So dark.
The thick darkness felt almost tangible, viscous like a rolling, churning fluid.
It was as if he had suddenly moved from a brightly lit environment to a place where he couldn’t see his own hand in front of his face.
The suddenness had left him dazzled and unable to see anything clearly.
Come to think of it, his eyes really had been blinded by a bright light.
It was the high beams of a 100-ton King.
And it had been heading straight for him.
‘Then I must be dead.’ Ning Lan, in his previous life, was a hardworking “ox-horse” employee at a miserable company.
He had been lucky enough to land a big client and then lucky enough to work some overtime.
As a result, he had the “luck” of running into the boss of otherworldly reincarnations—the truck—ramping through the night.
Talk about a stroke of luck.
Ning Lan felt he still had some fortune left in him because the “Great Luck” truck had actually screeched to a halt in front of him, stopping just 1 or 2 meters away from sending him flying.
Unfortunately, there was a follow-up attack.
The King of the Road was carrying its Ultimate Imperial Weapon—a massive steel coil—which rolled off the back due to inertia.
Ning Lan shuddered as he recalled the cause of his death.
It clearly didn’t feel good to be physically compressed into a zip file and turned into a 2D existence.
He was definitely dead.
There was no possibility of resuscitation for someone who needed to be scraped off the pavement with a shovel.
So, what was his current state?
Was he in heaven?
Hell?
Or was death just an endless void where the soul crumbled in long-lasting loneliness until even the last shred of consciousness vanished into nothingness?
Just thinking about such an end made him feel like he was going to break down.
‘I should check my own status first.
Just in case.’ Perhaps he really had traveled to another world and was just waiting for his first cry as a newborn to start a new life.
This wasn’t baseless speculation; he had his reasons.
While not exactly common, the “reincarnation from birth” trope existed.
The most classic part was the “mystery box” start to see how high the difficulty was.
For example, waking up in a bathroom stall of some vocational school.
‘Please, anything but that.’
Praying for anything but a hellish start, Ning Lan began trying to adapt to this environment.
He focused on the thick darkness, hoping to gain even a tiny bit of information about his current situation.
Hard work paid off.
After an unknown amount of effort, he finally saw a silhouette.
A round cap and a cylindrical body.
The object stood right in front of him, occupying most of his field of vision.
‘Why does this thing look exactly like a mushroom?’
As if to confirm his suspicion, a transparent glowing screen popped up.
[Race: Purple Mushroom]
‘Whoa, a text box!’
This was a cause for celebration.
After all, a text box usually meant a cheat.
Regardless of the circumstances, it was a huge help for him right now.
‘Let’s look at myself.’
Ning Lan rubbed his non-existent hands.
After some trial and error, he finally managed to point the System Panel toward himself.
[Status Window]
Race: Purple Mushroom
Level: 1
Skill: Spread Spores Lv 1
Wait.
A mushroom?
Was he actually a mushroom?
So, it wasn’t that the mushroom in front of him was giant; it was that he had become incredibly tiny.
‘How virtuous of the universe…’
He couldn’t help but sarcastically praise his situation in his heart before finally accepting reality.
‘At least I’m still a living creature, even if I’m not human.
It’s better than being some weird object like a vending machine or a piece of clothing…’ Ning Lan could only comfort himself this way.
Since the facts were set in stone, complaining would only add to his troubles.
But he was still bothered.
Of all things, a mushroom.
Even a random animal would have been a hundred times better than this.
This was a hellish difficulty start—worse than being born in a bathroom.
Mushrooms lacked the ability to move, which meant he could only watch.
He couldn’t do anything else.
Being unable to move was more painful than dying.
Ning Lan continued to observe the panel, hoping to find a way out of this predicament within the small screen.
HP: 1
MP: 1
Strength: 1
Defense: 1
Intelligence: 1
He had only seen this many ones in… well, even that “city” didn’t have this many.
The most critical part was the stat that was a zero.
Agility: 0
That big circle felt like a finishing blow, confirming his fears.
It made sense; mushrooms didn’t have feet.
How could something without legs have any Agility points?
It was perfectly logical.
‘And then?
That’s it?’
‘You’re a cheat window.
You can’t just be a frame with nothing else!’
The enthusiasm sparked by the golden finger was instantly dampened by the cruelty of reality.
Ning Lan’s thoughts gradually turned sluggish and resigned.
After all, there was nothing he could do.
Since he was bored, he began to count the time.
After losing track of how many hours had passed, Ning Lan observed some new movement.
Yes, observed—not seen with his eyes.
Mushrooms didn’t have eyes.
Instead, they possessed a type of three-dimensional perception of their surroundings.
Within his range of perception, he could adjust his perspective at will to notice changes.
His current limit was about 5 meters.
Through this, Ning Lan understood his location.
He was in a narrow crevice in a wall.
Outside was a hollow grotto, its floor covered in many other Purple Mushrooms.
The movement he noticed came from a wild wolf with gray fur.
It was just passing by, but its paw casually crushed a Purple Mushroom on the outer edge.
‘If you’re not going to eat it, don’t touch it!’
Ning Lan grumbled in his heart and pulled up his cheat panel.
[Race: Mendelair Gray Wolf]
[Level: 5]
**[A low-level predator living in the Gloomy Forest Grotto.
It excels at ambushing prey from the bushes.]**
The small text at the bottom caught his attention—a supplementary explanation.
