The three of them wrapped up their break not too much longer after that. They took a few minutes to get used to their increased stats. The increase in power felt natural, but they did need to feel them out to know how the numbers translated physically. Only Lindle got a new Skill and after some very hesitant testing, it didn’t seem like he could burn anything with it, so they held out on more tests since it didn’t have any obvious combat applications yet.

The real puzzle had been the loot Lindle wanted to bring. He had looked over the Ethos of the mammoths corpse, finding the undeath aspect burned away, but there still being quite a few interesting aspects he wanted. Extra interesting was the mammoths tusk he had broken off before they set the zombie alight. He had targeted it in order to activate [Hunter Gatherer] after all, and present in the tusk was the aspect of undeath. The issue, of course, was how large his desired prizes were. Just the tusk was as long as he was tall. He could carry its weight, but it could prove unwieldy to carry for the rest of the quest. Even so Lindle was resolved to hold onto the tusk. The corpse itself they had to leave behind for at least until they came back this way, hopefully, if no predators returned they could take some pieces home, but Lindle stubbornly spent several minutes figuring out a way to tie the curved piece of ivory to the side of his pack.

Once he was done they continued on their way, following the tracks of the skeletons Humphrey had found earlier. The longer they walked the more evidence of the undead showed itself. At first, it was simply the physical signs of their passage as they hunted the living and tore through the flora, but after enough time the signs of persistent miasma were visible in the plant life and air. A sense of rot filled the area, leaking freely, and the flora was all wilted, most of the greenery turning to a sickly yellow. To Lindle’s Ethos sense, the air itself lit up faintly with aspects of undeath. It wasn’t too long after that they came across the source.

Humphrey found it first, taking the lead as he did before to make sure they didn’t stumble into any dangerous undead and finding a clear path for them to take. Luckily the only obstacles were scattered skeletons, the majority of the horde seemingly spread out in search. Lindle saw the crack in the earth that was the source, clouds of miasma leaking from the large T-shaped fissure. In the snow around the crack, there were dozens of smaller holes, which must have been from all the various skeletons under the earth which the leak reanimated first digging themselves free.

Humphrey whistled. “Definitely bigger than other ones I’ve heard of, the corpse must have been a big one.”

Lindle and Thalia nodded. Necrotic wellsprings appeared when, as far as anyone could tell, a large and powerful monster died and the necrotic energy that was generated as a result of their death was trapped underground. Their corpse would slowly generate more and more necrotic energy until the earth couldn’t hold the miasma anymore, and it would burst, raising any of the available corpses in the area and creating wild undead. It took a very high-level monster corpse in order to create a wellspring, so they weren’t common, but it was impossible to know how many said wellsprings were buried across the Reach. At the very least, they were less common the further away from the Border you were. This was unusual due to one this powerful appearing a good distance away from the Border even being visible, but it wasn’t unheard of.

Thalia measured up the area of the crack. “Around what I expected, I’ll probably need to add another tier to the spell, 3rd tier is doable for me, just let me get set up.”

“Gonna need any help?” Lindle offered as Thalia opened her bags, taking out her ritual supplies.

Thalia seemed to think for a moment before handing Lindle a sack. When he looked inside he saw it was filled to the brim with little mushrooms.

“Help me sprinkle these around the wellspring. I’ll try and make the ritual boundary, and you just fill the inside with as many mushrooms as you can, throw a few down into the crack for good measure, but spread them out as much as you can.” Thalia pulled out another sack of what he presumed were mushrooms. “Hopefully I brought enough, but just to be sure.” She turned to Humphrey, “Keep an eye out for undead, when I start casting the ritual’s life energy might attract them and it won’t be good if I’m interrupted.”

Humphrey put a hand to his chin and looked around. “Got it. I’ll get up high for a better view.” The ranger walked up to one of the nearby trees, its leaves wilted and dead-looking, but it didn’t seem to have rotted too much. He leaped up, grabbing onto one of the branches and started climbing.

Lindle and Thalia got to work filling the area with mushrooms, with Lindle trying his best to just spread the mushrooms across the zone she encircled as evenly as he could. When he ran out, Thalia simply pulled out another sack.

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“This is a lot of mushrooms… I expected there would be some more variety when it came to a real druidic purification ritual.” Lindle commented.

