Chapter 2 – A Stranger in the Garden

Evan felt almost blinded. That was impressive, considering he had no eyes.

His Mycelial Garden might be full of Puffcaps, but the basic variety sat firmly at the bottom of the food chain. Every one of their Stats began at 1, and they had a mere 10 HP. What ordinary Puffcap could ever reach 3,000 HP?

Evan could subdue her easily enough. It was the long list of Permanent Effects that truly inspired envy.

Enough envy to make him want to eat her and plunder her abilities.

Still, something novel had finally dropped into this dreary underground world. He would let her live.

Besides, the Status Panel suggested the Puffcap before him was probably human. Eating someone alive was a step beyond what Evan was prepared to become, at least for now.

“Calmed down yet?” Evan had the Puffcaps pinning her ease away, giving her a little room.

The sudden voice inside Elara’s head had left her badly shaken. She still did not know whether the speaker was human or monster. All she knew was that every nearby Puffcap obeyed him.

Was this the next part of the conspiracy? Had someone been stationed here to execute her?

“If you’re going to kill me, then do it!”

“Why would I kill you? Could you please calm down?”

“Huh?”

Outsider mushrooms had no manners. She had wrecked part of his Mycelial Garden and had not even apologized.

“I’m the lord of every mushroom on this stratum. You can call me Evan. What’s your name?”

“The... lord of the mushrooms...”

Elara could not imagine how those words belonged together. As far as she knew, mushrooms were bottom-feeders with a Level Cap of LV10. Even at max level, they could become meals for monsters only a few levels above them.

Nothing she sensed here resembled the territory of an LV10 monster. Then there was this method of communication, which felt similar to a Tier 7 Telepathy spell.

No, it was clearly more than Telepathy. Before the connection, Elara had been able to sense only a few yards around herself. Now her awareness stretched far into the distance with astonishing clarity, as though she were receiving the senses of every mushroom nearby.

She had no way to judge how powerful this Mushroom Lord might be.

Her best option was to pretend she was an ordinary Puffcap and bluff her way through.

“I... I’m a Puffcap too. I don’t have a name.”

“Then why don’t I give you one? How about Elara?”

“...”

What?

How did he know?

Could this Telepathy-like skill read minds as well?

The Puffcaps that had backed away began closing in again. Was he going to kill her for lying?

No!

They stopped when only a sliver of space remained. Evan’s voice returned inside her mind.

“I’m very friendly, as long as you don’t play games with me. Otherwise, I won’t mind having a little more fertilizer for the soil. Understand?”

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Elara bobbed her cap frantically.

“Let’s try that again. Name?”

“E-Elara St. Clair...”

“Identity?”

“The daughter of... Duke Alaric...”

A duke’s daughter?

So the outside world had something like a medieval social order.

No wonder she possessed a Church Blessing and a Fruit of Vitality, and still had 3,000 HP after being transformed into a Puffcap.

In any world, having the right father was life’s greatest shortcut.

“Tell me, then. How did a duke’s daughter fall all the way down here?”

Now that he knew the truth, Elara saw no point in hiding anything else. She told him how she had been betrayed and sent into the chasm, then answered each of his questions honestly.

Evan learned a great deal. The place he occupied was a dungeon within House St. Clair’s territory, and he lived in its Deep Strata. That explained why monsters seemed to be everywhere.

He also learned that the outside world contained all manner of species. Humanity was currently at war with the Vampires of Demonkind, and the two traitors who had tried to murder Elara were most likely working with them.

More importantly, Elara seemed unable to see a Status Panel despite being native to this world. Otherwise, she would never have tried to conceal her name.

Perhaps the Status Panel was a hidden privilege granted to a Hero.

Whatever the explanation, Evan found the pink Puffcap much more agreeable now that he had learned so much from her.

“Elara, you’re a Puffcap now. What do you plan to do next?”

“Next...” The earlier intimidation had left its mark. “You truly aren’t going to turn me into fertilizer?”

“You have my word.”

“I want to return to the surface.”

She wanted more than that. Elara intended to find her father, undo the Polymorph, and take revenge on the two traitors.

“The surface?” Evan found that genuinely amusing. “I’d like to reach the surface too. But as you can see, you’re a mushroom and so am I. How are we supposed to fight our way through an underground world full of terrifying monsters? We don’t even need to look beyond this stratum. The passage upward runs through the Magma Fiend Lair.”

A Magma Fiend was a high-tier monster of at least LV55. Elara could not have defeated one even before her transformation. She was not sure she could have escaped alive if she encountered one.

“Come to think of it, won’t your father come to rescue you?”

“I think he will...”

Elara remembered what the traitors had said about her father being finished, and her certainty wavered. Her pink cap visibly drooped.

She had lost access to the magic that had once been her greatest strength. How could she possibly return to the surface as a Puffcap?

“All right, that’s enough gloom. You must be hungry after causing such a commotion. Let’s get you something to eat.”

The newcomer he had only just found would be no fun if she starved to death.

A cyan-capped Puffcap hopped out of the mushroom patch and came forward to guide Elara. She had to admit that she was hungry.

“Is this one you?” she asked.

“It is, and it isn’t. Every mushroom here is me.”

Evan did possess a true mushroom body, but he had no intention of mentioning it.

Elara bobbed her cap with only the faintest understanding. The two of them soon reached a mycelial mat formed from a convergence of hyphae.

Evan thoughtfully demonstrated how Puffcaps ate. The Puffcap under his control lay down, allowing the hyphae below to connect with its body and deliver nutrients. In less than five minutes, it was full.

The color of Elara’s cap shifted as she watched.

What was that?

A mass of hyphae pierced its body and injected some unknown substance. After sixteen years of eating with her mouth, Elara found the spectacle difficult to accept.

Evan did not rush her. If a child refused to eat, it simply was not hungry enough. Once hunger truly set in, the child would figure it out.

Her weakening body eventually forced Elara to lie down on the mycelial mat.

The sensation astonished her.

Nutrients surged into her through countless points of connection beneath her body. Warm satisfaction bloomed as she was fed and filled.

It felt wonderful.

Only when she had absorbed all she needed and the hyphae stopped supplying her did Elara rise, still reluctant to end the experience.

Being a mushroom was unexpectedly pleasant.

No, no. What was she thinking?

Elara, had even her brain turned into a mushroom?

Technically, her brain really was part of a cap now. A pink one.

Evan knew nothing of her inner struggle. Once she had finished eating, he began introducing the various sections of the Mycelial Garden.

“You know the Feeding Ground now. You’ve already seen the Puffcap Nursery too. That was the place where you knocked over my Puffcaps.

“See that rock wall? The Mining Zone is beneath it.

“Over there is the Breeding Zone. We keep Roller Beetles and Slimes there. They’re aggressive, so don’t wander too close.

“See the giant mushroom on the right? That’s the Specialization Chamber. It’s rather complicated, but you’ll understand once you visit it yourself.

“And don’t go that way. It leads beyond the Mycelial Garden, and it isn’t safe.”

Evan continued with his tour, but Elara’s thoughts had stalled at the very first term.

A Puffcap Nursery? A Breeding Zone?

Evan did not sound as if he were describing part of a dungeon. He sounded as if he were presenting a fully functioning town.

Was she still inside the Amethyst Deep?

Where were all the other monsters?

How could a collection of mushrooms claim so much territory in the deadly Deep Strata?

The more Elara thought about it, the less she understood. The Deep Strata seemed impossibly strange, a place where common sense itself had ceased to exist.