Black Mould - Fourteen - Grafting New Forms of Life

I had two useful types of mushrooms at my disposal: the [Horse Head Mushroom] and the [Brown Chanterelle].

When fed enough mana during its ‘flowering’ phase, the [Brown Chanterelle] turned into [Mana-Infused Brown Chanterelle]. The horse head did the same, but its mana-infused properties weren’t nearly as interesting as the chanterelles’.

If I wanted to create something that could heal, then I’d need more than just the base mushroom. I needed something more potent.

I was already cultivating my mushrooms so that the more powerful, faster-growing, and more nutritious strains took precedence over the others. That was basic gardening 101. What I needed wasn’t something that would occur through selective breeding.

So, of course, I decided to try another route.

With flowers, grafting was a relatively simple, though finicky, process.

A cutting of one flower would be taken, and by sticking that cutting to the stem of another plant, you could keep it alive, and even have it grow. It wasn’t quite a new plant, more of a hybrid, but sometimes the seeds of these hybrids would keep some of the properties of both plants.

Usually, it ended in a mess and with failure, but every so often you’d get a honeycrisp out of it.

The problem was that fungal bodies couldn’t be grafted. Cloned, yes, but grafting fungi was something beyond the technology of my previous life.

But mushroom farmers on Earth didn’t have magic, and I did, so I was going to cheat my little butt off.

I grabbed a sample of the mycelium of both of my edible mushrooms and carefully rubbed at the surface of the root-like structure. With a tiny knife, I snipped off any offshoots so that I was left with two long and raw strands of fungal body.

Under normal circumstances, I’d give them only one in a hundred odds of being able to regrow. Fungal bodies were fragile compared to most plants. Tenacious, but weak.

Mana, fed at a trickle into the mycelium, kept it alive, and even seemed to encourage it to heal itself.

Once I had my two cuttings prepared, I essentially knitted them together into a single long braid. Nothing too fancy, just an over-under sort of twist that would maximise the amount of contact between the two strands.

Once that was done, I picked up a chunk of rotting wood, one that was satisfyingly squishy from the water soaked into it, and I tucked the strand into a few crevices in the wood.

Then I fed it some mana and dropped it onto a rack that had plenty of compost for something to grow out of.

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

[You have unlocked a Sub-Skill!]

I grinned. It was about time. I was growing tired of the slow level ups just from farming the same mushrooms over and over again.

[Congratulations! Your [Mycologic Growth {Uncommon}] Skill has unlocked the [Overnight Growth] Subskill!]

Would that make things grow faster?

[You have unlocked the [Fungal Grafter {Uncommon}] Skill!]

[Do you want to add the [Fungal Grafter {Uncommon}] Skill to your known repertoire of Class Skills?]

Now that was interesting. And unexpected too. I hadn’t seen a new skill in a while. Did that mean that my attempt had worked? I opened the skill description.

[Fungal Grafter {Uncommon}]

You have discovered the first step of the ancient art of tailored evolution. You are now able to more easily combine fungal bodies to discover new and greater effects. As this skill grows, so will your ability to graft more difficult and disparate fungal bodies.

That was a no-brainer. Of course I was going to accept it. The tailored evolution thing sounded a lot like a potential skill as well. Or was it more of a sub-skill?

[Congratulations! You have Obtained the [Fungal Grafter {Uncommon}] Skill!]

The only thing left to do was to check on my new sub-skill.

[Overnight Growth]

All fungal bodies under your care will grow much faster over the course of the night, or when in extremely dark areas.

“Oh hell yeah,” I muttered in English because I didn’t know the word for hell in the local dialect (what was the language even called?). This sub-skill was going to change everything. If I could start producing even twice as fast, then I would be able to farm non-stop. That was sure to earn me a decent amount of money, maybe enough for that potion my dad needed.

I had to tell my parents, they’d be super proud.

But not quite yet.

As I started tidying up, I checked on my skill sheet.