It seemed the panel wasn’t that useless after all.
But why didn’t it show up for the Purple Mushrooms?
It couldn’t be that mushrooms were too low-level to need an explanation, right?
‘Haha, the future looks pitch black.’
Then there was the prefix of the wolf’s race: Mendelair.
This was clearly a geographical name, one that didn’t exist in his previous world and carried a distinct fantasy style.
He really had reincarnated.
Now that it was confirmed, Ning Lan felt a complex mix of emotions: anticipation, unease, and panic.
He tried clicking the panel.
**[Mendelair Great Labyrinth: A subterranean ruin that pierces through the entire continent.
Its origins are untraceable, and it is the birthplace of all monsters.]**
‘Oh, speaking of labyrinths, there must be people like adventurers.
So this is a world of swords and magic?
How exciting.’
Of course, none of this had anything to do with a mushroom.
Ning Lan, who had no chance of going on an adventure from the start, ignored that grand dream and continued clicking the panel for more info.
**[Gloomy Forest Grotto: A cave area on the second floor of the Mendelair Great Labyrinth.
It is named for the vast amount of Gloomy Thickets growing there.]**
[Strength: An individual’s average attack power.]
[Defense: An individual’s average defensive power.]
[Intelligence: An individual’s efficiency in gaining skill experience.]
‘So that’s what Intelligence means.’ He had been thinking that even as a mushroom, he was still an intelligent being, so how could he only have 1 point?
Wouldn’t that make him a total idiot?
‘So it’s just about the efficiency of skill experience gain.
That’s fine then.’
He mentally shook his mushroom cap, tossing aside his wandering thoughts.
He couldn’t overthink it.
The more he thought, the more he felt like a complete scrub, and he didn’t have much will to live as it was.
Just as Ning Lan was digging deeper into the system information, a deep red bar burst into his vision, blocking part of his sight.
‘What the hell?’
Looking for the source, Ning Lan realized this thing was a displayed health bar.
[Race: Gloomy Shadow Wolf King]
[Level: 55]
[Titles: Lord of the Gloomy Forest Grotto, Monster Killer, Shadow Controller]
‘Holy crap, it’s a floor boss!’
The little mushroom trembled.
He couldn’t help but be afraid.
This was an existence whose health bar appeared before he even saw the body.
The gap between them was like a heavenly chasm—he couldn’t even see the end of it.
He didn’t dare look again.
It wasn’t until that invisible pressure faded away that he cautiously extended his mental perception to check the situation outside.
He wasn’t sure if the Purple Mushrooms were just eyesores, but after the Lord passed by, Ning Lan sensed that a huge number of mushrooms outside had died.
‘Those aren’t my kin.
My kin aren’t that flat.’
He was lucky.
At least he was born in a crevice, a natural safe harbor.
He wouldn’t be stepped on by a passing monster or turned into a snack.
Monsters and animals seemed to be the same; there were carnivores and herbivores.
Big fish ate small fish, small fish ate shrimp, and mushrooms were the shrimp.
If he couldn’t find a way to change his situation, even if he hid in a nook or cranny, he would eventually meet a dangerous end to his brief mushroom life.
He didn’t want to die.
Who knew if there would be another chance to restart?
No one was willing to wait for death, not even Ning Lan, who couldn’t do anything.
While he couldn’t move as a mushroom, his thinking ability reached its peak.
Since he had nothing to do, he could only spend his time daydreaming for comfort.
After a long time, he actually found something to do.
He could expand his “eyes”—that is, his perception range.
His original vision was only 5 meters, but after an unknown number of days of effort, it had doubled.
Although he didn’t understand the mechanics behind it, it was worth celebrating.
One might say that just being able to see was useless.
No, no.
Thanks to his expanded vision, he had witnessed seven different ways for Purple Mushrooms to die during this period.
For example, being crushed by a large monster, being eaten by a slime, being corroded by an acid worm, or being picked by an elf lady gathering mushrooms.
That last one was the most terrifying.
The other party had discovered his existence and even lay down outside the crevice to reach in for him.
Looking at the giant face appearing outside the narrow crack, Ning Lan recalled the “fear of being dominated by giants” from that one day.
Fortunately, the elf girl’s arm wasn’t long enough.
After a few failed attempts, she simply gave up.
[Lumina Felin]
[Level: 24]
[Race: Half-Elf]
[Class: Priest]
New entries appeared.
After the initial life-and-death crisis, his fear slowly faded, and curiosity took over.
Ning Lan’s perspective followed her, spotting a campsite.
They were humans.
The dazzling array of classes like knights, warriors, and mages, along with their gear, allowed Ning Lan to confirm their identity—adventurers.
This feeling of gradually gaining information to understand the world gave him intense satisfaction and anticipation.
Without being discovered, he stayed on the side as a quiet observer, learning about the customs and culture of this other world.
It looked like the elf girl was being isolated by her teammates.
‘What are they jabbering about?’
As expected, there was no such thing as a “universal language” translation.
Just as Ning Lan was feeling frustrated about not being able to understand the language to eavesdrop on the drama, his metaphorical eye suddenly twitched.
‘Is there a strange thing standing among you people?’
[Gloomy Shadow Wolf King]