of it, I combined the mushroom’s fungi with some from my only Epic mushroom, the [Faerie Fire Cap]. The result was a mushroom called the [Faerie Fart].

[Faerie Fart] - Rare

A rare mushroom which, on detonating, will release magical spores which can turn breathable air into a noxious but non-lethal gas which is mildly flammable.

I refused to use that one because I had some pride. The [Skunk’s Lament] would have to just survive on its own for a while as I dropped it to the very bottom of my priority list. If I needed non-lethal options, I had others which were much better.

The next mushroom was one I could comfortably grow on my farm.

[Ghoul Button Mushroom] - Uncommon

A mushroom that grows on flesh, though it prefers the flesh of undead creatures and will grow with startling speed on those. If consumed whole it will make the eater more resistant to necrotic influences.

I extracted a few spores from one of the first of these to grow and checked it with my [Poison Handling Expertise] skill.

[Ghoul Button Mushroom Spore]

A spore that nestles in the crevices of a mammal’s skin and which feeds on skin particles to grow. Will rapidly spread outwards from the point of contact and can spread necrosis within the flesh.

Interestingly enough, the mushroom seemed to counteract its own effect. That was a little confusing, but there were a number of medicines that worked in a similar way, and I wasn’t averse to the idea that my new mushroom was its own cure.

On its own, it was really only good against the undead, which I hadn’t ever run into and didn’t expect to. I wondered if the resistance to necrosis would work against my [Blight] but I was hardly going to test it on myself.

This one didn’t take to hybridization well. None of the samples I tried to combine with any edible mushroom worked. That might have been a coincidence, but I suspected it wasn’t. I obtained six working hybrid strains from the [Ghoul Button Mushroom], two of which came from combining it with existing hybrids.

[Ghoul Finger] - Common

A common wood-rot fungus. Its flowering scent, though unnoticeable to most, repels many insects. Inedible. Consumption leads to digestive issues. Will rapidly spread from the corpses of dead insects.

A spreading insecticide. It had its niche uses, but none that I needed yet. I kept note of it anyway.

[Death Agaric] - Uncommon

A powerful hallucinogen, capable of befuddling the mind s of the undead with mere contact to its spores.

I had no idea what I’d use this on, but it was interesting nonetheless. Did that mean that the undead had minds? I wasn’t in a position to think too deeply about that.

The next was far more interesting. It came out as a roundish mushroom with a purple top half and skirt, the rest being a faded grey. It was relatively small, too, no bigger than my thumb.

[Purple Ghoul Watcher] - Rare

This rare mushroom is only found in areas with predatory undead. While very mildly poisonous, this mushroom allows those who eat it to see the life essences of those around them.

This one I tested as soon as I could, and the results were some of the coolest I’d dealt with yet. The poison itself wasn’t all that terrible. It caused stomach cramps and some abdominal pain, but nothing worse than the average person could live with.

The magical effect was... strange. It made living things glow faintly to me. Sir Nibbles gained a pale whitish glow around him, and many of my fungi had a very faint, nearly imperceptible green glow to them.

This would be invaluable in the dungeon.

In fact, I started to wonder if I could grow this one in larger quantities for resale. I imagined delvers might be keen on something like this.

I desperately needed to make a contact somewhere who could sell what I produced to the various alchemists in the city. I was sitting on a heap of coins here.

Oh well. For the moment I was flush, which is all that mattered.

***

Death Cap - Thirty-Nine - Interesting Enough to Study

There were two final new hybrids developed from the [Ghoul Button Mushroom] that I found interesting enough to study.

The first of these was the combination with my [Faerie Fire Cap]. The mushroom which had the most magical potency to it.

The result was a rather lumpy mushroom which was on the smaller side. It had a bulbous middle to its stem, which acted as a sort of sac for its spores which could, with a squeeze, be sprayed out of the many little holes on its top.

[Dead Fae’s Lament] - Rare

An inedible mushroom which grows in rings around the location where a fae was buried for its final rest. These mushrooms react to any necrotic magic by releasing their spores, which will light themselves on fire on contact with undead flesh and will disrupt necrotic magics.

The only thing I had to test this one was my [Blight] skill, which did make the mushroom react.

Placing a few of the mushrooms down in a culvert that was out of sight, then spraying [Blight] near them made the mushrooms burst apart, sending scintillating spores through the air. They weren’t too bright, and touching them revealed that they weren’t hot enough to actually burn.

Maybe they’d burn undead flesh but not my still-alive flesh? I had no way of testing that.

I would maybe approach some of Dearil’s  people one day. Those priest’s entire goal was to fight the undead, so I imagined that a biological weapon designed to burn zombies and ghouls would be valuable to them.

For me, it was little more than a curiosity. I’d bring some with me into the dungeon, I supposed, in case I ran into any undead, but I hadn’t heard of any in the Ditz Dungeon.

The other interesting combination was with my new healing mushroom. This one was quite the opposite of the previous.

The [Healing Chime] was a mushroom whose effects I couldn’t quite pin down. It was meant to accelerate healing, but I had the impression that that didn’t really do much. It wasn’t a magical cure-all, certainly.

Even healing twice as fast, which would be an impressive boost to one’s healing speed on paper, still meant that a serious wound would take weeks to heal instead of months.

[Healing Chime] - Rare

A small mushroom that accelerates healing when eaten raw.

Combining that with the [Ghoul Button Mushroom] produced an interesting offspring.

[Ghoul Chime Mushroom] - Rare

A mushroom that, when consumed by the undead or grown on their body, will replace lost flesh with a fungal simulacrum.

I had no idea how that would work, and I didn’t have the first clue on how to test it. I took note of it, but chose not to continue growing this one. I had one wall of my farm entirely dedicated to experimenting with hybrids. The other two walls were split between growing interesting and useful mushrooms, and keeping up my production of edible shrooms , which I was only barely able to manage. Space being a premium meant I had to discontinue growing some samples.

Some of the next ones though, they would certainly be replacing some of my mainstays.

The [Healing Chime] had a similar issue with hybridization as the [Ghoul Button Mushroom] did. While the undead mushroom seemed to never work when hybridised with edible mushrooms, the [Healing Chime] just refused to combine with any mushroom with harmful effects.

Once I’d figured out that particular limitation, I went on to try and combine the mushroom with every potential hybridization match and even a few existing hybrids. It combined surprisingly well with most, though the results were often underwhelming.

[Horse Head Mushroom], [Brown Chanterelle] and the hybrid of the two, the [Brown Horse Head], all produced similar results, the greatest of which was the hybrid offspring that I was currently using as my main food source.

[Brown Healing Horse] - Rare

A cultivar of several popular mushroom types. Grows rapidly, and is both nutritious and healthy. Promotes healing and has a soothing effect on the digestive system.

It tasted pretty alright raw. The mushroom was brown, with some white speckles atop it. It was earthy, with a bit of an almost salty aftertaste? It reminded me very faintly of ketchup for some reason.

I obviously tried to cook some with garlic and butter, and the results were quite satisfying. I wasn’t sure if I could sell these though. They were verging on the magical, and I didn’t need people to start spreading rumours about my mushrooms being able to heal stuff. That would just ask people to line up with issues that I couldn’t do anything about.

Still, for private consumption, these were perfect. My mom commented that they tasted interesting, and so I slotted these in to replace my at-home mushroom meals. They grew fast too, which was a bonus. I could, if I focused and spent mana without a care, grow these from mycelium to mushroom between morning and evening.

Since I couldn’t combine the [Healing Chime] with anything lethal like my [Dead Man’s Cough] I ended up going back and trying to combine it with one of the mushrooms that created my favourite mushroom.

That resulted in a strange looking mushroom that was thick and thin, like an upright sausage.

[Puffy Healer] - Rare

An uncommon mushroom which, when squeezed, releases a thin cloud of spores which can reknit broken flesh and assist in healing minor lesions. The resulting clotted skin becomes a vector for the mycelium to grow within.

