Chapter 1 – A Pink Puffcap Falls

“Let me go! Who are you? Let me go!”

Elara woke to find herself stuffed inside a sack. She thrashed with all her strength.

“Perrin, did you water down that Sleep spell? She’s awake already.”

“Idiot. Don’t use my name. Her father is a duke, and he’s poured a fortune into her. You think her resistances would be low? We’re lucky she stayed unconscious this long.”

Elara went rigid. She knew both voices.

“Perrin? And you, Roderick! You ambushed me? You betrayed my father?”

“See what your big mouth did? She recognized us,” Perrin snapped.

Roderick sounded unconcerned. “What are you afraid of? She won’t be getting out to tell anyone.”

What did that mean? Was this more than a kidnapping?

“What are you going to do?”

Once Elara realized her life might be in danger, fear sharpened her temper instead of dulling it.

The sack was ripped from her head. Roderick’s vicious face was the first thing she saw.

“What are we going to do? Why, Lady Elara, today you’re going to be a monster’s dinner!”

Elara looked around. Amethyst Crystals of every size studded the walls of the dim passage.

They had brought her to the Amethyst Deep?

“You two are Mill Rats in human skin! The old man never mistreated you, and this is how you repay him?”

“Your father is finished. Do you really think he can stop the empire’s advance? Killing you will be the final blow that breaks him, and whoever arranged it promised me a title for the trouble.”

The thought of his promised nobility sent Roderick into a fit of laughter.

“Stop laughing before you draw a monster,” Perrin said impatiently. “This will do. Put her down.”

They dumped Elara onto the ground. She still looked ready to bite someone.

Roderick studied her lovely face with genuine regret. “Such a beauty, and every bit as foul-tempered as her father. I’d been looking forward to finding out what a duke’s daughter was like.”

“This is the Sixth Stratum. If you don’t mind a monster chewing on your naked backside, feel free to have your fun right now.”

“It was a joke. Once I’m a noble, I’ll have all the women I want.”

Perrin raised his wand, pointed it at Elara, and began an arcane incantation.

“Polymorph?”

Elara recognized the spell at once. She kicked at Perrin with her bound feet, desperate to interrupt him, but Roderick caught her legs.

“If you have the nerve, kill me! Kill...”

Her voice faded as the spell took hold. Elara shrank into a Puffcap with a pair of stubby legs, the creature common folk called a walking mushroom.

When the incantation ended, Perrin reluctantly produced a potion that shimmered like starlight and poured it over her. Roderick clicked his tongue in wonder.

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“Polymorph Fixative? You spared no expense. Why go to all this trouble? We could just kill her and throw the body down for the monsters.”

Perrin stared at him as if stupidity might be contagious.

“Go ahead, then. See whether the Duke’s Vengeance Mark attaches itself to you when she dies. When her father abandons his territory to hunt you down, don’t you dare give him my name.

“There’s no chance she doesn’t have tracking magic and a Vengeance Mark on her. Letting the monsters below devour every last bit of her is the safest option.”

As yet another thoughtful precaution, he cast an extended Featherfall on the Puffcap Elara had become. They did not want the fall itself to kill her.

“Forget I said anything.” Roderick took the insult without complaint and walked over to Elara. “Farewell, Lady Elara.”

He kicked her into the chasm and watched the darkness swallow her.

The fissure led straight into the dungeon depths. No one who fell into it had ever climbed back out, least of all a defenseless Puffcap.

* * *

Bastards!

They had lured her out in the old man’s name!

She would kill both traitors with her own hands!

...

It was so dark.

The chasm seemed truly bottomless. Even the extended Featherfall had not carried her to the end of it.

As her descent grew faster, Elara’s rage cooled. At sixteen, she had never faced death so directly, and fear finally found her.

Was she really going to die like this?

Poof!

Elara landed on something soft and springy. It flung her high into the air, caught her again, and bounced her several more times before she finally tumbled onto the ground.

She was alive! Fate had not abandoned her after all.

But where was she?

A Puffcap had no eyes or other visible sense organs, yet she could still dimly perceive her surroundings. The thing that had caught her appeared to be an enormous mushroom, nearly ten feet across.

What was making all that noise around her? The figures moving past felt strangely familiar.

Were those Puffcaps just like her?

Why would so many creatures from the very bottom of the food chain live in the deadly dungeon depths?

And why were they closing in on her?

* * *

Evan, master of the Mycelial Garden, suspected he had been spreading his attention too thin lately. He kept making careless mistakes.

Case in point, an uncontrolled Puffcap had somehow appeared in the garden. Perhaps it had matured and dropped from the mushroom patch before he could connect it to the Mycelial Network.

Its cap was pink, too, making it stand out amid all the cyan and gray caps.

Was it a mutation?

Fortunately, the problem was easy to fix. He only had to connect it with his hyphae and tune it to the frequency of the Mycelial Network.

Why was it resisting so fiercely?

The uncontrolled Puffcap fled from the one Evan sent to establish the connection. It knocked over several Puffcaps, trampled through a mushroom patch, and left chaos in its wake.

Once Evan lost patience, he ordered a swarm of Puffcaps to surround the newcomer and pack in until it could no longer move. Only then did he connect his hyphae to it.

“Aaaah! Get away! Get away from me!”

What in the world?

The instant the Puffcap came online, its screams blasted through Evan’s mind so loudly that his hyphae nearly recoiled.

“Quiet!”

The irresistible command swept through the Mycelial Network to every Puffcap. The entire Mycelial Garden stopped at once.

“Damn it. No, not all of you. Resume work in every sector.”

It took him a while to get the garden running again. Only then did Evan focus on the unusual Puffcap.

He had figured out the obvious by now. This was no homegrown Puffcap. It was an outsider.

How had a foreign mushroom reached such an isolated corner of the dungeon?

“Talk. Where did you come from?”

“Who are you? How are you speaking to me? Wait, how am I speaking?”

Wonderful.

The newcomer was so confused that she could barely form a coherent sentence. Evan decided it would be easier to inspect her Status Panel.

[Name: Elara St. Clair]

[Species: Fungus: Puffcap]

[Level: LV28]

[HP: 3280]

[Strength: 1]

[Agility: 1]

[Constitution: 1]

[Intelligence: 33]

[Spirit: 24]

[Racial Trait: Spore Dispersal (actively releases surrounding spores; always triggers on death)]

[Permanent Effects:

Church Blessing (grants Light Affinity LV4 and Light Magic LV4)

Duke’s Vengeance Mark (transfers to the killer upon death; the caster can track and deal increased damage to the killer)

Tracking Sigil (location marker)

Fruit of Vitality (grants 3000 bonus HP and Regeneration LV4)

Dragoncrystal Elixir (grants high Resistance across the board)

Permanent Polymorph (the transformation persists until the magic is dispelled)

Mycelial Network Link (a short-range telepathic network formed by mana resonance between hyphae)]

[Skills: Horsemanship LV4, Elemental Affinity (Water, Light) LV4, Mana Storage LV3, Mana Control LV4, Light Magic LV4, Water Magic LV3, Cloth Armor Mastery LV2, Dagger Mastery LV2, Magic Resistance LV6, Physical Resistance LV6, Mental Resistance LV6, Corrosion Resistance LV6, Paralysis Resistance LV6, Heat Resistance LV6, Cold Resistance LV6, Stun Resistance LV6, Underwater Adaptation LV6, Astrology LV1, Old Elvish LV2, Regeneration LV4]

Well, then. A superpowered pink Puffcap with more than 3,000 HP and LV6 across the resistance board.