Death Cap - Two - Options Determining Future Paths

I eyed my options one last time.

[Because of prior experiences, and because of cross-class compatibility, the following skills are immediately available to you:]

- Mycologic Growth {Uncommon}

- Druid Sight {Uncommon}

- Fungal Grafter {Uncommon}

- Mushroom Magic {Rare}

- Commune with God {Rare}

[You have two remaining Class Skill slots.]

The choice, in the end, wasn’t an easy one.

[Mycologic Growth] could be set aside without too much trouble. My new [Aura of Growth] skill had a lot of overlap. It was the other four that would be tricky choices.

[Druid Sight] went on my short-list of options. It wasn’t necessarily a powerful skill, but it allowed me to pretty much directly inspect and learn about natural things in a way that none of my other skills did. The knowledge-gaining potential was too much to pass up.

I didn’t have books, reference manuals, or the internet to rely on. With mushrooms, not knowing what you were working with could be a lethal mistake.

So that was a no-brainer option.

That left three choices to pick from. [Commune with God], [Fungal Grafter], and [Mushroom Magic].

[Commune with God] was powerful, I think. But I’d never really used it… yeah, that was one skill I could live without. I bet I could get it back if I tried praying some more. After all, a Crusader was a sort of paladin-esque thing, wasn’t it? And my class directly named Feronie. That would have to be enough.

So, the final choice came down to [Fungal Grafter], and [Mushroom Magic]. [Fungal Grafter] allowed me to combine mushrooms together to create new ones. That was pretty much the entire basis of my success so far. [Mushroom Magic], on the other hand, allowed me to pump magic into mushrooms. I was certain that there was a lot more potential there, I just didn’t know magic well enough.

In the end, greater potential won out.

[Congratulations! You have obtained the Druid Sight {Uncommon} Skill!]

[Congratulations! You have obtained the Mushroom Magic {Rare} Skill!]

[Fungal Grafter] had unlocked when I’d grafted things manually. I could do it again without a skill to rely on.

I nodded and checked my new character sheet.

Name: N/A

Race: Human {Common}

Age: 6 Years

Mana: 15/18

Primary Class: [Feronie’s Crusader {Epic}]

Afflictions

- Black Lung {Common}

- Child of Poverty {Common}

Blessings

- Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

Feronie’s Crusader Class Skills - Level Five

- Aura of Growth {Rare} - Level One

- Blight {Epic} - Level One

- Ritual of Sporemageddon {Legendary} - Level One

- Druid Sight {Uncommon} - Level One

- Mushroom Magic {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

-

-

My mana had dropped a lot. And my two returning skills had been reset. It… it felt a bit like a punch to the gut to have lost so much progress. But then, I had a lot of new skills, more powerful ones, to work with.

I nodded to myself, then I looked around my farm and got to work. It was idle work. Harvesting what needed harvesting, collecting spores into jars, resetting racks into their place.

The entire time, I started to fiddle with one of my new skills. [Aura of Growth] needed a constant push of mana pressed into it. When I did so, I could feel the air around me… not quite stir. It didn’t shift or move, but the air felt different. More potent, maybe?

I called it off a few points before bottoming out my mana.

[Congratulations! Your Aura of Growth {Rare} Skill has reached level Two!]

I let out a sigh. Progress. It was like a balm to the soul.

I continued to work. I’d need to sell these mushrooms. I needed funds to do what needed doing.

My plan was simple.

I was going to find out who my father worked for. Then I was going to kill them. Then I was going to find out what I could about those Bluertons, the union-busters. I was going to kill them too. Then, once they were all dead, I’d move on to the next step in my plan. The dungeon. The Ditz dungeon that this city relied on for raw resources.

If I understood [Ritual of Sporemageddon] properly, it would allow me to destroy the dungeon.

That sounded just fine to me.

The problem was, as usual, my lack of knowledge.

I didn’t know who owned the factory Dada worked at. I didn’t know where the Bluertons were based. If this was the age of the internet, it wouldn’t be hard to find out who owned what, where they lived, and even how to make a Molotov cocktail to deliver through their window. But it wasn’t.

As I checked on one of my racks (the only fully-enclosed rack I had, since it contained some small puffball samples for future grafting) I considered my options.

Technically, I wasn’t the only one fighting the industrialists. Those nurses and people who had collected the injured… what had Larry called them? Ratesco’s Union? They were protesting the factory’s conditions too, weren’t they?

Their enemy was mine as well.

I made a mental note to ask Debra what she knew about them. Maybe there was some potential for trade there.

Setting the last rack back into place, I turned and checked on the baskets of freshly plucked mushrooms I had harvested. Two full baskets, almost too much for me to carry on my own. Enough to feed a family like mine for… well, longer now.

I swallowed, buried the pain. I needed anger first.

“Okay,” I murmured to myself.

I looked around the farm. It was probably late out. Time to head back home.

I didn’t want to.

Home was… home wasn’t a nice place. I wanted action, I wanted to do something.

My fists clenched and I buried my face into my workbench. I wanted to scream, but everything felt jammed up in my chest. Nothing would come out. It felt as if the entire world was contracting in at the corners and pressing down around me.

My vision went dark in the corners, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe.

Was I having a panic attack?

Why?

It was such a stupid thing to do. I didn’t have time for that kind of thing, dammit.

My body didn’t seem to care though. My heart raced away, beating all wrong, and I found myself dropping onto my knees under my workstation, arms wrapped around my chest to hug myself.

I cried. I didn’t want to. I’d cried enough already. It was time to act, to fight, to… to do something.

I guess, in the end, I was still just a child.

My mind might have been on revenge, but the rest of me wasn’t ready for it.

By the time I’d calmed down I had… nothing. No plans, no idea of what to do. I was powerless. I was just a kid out of their depth.

The scream I was holding in finally came out of me and I punched the floor until my knuckles hurt.

It was all too much. “Screw this,” I swore. “And screw you, Feronie. I can’t do this. I just… I can’t do this.”

I shuddered while I worked hard to try and bottle everything back in. Then the shuddering stopped and something, something faint and ephemeral, wrapped itself around me, like a warm blanket, a hug. Swallowing, I looked around my little farm, but there was no one but me.

The lone candle on my desklone bulb hanging from the ceiling flickered and the sensation left me.

I was a bit calmer, a little bit less… tense.

Had that been Feronie? An apology? Or maybe just… comfort, given to a follower in need?

I wiped my face clean with my sleeve and climbed to my feet. I could do this. I didn’t have a choice.

What I did have was time. Revenge didn’t need to happen immediately. I was a scientist, damnit, if anyone should understand that things took time to realise, then it was me.

So, I’d prepare. If it took a year or two, then so be it. By the time I was ready, I’d be ready for real. I had some funds already. I could scout things out, meet the right people, get the right tools for the job.

I’d start by studying what offensive skills I had. And I needed to re-level my re-obtained skills.

That was something I could start working on right away.

My pain was quenched, at least a little, by determination. My anger was a burning heap of embers, still there to fuel me.

It was time to get serious.

***