Name: N/A

Race: Human {Common}

Age: 3 Years

Mana: 19/24

Primary Class: [Agaric Cleric {Rare}]

Afflictions

- Black Lung {Common}

- Child of Poverty {Common}

Blessings

- Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

Agaric Cleric Class Skills - Level Sixty-Two

- Mycologic Growth {Uncommon} - Level Twenty

> [Overnight Growth]

- Druid Sight {Uncommon} - Level Eighteen

- Mushroom Magic {Rare} - Level Twenty-Three

> [Shroom Zoom]

- Fungal Grafter {Uncommon} - Level One

-

General Skills - Level Sixty

- Running {Common} - Level Fourteen

- Knitting {Common} - Level Forty-Six

> [Patterner]

> [Clicky Clacker]

-

-

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That was pretty satisfying. I was certain that anyone going through some sort of formal training would be leagues ahead of me in the same amount of time I’d had to learn and train my skills, but I was equally certain that I was doing pretty good for a three-almost-four year old.

In a few weeks I’d be four, actually. That… wasn’t optimal just yet. It gave me lots of time with few responsibilities, but I suppose it also limited my freedom, at least a little.

Or… maybe not so much. I hadn’t thought about it, but at my age, if someone caught me trespassing, I didn’t think I’d get into too much trouble. A five-year-old might be up to mischief, a pre-teen could definitely have an agenda, but someone not even four?

I locked things up in my farm, setting a [Bug Agaric] up against the doorsill so that it would burst on opening the door and drop some spores around (a very ineffective trap, seeing as how the best it could do is give someone a buzz and a stomach ache) then I stepped out.

Debra, the local homeless woman and my sorta-watchwoman, was still sitting around nearby. “Hey,” I said as I moved over. I handed her a fresh horse head, a big one too.

“Hello, dearie,” she said. “Everything go well?”

“Yeah, well enough,” I said.

“Anyone tell you that you speak well for someone so small?” she asked.

“Actually, no, no one ever has. Thank you, though.” I shifted a bit. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to know where someone could find a lot of mushrooms, right?”

Debra munched on her snack while thinking. “Can’t rightly say that I’ve paid much attention to it. There’s the magical ones down in the big-D dungeon.”

“I’m sorry, the what?” I asked.

“The company that runs the place, even though they ain’t supposed to, are called… Ditz and Sons, I think. Their logo is a big D.”

“Where is the dungeon?” I asked.

Debra eyed me for a moment. “A little thing like you shouldn’t be heading over so close to the dungeon. It doesn’t happen often, but monsters will sneak out of there sometimes.”

“Oh,” I said. “That doesn’t tell me where it is, though,” I said.

She sniffed, then with a sigh, started to stand. “Come. I’ll do you one better.”

“Huh?” I asked as she started to head off and away from my farm. I ran back and made sure the door was shut tight, then jogged after Debra. She was waiting for me by the edge of an alley.

I mostly avoided those. I couldn’t see if there was anything on the ground, and when there was something, it was often glass or sharp bits of waste. I didn’t have shoes to protect my feet. Sure, my soles were pretty thick with callouses, but I didn’t want to test those.

“This way,” Debra said. She tugged up a blanket which she used to cover herself a bit more. It was patched and threadbare and still looked better than the dress underneath.

My own clothes didn’t stand out, though. Dirt-stained overalls, folded at the cuff because they were made for someone a bit bigger than me, and an equally dirty shirt. I was a local and I looked the part.

We moved through the alley, my tension rising as I followed Debra to a place I didn’t know.

This was probably a bad idea, I realised. What if this was her way of kidnapping me?

Then the alley opened up into a camp of sorts. A wide area, with just a slit of sky above between two buildings. Partitions were marked out along the sides with poorly-crafted walls, and a large drum sat in the middle, a bit of smoke wafting out of it.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Just a camp,” Debra said. “Here, you’ll be wanting to talk to Stew.”

“Stew?” I asked.

“That’s me!”

I spun, then took in the form of a young man sitting atop some folded blankets in one of the partitions. He was missing an arm and a leg, but seemed hale otherwise. He smiled, showing a few gaps in his teeth. It was strange. He was dressed like a beggar, but he was young. Clean, even.

“Stew here worked in the dungeon,” Debra said. “Kid has some questions, Stew. Could be the kid can pay you with a bit of grub.”

“Oh?” Stew asked. “Well, I’m not doing anything clever. You got questions about the dungeon, and I’ve got answers.”

I grinned, some of the worry bleeding away. Not a trap then, just an attempt at helpfulness. I pulled up a chunk of wood to sit on and leaned forwards. “I have a ton of questions,” I said. “Where do you want me to start?”

***