I didn’t want to test this on myself, but it did have some potential. The problem was the risk inherent in having mushrooms grow out of your skin. That sounded absolutely awful. I took notes about it, but didn’t want to take any risks on myself, and it didn’t seem effective as a strange weapon, not if it required that an opponent be covered in wounds already.

If I could manage to get someone bleeding, then it would be more logical to just finish them off than try something like this.

The only possible exception was if these reacted strangely with any healing effects but... well, it was an idea for later, maybe.

I only had two other hybrids of my [Healing Chime] left. The first was with my [Purple Horse Head] a kind of mushroom I was quietly cultivating for a rainy day, though only in really small quantities.

[Purple Eye Mushroom ] - Uncommon

A mushroom which, when eaten raw, will improve the eater’s eyesight.

That was one of the shortest descriptions I’d seen, but maybe it didn’t need to be much longer than that. The utility here was obvious. I ate one to see what would happen--pun intended--and found that very little changed .

Maybe my vision was sharper? I didn’t exactly have the equipment to test it before and after. Then again, my eyesight was one of the few things which weren’t too bad with my young body. The description didn’t say temporary, so it was possible that the healing was somewhat permanent in nature.

I wouldn’t over-consume these, just in case. Too much healing could be as bad as not enough at times. Still, maybe these would prevent me from needing glasses in my old age.

I snorted. As if I’d ever get old enough to have to worry about that.

I expected that combining the [Healing Chime] with some [Blackbottle Night Watcher] would lead to similar results. After all, low-light vision was low-light vision. Instead, I ended up with something entirely different. Maybe it was the added rarity that made it better? I couldn’t tell, but I wasn’t about to complain about the results.

[Healing Bottle] - Rare

A mushroom with potent healing characteristics. When consumed in its raw form, the mushroom will encourage rapid healing in the consumer until the mushroom passes through the digestive system. Spores will grow within the consumer’s faecal matter.

I could do without the last part, but still. The mushroom was about the size of my fist, entirely purple on the outside with a glossy texture, and it was spongy and soft, almost fragile. Squeezing it too much ‘broke’ it, revealing a beige interior.

It tasted surprisingly sweet, like cotton candy, almost, but with a smoky aftertaste. Dirt-flavoured cotton-candy, maybe? It certainly melted in the mouth in a strange way.

The effects on eating it were much more pronounced than eating a [Healing Chime]. I could feel a tingle across my body, and my heart beat a little faster for a while. “I... think that worked?” I asked.

Sir Nibbles raised his head from his blanket-pile. Then made a sort of dismissive grunt.

“Hey, don’t knock it, this stuff might save your skinny badger butt one day,” I said. I plopped the rest of the mushroom away, then got to cleaning . So far, things had gone pretty well.

I was disappointed that I couldn’t weaponize things as much as I wanted, but I’d gotten some decent new mushrooms to play with, and at the end of the day, that’s all I needed to be happy, I think.

***

Death Cap - Forty - Discovering That Your Time is Limited but the World’s Isn’t

The Union was happy to take some of my new healing mushrooms off my hands. The negotiations went... well-enough. I couldn’t supply a ton, and they weren’t interested in buying too many, not when (as I discovered) the potency of healing mushrooms decreased rather sharply over time, and they needed to be eaten raw to have a full effect.

Still, the union was happy to buy what I could supply for a rate that was about a tenth of what they’d get at any pharmacy.

The way Markham spoke of it, they’d just toss in any mushrooms that were going dry into the evening’s stew. It wouldn’t do much  but a tiny bit of magical healing every few days couldn’t hurt.

I also discovered that that sort of magical food-stuff was standard for the rich and well-off of the city. They spent their entire lives eating foods that boosted their immune-systems, helped them heal faster, and generally made life a more pleasant thing.

I was definitely a little envious.

Still, my plans went on.

The mushroom sales to the Union paid well, but because the sales were more sporadic and spread out, and because I couldn’t just sell more mushrooms (they’d only buy so many) I ended up making more from Bet selling skewers, at least on a monthly basis.

As autumn rolled in and the air grew a little more chill, I collected my winnings and revelled in having so much loose money that I could spend at my discretion.

I had earned more in six months than I had in all the time before that. Though a good chunk of that was from robbing the muggers, which was a one-off event.

I headed to the Delver’s Guild in high spirits. My only challenge for the day, I imagined, was going to be convincing them that I was serious despite my age. I didn’t want to have to hire someone to pretend to be me, although maybe Stew could give it a go if I asked nicely.

The Delver’s Guild--who’s real name was far more complicated and historied, but which no one cared about when it was easier to call them what they were--was a grand building just on the edge of the Mistbank district, set between a bank and a few office buildings.

It was a respectable building, all brick and glass, with an open plan for the entrance that seemed like a gathering place for a few old-timers.

I walked to the counter and then found a receptionist who was only ten or so years my senior. She was amused by my age, I think, but she answered my questions anyway.

As I suspected, to hire a team, you posted a job. Then the local teams would place bids which the employer (in this case me) could pick from.

All rather sensible.

The issue was the price.

I swallowed as I looked at the other bids, all of which were neatly placed within a binder that anyone could look over. They even had a stool to step up to it (for hobgoblins, maybe?). The other bids were all in the hundreds of pounds, and most only asked for teams to go down and clear specific rooms within the dungeon.

No one was heading as deep as I needed to.

Still... Nothing ventured.

I placed a bid with the receptionist. Fifty pounds. Enough to bootstrap someone like me right out of the slums. A price so high it left me feeling sick. I had to pay a tenth to the guild upfront, then half as a deposit. Thirty pounds down. The other twenty-five would be deducted once a team fulfilled the contract. It would, of course, be held in escrow by the guild until then.

That just hurt, but I did it anyway.

The receptionist said, outright, that the bid might be too awful for anyone to accept, so I added stipulations. I didn’t need a full team, just one-or-two members willing to brave the depths. The mission was an escort mission where anything they gathered they’d keep with the exception of mycologic resources. I didn’t put a cap on experience.

I wanted it to be the sort of cheap in-and-out job that anyone looking for a quick buck would accept. And that meant I wouldn’t be getting the cream of the crop.

I’d live with it because I couldn’t afford better.

“Going all the way down, huh?” an old man asked.

I turned and found him sitting near the counters at the front. He was old, especially by City Nineteen standards. A guy with a cane, white whiskers on his upper lip, and a genial smile.

“Yeah, I need to go all the way,” I said.

“Long job,” he said.

“Long?”

He frowned. “You don’t know how long floors take?” he asked.

I shook my head, then he gestured to the seat across from his. I only hesitated a moment. I think I needed to sit down after spending so much anyway.

“So, first floor, how long does it take to clear?” he asked.

“I... don’t know, I guess that depends on a lot of things. Who’s sent to clear it, if they’ve done it before, the number of people.”

He grinned. “Smart kid. Right answer too. Lots of ‘it depends’ in this line of work. Understanding that’ll make you a good employer.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Weird to see one so young though... you starting something?”

I nodded. “I grow plants. I need better ones, to grow them and sell them for more.”

He hummed while nodding. “I’ve seen the sort. Yeah, you’re on the younger end, but sometimes motivation trumps age. Still, facts are facts. First floor, assuming you’re just crossing it, that’ll take you an hour.”

“If it wasn’t cleared,” I said.

He nodded. “Fair point. But you’ll be wanting to hit the dungeon early in the morning. Or... maybe late at night. Some risk there, but some advantage too. Second floor, you know how long it takes?”

“I don’t,” I admitted.

“Two hours. Assuming a heap of things. But if you have a map and walk a straight path across the floor, that’s how long it’ll take. Third floor, how long?”

“I guess three hours,” I said.

