Chương 14: Black Mould - Ten - Farming For a Greater Purpose

"Here it is, little mushroom," my father said. I had been stuck at home, slowly going spare and losing my mind, for over a year. In that time, my only real pastime was knitting. Knitting! I hated knitting, with a burning passion that only rivalled the cuteness of my pom-pom-covered beanie. At least the yarn was cheap, and my parents seemed to appreciate it when I made them little things. At first, it was beanies, then scarves, and finally really (why are they so hard to make?) complicated things like gloves.

Pants and shirts and coats were a bit beyond me, not because of complexity, but because at two-and-a-bit years old, I was still a tiny little thing and any big clothes I made would be bigger than I was. My [Knitting] skill was at level forty-two, and I had unlocked two entire subskills. [Clicky Clacker] You have become proficient at knitting faster. As you practise, your speed and focus will sharpen. [Patterner] You can more easily notice and copy knitting patterns, and creating new ones comes more easily to you.

If there ever was a sign that I was losing my mind, it was that I was actually proud of the level of proficiency I'd gotten with knitting. Hopefully though, today would be the last day where I'd be stuck with nothing better to do than knit. My father took me out of the house in the early hours of the morning. Trips outside weren't entirely uncommon. I followed Mom to the local grocers' and general store once in a while.

It was where we bought our yarn (despite the name it was some sort of blended material; I doubted any of it came from an actual animal). Today, we headed in an entirely new direction. Left on leaving the house, then down a concrete staircase and into a section of the city that was entirely below-ground. The air was warmer down here, thick with humidity, and a stench that had me holding back a gag, like ammonia and farts.

My father never let go of me until we turned down an alley of sorts, across a section where a grated ceiling showed glimpses of the sky above, and then into a stubby alcove where a large metal door sat waiting. My father pulled out a key from a pocket and unlocked the door, which opened with a dramatic squeal. The room within was entirely dark, at least until my dad flicked on a switch and an incandescent bulb slowly started to glow brighter.

"Here it is, little mushroom." I stared around the room. It was empty. Well, mostly empty. Three tables were pushed up against the walls, and a few of those had wooden crates sitting on them. A few more crates were on the ground here and there, and there was a large steel drum in one corner.

"What is it?" I asked. My dad grinned.

"A gift! A bit late for your second birthday, but… I thought you'd like it."

"It's, uh, a room," I said. He chuckled, then pulled the door shut.

"Yes. But it's your room. I got it for very cheap. It was storage for a small company that went under and… well, it's mouldy and in a rough part of town. It wasn't much. The only water is from a tap down the street, and there's no chimney access. It will be very, very cold in winter."

"Oh," I said. A whole room. A whole dank, dark room. I tasted the air. Humid. More so than would be comfortable for a person, especially with the cement walls and floors and rusted metal beams on the ceiling. But for fungi? This was perfect.

"Thank you!" I said as I ran over to my dad and hugged him tightly. He chuckled.

"I expect you to return the favour though. If you grow mushrooms, we need to sell some to pay for the rent, okay?"

"Okay!" I said.

"Oh, but I'll need compost, some dirt. A few starter mushrooms, with their spores still viable. But this, this could work!" My dad laughed, then patted my head.

"I'm glad you're happy," he said.

"So, where do we start?"

"Uh… whoa, okay, we need a place for the mycelium to grow. Rotten logs would be nice. We definitely need some more water. The humidity here is nice though. Um… and we need fertiliser. Rotten meat, some decomposing biodegradables. Anything really, mushrooms aren't picky eaters." Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. My dad nodded, then moved over to the tables.

"These are a bit tall for you now, but we could get you a little stool that you can move around."

"We need racks," I said.

"Racks?"

"More growing space. If you stack racks atop each other, with a handspan or two between them, then we can grow more mushrooms in less space. We can have racks from the floor all the way to the ceiling." He hummed, then rubbed at his chin.

"There are some leftover planks at the factory. I might be able to grab a few. We'll need to straighten out some nails. I know a guy that collects crooked ones from where he works. I'm not sure about the compost."

"Mom has a friend that works at the butchers. Maybe we can buy some of the useless bits from them," I said. My dad laughed.

"We're thinking very big, aren't we? How about we start a little smaller?" I didn't want to start small, I wanted to go all-out, but… he was probably not wrong.

"Okay," I said. For the next week, every day when Dad returned from work, we'd go to my little hideout, hand in hand. At first, I mostly sat around while he banged out a few boxes from some wooden scraps. I think they were boards from wooden pallets, which begged the question… did they have forklifts here? On asking, I discovered that they did. Magical forklifts. They were apparently horrifically dangerous too, which somehow only made me want to see one even more.

Once the first box was done, Mom found some rotting meat for cheap, and we went to a spot not too far from home where we found a heap of old dirt, which we piled into a potato sack until we had enough. My first growing box wasn't all that impressive in the end, but I was still really proud of it. The first mushrooms I cultivated for their spores were simple. [Horse Head Mushroom] - Common A common edible mushroom. Mostly tasteless, but filled with nutrients. Commonly found near places where bodies are buried.

I extracted the spores with a nail, then placed them inside of a set of jars at home. Of the seven strains I collected (because I only had seven jars to work with), five started to form mycelium after a few weeks. I fed all five of them one point of mana a day, every day, until they nearly filled their jars, then I returned to my little hideout and transplanted the samples into the compost. Mushrooms, as a general rule of thumb, grew very fast when the conditions were right.

The slow part was spreading the fungal body out. The mushroom itself was like the flower on another plant: it was the obvious, attention-grabbing bit on top, but it wasn't the entire plant. A rosebush was more bush than it was rose. After the transplant, two of my samples failed. I wasn't sure why. Maybe the dirt wasn't right, maybe there was an issue with the amount of humidity in the air. A lot of things could push a fragile fungal body towards failure.

The other three though, they spread throughout their box, little graspers reaching further and further until tiny vein-like mycelium were present all throughout the box. One morning, maybe a month after my dad had first brought me to the hideout, I found the first pinprick heads of what would soon be mushrooms sticking out of the dirt. I pressed a bit of magic into the fungal body. Never too much. I was aware of how weak it made me feel, and I didn't want to push my health any.

I was already spending more time in a dark, damp room than was likely safe for a child of my age, and my diet wasn't exactly superb. Pinching every penny as we did didn't lead to large meals and fat tummies. Two distinct variations of mushroom appeared: the usual [Horse Head Mushroom], which seemed like a nice and nutritious snack, and a few samples of [Magically Infused Horse Head Mushrooms]. [Magically Infused Horse Head Mushroom] - Common A common magical edible mushroom.

Mostly tasteless, but filled with nutrients and mana. Commonly found near places where magical bodies are buried. Two days later, we ate like kings, with a knit bag full of horse head mushrooms in our pantry, and a few frying on a pan with just a lick of oil on them. It was wonderful. For a while, it really felt like life could only get better.