This Dungeon Grew Mushrooms

Elvien the Sword Saint.

A name that echoed across the continent.

Before him, the last person to master The Pinnacle of the Sword dated back three hundred years to the former hero Link, who had once saved humanity but also brought great catastrophe to the lands.

But Elvien was not born with such terrifying power.

In fact, until he was twelve he had never even held a sword—just a farm boy.

His father was hardly industrious. Even though Elvien helped in the fields early on, the family still lived hand to mouth.

Their ancestors were said to have been nobles, but by the time of Elvien and his father, all that remained was the empty surname Slein.

When Elvien was young his father had once been an adventurer; he met Elvien’s mother during those wandering years.

But like most low-tier adventurers, talent limited his prospects.

No matter how he tried, he remained only a silver-rank adventurer.

On a mission he lost his left leg forever and could not afford expensive limb-regeneration potions. With only meager savings he returned home to become a farmer.

The man often complained about fate and how talent divided people into ranks.

By the time Elvien reached ten, those complaints had turned into post-drinking violence.

The drunken father frequently beat his wife and child. Little Elvien’s greatest wish was simply to grow up fast and protect his mother.

Then one day the father changed.

He quit drinking and stopped hitting the family.

Though he still wandered and neglected farmwork, to a young Elvien life was better than before.

Until the night he was twelve.

That night, Elvien watched his father strike his mother with a candlestick, drag her toward a crude ritual circle drawn with shoddy materials—and it became clear.

His father had not become good. He had fallen deeper into darkness.

The Hand of Passing.

Unlike the cult that now barely existed and that many ordinary people had never heard of, in those years the name of that cult struck terror across the kingdom. They operated openly within the realm, and even some dukes secretly knelt before their altars.

Elvien’s father’s endless complaints finally drew the cult’s attention. Its tempters easily recruited the despondent man as an outer follower, filling his hollow heart with promises of a glorious afterlife.

To prove his devotion and to pursue the cult’s promised future glory, the bewitched father decided to offer his wife as a sacrifice to death.

The boy realized at once that if anyone could save his mother it was only himself.

Trembling, he drew the long adventurer’s sword his father treasured, pointing the blade at the man he once called father.

Although the father’s mobility was impaired and his strength not what it had been, he had been a silver-rank adventurer.

At first the boy’s sneak attack was easily countered—he was kicked away.

But the boy’s swordsmanship grew at an astonishing rate. From dodging his father’s axe to parrying attacks head-on, he soon blocked and then pierced his father’s throat. The whole sequence took only minutes.

Elvien was the kind of genius who became the target of his father’s lifelong resentment.

After that, Elvien became an adventurer. His talent brought steady gains, but some wounds money could not heal.

His mother was crushed by betrayal and died in melancholy when Elvien was fifteen.

Though he gained power, he lost what he had hoped to protect.

He left the grieving place and poured himself into the way of the sword. He traveled the kingdom doing various missions—cutting down demon spies in military ranks, serving as a guard on merchant ships, and surviving a terrifying shipwreck.

A mermaid saved him.

She did not sing to lure him into the deep and drown him as many merfolk might, but guided him to an uninhabited island.

There, Elvien taught her the common tongue; she brought him strange gifts from the sea, and they became friends.

When he eventually realized she intended to keep him on the island forever, he slipped aboard a passing ship and left.

But the connection was not severed: he soon discovered he was cursed.

From then on, whenever he sailed the sea, sea beasts followed and attacked. Realizing the cause was himself, the future sword saint had no choice but to return to the mainland.

Back on land, Elvien continued to pursue swordsmanship.

He sought out famous sword masters across the kingdom—sometimes humbly studying, sometimes drawing his blade in challenge.

With each decisive duel, the name “Twin-Sword Elvien” spread through taverns.

Then he encountered the cult that would change his life.

At that time the Hand of Passing was at its height. No longer satisfied with isolated secret sacrifices, they attempted to offer whole cities as ritual victims.

An elven envoy passing by was caught up in the crisis.

In front of the blood-stinking altar, Elvien saved Gelladriel Dusksong from the death priest’s hands.

They fought side by side and shattered the monstrous conspiracy.

The kingdom’s leaders were shocked by the cult’s reach and launched a full-scale purge.

Elvien gained the elves’ friendship and access to the elven forest; he even received personal sword instruction from the elven king.

There he learned many things. Among them, his favorite skill—Treading the Moon—came from the elven king.

In moonlit elven courtyards the young man often sparred with the elven king’s daughter.

But the idyll did not last. When Gelladriel’s eyes began to glint like the mermaid’s once did, and Elvien feared being distracted, he quietly left the forest to preserve his draw speed.

For years after that he relentlessly hunted the cult.

On a rainy night in an abandoned monastery he personally slew the Hand of Passing’s high priest.

In that death struggle he finally fused his knowledge: his blade cut through foul magic, and he realized the legendary The Pinnacle of the Sword.

At twenty-seven he reached hall-tier.

As the cult waned, the title “Sword Saint” rang out across the land.

When the cult’s traces grew scarce, Elvien took in dozens of orphaned children whose parents were killed by the cult.

Most of them became craftsmen or scholars; only a few with talent continued to study swordsmanship under him.

But swords are blind; in the end only Fifteen remained.

…

Now, pierced through by several blood-crystal spears and the wind roaring in his ears as he fell, Elvien caught a flash of his life in his final moments.

“What a pity…” the sword saint thought as consciousness faded. “If I had twenty percent more power, that claw could have cut off the emperor’s head.”

But the human body has limits. Even lycanthropic draughts were only an enhanced Fury.

In that last moment Elvien thought strangely of his father’s old complaints—this world truly was unjust.

At least he had done his utmost.

As his mind sank into blackness, a strange sensation followed. It washed over him like waves, dissolving some heavy thing inside him. He felt feather-light.

Is this death?

Not bad.

…

“Yes! Our mushroomfolk will have a new member! The mycelial lord says Fourteen has great potential; with Four transferred, my flock needs someone just like Fourteen!”

“What do you mean ‘my flock’? Did you ask Fourteen what they wanted?”

“Second, what do you mean? Our squad contributed most in the last battle—we should have priority if Fourteen joins!”

“What contribution? After that smash everything was dead. What’s the difference?”

“At least it proves my command was superior—more fit to lead the mushroomfolk!”

Voices bickered inside his head.

Thought-voices?

Am I not dead?

Who argues by thought-voices…

Elvien felt as if some heavy thing covered him—was it a blanket?

Pushing slightly, he forced open the mycelial cocoon wrapped around him.

What he saw was a crowd of… puji?!

The puji, who had been scrapping and tussling, all froze and rushed to gather around.

“Look! It’s out! It’s out!”

“Finally out, we’ve been waiting ages!”

puji number one and puji number two both crowded up to him. “Welcome to the mushroomfolk family, Fourteen! From now on you’re our little bro!”

Elvien stared at these mushroom creatures, then lowered the cap and felt his two short legs and four tentacles.

What the hell?

Do people turn into puji after they die??