“Wrong, but not by much. Four hours, usually. Maybe longer since the traps and monsters get more clever. Fourth floor?”

My heart sank. “Eight hours?” I guessed.

He grinned. “You got it. Again, same assumptions. Could be longer, but with a competent, over-levelled team, eight hours of walking. Fifth floor?”

“Sixteen.”

He nodded. “Which means staying the night in the dungeon.”

“Can you do that?” I asked.

“Oh? Sure. But the entire floor won’t reset. Not an issue in the deeper floors since most folk don’t extract materials from there often. Not like the top three floors. Bit of a pain if teams go in to stay many-days in a row, but there usually aren’t enough teams for that, and the floors get big enough that it doesn’t matter.”

“The sixth floor is thirty-two hours to clear?” I asked.

“With a competent team,” he nodded. “And the last floor of Ditz, if that’s where you’re heading, is sixty-four hours from entrance to core.”

I slumped back in my seat.

No one was going to take a fifty-pound job for... six days of work? No, twelve. We’d need to walk out as well.

Twelve days for.... Say a team of four, that meant that they’d each get twelve pounds. That was a handsome reward, actually, but not for nearly two weeks worth of life-risking work. They’d have expenses too. Food, potions for various things, camping supplies.

“No one’s going to take my bid,” I said.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” the old man said with a grin. “Plenty of us want to see the bottom. It’s a rite of passage. Bad for business to go all the way down, but great for the bragging rights. Good class options too, if you make it to the core room and back, then get rid of your class. Some strong, clever delvers have taken that risk and it’s paid off before. Keep your hopes up, kid.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Think you know anyone dumb enough to give it a shot?”

He hummed, then there was a glimmer in his eyes. “I might. But you’d have to wait a month or two.”

“I can do that,” I said. “I have all the time in the world.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I bet you feel that way. Go on kid, get ready for your big adventure. There’s far too few of those nowadays.”

“Thanks,” I replied.

He was right. I had to get ready. If this whole thing was going to be a weeks-long  affair, then it would be best if I had all the supplies and levels I could squeeze to be ready for it.

It was time to get down and practice and to push myself to be as ready as I could be.

***

Death Cap - Forty-One - Days Passing in Self Improvement

I checked back on my bid the next day, then the day after, then every day for the next week.

After the first week passed, I started to check every-other-day, then once a week.

At some point, it became a habit to run over on weekends to see if there was anyone answering the bid.

I was constantly tempted to increase the amount I would pay out, but at the same time... well, it was a lot of money to spend, and I couldn’t bring myself to spend  it. Time passed relatively quickly, mostly because I was as busy as could be.

The more time that passed without me finding someone, the stronger I became.

First, I took up jogging as something of a hobby. I found a stretch of the catwalks on the second level of the slums that rarely had anyone on it, and started running back and forth for a few minutes each day.

I didn’t see much progress, but my [Running] skill did improve, initially by a level every couple of days, then even slower as time went on. I didn’t mind the slow progress. It was progress, and that’s what mattered for the moment, even if only a couple of minutes of sprinting left me gasping for air with lungs that didn’t seem able to pull enough.

I felt healthier, and a steady diet of [Healing Chimes] was certainly helping, but I think I had some deeper issues that those mushrooms couldn’t help. They were magical, technically, but I think there was a limit to how much magic could heal.

My nutrition wasn’t great to start with, and while I wasn’t as sickly-thin as I’d once been, I was still a bagful of twigs as far as musculature went. I had a steady and reliable source of protein and probably a few other important nutrients, but my diet lacked variety, even if I was willing to spend a little to get mom better ingredients to cook with.  I had to start branching out to non-mushroom-y things.

It didn’t matter too much in the end. I was  feeling a little better. At the rate I was going I wouldn’t have to worry so much about starving to death.

I never got [Running] high enough to gain the next subskill  at level sixty, but I did improve some of my other skills.

[Aura of Growth] was the first major skill to hit its next milestone. It took a fair amount of work, what with diminishing returns coming into play, but I think using the skill nearly-constantly and on new and different mushrooms all the time helped it improve.

That might have been part of the system’s gimmick for growth, actually. Doing the same rote task over and over would hit a hard limit early on, but trying new and challenging things helped compensate for that.

It meant that people working the same spot in a factory were out of luck when it came to constant growth and improvement. I wouldn’t say I was addicted to the progression, having come from a world without it, but I still shuddered at the idea of improving so slowly.

[Congratulations! Your [Aura of Growth {Rare}] Skill has unlocked the [Unrestricted Growth] Subskill!]

[Unrestricted Growth]

Even in places where growth is improbable, you can endow the seeds you’ve planted with your essence, encouraging the unrestricted ability to grow on all you touch. Practice will increase your efficiency with this subskill.

I, of course, tested that. First by growing some [Brown Chanterelle] on some random bricks outside, then with more complicated and uncommon mushrooms in places where they weren’t naturally predisposed to growing.

The limitations were obvious. Mushrooms would only grow when I was applying my aura to them. Areas that were too hostile would inevitably lead to the mycelium breaking apart or being ruined by the environment.

Still, the subskill made it possible to grow mushrooms just about anywhere as long as I was there and applying a light amount of attention to their growth.

It was mana-intensive though, at least at first. The big advantage came from the experience gained from growing things in places they didn’t belong.

My next skill, in order, to gain enough levels to unlock a subskill was [Blight]. Probably because I was practising with it so much and had weaponized it a few times.

[Congratulations! Your [Blight {Epic}] Skill has unlocked the [Rigour Mortis] Subskill!]

[ Rigour Mortis]

By applying your Blight onto the living, you can force their muscles to contract, their skin to tighten, and their organs to writhe with the early symptoms of death’s grasp.

That sounded awesome, but as was often the case with magical abilities I gained, it wasn’t as strong in application as it was on paper.

Sir Nibbles, after being bribed a little, ran out and found me a rat or two. The badger was a sort of unnaturally strong predator in the slums, able to enter rat warrens and rip them apart, regardless of their larger size.

I used my newly empowered [Blight] on one of these in a cage, and its consequences were fairly obvious. If I concentrated the [Blight] on a specific limb or area, that area would not only necrotize on the surface, it would also lock up. Limbs would stiffen and organs would fail.

Interestingly, it was more temporary than [Blight]’s other effects and it took a moment for the localised paralysis to take effect.

Still, for all that it was a bit niche, it did have its uses. I could freeze up limbs . Paralysing an adversary, even if it wasn’t all of them, could change the tempo in a fight. And with more control over my [Blight] I could shove it down throats and at eyes.

Paralysing something’s entire face had a wonderful ability to make that thing go absolutely nuts.

The next skill I got came from hours of practice. Surprisingly, it seemed to relate to Sir Nibbles more than I would have expected it to. It also made my rat-based experimentation a lot less comfortable than it had been.

[Congratulations! Your [Druid Sight {Uncommon}] Skill has unlocked the [Druid’s Ear] Subskill!]

[Druid’s Ear]

You have listened to nature long enough that you have an empathic understanding of natural things. This will improve with practice.

It bothered me that a skill called [Druid Sight] gave me the ability to hear  nature better. Although, it was less about hearing, and more about understanding. Now, when I slowly killed a caged rat, I could understand its squeaks and moans enough to tell that it was begging for freedom, from the cage and from the pain I was subjecting it to.

I stopped the experiments.

Sir Nibbles was very miffed about it, and used the new subskill to express that to me at length. He liked the chase, though I didn’t stop him from hunting for sustenance.

Mushroom Magic hit level forty, and I got one of the most potent skills I’d ever seen from a subskill.

[Congratulations! Your [Mushroom Magic {Rare}] Skill has unlocked the [Mushroom Remaker] Subskill!]

[Mushroom Remaker]

As long as you have a spore linked to a previously self-grown mushroom, you can influence its growth along a similar path.

