Chương 43: Black Mould - Thirty-Six - Windfalls and Joys Shared

Dada was in a great mood the following weeks. My windfall was part of that, of course. I wasn't quite ready to return to the dungeon just yet. I had heard that there was something of a bigger mess the next day, after that first protest. The area was supposed to be swarming with Bullies so I decided to be smart and wait a while for things to settle. Still, even with my income temporarily cut off, I had still brought in several months' worth of income for our family in a single day.

We were being wise about it, of course. No blabbing to the neighbours. When they asked, we said the truth, that the protests cut things off short and that I had only sold a few skewers. It was a satisfying bit of truth. My dad was happy for other reasons too, of course. The protest at the dungeon wasn't the only one. There had been quite a few of them in the following days, including one at the factory he worked for. Apparently, it had worked out well.

Mostly, the whole thing was to drum up support for talk of a union, though they weren't calling it that since it was taboo. Apparently, the foreman in charge of the factory had thrown a fit about it, but the Bullies were too busy elsewhere, and the kind of people they usually hired to take care of that kind of protest made a point not to show up when they thought they might lose if things broke out into a fight. My dad was quite proud of himself. The mood at home was at an all-time high.

Mom was laughing a lot more, and instead of chastising Dad and me about some of the silly things we did, she just rolled her eyes at us. I spent a few pence that week on a newspaper. I'd kind of forgotten to practise my reading, so it took me far too long to read even a single article. It didn't help that there were plenty of words I was unfamiliar with. I was going to make a point of buying the newspaper more often. The Nineteener's Gazette might have been biassed, but it was still enlightening.

The protest at the Ditz Dungeon wasn't first-page news. It was relegated to page eight, squeezed in between a feel-good story about a boy and his lost dog and an advice column about making dresses with potato sacks. The next page over had an image of a green-skinned goblin, tooth missing in its smile as it held up a can of coffee. My mis'tress knows what's makin' her happy, and so do I! I shuddered at the image. It was kind of blatantly speciest.

I had never seen a goblin up close before, but I couldn't imagine them being so pitiful naturally. The front-page article was about the construction of a new temple to Vista Lida which was said to become the biggest religious site in all of City Nineteen. It was going up near Spirit Point, a part of the city I wasn't familiar with. The image on the cover showed a large complex being built, scaffolding, stacks of bricks, and workers all over. I stared at the image for a while.

Behind the location of the new temple were a few smaller churches, though they weren't any more humble. Past those, on a big cliff in the background, was a large complex that was partially cropped out of the image. Opulent. It kind of pissed me off that there were so many beautiful things within the same city I lived in, and yet I hadn't seen a single one.

I leafed through the newspaper, taking in some ads of women in Victorian dresses with speech bubbles that spoke of comfortable corsets and men in suits advertising fine shoes made of real gryphon leather. The propaganda about working hard being the path to a happy life was everywhere. This was a culture obsessed with working themselves to the bone. So I took a few days off and did nothing for a while but read every last article and page I had. It was all in protest, of course. I learned a few important things.

Notably, that the city was more or less split into three, though in reality there were seventeen districts across City Nineteen. The central section, around the Gutter and its opening, was where we lived. As far as I could tell, it was all factories, slums, and the warehouses around the two dungeons in the area. To the west was a section where a better class of people lived. Eventually, I tossed the newspaper aside.

I'd use the pages as composting material later (no point in wasting it), but I didn't think I'd learn anything new from the paper. I'd gotten a prompt at some point to unlock the [Reading {Common}] skill, but I ignored it along with the dozens of other potential skills I'd unlocked so far. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Most of my skills seemed to be stagnating a little.

The more annoying ones were those like [Running] who were stuck just behind a new subskill. I think that the main issue was that growth with a skill demanded either constant progression and improvement, or a challenge to push it forwards. [Knitting] had grown quickly because I was always knitting bigger and more complex projects. It was a constant stream of new things to try and new challenges which ensured that the skill could grow.

I shook my head, got off the mattress that I usually slept on, and then stretched as best I could. I had wasted enough time. I wasn't going to be six forever. My farm needed tending, I had enough money to maybe buy some new mushroom strains outright, and I wanted to see if I could evolve some of my mushrooms into a new type naturally through selection bias alone. I left our home and headed out across the slums. The place stank, as always.

Shit and coal fire mixed to coat everything in a very particular stench, but it was the stench of home. Kind of a gross idea, but not too unusual, I think. I got to the farm, greeted Debra, who seemed to be in a fine mood, then got to work. A few weeds had snuck into the farm and were growing out of my compost bin. More bugs too. I swatted a few flies away and made a note to start growing more bug-killing mushrooms. I had cut those down to a single rack in one corner, but it was clear that wasn't enough.

I didn't have much to harvest, but what I did have still filled a little basket that I knew I'd be able to use later. Once everything was done and squared away, I wiped the sweat off my brow and sat down on the stool I'd once needed just to see the top of my workbench (I was now able to see the top if I stood on the tips of my toes).

Name: N/A Race: Human {Common} Age: 6 Years Mana: 27/30 Primary Class: [Agaric Cleric {Rare}] Afflictions - Black Lung {Common} - Child of Poverty {Common} Blessings - Blessing of Feronie {Unique} Agaric Cleric Class Skills - Level One Hundred and Thirty-Two - Mycologic Growth {Uncommon} - Level Thirty-Eight > [Overnight Growth] - Druid Sight {Uncommon} - Level Thirty-Seven > [Druid Sense] - Mushroom Magic {Rare} - Level Thirty-Seven > [Shroom Zoom] - Fungal Grafter {Uncommon} - Level Nineteen - Commune with God {Rare} - Level One General Skills - Level Seventy-Six - Running {Common} - Level Nineteen - Knitting {Common} - Level Fifty-four > [Patterner] > [Clicky Clacker] - Basic Poison Resistance {Common} - Level Three - - I sighed.

My progress had really slumped. Only a few levels here and there after a year or so of work. Ridiculous. It seemed that focusing on making money instead of working on progressing my skills was really biting me in the rear. Maybe I could set aside a few days a week to do nothing but practise things? That would eventually lead to me gaining more skills as time went on. I had no doubt that I was far ahead of the curve for my age, but that wasn't enough.

If I wanted to pull myself up by my bootstraps, I'd need to be more than just a little bit ahead of the curve. But that could wait. I grabbed the things I wanted to bring back home, then a few extras, and stepped out of the farm and locked it up. I chatted with Debra for a minute before giving her a small sack full of mushrooms to share with her friends, then I headed home. I had enough saved up that I was considering going into the nicer parts of the city to look and see if someone sold medicinal stuff.

Or maybe I could find a bookstore? That book my dad had bought for my birthday a while ago mentioned a few mushrooms that I wasn't familiar with that might have helpful properties. I knew something was wrong when I got home and found the door open.

"Mom?" I asked.

"Dada?" I stepped in and found my mom searching through our things in a hurry. She gasped as she noticed me.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"It's Roger. Dada. Oh, all the gods. Why?" My stomach flipped. This was too close, far too close to what had happened before.