“Sunuva!” Issac yelled from the top of his lungs as hundreds of spiders the half the size of ladybugs came pouring out of the gills of the unsuspecting mushrooms. It was obvious that his first reaction was to attempt, once again, to unhand the mushroom. For a few brief seconds, the dwarf attempted to bat away and squash as many of the spiders as he could with his opposite hand. When he realized that they were appearing faster than he could kill them, Issac dropped his shield and scrambled to unfasten his leather gauntlet from his vambrace.
Luckily, he managed to detach it just as the first wave of spiders crashed against the shore that was the edge of his glove. Falling straight onto his butt, Issac scrambled back on all fours as he did his best impression of a crab. The little spiders spilled over the edge of the hardened leather glove and inside of it, scrambling around for a while before exiting it and retreating to the relative safety of the mushroom’s gills while leaving little trails of a mucus-like substance.
“Well, that was a bit anticlimactic, don’t you think?” Kali said between bouts of nervous laughter. Though she didn’t have an unnatural fear of spiders, the thought of being in Issac’s position made her skin crawl. She had been led to believe that the few spiders spotted within the dungeon would be large enough to fight with her knives, somehow the smaller creatures creeped her out even more.
“Don’t even start with me, missy. Just lost one of my favorite gloves, I did.” Heaving and huffing from where he was on the floor, Issac glowered over at the offending toadstool. “Damnable fungus trap, you haven’t seen the last of young master Nommin, I’ll have you know. It is I that eat the flora, not the other way around!”
As if mocking him, small mushrooms began to appear from within the remains of the many pulped spiders upon his leather glove, finding purchase in the dead animals’ carcass and nutrients within the slime that the other spiders left in their wake.
“Hey, those new mushrooms. You don’t think those look just a bit like-” Kali was tackled from the side by Faeryl even as Marcello ran toward where she’d been moments before. In the turbulent firelight provided by the rolling torch, Kali saw Marcello as he snatched a leaping spider the size of an apple from midair and crushed it in his hand. He dropped the mycelium carapace to the cave floor and back pedaled toward the rest of the group.
Looking to her left, she saw that Issac had managed to regain control of his unwieldy bulwark from where he’d dropped it and regrouped with them. The dwarf kicked the fumbled torch toward one of the cave walls after using it to light a new one that he then tossed behind them. Upon the walls, the polypore fungus began detaching themselves from damp mold lined cavities, crawling down or leaping with their pale eight legs.
“To me!” Issac roared as he swung his massive shield in a backhand arc, catching three of the arachnid projectiles and sending them flying back from whence they came. The impact of the spider and wall sounded more like a snowball impact than a fleshy being popping open. From behind the bulwark, Marcello would occasionally flash out his fist or foot to catch any spider that attempted to get around the shield wall.
Faeryl, too, carried her weight as a dark-purple circle filled with runes began glowing next to her hand, occasionally shooting out darts that seemed to be composed of shadows that speared through the spiders before they could even finish detaching from the wall.
After only a minute or two, the combat was already over. Some ten spiders were smeared across the floor and wall within another six or so pinned to where they’d attempted to climb out of their recesses. For good measure, the mushrooms that began growing on the discarded leather gauntlet were also speared through by magic arrows. They even attempted to destroy the polypores that were on the wall, though the ones that hadn’t moved all appeared to be actual mushrooms that were visually identical in the low-light conditions.
“First room appears to be a hybrid trap and monster room. Trigger, attempt to harvest any of the mushrooms in the room most likely. For certain, attempting to take a toadstool will trigger the monster wave.” Faeryl scribbled more notes onto her paper as Issac retrieved the discarded torches.
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“Are you kidding me right now, you stomach minded dwarf!?” Kali practically yelled. She’d already been freaked out by the close encounter with the tiny spiders, let alone the actual trap that was sprung from the leaping wall-mushroom spiders. Throughout the entire exchange, she’d felt useless as every enemy died long before it got within knife range, which hadn’t helped her frayed nerves in the slightest.