It took me a bit to untangle that.

When I did, I was flabbergasted, because that was not  how nature worked.

I could, simply put, take a spore of one mushroom, and turn it into the spore of another. But only if the mushroom was part of the same evolutionary path.

That meant that I could take some [Beige Puffball] spores and magic them into [Dead Man’s Cough] with nothing but mana.

It took a ton  of mana. I was left a shaking, sweating mess after using the skill on a needle-tip’s worth of spores, but it worked.

In theory, given... significantly larger stores of mana and more efficiency, I might be able to recreate my entire mushroom arsenal from a few base samples. If I had to abandon my farm, I could walk around, find a few common mushrooms, and have most of my best shrooms back. It would take days still, but... yeah. Handy.

Not something I’d be able to practice too much though, its mana-cost was too ridiculous.

The last improved subskill came from my [Social Manipulation] skill.

[Congratulations! Your [Social Manipulation {Uncommon}] Skill has unlocked the [Too Cute to Kill] Subskill!]

[Too Cute to Kill]

As long as people perceive you as weak, innocent, or defenceless, they will find it much harder to suspect you of any activity they imagine to be morally reprehensible.

There was a lot of leeway in that one’s wording, but I would sure take what I could get. I suspected that I would need every ‘get away with homicide   card’ I could  get my grubby hands on.

All I needed to do was leverage my looks for it.

It disturbed me a little, but the payout might be worth it.

The day after I got that skill, I was given the opportunity to put it to the test. It was mid-winter, and someone had finally agreed to my bid.

Name: N/A

Race: Human {Common}

Age: 7 Years

Mana: 41/49

Primary Class: [Feronie’s Crusader {Epic}]

Afflictions

- Black Lung {Common}

- Child of Poverty {Common}

Blessings

- Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

Feronie’s Crusader Class Skills - Level One Hundred Ninety-Two

- Aura of Growth {Rare} - Level Sixty-One

> [Shaped Aura]

> [Careful Casting]

> [Unrestricted Growth]

- Blight {Epic} - Level Forty

        > [Persistent Death]

        > [Rigour Mortis]

- Ritual of Sporemageddon  {Legendary} - Level One

- Druid Sight {Uncommon} - Level Forty-Three

        > [Druid’s Sense]
        > [Druid’s Ear]

- Mushroom Magic {Rare} - Level Forty-Seven

        > [Super Shroom Zoom]

        > [Mushroom Remaker]

General Skills - Level One Hundred Ninety-One

- Running {Common} - Level Fifty-Two

> [Surefooted]

> [Sprint]

- Knitting {Common} - Level Sixty-Three

> [Patterner]

> [Clicky Clacker]

> [Resizer]

- Basic Poison Resistance {Common} - Level Twenty-Seven

> [Mana Bleed]

- Social Manipulation {Uncommon} - Level Twenty

        > [Too Cute to Kill]

-   Poison Handling Expertise {Rare} - Level Twenty-Nine

> [Iron Lunged]

***

Death Cap - Forty-Two - Meeting Those Who Have Been Where You Will Go

I was bundled up in a few layers of warm, self-knit clothes as I waited just outside the delvers’ guild. Winters in City Nineteen weren’t all that cold, but they were far from warm.

The snow here was sporadic at best. Mostly it was little more than a dusting in the morning. But on some days it would come down hard and fast. This day was one of those.

My breath misted the air, sending a scattering of fat snowflakes dancing before me. There wasn’t any wind, so the snowfall was gentle and calm. It made the city much prettier than it usually was.

You couldn’t see the muck on the streets, the faded paint on walls, and the rust on rooftops when everything was covered in a foot-thick layer of snow.

I decided that I liked the winters here. Sure, it was cold, and when I didn’t have enough clothes on and a full belly, that little bit of cold was a clawing horror, but when you had both and a reason to keep moving, the winter wasn’t all that bad. The streets weren’t as busy, the city’s constant clamour was muffled, and the muggers were too busy huddling by a trash fire somewhere to try and stab you for your coin purse.

I was waiting for two people to show up.

The bid reply only included one of their names. Phillipe  Greene. It had come with a tiny bit of information about the man, just the sort of profile you’d expect to be public.

He was a guild veteran. Seventeen years as a delver and accredited member of the guild. He had worked for three teams, one of them for twelve consecutive years. He was technically still employed with that group, but this bid was being answered privately.

His partner was a complete unknown.

I waited next to the guild’s front door, occasionally rubbing my hands together for warmth (I regretted not doubling the thickness of my self-knit mittens) while Sir Nibbles buried himself around my neck as much as possible. He refused to stay above my sweater and insisted on squeezing close.

If he was a bit softer it might actually be nice, but the ugly badger was all coarse and rough, but he was also very vocal about his dislike of the cold. I imagined that wherever he came from, it was a warmer place than City Nineteen.

“Are you the Mushroomancer ?”

I jumped and turned, then looked up to the person who’d addressed me. Then I looked up some more.

I was used to having to look up to people. Even Bet was a head taller than me, and with how tall my mom was, I was certainly going to have strong neck muscles from looking up to everyone forever.

This guy though, he took the cake.

I wasn’t a great judge of distances or heights or whatever, but I imagined this guy was nearing seven feet. He would have been taller if he didn’t have a bit of a slouch from wearing a heavy  coat. He was also, I noted, broader than anyone I’d seen up close in this world.

The man was rocking that Arnold-in-his-prime body with a huge blond moustache that was artfully curled up on the edges.

“Um, yes,” I said, just a little wary.

I wasn’t unarmed, but I didn’t know if the amount of poisonous mushrooms I had on me would be enough to kill an elephant, let alone this man.

“Wonderful!” he said. His voice was surprisingly tame. I half expected a bellow. “You certainly fit the description we received. Did you want to talk within? I can pull a favour and we can use one of the quieter rooms above.”

“That’s acceptable,” I said. From what I’d learned, that was the norm for more specialised bids. The client would meet with the delver team and they’d go over details together. “Are you mister Greene?”

“I am!” he said. “I’m sorry, but your bid didn’t include your name.”

“I’d rather not use one,” I said. “You can call me by the name I set on my bid, if you want.”

“The Mushroomancer?” he asked.

I nodded.

He shrugged. “Very well. Come along then.”

I followed him into the guild, then up past the front counter and to the second floor. I was breathing a little hard by the time we reached the meeting room there. Mister Greene’s every step was worth three of mine.

The meeting room wasn’t empty. There was a man there. Or maybe a teenager? He was tall and slim, his coat discarded on the back of one straight-backed chair. He had a thin attempt at a moustache of his own. His hair was blond, the same as Mister Greene’s.

There was a slight familial resemblance there, but I didn’t know for sure yet.

“Please, sit,” Phillipe said with a gesture to one of the free seats.

I moved up to it, turned, then with a jump backwards I climbed my butt onto the seat. “So, you’re Mister Greene and...”

“Tyro,” the younger man said. “Also Greene.”

“Oh? Father and Son?” I asked.

Mister Greene senior grinned and placed a meaty hand on his son’s shoulder. “That’s right,” he said before sitting down. “Now, Miss Mushroomancer.” Tyro turned his head towards his father, obvious confusion on his face at the name. “Your bid was rather interesting. And it’s been sitting there for a while.”

“Yes,” I said.

He rubbed at his chin, then shrugged. “Well, I’m curious, how old are you?”

“Does that matter with regard to the bid?” I asked.

He chuckled. “Smart one, aren’t you? Yeah, you’ve got that look in your eyes.”

I stared at him, but he didn’t elaborate. “I’m seven,” I said.

“Seven,” Tyro muttered. He glanced to his dad. “Are we really going to work with a seven-year-old?”

“For,” his father said. “And don’t question the client in front of the client. I didn’t think I’d have to teach you about basic politeness.”

