Chương 193: Psilocybin Eight

It was time. Well, it had been time yesterday, and a bit this morning, and it was time now as well. Generally speaking, 'the time' was a wide band and... and I was probably overthinking things because I was a little excited. I arrived at the farm early in the morning, Sir Nibbles by my side. Today was the day that I was going to harvest all of the new cultivated mushrooms. The surviving ones, at least.

My [Druid Sight] had been pretty helpful in telling me when things were coming close to being harvestable, and it seemed like most of the strains I'd managed to keep going until they sprouted a mushroom were going to be done today. Sliding the door open, I let the panbadger in, then walked after him, closing and locking the door behind me.

It was hard not to rush to the shelves with the new strains and instead go through the usual morning routine of checking water levels and soil humidity and shifting a few rotting logs around. Still, it had to be done. A lot of mushroom farming, like normal farming, was about sitting back and waiting, but there was still some stuff that needed daily tending. Once that was done, however, I rushed to the racks. I'd started with five new mushrooms.

These, I combined with specimens that I'd had to grow fresh of existing and known mushroom variants. Tricky, but not all that hard. The [Mushroom Remaker] sub-skill from [Mushroom Magic] let me regrow anything that I'd grown before, so I basically had a massive library of potential shrooms to work with. Obviously, the skill was mana-hungry like no other, but I used it here and there anyway. It was a good way to level it. Anyway, I'd tried a total of twenty-five combinations, mostly going with my gut.

I had a pretty good sense of what would and wouldn't work. Each one of those twenty-five had five twisted 'seeds' to start from. There were, as I looked over my bounty, nine survivors. Not that bad, really. I was pretty sure that I could have pushed more to survive, but a lot of them were coming up as duds, or with results that I didn't find impressive, so I decided to nix those projects. I was, basically, looking for two things; strains that were interesting, and a new tool for my future drug-empire plans.

Of the mushrooms that really interested me, only one had survived and... yeah, I wasn't too surprised. I'd tried some wild combos hoping for a sort of Hail Mary, and four of the five had died early on. Licking my lips, I pulled out the shelf with my experimental mushrooms on it, then moved to the side to slip on a cloth mask and some gloves, just in case. Sure, I had all sorts of poison resistances, but they only resisted, they didn't negate.

I didn't need to suffer from the shakes, the sweats, or the runs right now just because I'd touched the wrong spore. The first two mushrooms were combinations with the [Widow's Cup]. The [Widow's Cup] was an Uncommon mushroom with a bright red cup-shaped head. It grew best in hemoglobin-rich environments, so to grow these, I'd soaked some rotten old wood in blood and gristle. It worked out pretty well. I now had two new mushrooms to poke at.

Widow's Cup / Brown Chanterelle [Bleeder's Brothcap] – Uncommon A rusty-brown mushroom that grows in battlefields or butcheries. When boiled, its broth tastes earthy and rich, and thickens blood almost instantly. Soldiers use it as a field remedy, though overuse may cause clots. Widow's Cup / Ghoul Button Mushroom [Corpse-Rose] – Epic A blood-red bloom growing from undead flesh. It neutralizes rot and weeps crimson droplets that can revive necrotic tissue. Necromancers prize it for corpse preservation.

The [Bleeder's Brothcap] was interesting. Its mycelium were long, white little veins that clung onto any rotting meat with some rapidity and it had grown quickly and easily. The use for it was... questionable. Blood-thickening was kind of interesting. Maybe a third-generation mushroom, or a combo of a combo, would take that trait and turn it deadly? I had some mushrooms that had impacts on circulation, so... hmm, there was potential there. Did you know this story is from Royal Road?

Read the official version for free and support the author. I was pretty sure I wouldn't be making broth from it, not unless I discovered that my blood pressure was too low or something. The [Corpse-Rose] was far more interesting, mostly because it was one of the rare (pun intended) Epic mushrooms I'd discovered. The flesh I'd used to grow it wasn't undead, and the mushroom, which came out looking like a small, anemic red rose, seemed a little weak. I suspected a link there.