“It’s not a particularly complex one, it’s not even really a ritual to purify the area. It’s more of a growth ritual.” Thalia responded, finishing her circle of mushrooms.

The particulars of druid spell rituals weren’t widely spoken outside the circle, but Lindle knew enough to make a guess based on the clues. “So… you’re just going to grow a bunch of mushrooms over the crack?”

“Kinda! More like just a few really big mushrooms. And those mushrooms will then consume the miasma and convert them into something healthier for the area.”

“I guess I have heard that the necromancy-focused druids in the circle always have a lot of mushrooms on them… why mushrooms?”

“Mushrooms aren’t really plants. They don’t grow using moonlight, they eat things like animals, usually corpses. They’re really good for safely handling necrotic energy because they don’t wilt in it like plants do and magical variants can eat or store it instead, so some druids grow them on their clothes for safety when they use miasma constantly.”

“Are you sure you aren’t an expert in this stuff?” Lindle teased. “You aren’t going to start growing mushrooms over your clothes right? I might be able to make you something for that.”

“Shut it.” She rolled her eyes before she paused. “… If you do make something like that… I wouldn’t say no… It could be cool, just to study.”

“Ha, I knew it!” Lindle crowed.

“I said shut it.” Thalia snapped. “The important thing is that the mushrooms are going to plug up the crack and eat the miasma until the wellspring eventually runs dry.”

“You know, a priest would probably just purge the area, they really don’t like leaving any sources of miasma around,” Lindle said. Dorothea’s reaction back in the guild hall had him thinking back to everything the Soarian priests and teachers had told their class, trying to see if there were any other large discrepancies in how they thought and the way things were done in Glacerhine.

“Yeah, but this way seems a lot less wasteful. Now the miasma can be used to help repair the damage it did to the area until it dries up. I very much doubt Soarian holy magic works very well when it comes to repairing nature.”

“Good point.” Lindle conceded.

They finished scattering the mushrooms and Thalia drew Lotus Thorn. As she drew a deep breath, a thought occurred to Lindle.

“Hey, if mushrooms aren’t plants, is Lotus Thorn’s effect going to work on this?”

Thalia froze, blinking several times before looking down at her wand, no doubt reading over its status. “I… hope so?” I don’t know how this thing works. I didn’t test any mushroom spells with this before.” She frowned. “I was pretty confident that between the buff and casting at 3rd tier would be enough, but now I’m not sure.”

Lindle hummed. “Can I take a look at it?” He held out a hand and Thalia raised an eyebrow, but handed him Lotus Thorn after a moment. He held back a smile at the possessive look on her face.

“You aren’t going to mess with it or anything right? I don’t want you to break it or something.”

“It’s fine, I’m not going to try and change it.” He’d want to ask Nothing how to do so safely first before messing with a finished artifact. Instead, he looked at his artifact under his Ethos sense, inspecting the aspects present. He focused on the primary plant aspect he had made dominant when he crafted the wand, trying to get a deeper sense of what it encompassed. A lot of his practice with Nothing before he received his class had boiled down to sharpening his ability to perceive and comprehend Ethos, and he got a certain feeling as he inspected the plant aspect.

Lindle handed the wand back. “Try casting a small spell with mushrooms.”

Thalia seemed curious, but she complied, pulling out one of the few left mushrooms they had and pointing her wand at it. After a moment it suddenly grew in size, apparently more than she expected because it more than filled her palm and she fumbled it, the enlarged mushroom falling to the snow.

“Huh. So it does work on mushrooms? Why?”

Lindle shrugged. “I think… it’s because I thought mushrooms were plants when I made the wand?”

“That… can’t be how it works…” Thalia screwed her face up in confusion.

“Nothing mentioned that Ethos works a lot based on interpretation, and I could mix up aspects if I’m not completely through when I’m crafting. I guess my interpretation of plants included mushrooms when I made the wand.”

"That’s super weird. Is it a good thing or bad thing for you to better understand things like that then?”

“It can’t be a bad thing…” Lindle hesitated. “I’ll ask Nothing when we get back.”

“Hey!” Humphrey’s voice rang out and they both flinched, looking around. “Are you going to do the ritual or not!”

They looked up and saw Humphrey looking impatiently down at them in his tree, his antlers littered with dead leaves and small twigs.

“It’s really uncomfortable to fit my antlers through the branches up here!”