“Sorry,” he said. Then to me, he repeated the same. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “This is all very unusual, I’m sure. Which makes me wonder, why did you accept  the bid.”

Mister Greene grinned. “For the experience, of course,” he said. He smacked his son on the back. “Tyro here is getting into the delving business soon. We want to make sure he’ll survive and thrive, which means making sure he has the right kind of class for it. For that, we need to reach a dungeon’s core. The smaller the team, the better the chances he'll get  a rare or epic class.”

“Oh. thank you, I didn’t know that.”

He shrugged. “It’s a poorly kept trade secret,” he said. “My boy here’s been working hard to get good Generals. He’ll be able to switch out his class, train his new one up a bit, then become a competent delver.”

“Interesting,” I said.

“What about you? What are you trying to reach the lowest floor for?” he asked.

“Mushrooms,” I said simply. “While we travel down, I’d appreciate some time to study every mushroom we run across.”

“Wouldn’t it be less costly to just buy the mushrooms f rom a team that travels down more often?” Tyro asked.

His father frowned a bit, probably because that was a good idea and one that wouldn’t need me to hire them for. “I could,” I said. “But I want to see them for myself. And... maybe I want the experience too. I’ve noticed that my skills grow faster when I’m using them in new and creative ways. I think this will be a good opportunity for that.”

Mister Greene nodded, then he reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small stack of papers. “We should sign the preliminary papers,” he said. “Before we start telling each other too much.”

“Those are the disclosure agreements?” I asked. I did have some time over the last couple of months to learn about how this kind of thing went down.

The old men who lingered at the guild were always willing to talk a lot to a curious child. It was good training for my [Social Manipulation] skill too.

The first pages were a literal non-disclosure agreement. It was more of a formality since all that would happen if Misters Greene and Greene went blabbing was the guild giving them a slap on the wrist, and that would only happen if I could prove  that they blabbed.

The rest of the contract I set aside. It would require more careful study and reading, and maybe I could show it to some of the old men downstairs to see if it was entirely legit. “Here,” I said as I signed the agreement.

It went both ways. The Greenes couldn’t talk about me, and I couldn’t talk about their abilities. Nice and clean and simple.

“Wonderful,” Mister Greene said. “I have questions about this bid. Foremost among those... you want to descend as well?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Can you?” he asked.

I frowned. “On my own? Maybe, but I doubt it. I’m not defenceless though.”

“No offence,” Greene-younger said. “But you don’t seem... physically strong?”

I shrugged. “Maybe not. But I’m an expert in my field, and my field is exceptionally lethal if mishandled... or handled in just the right way. Trust me, I can clear out any room as long as the things in it need to breathe.”

***

Epilogue

It took a week to prepare, a week spent constantly draining my mana to grow mushrooms faster, a week where I exhausted my meagre coffers to buy supplies. A week where I tried to spend a bit more time with my mom than usual while convincing Bet to help me craft a lie.

I didn’t need mom knowing where I was going. She wasn’t exactly headstrong, but I thought she’d put her foot down if she discovered that I was going to venture into such a dangerous place.

It was better if she didn’t know.

In the end, I had everything packed as best I could. I had a backpack--a gift from Bet who said they were relatively common with the children sent into the dungeon to gather materials--I had a few little utensils, a lamp which I could use for light or for cooking, a tin of oil, and a good sturdy knife in a sheath hidden in the small of my back.

I brought food, of course. A couple of cans of spam, some beans, a couple of changes of clothes. Really, I wanted to have everything that I thought I might need down in the Ditz Dungeon.

Most of all, I had mushrooms. Samples of nearly every mushroom I’d ever found useful, and some of mushrooms that had the potential to be. Fully grown mushrooms as well, of all the sorts that I was accustomed to.

Most of these were in my satchel, which I decided to carry along too.

I regretted not moving around with my full gear more often, since it was rather heavy, but I could manage it. The stuff I used up along the way would be discarded, decreasing the weight as I went.

“Sample jars, can’t forget those,” I muttered as I picked up a few, wrapped them in cloth, then stuffed them into my satchel. I didn’t want the trip to be a waste, after all. If we couldn’t make it to the bottom, I might at least be able to come back up with a few interesting new fungi to play with.

Sir Nibbles chittered at me, and I rolled my eyes.

“Yes, I’m bringing your snacks too,” I said. I opened the backpack and half-pulled out a little cloth bag. I’d stitched--rather poorly--a badger face to the side. It had dried mushrooms in it, those that had gone a little too hard when I tried to make mushroom jerky and subsequently failed because I didn't know what I was doing.

I checked everything one last time, but at that point it was pretty much just paranoia.

“Alright, I think that’s everything,” I said as I buckled everything down.

I reached a hand to Sir Nibbles and he scampered up my arm and around my neck. The badger was getting a little chubby, and big. I didn’t know how big normal badgers got, but I was starting to suspect that panbadgers like Nibbles were on the bigger side. Soon carrying him like this wouldn’t be an option.

With everything set up, I made sure the notes for Bet were in plain sight, then I headed out. She’d have to take care of the farm while I was out. Fortunately, that was mostly just picking mushrooms at the right time. I’d culled my local supply of the more lethal stuff. I didn’t want to return to find that Bet had poked a [Dead Man’s Cough] and died.

The moved mushrooms would grow nice and quietly in a few different spots around the slums. The nice thing about them was that they were their own theft-deterrent.

Sir Nibbles and I crossed the slums. It was weird how much they’d changed without me really noticing. Some homes had burned down, some buildings were ripped apart, and yet all of that had been replaced with newer, worse construction.

The slums were like a spreading fungal body. It weakened and died, then came back to flourish in its own death, ever changing, but always producing the same result in the end. There were new faces, there were old ones, and there was more rust and more smog.

So, everything was changing, but nothing changed at all.

Introducing a spark was why I was taking this risk, why I was willing to try and use [ Sporemageddon ]. Maybe it was a mistake, but I’d only know that once it was done.

I arrived at the Ditz Dungeon to find it quieter than when I’d ever seen it before. To be fair, the sun hadn’t risen yet. The yard had a few very early workers, some cleaning people, and a few guards milling around, but it wasn’t the hive of activity it would be the moment the sun rose.

Misters Greene and Greene were waiting for me on the edge of the dungeon’s plaza. “Hello, sirs,” I said.

Philipe grinned. “You look kitted out,” he said. “Are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be, I suspect,” I said before flashing him a grin. “Let’s see what kind of trouble we can get into, shall we?”

***

Feronie  smiled. It was a weak thing, but it was present. A little grin for a little victory.

“Go on, loyal-one. Turn that loyalty into the death of our enemy.”

The pain was growing less bearable by the day. But she didn’t give up. She couldn’t. At the moment, she was being fed the most potent of all anaesthetics; hope, and with that she couldn’t help but fight on.

There was still time.

***

Afterword

I’m terrible at writing these, but I felt that this story deserved one.

To those of you reading this: I hope you enjoyed the story to this point. I hope you’ll keep up with the next volume when it inevitably releases, or that you’ll keep up on my patreon.

Sporemageddon  was a weird idea I had one day while walking Molly that I jotted down on a whim. I didn’t expect it to become this big, but I’m happy it did!

As for the future of this story... well, it was recently sold to a big publisher. I can’t disclose many details, but suffice to say it will be available online soon, and in a new format. I’m hopeful for it, and think that Sporemageddon might do well in its new home. Still, I’m sad to see it go, and I’d understand if you felt the same.

Once the story is up, I’ll be posting some news about it in the ANs of my other stories, no worries.

In the meantime... well, if you enjoyed this story, then there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy some of my other stories. Some are quite a bit longer than Sporemageddon, and a few are even completed!

Check out Stray Cat Strut if you want more action, Cinnamon Bun or Fluff for more cuteness, and Heart of Dorkness for more not-horror!

If you’re looking for something entirely completed, then look at Lever Action or Love Crafted!