This might well grow better on actual undead flesh. Neutralizing rot was a strange thing, but... it seemed to be working? The mycelium had plunged into the gristle and it looked like it was as rotten as when I started. Which was to say, a little, but not entirely? Weird. I didn't have a use for that, so I'd probably trash this mushroom, but it was maybe good to have in my back pocket? The next three were all cultivars based off of the [Ironcap Toadstool].

That one seemed like it was a particularly tenacious and tough little mushroom. I'd been eating one of those a week... or rather, I'd been chopping one up and dry-swallowing it once a week. It was supposed to be good for bones and teeth, and one glance inside of what passed for a dentist around here (almost always a place that doubled as a barber's shop) told me in no uncertain terms that I didn't want to end up with cavities. The first of the three new [Ironcap]-varients was the only Rare in the bunch.

Ironcap Toadstool / Magebane [Nullsteel Cap] – Rare A dull silver fungus that devours ambient mana and reinforces the body. Used by knights who fear magical interference. Consuming it numbs spellcasting ability for hours. What knights? I'd never seen a knight. There had been lots of art of knightly figures at the Academy, and perhaps a statue or two, and even a full set of armour here and there, but I had never encountered an actual knight. Perhaps in other cities? Or elsewhere in the world?

OR maybe knightly chapters and orders had gone out of style in the last century or so? I wasn't sure how national warfare worked nowadays, but with the level of industrialization present, I'd imagine that war was fought on massive battlefields covered in trenches and booming with artillery, not men on horseback with plate armour. The hint that it was anti-magical was interesting. The mushroom had maybe interfered with the two neighbouring it, so I'd have to try to regrow those at a later date.

I wondered if this was worth consuming on a regular basis. The advantage seemed decent, though... the downside was rough. It would negate several of my abilities, wouldn't it? Maybe it would also negate some negative side effects? Something to study. The other two were interesting as well, though they were merely Uncommons. Still, more mushrooms filling out my repertoire was rarely a bad move.

Ironcap Toadstool / Tubershroom [Stoneheart Rootcap] – Uncommon A dense, root-veined mushroom that strengthens bones and heals fractures slowly over days. Heavy consumption leaves the eater sluggish and stiff. Ironcap Toadstool / Dead Man's Finger [Grave Iron Fungus] – Uncommon Grows along old coffins, forming iron-like knuckles through decayed wood. Powdered, it's used in charms to keep insects from disturbing the dead. Two very niche mushrooms. I could see some applications for the first.

My current healing mushrooms didn't have much to say about healing bones, specifically, so these might be better in a pinch, but I wasn't exactly jumping for joy at the find. The next two caught my eye... mostly because both of them were glowing. Lantern Gill / Purple-Capped Night Watcher [Dawnwatcher Cap] – Rare Alternates its glow between gold and violet depending on ambient light. Eating it grants both night vision and improved sight in bright-light conditions.

Lantern Gill / Blue Cleangill [Purelight Gill] – Rare Grows near clean springs. Its light purifies small quantities of water or potion when submerged, removing curses and toxins alike. The [Purelight Gill] was going to be big. I moved to the back of my farm and returned with an old glass jar filled with tap water. The tap water here was always a little murky and cloudy, and there were always mysterious floating things in the water that I couldn't quite identify. I figured it was just the old lead pipes being awful.

It was good enough to water the mushrooms with, but I was worried about drinking any. Placing a [Purelight Gill] over the top of the jar and then feeding it a bit of magic to increase its glow did something magical. The mushroom's glow brightened, and just like that, the water started to clear. The gunk within moved to the top, then burned away like steam, peeling off the water and slipping into some cracks along the mushroom's surface and into its many glowing gills. What was left behind was crystal-clear water.

Yeah, this was good. I could now trade some of the mana I gained over the day for clean water. I'd have to rework my entire water system, but that could be done. I grinned. A fantastic result, and I wasn't even done! 🍄︎🍄️🍄︎