Chapter 22: Mushrooms and Skills

Recently, the mushroom has been feeling refreshed and clear-headed.

Perhaps it’s because she finally came clean to the elf.

When you feel guilty, you really should explain the reason to the person involved and ask for forgiveness. Even though Lumina had almost forgotten about it, Marlow still felt a lightness, as if a heavy burden had been lifted from her shoulders.

There was also that title that treated her as a unit of combat power. Still, since it had no negative effect on the elf, there was no need to worry about it.

Yes, she was also grateful for the little elf’s generosity.

As expected of someone in the priest profession—Lumina was gentle and kind like an angel, always willing to give of herself. She had not uttered a single complaint about everything she had been through.

What, you say the elf simply didn’t dare complain? How could that be? She wasn’t some terrifying monster that made people tremble in fear.

Aside from that, the qualitative improvement in strength also lifted Marlow’s mood.

Compared to the mushroom who had first arrived in this world—when she could do absolutely nothing—the range of things she could do now was still limited. The difference was simply that the situation had flipped completely. Now the mushroom stood in the role of the hunter, rather than the helpless prey destined to become food.

While intercepting the bees, she had harvested a huge amount of skill experience. Ignoring the temporarily useless skills like Flight and Piercing, the extremely practical Paralysis Toxin had reached Lv.5.

The higher a skill’s level became, the more the experience required for the next level seemed to multiply. Even after devouring a large number of bees, she had only managed to gain a single level. Opportunities like that were incredibly rare.

After the first failure allowed her to pick up easy spoils, the bees organized a special corpse-recovery squad. Whenever a bee died, they would retrieve the body before the mycelium could digest it.

From that moment on, the number of corpses she could absorb dropped drastically.

Unless she fought the bees to the death and forced them to ignore their fallen, it would be nearly impossible to replicate that success again.

Not only Paralysis Toxin—many frequently used skills had also improved. Spore Spread had reached Lv.8, while Spore Shot had reached Lv.3.

After learning that practice was a method of gaining skill experience that only required time and a bit of energy, Marlow had consciously kept using her skills.

After all, using skills only consumed a little magic power for her, and it replenished quickly. She didn’t have to be frugal like the elf, carefully counting every bit of mana.

Scatter spores, scatter spores…

From time to time, a clump of gray-green mist drifted down onto Lumina’s head. At first Marlow tried to restrain herself, but once she completely let loose, it was as if Lumina had stepped into a fairyland.

Except there was no dreamlike beauty—only the suffocating difficulty of breathing polluted air.

Looking worried, the little elf asked with concern,

“Marlow… are you sick?”

“Huh? No. Why do you ask?”

In truth, Lumina was politely protesting. Don’t pretend you don’t understand… the elf shouted inwardly.

“Because I’m about to get sick. Achoo!”

Faced with her good neighbor’s strong objections—and especially Lumina’s endless sneezing as if she were allergic to spores—Marlow had no choice but to temporarily suspend her skill-training plan.

Not that she abandoned it completely. She simply changed methods. For example, she could use another body hidden within a crack in the wall to practice skills freely.

The good news was that no one disturbed her.

The bad news was that she had to constantly switch her consciousness back and forth.

The other body could not be controlled simultaneously like a subordinate under a unified will. Once she shifted her awareness from one side to the other, the previous connection would immediately cut off.

The cave looked almost the same as when she had first left it. The only difference was that the things the adventurers had left behind were now completely ruined by native monsters.

The tents had become tattered scraps. The warning line with small bells tied to it had snapped into several pieces. A backpack that hadn’t been taken away remained only as a wreck, its contents long gone.

Even the iron pot that had once been used to cook mushrooms had disappeared. That pot had been the very thing that led to the mushroom meeting the elf. Honestly, Marlow felt rather nostalgic about it.

It was like an anniversary between lovers—something worth remembering.

…Well, alright. There was absolutely nothing romantic about that particular memory.

The elf’s small pouch containing the map was eventually found. It lay among a cluster of mushrooms very close to the cave wall.

Perhaps the surrounding mushrooms had hidden it, which was why it hadn’t been destroyed by passing monsters like the adventurers’ camp had been.