On that note, I wish you all the best! If you want to support me, check out my patreon, and if you want a physical copy of Sporemageddon, then there’s a version of volume one up on Amazon right now. The audiobook is being negotiated with another publisher as I write this, so that’ll be showing up soon as well!

Thank you for enjoying my story!

Keep warm; stay cool,

RavensDagger

Heavy metal

Do you know what it means to be loyal?

Loyalty unto death is what I need.

But worry not, child of man, it is not your death that I want.

System Shit

Rarities:

common uncommon rare legendary unique

Skills:

[Skill Name {Rarity}]

System messages:

--- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Rarity Order:

Common, uncommon, rare, epic, legendary

---

[You have unlocked a Sub-Skill!]

[Congratulations! Your [X {Y}] Skill has unlocked the [Shroom Zoom] Subskill!]

---

[Congratulations! Your X Skill has reached level Y!]

---

[You have unlocked the X Skill!]

[Do you want to add the X Skill to your known repertoire of General Skills?]

---

[Congratulations! You have Obtained the X Skill!]

---

[Class Name {Rarity}]

Description in second person

Class requirements:

Class Skills: Three skills

---

[Do you want to accept the X Class? You can reject a Class at any time.]

---

[Congratulations! You have unlocked the X Class!]

[The following Skills have been added to your repertoire:]

---

480 halfpennies > 1 pound

240 pence > 1 pound

12 pence > 1 shilling

20 shilling > 1 pound

---

Name: N/A

Race: Human {Common}

Age: .6 Years

Mana: 08/10

Afflictions

- Black Lung {Common}

- Child of Poverty {Common}

Blessings

- Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

General Skills

-

-

-

-

-

---

[The General Skill X has Transformed into Y and is now a Class Skill!]

---

Name: N/A

Race: Human {Common}

Age: .6 Years

Mana: 08/10

Primary Class: [Agaric Cleric {Rare}]

Afflictions

- Black Lung {Common}

- Child of Poverty {Common}

Blessings

- Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

Agaric Cleric Class Skills

- Mycologic Growth {Uncommon}

- Druid Sight {Uncommon}

- Mushroom Magic {Rare}

General Skills

-

-

-

-

-  

Afflictions

Black Lung {Common}

You are afflicted by blackened lungs. Your breathing is hampered, as is your natural ability to process mana through respiration.

Child of Poverty {Common}

Marked as a child of poverty by lack of care, education, and opportunity, you carry the handicap of poverty.

Blessings

Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

Uniquely blessed by the Goddess of Nature. Your soul connects with greater ease to all things natural. Nature knows that you are its friend and ally, just as much as the unnatural sees you as an adversary. All talents and skills and classes related to nature will grow with greater ease and will be more readily accessible to you.

Skills

Feronie’s Crusader Skills

[Aura of Growth {Rare}]

By pushing your will and mana into the environment around you, you can encourage the growth of all natural things. As this skill grows, your range and focus will increase, and you may be able to help yourself grow as well.

Category: Nature Magic

Subskills

[Shaped Aura]

You can more easily move and manipulate your aura. With practice, you will be able to move it entirely away from yourself, to bring growth to all that need it.

[Careful Casting]

You become more aware of how much assistance all natural things need in order to flourish, and in doing so, are better able to conserve your own strength. practice will increase your efficiency.

[Unrestricted Growth]

Even in places where growth is improbable, you can endow the seeds you’ve planted with your essence, encouraging the unrestricted ability to grow on all you touch. Practice will increase your efficiency with this subskill.

---

[Blight {Epic}]

Your mana and will gains  the tint of rot and death. At will, you can make your presence force sickness, rot, and necrosis onto those you consider your adversary. As this skill grows, so will your range, and you will be able to empower yourself from the natural rot you create.

Category: Nature magic, Necro magic

Subskills

[Persistent Death]

Your Blight’s magical effects sink deep into living matter and remain there, active until the living passes away or endures through the Blight.

[Rigour Mortis]

By applying your Blight onto the living, you can force their muscles to contract, their skin to tighten, and their organs to writhe with the early symptoms of death’s grasp.

---

[Ritual of Sporemageddon  {Legendary}]

Deep within a dungeon you shall dive. There you will plead with your Goddess, and with a loyal heart shall prevail. The gift given unto all sentient-kind will be revoked.

Category: Apocalypse magic, Forbidden magic

---

Druid Sight {Uncommon} - Level One

Your sight alone will allow you to better understand nature itself, its whims and desires, as well as its many dangers and threats.

As this skill grows, your senses will sharpen faster, helping you identify and learn from nature.

Category: Body Enhancement - Vision

Subskills

[Druid’s Sense]

You have gained a heightened sense for an area’s attunement, or lack of attunement, to nature.

[Druid’s Ear]

You have listened to nature long enough that you have an empathic understanding of natural things. This will improve with practice.

---

Mushroom Magic {Rare} - Level Twenty

You can infuse any fungi you find with your magic, either to transform and help with its growth, to give it magical properties, or to turn it into a deadly weapon.

As this skill grows, you will learn new methods to use your magic and its use will become more efficient.

Category: Nature Magic

Subskills

[Super Shroom Zoom]

All fungal bodies will grow at an increased speed as long as you are directly applying magic to them.

[Mushroom Remaker]

As long as you have a spore linked to a previously self-grown mushroom, you can influence its growth along a similar path.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

General

[Running {Common}]

Move all of yourself as efficiently as possible to gain speed and cross distances faster.

As this skill grows, you will find running, jogging, and sprinting easier and less tiring.

Category: Physical Movement

Subskills

[Surefooted]

You will find yourself tripping less often as you push yourself to run faster. With practise, you will no longer lose your balance and momentum as you run.

[Sprint]

You conserve stamina better while pushing yourself to move faster. As you practice you will gain speed and endurance and become a better runner.

---

[Knitting {Common}]

You can weave strands of cloth together, forming clothes and items for you to wear and use.

As this skill grows, so will your proficiency with your needles and cloth.

Category: Item Crafting

Subskills

[Clicky Clacker]

You have become proficient at knitting faster. As you practise, your speed and focus will sharpen.

[Patterner]

You can more easily notice and copy knitting patterns, and creating new ones comes more easily to you.

[Resizer]

Your exceptional experience with adjusting and modifying garments allows you to resize them with greater ease.

---

[Basic Poison Resistance] - Common

You have grown used to the ravages of poison. As this skill grows, so will your ability to shrug off the negative effects of poisons.

Subskills

[Mana Bleed]

You will naturally leech away from the mana from negative magical effects pushed into your body, subsuming it for your own use and weakening the effects.

---

[Social Manipulation] - Uncommon

Lie, cheat, misinform and confuse others with greater ease. As this skill grows so will your ability to trick and beguile.

Category: Social skills

[Too Cute to Kill]

As long as people perceive you as weak, innocent, or defenceless, they will find it much harder to suspect you of any activity they imagine to be morally reprehensible.

---

[Poison Handling Expertise] - Rare

Handle dangerous materials and poisons with greater ease, while also gaining the ability to craft and cook new volatile poisons. As this skill improves, you will gain a better understanding of the poisoners art and additional resistances to the very mixtures you create.

Category: Poison making, Poison-based combat

Subskills

[Iron Lunged]

Your body and natural magical affinity are attuned to poisons you have grown and created, conferring a major resistance to aerosolized poisons and a minor resistance to injected and contact poisons.

---

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Agaric Cleric Skills

Mycologic Growth {Uncommon} - Level One

You are able to nurture and encourage the growth of all fungi from spore to mushroom. Further growth of this skill will allow you to influence the direction of fungal growth, picking out the most desirable traits and expanding upon them.

Category: Nature Magic

Subskills

[Overnight Growth]

All fungal bodies under your care will grow much faster over the course of the night, or when in extremely dark areas.

