Psilocybin Nineteen 

We were six rooms deep into the Sixth floor when we started to run out of supplies.

Fortunately, I had planned for that.

The sixth floor wasn’t as well documented as all of the previous ones, and for decent, economical reasons. This floor was a cavern. Dirt floors with the occasional slab of rock and walls made of protruding, uneven stone. The light down here mostly came from familiar glowing moss, bunched up and squeezed into humid corners and providing just enough bioluminescence to see by.

Down here, the main money-making items were the skins of the local monsters, as well as some patches of soil rich in certain metals. Mostly copper and tin, again.

Basically, there was nothing valuable enough on this floor to make sending delvers to it financially worthwhile.

Sure, as I walked I could see veins of rich copper along the walls, copper so visible and open that I could reach out and pluck some of the greenish metal right off the wall with my bare hands, but there was copper on the fourth floor as well, which was less of a trek. 

The main threats were also pains in the ass to deal with. 

Burrowing worms were ten-pace long worms, with bodies about as thick around as my forearm was long. They had no eyes that I could see, and a disgusting slug-like mouth. They secreted a constant flow of slimy goop which did have some uses as a magically-potent adhesive, but otherwise there was nothing in their bodies worth hunting them for.

They were extremely susceptible to hallucinogens. Less-so to the lung-destroying portions of my spore bombs, however. 

When one of them came into contact with the expanding cloud of death rolling before me, they would soon start to squirm and twist themselves into wild knots.

When a worm was that big, their thrashing was actually quite dangerous, smashing rocks apart and bashing into walls with the force of a runaway car. If they didn’t kill themselves with the motions, then they often ended up just laying there long enough for me to finish them off with a single stab of my camp knight.

The other creatures that called this floor their home were armoured lizards.

These were semi-intelligent beings. Less smart than a goblin or kobold, but more dangerous all the same. 

An armoured lizard stood at seven to eight feet tall, walked on two legs, and was smart enough to use tools. They also had access to natural magic. I paused after killing my first to really inspect they biology, and it turned out that the lizard itself wasn’t armored at all. The moniker came from the way they covered themselves.

Beaten plates made of copper and tin and maybe bronze? They were crudely shaped into cuirass and faulds and pauldrons, as well as greaves and even gloves. The armoured lizards had access to some sort of magic that let them squeeze metal into shape like someone squeezing putty. 

They needed to breathe, so they died just as easily as the next thing. 

Entering the sixth room of the dungeon floor, I found myself in a space that was wide and long, with a whole lot of nothing going for it The room had a nest of sorts to one side, rocks and dirt piled up to make room for some lizards to sleep in, and there was a small camp in the centre.

The camp had a fire pit, with the makings of a very crude forge of sorts, and around that, logs serving as benches and a stack of coal for the fire.

The locals were laying around here and there, very much dead. It was strange to note that lizards didn’t change colours very much when they asphyxiated. Oh well. 

“Come on,” I said to Sir Nibbles as I walked in and scanned the space. There were lingering spores in the air, which was a good sign. I walked around the space once, making sure that everything was dead, then I checked the only other tunnel in the space. It led off a ways, with a sharp bend at its middle.

I tossed in an explosive mushroom, letting it go off around the bend before I retreated. That would stall anything trying to make its way over to us. So far, nothing down here was able to survive my mushrooms. Hopefully it would stay that way.

“Alright,” I said as I moved over to the fire and finally removed my backpack. It was great not having that weight on my back anymore. The straps were really digging into me there. I wanted to lay down and just relax for a while, but I had so many things to do.

First, checking on the fire. 

The lizards had it burning coal, probably sourced from the walls somewhere. I poked at the flames with a long, slightly crooked rod made of berdigris-covered brass, then after raking the coals, I tossed in some fresh ones atop it all.

The ventilation in here was... adequate enough. There seemed to be a breeze coming in from the direction I’d come in and pushing deeper into the dungeon. Good. That might carry some of my spores a good ways downwind. 

After checking on the fire, I started to move the bodies.

They were damned heavy, and I didn’t exactly have a good hold on most of them, but I managed. It wasn’t delicate, but yeah, I dragged the corpses so that they were all off to one side of the room, one that happened to be downwind of the camp.

Now came the fun part. 

I was down to just two mushroom bombs. With the rate of spore dispersal... assuming that I needed at least a small concentration in the air to keep myself safe overnight... yeah, I was probably cutting it close.

So I needed to replenish my supply.

Fortunately, my magic was topped up. Being in a dungeon would do that, with the high ambient mana refilling my internal supply far, far faster than on the surface.

So I could go a bit nuts with the magic. 

I raised a hand towards the heap of corpses, then cast [Blight]. Then I cast it again, and again, and again. 

Flesh rotted, turning darker, then melting ever so slightly. Soon, some of the dead lizards looked like they had died weeks ago. 

I went and grabbed that fire-poking stick and returned to start opening them up. It only required a few hardy smacks, like hitting a ripe fruit. The smell... was not great, but honestly, I was kind of used to that by now. I used rotting meat to feed the mushrooms in my farm all the time, so this was little different.

Once the bodies were ripe for it, I returned to my backpack and opened a small pouch within. It was filled with spores that I had coated in magic for a while. I had every flavour I needed here.

Again, gross, but I did what I had to, ‘planting’ the spores where they would grow best, then blasting the area with a heavy dose of mushroom magic, far, far more than I would ever dare use on the surface.

By the time half an hour passed, I could see different types of mycelium crawling over the bodies, digging into the rotting flesh for nutrients.

I scanned over everything, making sure that they were growing well, and when I felt like it was good, I stood and returned to the fire.

“Time for supper!” I called out.

Sir Nibbles looked up at me then grunted and pawed at his mask.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Give me a minute.”

This was nice. Sitting down next to Sir Nibbles after a hard day’s work, warming up some well-earned food. 

If the harvest went well, I’d be able to continue the push through the sixth floor. Then it was the seventh and finally the final floor of this dungeon. I was pretty confident that my tactic so far would continue to work, but that would depend entirely on whether or not my mushrooms here grew in time.

I think they would. I had tested it in less optimal conditions back on the farm, and most of the mushrooms I was using could go from spore to fully mature in about sixteen hours. I was hoping that the higher ambient magic here and my almost wasteful use of growth magic would kick that up a notch or two. 

If it didn’t... well, I had warned people that I’d be gone for a while. I could always use this basecamp for a couple of days. 

Too bad that armoured lizards didn’t seem to care much for bedding. “We’ll have to sleep on the floor tonight,” I said.

Sir Nibbles hissed at me, almost mockingly, as if to say ‘I sleep on the floor all the time.’ 

I reached over and scratched him between the ears, where he liked it. I was happy he was along. It made this whole thing a lot less lonely. 

A couple more days, and I’d be done. Another capstone on my little adventure, and another leg knocked out from what held the city in place.

***