While Jen had missed the moment when the tentacle first made contact, she did notice when it began to experimentally squeeze her foot. It was a closely guarded secret that the soles of her feet were extremely sensitive, with prior attempts at tickling resulting in an almost painful response. While it wasn’t a tickling sensation, the slow scraping of her feet was still enough to jolt her from her meditative state.

Jen screamed. The shock of being grabbed, especially after spending days without encountering anyone else, was too great for there to be any other response. The grip wasn’t forceful to the point of being painful, but it was still very present. After her initial panic had dimmed a little, Jen began to kick out, hoping to dislodge whatever had grabbed her.

Her wild thrashing paid off when her free leg happened to push along her other leg, forcing the tentacle down her foot and off completely. Now unhindered, Jen rolled away, unwilling to take the time to get to her feet. After she had covered a sufficient amount of distance, she pulled herself into a crouch, extending her sense of hearing to try and get a rough idea of where her attacker was located.

She also began to try and generate a light source, hoping to get a better picture of what was happening. For the first time, she cursed the amount of time it took to complete. Practice and a greater amount of mana to draw from had brought the time down to just over a minute of concentration, but that still felt like an eternity to Jen in her present state of fear, unsure if the next second would be the one that the monster made its move.

The adrenaline gave her actions a strange sense of clarity as well. Her manipulations of her mana had always been diffuse, general movements that combined to achieve her desired result through repetition. In the moment it felt as if Jen had achieved a new sense of awareness, allowing her to focus her attention on specific mana channels as she gathered up her magic in slow motion.

While the area had been silent since she had rolled away, Jen was still extremely relieved to have a light. Resolutely ignoring the small portion of her mind determined to compare her current situation to a horror movie, she started to look around, trying to spot anything out of the ordinary.

To the left was the pool, placid as ever. Adjacent to that was her pile of rocks she had gathered, seemingly undisturbed. Ahead of her the mossy ground simply faded into the darkness, nothing of interest visible. And to her right were the signs of her rapid movement, the moss depressed and torn where she had rolled across in a hurry. Further out was her depleted stash of mushrooms, less a pile and more just a collection after her meal. To the right of that was her test mushroom, the crystal embedded in its head catching the light as the roots sprouting from its stem waved in a sinuous manner.

That caught Jen’s attention. When she had finished her experiment the mushroom had been still, nothing but its unusual size and internalized magic crystal to separate it from any of its fungal brethren. Things had apparently changed since then.

Taking the time to Identify the new creature from a distance confirmed many of Jen’s suspicions. No longer was it referred to as an antimagic mushroom, but instead was something completely new.

Myconid, Lesser

Jen was curious as to where it had come up with the name. Was there an actual species of Myconid creatures in this new world that she had managed to replicate? Or had it simply trawled her memories of half forgotten tabletop sessions to give her unique creation an apt description? Putting it into the mental category of ‘mysteries to be examined later’, Jen turned her full attention back towards her creation.

It seemed like the light or perhaps the presence of her external mana had drawn its attention, as it seemed to stretch out several slender roots as if to grasp at it. The myconid itself seemed to be making an effort to travel in her direction, but was mostly failing. The minimal progress it had made seemed almost accidental, the various roots seeming to push or pull it around almost at random. Whatever intelligence that was guiding it was both new and stupid. Jen cautiously moved closer, angling to the side as she confirmed the myconid’s attraction to her magic. Taking a small risk she reached her free hand towards one of the roots, ready to pull back if she was attacked. The root seemed to have no awareness of her presence though, and attempting to poke the root showed either a lack of a sense of touch or of the intelligence necessary to respond.

That conclusion took away most of the remaining tension. Jen hadn’t been attacked by some intelligent predator, but had been accidentally grabbed by a barely sentient plant. It seemed like it maintained the original plant’s ability to consume magic, but didn’t seem able to comprehend that Jen could be a source of that magic.

Given its small size, no larger than a small dog, Jen began to feel a strange sense of affection for it. Sure, it had scared years off her life when it grabbed her, and the tentacle like roots were unnerving, but it was dumb enough that any threat it might have posed just came across as a sort of awkward cuteness.

Intentionally or not, Jen had caused it to gain life of a sort. And having something to interact with, no matter how dumb or dangerous, would go a long way towards treating any effects of her isolation. It was better than naming a rock ‘Wilson’ and carrying on as if it could understand her. Optimism aside, Jen would still make an effort to keep it away from her while she slept, perhaps in a pen of loose rocks. Tentacle monster and sleeping girl was a combination she wasn’t about to tempt fate with.

Shaking that deviant thought away, Jen decided that her new pet needed a name. Spot was an obvious choice, given that the previous blue speckles had condensed into larger spots of color against the mostly grey skin as the mushroom had grown. She rejected the name after a moment as being too cliche, before her attention turned to the piece of mana infused fluorite that was now visible poking through the top of the myconid’s cap. Crystal would make for a nice name, but she didn’t really see the myconid as being female. The coloration was male, and the probing roots enforced the concept. The low intelligence wasn’t technically a masculine trait, but Jen amused herself for a moment by pretending that it was more justification.

Having decided that her creation was a boy-myconid, Jen needed a manly name for it. Toad didn’t quite fit, and Jen couldn’t think of any more famous fungi at the moment. Eventually, she decided to play off the crystal, taking it in a more masculine direction. Rocky was a good pet name, aptly described both the mineral and the intelligence that her new companion possessed, and was a good reference to a character known for being an underdog. Jen figured that that spirit of determination and perseverance would serve her well in the coming days.

Feeling content with her decision, she decided to tell Rocky his new name. The excess of adrenaline still in her body led her to be a bit silly with the actual details though.

“Oh creation of my magic, I have deemed you worthy. Henceforth, you shall be known as: Rocky, first of his name and great in mushroomy power.”

More interesting was the fact that after giving her declaration, the small Identification window that she had yet to dismiss changed, gaining an additional line.

Rocky

Myconid, Lesser

Jen blinked, before making a note to test her ability to add additional information to identification screens. Having a way to store notes or other information would be a fantastic benefit, taking the pressure of Jen to keep track of every new piece of information she learned or hypothesized. She knew she was already beginning to slip, to forget about avenues of research or improvement that she had mentally catalogued to revisit at another time. Even if she could only assign names, she at least would never be at a loss for who she might be talking to. The unpleasantness of calling someone by the wrong name faded in light of her recent experiences, but Jen was still able to see the bright side of her new ability.

Turning her attention back to Rocky, Jen sighed. Having a new pet was nice, but she would much prefer him to be elsewhere, not wandering around the area where she slept and meditated. Being grabbed once by surprise was enough, thank you very much. At the same time, Jen wasn’t confident in her ability to move Rocky in the complete dark. Trying to pick him up while maintaining a light, and somehow keeping him from absorbing the magic without damaging him seemed like an impossible task on the other side of things.

Jen let out another little sigh. She knew what the solution was, no matter how much she was avoiding it. She needed to have a light source that didn’t stay in her hand. That meant turning a mushroom into another beacon.

A quick check showed that while she could force mana into the smaller mushrooms as they were, for whatever reason it lacked the permanency that the larger mushroom had, the light dissipating quickly, as well as generating an equivalent amount of heat as when Jen formed her own light. Reasoning that the smaller mushroom just didn’t have the physical capacity to store the excess mana, Jen gritted her teeth, before digging through the mushrooms to find the biggest one available, meaning less growth required.

A quick check confirmed that she had more mana available than the previous time she had accidentally grown a mushroom, and without any further delays available, Jen got to work.