---

Druid Sight {Uncommon} - Level One

Your sight alone will allow you to better understand nature itself, its whims and desires, as well as its many dangers and threats.

As this skill grows, your senses will sharpen faster, helping you identify and learn from nature.

Category: Body Enhancement - Vision

Subskills

[Druid’s Sense]

You have gained a heightened sense for an area’s attunement, or lack of attunement, to nature.

---

Mushroom Magic {Rare} - Level Twenty

You can infuse any fungi you find with your magic, either to transform and help with its growth, to give it magical properties, or to turn it into a deadly weapon.

As this skill grows, you will learn new methods to use your magic and its use will become more efficient.

Category: Nature Magic

Subskills

[Shroom Zoom]

All magic applied to fungal bodies will take less time to react to your will. Moderately decreased casting time for all [Mushroom Magic] abilities.

---

Fungal Grafter {Uncommon} - Level One

You have discovered the first step of the ancient art of tailored evolution. You are now able to more easily combine fungal bodies to discover new and greater effects. As this skill grows, so will your ability to graft more difficult and disparate fungal bodies.

Category: Nature Magic

---

[Commune with God {Rare}]

You have opened the path to speaking with your divine through  ritual, prayer, and sacrifice. Your pleas were heard, for better or ill. As you improve with this skill, your ability to speak to your god will improve, though it will have no bearing on whether they choose to listen.

Category: Clerical Magic

---

Mushrooms

[Brown Chanterelle] - Common

An edible mushroom frequently picked and eaten by small mammals.

[Mana-Infused Brown Chanterelle] - Uncommon

An edible mushroom frequently picked and eaten by small mammals that has grown in a mana-heavy environment. Will restore some of the eater’s vitality and mana.

[Horse Head Mushroom] - Common

A common edible mushroom. Mostly tasteless, but filled with nutrients. Commonly found near places where bodies are buried.

[Magical Horse Head Mushroom] - Common

A common magical edible mushroom. Mostly tasteless, but filled with nutrients and mana. Commonly found near places where magical bodies are buried.

[Dead Man’s Finger] - Common

A common wood-rot fungus. Its flowering scent, though unnoticeable to most, repels many insects. Inedible. Consumption leads to digestive issues.

[Bug Agaric] - Common

A mushroom prized for its utility as an insecticide and as a drug.

[Green Spirit Mould] - Common

A kind of mould frequently found near areas with large amounts of spiritual activity. Glows faintly when in the presence of ghostly spirits. Inedible, but not poisonous.

[Beige Puffball] - Common

A common sight next to rotting wood and other detritus. The puffball is an edible mushroom in its early fruiting stage which grows into a ball filled with dust-like spores that are released on impact or from strong winds. The spores are a mild irritant. Not very nutritious, but considered tasty by most who enjoy mushrooms.

[Blackbottle] - Uncommon

A mushroom frequently found in humid climes. It will fill with water and when ripe, will burst apart releasing watery spores onto the ground around it. A source of untainted water.

[Blur Glow Lichen] - Rare

A lichen found in several dungeons and which will glow when in the presence of mana. Often used by alchemists to create mana-activated potions or lights.

[Purple Capped Night Watcher] - Rare

This rare mushroom is only found in areas with a particular kind of predatory animal, notably creatures who stalk and predate on others using magical means in unlit environments. While very mildly poisonous, this mushroom allows those who eat it to see in the dark, amplifying natural night vision. Used in several alchemical concoctions.

[Ghoul Button Mushroom] - Uncommon

A mushroom that grows on flesh, though it prefers the flesh of undead creatures and will grow with startling speed on those. If consumed whole it will make the eater more resistant to necrotic influences.

[Skunk’s Lament] - Common

A small mushroom that, when squeezed, releases a cloud of minuscule spores which emit a potent foul odour. Has some use as a revitalising reagent.

[Healing Chime] - Rare

A small mushroom that accelerates healing when eaten raw.

Combined mushroom types.

Blur Glow Lichen / Green Spirit Mould

[Green Burn Lichen] - Epic

A form of lichen which spreads rapidly and which glows brightly in the presence of mana. Too much mana though, and it will set itself alight, spreading the spores of its fungal form around. It will also ignite on contact with spirits with a spiritual flame that is harmless to flesh but dangerous to spiritual bodies.

Horse Head / Purple Capped Night Watcher

[Purple Horse Head] - Uncommon

An edible mushroom which gives the eater a slightly improved ability to see in low light conditions. Otherwise nutritious.

Blackbottle / Purple Capped Night Watcher

[Blackbottle Night Watcher] - Rare

A rare mushroom not found in any natural environment. This small, edible mushroom contains a basic alchemical reagent that allows the consumer to see in low light conditions. Can be used in several alchemical concoctions.

Blackbottle / Beige Puffball

[Black Puffball] - Uncommon

A common sight next to stale water and other humid detritus. The black puffball is an edible mushroom in its early fruiting stage which grows into a ball filled with spores in a muddy goop that are released on impact. Not very nutritious.

Blackbotttle / Brown chanterelle

[Brownbottle] - Uncommon

A nutritious mushroom frequently found in humid climes. It will fill with water and when ripe, will burst apart releasing watery spores onto the ground around it. A source of untainted water. Its meat is nutritious and healthy, though the stem will contain the impurities filtered out of its water.

Brown chanterelle / Dead Man’s Fingers

[Dead Man’s Member] - Common

A common growth near rotting woods. The dead man’s member is a mushroom that can act as a mild aphrodisiac, though it also gives the eater digestive issues if eaten raw.  

Brown chanterelle / Horse head

[Brown Horse Head] - Uncommon

A cultivar of two popular mushroom types. Grows rapidly and is nutritious. Can be found next to decomposing meats.

Brown chanterelle / Horse head +Magic

[Mana-Infused Brown Horse Head] - Uncommon

A magical variation of a cultivar of two popular mushroom types. Grows rapidly and is nutritious and mana-rich. Can be found next to the decomposing meats of magical creatures.

Bug agaric / dead man’s fingers

[Dead Man’s Agaric] - Uncommon

A highly toxic mushroom. The spores cause the lungs of mammals who inhale them to inflame, and consumption of the mushroom’s meat causes internal haemorrhaging within two days of the time of consumption. Leads consumers to a heavy trance-like state where they will hallucinate vividly.

Dead man’s finger / horse head

[Dead Horse Head] - Uncommon

A magical mushroom that is high in nutritious content and has a smell that will tempt mammalian creatures into consuming it. Very mildly poisonous, and will impact the digestive tracts of any who eat it.

Purple Capped Night Watcher / Beige Puffball

[Purple Starball] - Uncommon

This magical mushroom unleashes clouds of glowing spores that, if inhaled, will cause a mammal to have vivid visual hallucinations.

Dead Man’s Finger / Beige Puffball

[Beige Puff Finger] - Common

A fragrant mushroom with a pleasant, earthy scent. Attracts insects, especially wood-burrowing insects.

Bug Agaric / Beige Puffball

[Bugball] - Common

A small, puffball-like mushroom whose spores attract insects. The spores contain a neurotoxin too weak to kill most mammals, though it remains effective against insects. The spores cause mild hallucinations in mammals.

Dead Man’s Agaric / Beige Puffball

[Dead Man’s Cough] - Rare

A mushroom filled with highly toxic spores. Inhalation of these spores will cause immediate inflammation in the inhaler’s lungs, followed by trance-like hallucinations and internal haemorrhaging, possibly leading to death.

Dead Horse Head / Beige Puffball

[Horse Pop Mushroom] - Uncommon

A slow-growing mushroom which fills with spores and methane. It will grow until it pops, releasing spores which will dizzy most mammals who consume it. Mildly poisonous to consume or to inhale.

