Sporemageddon

“Well, that’s more than I expected,” I muttered to myself as I inspected the morning’s crop of freshly-grown mushrooms. The dead lizards have proven to be a good anchor for my mushrooms, and the results were more than satisfactory.

Every mushroom I had seeded was in full bloom, the corpses’ skin bloated out to make room for crawling mycelium to break into the flesh in a search for fresh nutrients. It was almost hard to make out the shape of the dead from the amount of mushrooms covering them.

I knelt down and plucked one mushroom off the stem, then gave it a sniff before taking a little nibble.

The flesh of it was rich in mana. That neatly explained the additional speed of their growth.

I tossed the remainder aside, brushed off my knees, then returned to the little camp I had. We’d be using that harvest to keep pushing through the rest of the sixth floor, but first, breakfast.

I had a limited supply of fresh water. I could grow some mushrooms to accumulate more, but... well, that was a pain in the butt. The little bottle-like mushrooms had to be broken into, and it was always a squishy, messy task. For now, I’d be depending on my canteen water, at least as far as I could. That would only last for the rest of the day, though.

Maybe Sir Nibbles and I would get lucky and find a source of fresh water in the dungeon? I remember Ditz having a few of those. And this dungeon had a level that was basically a sewer--though I obviously questioned the purity and cleanliness of that water.

Sir Nibbles laid down and acted like a lazy oversized cat while I stoked the flames and cooked a simple meal. He was less lazy when it came time to eating his share.

Once that was done, I stood and repacked most of my gear, then I started harvesting mushrooms and rebuilding my bombs. It was surprisingly tedious without a workstation, but that was fine. I’d been recollecting the little knit nets that I held the explosive mushrooms in at the start, and some were even in a somewhat reusable state. The rest I had to reknit together, but that’s where a high level Knitting {Common} came into play.

Sir Nibbles grumbled, but he allowed me to fit his mask back on, and then we were off again.

The rest of the sixth floor was easy. It felt more like a casual early morning walk, only with a little bit more mycological homicide than usual.

By early afternoon, I was starting to feel the long day in my feet. Annoying, since I had splurged for good boots, but I supposed that the weight of the backpack I was carrying didn’t help, and trekking through the dungeon was a lot of work.

The seventh floor beckoned.

The information I could get on the sixth floor was rather sparse. The seventh gave me even less to go on. The only thing of value occasionally gathered from that floor was silk.

Now, silk was valuable. There was no denying that. The issue was that the silk that could be gathered on the seventh floor came in almost industrial sizes. The floor had moths living on it called giant moths. The name wasn’t a misnomer. The bestiary I consulted claimed that they could grow to be up to a metre long.

They were also on the less aggressive side, for dungeon monsters. They would attack, but only if you approached, and wouldn’t seek delvers out. Their silk was used to create false walls and confuse the layout of the dungeon more than anything else.

Killing a giant moth was apparently rather easy. They weren’t particularly tough. They did require a few good hits to kill, but since they were unarmoured and generally slow, that wasn’t difficult.

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All in all, they were a non-issue.

The stalkers were another story.

Pale Stalkers had their own section that covered a few pages in the bestiary. The first was a long list of warnings. They were an upper-level threat.

The stalkers were an off-white, covered in a sort of carapace, and could stand entirely still for hours at a time. Their anatomy wasn’t well documented. Their ability to behead delvers was.

They weren’t insects, but rather the unholy combination of a praying mantis the size of a carriage and a lizard, with armoured scales and long, clawed limbs that allowed them to hang off of walls and ceilings. They were likely cold-blooded and were exceptionally patient hunters.

There were two ways to handle them, one significantly safer than the other.

The safe method was to be extremely vigilant. While they were strong, a well-trained and well-armed delver could take one on in a straight fight. Their head was notably somewhat weak and while they were fast, they weren’t flexible. If they attacked, it was always straight ahead. Dodging to the side would mean that they had to reposition.

The unsafe method was to run. The stalkers liked attacking prey unaware while they were slow, but they didn’t chase their prey down. If you moved by one quickly and never stopped moving, they wouldn’t try to behead you... most of the time.

It wasn’t a very safe way of doing things, but it was still noted down. If caught in a losing battle against a stalker, escape was often the better choice. Though they could still grab you from behind while you ran.

“Okay, Sir Nibbles,” I said. “We’re going to be fighting stalkers down here. Be ready. Hiss if you see anything at all.”

The panbadger grunted by my side, and I took that to mean that he understood.

We started down a slightly inclined tunnel that eventually curved around and kept heading deeper into the ground. Sir Nibbles took the lead, confidently trotting ahead, his eyes scanning the walls and ceiling.

That was a good idea, actually. The stalkers were noted as being able to cling to ceilings. Humans, and other mammals I supposed, weren’t always good about looking upwards for trouble.

“Pause at the threshold,” I said.

Sir Nibbled grunted again. I wondered if I couldn’t figure out a way to communicate with him better? Not a full language, of course, but something more solid than an affirmative grunt and a negative hiss. He didn’t have vocal chords capable of human speech, obviously, but he could probably string together something analogous to a sentence with different grunts and snorts.

Something to look into.

We made it to the end of the tunnel and paused. The floor was poorly lit. Unlike those above, there was no sign of any sort of civilization here. No old walls, no sconces with torches, not even the sort of hovel that a goblin could put together with sticks and stones.

I spun my backpack around and fished within for a lamp, then with a few flicks of a lighter, had it burning. I had a good few ounces of fuel, enough to last a couple of days, and by the looks of it, I might need it.

“Damn, it’s always something,” I muttered as I raised the lamp high and tried to illuminate the tunnel ahead. This was... a maze. A dark, damp maze, with rocky, uneven ground and a ceiling that rose up so high in places that I couldn’t see the top of it. “Can you keep an eye out?” I asked.

After receiving a positive response, I grabbed a mushroom bomb and tossed it deep into the room. Usually the first room was moderately safe, but usually wasn’t always.

Besides, I had to see if stalkers and those moths and their worms were vulnerable to my poisons.

“I’m going to try to grow some [Glow Lichen],” I said. I had a small sample with me, just in case. I was going to look foolish, covered in a layer of glowing moss, but it would hopefully be enough to see by.

The last thing I wanted to do was to be caught here in full darkness.

I let the spore swirl around us as I got to work, pushing more magic into some of my growth skills than I would ever dare use on the surface even as I tried to guide the spreading lichen across and into the material of my clothes.

Soon, I had a very poorly made shawl of sorts that glowed a faint, pale blue. It was far weaker than the lamp, but it was better than nothing. Light enough to see a couple of feet around was a lot when surrounded by pitch darkness.

“Okay, you’re next,” I said.

Sir Nibbles made a questioning sound at that.

“Yeah. You think I’m the only one that’ll wear this? Come on. Let’s make you a little cloak. It’ll be cute.”

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