Sporemageddon

The fifth floor probably had an official, more proper sounding name somewhere in the records kept for this dungeon, but the delvers called it The Pen.

The name tracked. Compared to the previous floors, which had rather minor threats that could be mitigated with a well-trained crew with some basic gear, the fifth floor required people willing and ready to fight to kill the entire time.

The entrance into the floor was a stone-lined archway deep in the fungal grove that made up the fourth floor, and as I came to it, I found it... more or less undisturbed.

Teams were sent down there, to the fifth floor and below, but it was rather uncommon. The floor’s only real valuable extracts were exotic dungeon animals and meat. And while sending a crew down to hunt every day would probably generate a fair amount of fresh meat on the daily, I think a factory farm of sufficient size could probably match it without the inherent risk that came with delving into a dungeon.

More importantly, it was now probably around early evening, or late afternoon. I hadn’t exactly sprinted over, but I was still aware that time must have passed.

A team delving down this deep would only have a couple of working hours before they’d have to trek back up to the surface.

It was just not economical to work this floor daily, so there were time-slots used instead. Usually near the end of the week. A team would come down with the rest in the morning, set up a camp on the fifth floor overnight, and return to the surface the next day having had nearly a full day to hunt and prepare for the transport back to the surface.

The meat, I knew, was processed by premium butcheries. It was high in mana content and its quality was better than... well, just about anything normal people would have access to.

I knelt down three steps into the entranceway, just far enough in that anyone who may have followed--though I doubted that I had been--wouldn’t see me, then I opened my satchel up.

The panbadger grumbled, but he did slink out of the satchel. I sighed as I hooked it back onto my shoulder. It was far, far lighter. In a few months, he might not fit in the bag anymore. In a few years he definitely wouldn’t be able to sneak around to places like this with me.

Shame. He was sometimes useful to have around.

“Okay,” I said. “We’re going to be on the fifth floor, but not for too long. I’m planning on pushing through to the sixth before we make camp. That means we’re going to be walking more or less straight through a dungeon floor filled with monsters that are aggressive.”

Sir Nibbled growled at me, but his eyes were focused, paying attention. I wasn’t sure just how smart he was, but... well, the few books I’d found that spoke of his species all made mention of how clever... or rather devious a panbadger was. They were definitely smarter than dogs or cats or crows. I don’t know if he could actually understand language, exactly, but he definitely understood a lot of words.

Too bad that he mostly communicated by biting me.

I pulled out a fresh set of mushrooms from a second satchel. These were three mushrooms, tied together with some string netting. One was an explosive, the other was... also explosive, and the last was my most potent [Dead Man’s Cough] variant to date.

[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.

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[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.

[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.

Months of trying to combine the three had been wasted. They just didn’t want to work with each other, and I had a few inklings as to why. Too many divergent strains, and I think the rarer a mushroom was, the harder it was to successfully combine. These were two Rares and an Epic.

So, string netting was the best I had.

I pulled out a rubber mask with a pair of thick lenses, then forced it onto my face. This was less to resist the poisonous spores and more to keep the dust out of my lungs. That, and to keep my eyes clear.

Sure, I was pretty much immune to any poison I took enough of, and I’d certainly taken my share of the ones I was planning on using now, and sure I was also slightly immune to poisons I made myself, but none of that stopped my eyes from itching like mad when I got them filled with spore dust.

That stuff was irritating as hell.

“Mask on,” I told Sir Nibbles.

He spat and hissed at me, but didn’t protest overly much when I fitted a mask onto him. It was a bit makeshift, canvas and long, oblong lenses, but it fit, had a cloth filter, and would keep the dust out of his face.

At some point, Sir Nibbles had grown immune to my poisons.

I don’t know when, but... yeah, it just happened without me noticing. I think animals that were smart enough had access to a system as well, or something similar to a system, and he had likely picked some skills related to poison resistance. I wasn’t sure how far they went, but I wasn’t going to push it.

I rehandled my little mushroom bomb, then started down the slightly-sloped passage to the fifth floor. It wasn’t too long before we saw it up ahead.

The opening room was large, with walls made of crudely-shaped stone blocks with only dirt as mortar between them. A few pillars rose up, holding the ceiling above in place. Dirt floors, torches on rusty sconces, a few bits of slightly-glowing moss in the corners.

It was a room that was at once natural and not, and I couldn’t help but feel nervous as I stared into it.

Then Sir Nibbles made a deep grumbling noise, and I finally noticed that the room wasn’t empty.

The floor’s occupants were here.

They were called Hyenas, and were probably named by someone who had never seen one. The normal animal certainly wasn’t native to the area. These were bipedal, with hunched, fur-lined backs and spotted coats.

Like goblins, they had a primitive sort of civility to them. Most carried weapons beyond their natural claws and teeth. Clubs, mostly, sometimes long chunks of stone knapped into knives.

There had, apparently, once been an attempt to turn these into slaves the way goblins had been from the Ditz Dungeon. That had not worked. These hyenas were absolutely impossible to domesticate. Trying to beat them into submission would only anger them more, and while they could work on things the way a goblin might, they’d mostly just wait for their handler to turn their back on them before pouncing.

It wasn’t worth the massive effort needed to keep them in line. Worse, they had a tendency to kill each other when in captivity together, or when they were feeling cooperative, it was to work together to free themselves to then try and eat their captors.

I could respect that.

I still underhanded my mushroom bomb as deep into the room as I could.

The [Bottle Pop] exploded, sending bits of shrapnel flying all over and igniting both the [Fearie Fire Cap] and setting off the [Dead Man’s Cough].

A growing plume of dust filled with multi-coloured fire spread out, catching a few of the hyenas. Then the spores continued to disperse, slowly thinning out over the course of a minute.

By the second minute, the coughing had stopped, and the room was filled only with faint spores caught in the torchlight and the smell of burning fur.

“Alright, let’s move in,” I said.

That was my plan. I wasn’t in this dungeon for resources, so as long as the monsters and foe I had to face had to breath, I was simply going to murder my way to the end.

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