Blackbottle / Horse Pop Mushroom

[Bottle Pop] - Rare

A mushroom which fills with flame-proof spores, water, and methane, each within their own separate sacs within the fruiting body. On receiving a strong enough impact, the mushroom explodes, lighting itself on fire and spreading its hardened spores out around it to penetrate nearby materials. The spores are mildly poisonous. The fumes created by the explosion are mildly toxic.

[Faerie Fire Cap] - Epic

An exceptionally uncommon mushroom once cultivated by the fair  folk. This mushroom is explosive, and on bursting will release magical spores which will attach themselves to the nearest source of mana and burn with bright purple flames. Once used to prevent invisible intruders from entering sacred groves.

Skunk’s Lament/Horse Head Mushroom

[Horse Dropping Mushroom] - Common

An edible mushroom which can sustain itself next to fresh manure. Has a strong flavour, and little nutritional value.

Skunk’s Lament/ Dead Man’s Finger

[Dead Man’s Gas] - Common

A powerful insecticide that, when flowering, will release an odour that will attract insects while killing them slowly. Will use the corpses of insects to spread.

Skunk’s Lament/Beige Puffball

[Brown Puffball] - Common

A common sight next to manure heaps and sewers. The puffball is an inedible mushroom which grows into a ball filled with dust-like spores that are released on impact or from strong winds. The spores are a mild irritant. They carry a faecal smell with wards away fungivores.

Skunk’s Lament / Faerie Fire Cap

[Faerie Fart] - Rare

A rare mushroom which, on detonating, will release magical spores which can turn breathable air into a noxious but non-lethal gas which is mildly flammable.

Ghoul Button/ Dead man’s finger

[Ghoul Finger] - Common

A common wood-rot fungus. Its flowering scent, though unnoticeable to most, repels many insects. Inedible. Consumption leads to digestive issues. Will rapidly spread from the corpses of dead insects.

Ghoul Button / Bug Agaric

[Death Agaric] - Uncommon

A powerful hallucinogen, capable of befuddling the mind of the undead with mere contact to its spores.

Ghoul Button / Purple Capped Night Watcher

[Purple Ghoul Watcher] - Rare

This rare mushroom is only found in areas with predatory undead. While very mildly poisonous, this mushroom allows those who eat it to see in the life essence of those around them.

Ghoul Button / Faerie Fire Cap

[Dead Fae’s Lament] - Rare

An inedible mushroom which grows in rings around the location where a fae was buried for its final rest. These mushrooms react to any necrotic magic by releasing their spores, which will light themselves on fire on contact with undead flesh and will disrupt necrotic magics.

Ghoul Button / Healing Chime

[Ghoul Chime Mushroom] - Rare

A mushroom that, when consumed by the undead or grown on their body, will replace lost flesh with a fungal simulacrum.

Healing Chime / Brown Horse Head

[Brown Healing Horse] - Rare

A cultivar of several popular mushroom types. Grows rapidly, and is both nutritious and healthy. Promotes healing and has a soothing effect on the digestive system.

Healing Chime / Beige Puffball

[Puffy Healer] - Rare

An uncommon mushroom which, when squeezed, releases a thin cloud of spores which can reknit broken flesh and assist in healing minor lesions. The resulting clotted skin becomes a vector for the mycelium to grow within.

Healing Chim/ Purple Horse Head

[Purple Eye Mushroom]

A mushroom which, when eaten raw, will improve the eater’s eyesight.

Healing Chime / Blackbottle Night Watcher

[Healing Bottle] - Rare

A mushroom filled with potent healing WORD. When consumed in its raw form, the mushroom will encourage rapid healing in the consumer until the mushroom passes through the digestive system. Spores will grow within the consumer’s faecal matter.

Characters

Irene - old bitch

Roger - Dada, redhead, works as a mechanic

Tessa - MC’s mom, blue eyes, works at a factory, seamstress(?)

Martha - older woman, fat, who watches over the kids in the neighbourhood.

Bet - Young girl who knows how to read a little, befriends MC

Doctor Livalis - works in a clinic in the slums

Debra - homeless woman living close to MC’s place

Stew - homeless man, missing right arm and leg from a dungeon excursion.

Larry - Dad’s friend. Union organiser

Bill/Willian Worthington

Terrence Arthur - Works at Arthur’s Alembic alchemy shop

Phillipe Greene - Experienced Dungeon delver

Tyro Green - Phillipe’s son, inexperienced delver

Joe, William, Jack and Averell  - Mooks

Underside Gremlins

Philip - big handsome guy from a nicer family. A runaway

Brick AKA Tooth - Has missing teeth, reedy and thin, leader of his little group

Knuckles AKA Nose - big busted nose, bit brutish

Ratesco’s Union
Gary - an assassin/rogue working for the Ratesco Union

Dregs - a Hobgoblin working for the Ratesco Union as hired muscle

Markham - a leader with the Ratesco’s Union. Operates the area of the slums Mushie lives in.

Acolytes of Galen

Eight-Three-Eleven - Young woman 10 years older than Mushie. Friendly, but takes her work seriously.

Five-Oh-One-One - Older priest of Galen. 8311’s mentor

Pantheon

Feronie

Goddess of nature.

Represented by a beautiful woman. Is injured.

Galen

God of mercies

Represented by a young man with spectacles

Dearil

God of funerals, and killer of the undead. Symbol is a tombstone.

Followers wear beige clothes and cover their faces. Call themselves living brother/sister

Lorris

Recorded knowledge

Seb

Home and hospitality

Vista Lida

God of workers and industry

Plot

Parents learn she renamed someone

Investigation goes underway, but no one suspects her

Parents ask, and she admits that it might be her fault

Parents hide her

Time goes on

Learns to sneak out and explores around her house

Father gets injured, talks about a dungeon

Goes to look at dungeon

Finds a place to grow shrooms and starts a small farm

-> Dad continues to get drunk

-> Continue to merge and try things with different strands of shrooms

-> Create a poisonous mushroom

->

Is approached by a gang who demands food in exchange for leaving her alone offer to help her make drugs, she refuses

Dad dies, killed by pinkertons

Mom starts falling sick

Mc starts cultivating mushrooms in earnest, goes into dungeon

Magic

Needs to be cast with a command and a cost

The cost and command depends on the complexity of the spell

Spells can be written, signed, spoken, or played out as notes

The cost is consumed in the casting

Magic pre-dates the entire system that governs the world

Character Sheet

Name: N/A

Race: Human {Common}

Age: 7 Years

Mana: 41/49

Primary Class: [Feronie’s Crusader {Epic}]

Afflictions

- Black Lung {Common}

- Child of Poverty {Common}

Blessings

- Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

Feronie’s Crusader Class Skills - Level One Hundred Ninety-Two

- Aura of Growth {Rare} - Level Sixty-One

> [Shaped Aura]

> [Careful Casting]

> [Unrestricted Growth]

- Blight {Epic} - Level Forty

        > [Persistent Death]

        > [Rigour Mortis]

- Ritual of Sporemageddon  {Legendary} - Level One

- Druid Sight {Uncommon} - Level Forty-Three

        > [Druid’s Sense]
        > [Druid’s Ear]

- Mushroom Magic {Rare} - Level Forty-Seven

        > [Super Shroom Zoom]

        > [Mushroom Remaker]

General Skills - Level One Hundred Ninety-One

- Running {Common} - Level Fifty-Two

> [Surefooted]

> [Sprint]

- Knitting {Common} - Level Sixty-Three

> [Patterner]

> [Clicky Clacker]

> [Resizer]

- Basic Poison Resistance {Common} - Level Twenty-Seven

> [Mana Bleed]

- Social Manipulation {Uncommon} - Level Twenty

        > [Too Cute to Kill]

-   Poison Handling Expertise {Rare} - Level Twenty-Nine

> [Iron Lunged]

Do you know what it means to be loyal?

Loyalty unto death is what I need.

But worry not, child of man, it is not your death that I want.