How fortunate.

But wait—was something missing?

Right, the corpse of the human mage.

Marlow suddenly felt as if she had missed out on a fortune.

After obtaining that title, how had she forgotten to pick up such an obvious prize?

The pressure from the Wolf King had simply been too overwhelming. At the time she had only been thinking about running away, forgetting there was a top-tier material lying right beside her.

However, not even a skeleton remained where the body had originally been. Perhaps the Wolf King had returned and taken it away.

Looking at it that way, her decision to flee had been absolutely correct.

If she had run into the Wolf King again, she would have died instantly.

Back then she had merely been hard to kill—not truly immortal. If the Wolf King had eaten her, it might even have commented on how chewy she was.

Not to mention the past—even now, the Wolf King was still an existence neither the elf nor the mushroom could provoke.

Although Marlow didn’t intend to trust the system data completely, judging by the Wolf King’s real-world performance, Lumina’s light bullets probably wouldn’t even hit it. Let alone the much slower spore bullets.

If they didn’t even have a reliable way to attack, how could they possibly win?

After thinking it through, her regret gradually turned into relief. She calmed down and began scattering spores outside the wall crack.

Different skill combinations still needed to be tested.

Aside from the foundational skill Unified Will—which could not be removed—other skills could be added or reduced.

After all, Unified Will was the basis of her control. Without it, she would only be able to produce a few mushrooms like before, nothing more.

When she added Spore Shot, the purple mushroom would gain an extra nozzle. If Paralysis Toxin was added as well, the purple mushroom’s color would become darker, tinged with green.

At a glance, it clearly looked like a poisonous mushroom.

If she added the Glow skill on top of that, she would end up with a dazzling fluorescent poisonous mushroom capable of firing spores.

It certainly looked impressive. But the more skills she added, the longer it took to generate the mushroom, and the higher the mana consumption became. It was an unavoidable drawback.

Stockpiling units like she had done against the bees—preparing them in advance and taking control after enemies died—wouldn’t work here.

Without her will controlling them, these skill-infused mushrooms would quickly dissolve on their own, as if some bug had caused them to collapse.

But if she personally controlled them, those hybrid individuals could exist for a long time.

She had no idea how the “program” actually ran, but looking at it this way, it seemed that she herself was the biggest bug.

Whatever. As long as it worked for her.

As for things that shouldn’t exist in this world… well, the world was huge. What was wrong with having a few more strange monsters?

Marlow continued stuffing more abilities into the mushrooms.

She possessed quite a few skills now: Mana Storage obtained from slimes, Claw Strike from gray wolves, Piercing and Flight from bees, and so on.

Among them, Mana Storage slightly amplified the power of spores. But Flight and Claw Strike were completely useless.

One required claws, the other wings. She had already reached this conclusion before—even when applied to the minions she created, the result was the same.

Perhaps one day, if she obtained a skill like Morphological Shaping, she could sculpt claws and wings for her mushrooms and finally make use of those abilities.

That was something worth looking forward to.

After fairly rigorous experimentation, she generated seven mushroom guards in this cave. Each was equipped with Spore Shot and Paralysis Toxin.

They also possessed minor enhancement skills like Glow and Mana Storage.

Glow came from the most common plant in the Umbral Forest layer—the Luminous Grass. Mushrooms could blend with them perfectly as camouflage.

Not only would they protect the map until she and Lumina came to retrieve it, they would also guard her main body and the mushroom colony.

In the past she had no choice but to let monsters bully and devour the mushrooms.

But now she had resources. How could she still allow monsters to casually eat them?

If anything could treat her people as food whenever it wanted, where would that leave the dignity of the Mushroom Sovereign?

Hm. The guards here were temporarily complete. Although it consumed seven unit slots, it was a necessary expense.

As long as Lumina didn’t face the entire bee swarm head-on, the remaining forces on her side should still be enough to handle things.

Still, the unit cap of fifty was far too small. Especially as her development continued—once more mushroom types appeared, the number allocated to each category would become pitifully low.

She couldn’t keep tearing down one wall just to patch another every time.

She would have to find a way to break through the limit.