The last straw, however, was Issac’s actions once again. Sure, she’d not been able to contribute anything to the battle. But at least she hadn’t triggered the trap by trying to eat random dungeon flora that was actually fauna. Even now when she thought that the dwarf was checking the remains for loot, she saw him put a few of the more intact mushrooms into his satchel.
“Hey now, there's no reason to get sassy. As far as ye know, I’m bringing ‘em back for the scouts to investigate.” The dwarf dismissed his companion’s complaints outright as he kept looking for mostly unravaged specimens.
“Are you?” Faeyrll asked as she put her notes back down in her side bag.
“They can have one or two for a price, the rest I’m damn gonna experiment with. Teach these damn shrooms who eats who.” The dwarf grumbled out as Marcello expressed his tacit approval with a nod. Kali couldn’t believe the two of them and their ability to ignore their own wellbeing in pursuit of potentially hazardous flavors. Truly they were kindred spirits.
“Make sure you give a couple to the alchemists as well; dungeon flora is usually potent in some mana archetype or another. It’d be nice if we could get income from batches of locally sourced portions. Could even be a whole other revenue source for the divers here.” Kali had to physically click her jaw shut from where it had dropped. The more experienced, older. More mature, goddess-verified battlemage was on their side with this? She didn’t see the problem with grabbing random plants and attempting to eat them?
“You damnable tall-folk and your potions, I swear. You trade long-term nutrition and improvement for short-term boosts and restores.”
“A marginally larger mana pool is less likely to save your life than restoring it to full from empty in under 5 seconds in life-or-death situations. Not every kingdom has the subsidies that allow children to eat the mana-enriched food from such a young age. Us ‘tall-folk’ would have to take the slow and steady, and need I mention expensive, route after becoming adults. Most who aren’t adventurers or divers wouldn’t be able to afford their rent.” Faeryl rolled her eyes as if she’d dealt with the argument several times.
“Am I missing something here? Seriously, I was told never to eat strange plants in the forest when I was growing up. You can’t just walk into a hostile environment and start eating things! This is a dungeon for Goddess’ sake! You can’t just eat this stuff; it could be poisonous!” Kali finally snapped from all the insanity. Rather than admonishing Issac for grabbing random mushrooms, she was encouraging it and arguing about the best way to consume them!
Kali could feel all three sets of eyes swivel back toward her and, even though she couldn't even see their eyes in the lighting, could tell that their gazes held not contempt or contemplation, but sympathy. In her mind she knew that they were all judging her for her inability to contribute to the fight and wondering why she felt the right to speak up. Her face colored a red almost as dark as her hair as she bit her lip, ready to be told that they didn’t need her.
“Oh honey, sometimes it's easy to forget that you’re new to this lifestyle. You always grab the strange plants and animals. You never know what's going to be a good substitute for a known alchemical reagent. Besides, when it contains foreign mana, absolutely everything is poisonous. It’s all about how your body reacts to that poison. If it's too strong, you die. But if it's not, it could push your body to build resistances to that stain of mana, or deepen your mana pool, or even improve your stamina. You’ll learn.” Faeryl gave Kali a lecture, even if not the one she expected.
It seemed for now, nobody was going to point out just how useless she’d been. They finished collecting the spiders, some mostly intact mushrooms, and even managed to dislodge both Issac’s gauntlet and the mushroom it had been attached to, suspiciously empty of the tiny spiders she’d seen crawl back in there.
Even if Faeryl was the one to say it, they all agreed with her. They weren’t wrong either, she was still new to this and had almost no clue what she was doing. If she didn’t want to get abandoned by the party she’d lucked into, or die like all the other greenhorns that were arriving to the dungeon town every week, she’d need to adapt and learn the game.
She’d never achieve her goal of finding her father, or her most distant goal of figuring out what happened to her mother for that matter, if she kept on the way she was. Gripping her still clean daggers so hard that her knuckles changed colors in the dark, Kali resolved to be more impactful in the next room.