Black Mould - Five - Growth as an Extant Form of Progress

“Momma, do I have to?” I asked.

My parents were surprisingly fine with my diction and pronunciation. I don’t think I spoke with the babish slurring and hesitancy of a baby. Really, I couldn’t be bothered to pretend, and so far there hadn’t been any issues with the speed at which I picked up words.

Maybe it was normal?

To be entirely honest, I had spent more time around spores than I did around babies in my previous life. I didn’t exactly know how babies worked, and frankly I didn’t care to learn.

“Do you have to what?” my mom asked. I was still figuring out the whole walking thing (I was getting there, it’s just that my head was way too big and it made me top-heavy so I tended to flop back and forth a lot.

My dad had found a small chair which he set next to his at our little table. It was a bit short, so I could only just see the table if I sat up as tall as I could. They still insisted on feeding me, even if I could manage on my own.

“I don’t want to go to...” I paused. What was that old bitch called? Once I started paying attention to it, it was clear that my parents were giving her food to take care of me during the day, food that never ended up in my stomach.

I didn’t want to end up some malnourished shrimp! I was short in my last life, and I’d be damned if I was going to be short in this one.

“I don’t want to go,” I settled on. I didn’t know her name, or the words for ‘that old bitch.’ Not yet, anyway.

My dad patted me on the head, then smiled and reassured me that it was going to be okay.

I pouted and protested some more, but it was clear that they were writing off my protests as the whining of a kid who didn’t want to be away from their parents.

“Tomorrow,” my dad said. “We will bring you to the--” he said a word at the end that I hadn’t heard before.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“A place where you can make friends,” he said.

My mom’s head rose up, and she wiggled a ladle in my dad’s direction. They started arguing. My mom thought I was too young, and that it cost too much to have me watched over there, but it seemed as if my father had recently come upon a bit more money and was willing to spend it on me for this.

It... actually warmed my heart a little.

This family didn’t have much. My parents’ clothes were threadbare and work-stained, our home was more of a hovel than anything else, built on the ground floor of a complex with dozens, maybe hundreds, of tiny homes all jammed in together. Our food was crap, and just plain insufficient to ward off the hunger, but still... they were trying so hard.

“What’s wrong?” my mom asked, she gently touched my cheek, then pressed her dried lips to my forehead. “It’s okay, love, it’s okay.”

I nodded and kept my complaints to myself.

After breakfast, we all left the house. I walked over (all on my own, though I hung off my dad’s hand the entire way for balance, and he carried me up the steps) to the old lady’s place.

My mom gave her a small sack with some food, which the old lady set inside her pantry, then my parents were off with some final goodbyes.

I didn’t say anything to the old lady. Talking to her was fruitless, she’d just give me the stink eye if I distracted her from her knitting.

That was fine. I moved closer to her pantry and pretended to play with a few little wooden blocks. In reality, I was paying more attention to my current project.

Chanterelle’s were delicious, but in most cases weren’t grown indoors. They were finicky and somewhat difficult to grow. Ideal exterior conditions required certain shifts in temperature that made them harder to cultivate than other mushroom strains.

There was a reason they were so expensive.

Brown chanterelle’s though... well, I don’t think they existed on Earth. I couldn’t be sure, and it wasn’t like I could pop an image of what I had here online and look it up.

My current project involved the fungi spreading out beneath the pantry. The wooden boards (possibly oak?) were a great breeding ground for the mycelium, and the rotting whatever was acting as decent fertiliser as well.

I scooted to the side a bit, then slid a hand over to a thin white root-like mycelium sticking out from the edge of the pantry.

On touching it, I felt a bit of a pull. It wasn’t dissimilar to holding a magnet against a metallic surface, except instead of a magnet, I was touching it with my bare hand, and the pull was exceptionally weak.

I had been working on this for a week now, and I had come up with a basic system for how magic works.

Sorta.

It wasn’t ideal, and I knew for a fact that I was doing it all wrong. Mostly I tried something new every day and hoped that I would stumble upon a way to do things right. It would have been a lot easier if I had someone to just tell me what I was doing wrong, but that wasn’t the case.

My first experiments were about pushing magic into the substrate of the fungi. My [Mushroom Magic] skill seemed to require direct contact with a fungal body to work. The mushroom itself didn’t seem to work, at least not if it was cut off from its main body.

There might be a way around that later.

Once I figured that I could push that wiggly feeling inside me into a fungal body, I had started trying to learn what kinds of results I could expect from different uses of magic on a fungus.

Ideally, I would have two or more samples to work with, including a control group, but hey, I wasn’t a year old yet, I could be forgiven for sciencing wrong.

I pinched my tongue between my teeth and rubbed the mycelia between my thumb and forefinger.

Mana: 08/10

...

Mana: 07/10

Had it! I could feel an ephemeral... something, draining out of me. It always left me feeling a bit more hungry than when I started. Likely whatever mana was, I needed to replenish it at least somewhat through physical means.

I stopped, but kept the connection ‘open’ then held it that way for a while.

Mushroom Magic {Rare} - Level Three

Mycologic Growth {Uncommon} - Level Two

The two skills had grown a little bit, but so far none of their descriptions had changed. Did levelling up increase efficiency? Was the level just an indicator of the skill-holder’s proficiency? I had no idea what it all meant.

My current goal was to create a visible effect with my spent magic. The last few attempts had maybe strengthened the fungal body, but I had no way of seeing if that had worked or not.

Also, I needed to learn how to make my magic create specific effects. That did seem like one of the things that the skill was meant to be able to do.

I pushed more magic into the fungus, thinking mushroom-y thoughts.

A bead of sweat formed on my brow, and I pushed a bit harder. It felt almost like I was pushing against resistance, which was new.

Then, with a feeling like blowing air into a balloon, a mushroom appeared within the pantry.

I stared, my mana still ticking out of me, as it poked out of the muck, then grew up into a fat stem which unfolded into a teeny-tiny brown chanterelle.

Then my mana hit zero, and I felt myself suddenly go weak. It was as if I had just run a marathon on an empty stomach. My fingers shook, and I lost my grip on the mycelium, then I almost tipped over to my side.

[Congratulations! Your [Mushroom Magic {Rare}] Skill has reached level Four!]

[Congratulations! Your [Mycologic Growth {Uncommon}] Skill has reached level Three!]

It took a moment, but I managed to regain my senses. The gnawing hunger was back though.

I made a mental note not to hit zero mana again. It felt awful, and when your body felt awful, that wasn’t a great sign about your overall health.

Still, I wasn’t without possible nutrition...

Reaching out, I snapped the mushroom off at the base. There were a few other little stems sticking out of the compost. Given a few days, those would grow into proper mushrooms all on their own.

I examined the mushroom I held with my [Druid Sight], then let out a tiny gasp.

[Mana-Infused Brown Chanterelle] - Uncommon

An edible mushroom frequently picked and eaten by small mammals that has grown in a mana-heavy environment. Will restore some of the eater’s vitality and mana.

I thought as I chewed on my self-made treat. I could make mushrooms that helped me. Maybe. It would come down to a basic bit of math. Did it take more mana to make a mana-infused mushroom than I got out of it? If so, was the mana-usage worth it?

If I hurt myself making these mushrooms, then was I essentially just burning myself out for tiny gains?

Then again, it was helping level my skills, skills which outright stated they would improve and become more efficient.

I felt a tiny kernel of warmth in my stomach, and for just a moment, the hunger left me.

I decided it might well be worth the risk.

***