Death Cap - Twenty-Two - Keeping an Eye on Progress Towards a Better Tomorrow

While my class skills were progressing nicely, my general skills were leaping ahead. I don’t know if it was a matter of greater ease, or just because it was easier to practise most of them in my off time or as a passive thing. In either case, I was levelling those skills faster, though not insanely so.

[Congratulations! Your [Knitting {Common}] Skill has unlocked the [Resizer] Subskill!]

[Resizer]

Your exceptional experience with adjusting and modifying garments allows you to resize them with greater ease.

That was useful, in a sort of tangential way. It wasn’t going to be useful forever though. It basically allowed me to fix my clothes so that they continued to fit with only a few hours of work.

Hey, I was growing. Not fast, but it was happening. I think I might have still been short for my age, but that wasn’t too surprising with the way I’d skipped a few meals.

[Congratulations! Your [Basic Poison Resistance {Common}] Skill has unlocked the [Mana Bleed] Subskill!]

This one had me both giddy and very much not.

[Mana Bleed]

You will naturally leech away the mana from negative magical effects pushed into your body, subsuming it for your own use and weakening the effects.

Most subskills had come from something I’d done or practised, even if it was just once or twice. At the moment, I was dosing myself maybe once a week with some of the weakest poisons I had in tiny amounts.

It had led to stomach troubles, spending more time on the bucket than I wanted, and lots of sweating and some visual hallucinations from one particular mushroom. I didn’t dose myself with the same mushroom twice in a row, that way I left myself more time to heal between effects.

I didn’t need to ruin my kidneys from repeated exposure. Small damage with time to heal wouldn’t lead to long-term permanent damage. Or so I hoped.

This hinted that some of the poisons I’d been taking were magical in nature which... actually, it made sense. I was using my aura to feed the fungi which were growing in my Feronie-blessed farm. Of course they were a little magical.

My next subskill, unlocked from my [Poison Handling Expertise] skill, was a little more optimistic.

[Congratulations! Your [Poison Handling Expertise {Rare}] Skill has unlocked the [Iron Lunged] Subskill!]

[Iron Lunged]

Your body and natural magical affinity are attuned to poisons you have grown and created, conferring a major resistance to aerosolized poisons and a minor resistance to injected and contact poisons.

I was (a little) immune to some of my own poisons! The day I got that subskill I ate a larger-than-usual dose of a poisonous mushroom and spent an hour vomiting my lunch out into a bucket.

That was... actually, probably a good sign. That same dosage pre-[Iron Lunged] would have put me down for a day or two.

I still had to be careful with poisons, and it didn’t help with poisons not of my own devising, so I couldn’t just get rid of [Basic Poison Resistance] yet. Still, I think the two skills were stacking in this instance. Maybe at some point I’d be able to stand in a cloud of my own lethal poisons and breathe it all in like a warm summer breeze. But that wasn’t today.

Disappointingly, my [Social Manipulation] skill hadn’t gotten strong enough to give me a subskill. It was too bad, but it was going to grow a lot more once I got back to selling mushroom skewers.

Name: N/A

Race: Human {Common}

Age: 7 Years

Mana: 32/36

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 One Hundred Thirty-One

- Aura of Growth {Rare} - Level Fifty-Five

> [Shaped Aura]

> [Careful Casting]

- Blight {Epic} - Level Twenty-Two

> [Persistent Death]

- Ritual of Sporemageddon {Legendary} - Level One

- Druid Sight {Uncommon} - Level Twenty-Seven

> [Druid’s Sense]

- Mushroom Magic {Rare} - Level Twenty-Six

> [Super Shroom Zoom]

General Skills - Level One Hundred Thirty-Nine

- Running {Common} - Level Twenty-Eight

> [Surefooted]

- Knitting {Common} - Level Sixty

> [Patterner]

> [Clicky Clacker]

> [Resizer]

- Basic Poison Resistance {Common} - Level Twenty-Two

> [Mana Bleed]

- Social Manipulation {Uncommon} - Level Nine

- Poison Handling Expertise {Rare} - Level Twenty

> [Iron Lunged]

That was some pretty decent growth, I think. I bet there weren’t many seven year olds who had as impressive a set of skills and levels.

That didn’t matter. What I was trying to do didn’t take my age into account.

With a shake of my head, I picked up a satchel full of mushrooms and slung it over my shoulder. “Alright Nibbles, I’m heading out to the dungeon again. Wanna come?”

Nibbles, who had been acting a little nicer in the last week or so since I’d named him, hesitated for a bit before jumping up onto me and scurrying up to my side. He wrapped himself around my neck, which wasn’t as comfortable as I would have thought. His fur was itchy and his little paws ended in nasty claws. Still, he was kind of cute. I knit him a Peruvian-style beanie.

With a sackful of mushrooms on one side and my table and burner on the other, I headed out of the farm just before the crack of dawn. It was a chilly morning, with the air cool enough that every exhale came with a wispy plume of steam.

I didn’t like being up so early, but I needed to set up before the divers really started to work on the dungeon. Well, no, I could have set up at any time, the way their shifts worked there would always be people leaving. I just wanted to spy on the early-morning activity.

I didn’t carry much by way of change, but I did have a few coins to use as bribes for the local Bullies if they poked around before I had time to cook up any mushrooms.

Crossing the city was a bit of a chore. I had to stop a few times to catch my breath. My new [Iron Lunged] skill wasn’t an instant-cure for my unhealthy lungs, and I wasn’t so strong that I could carry everything with ease. My muscles were going to be sore the next day.

Actually, that was something I was planning on fixing soon. Not so much the muscles (though I supposed that I had some free time that I might as well use for exercise) but the lungs. If I made enough money I could stop by one of the big apothecaries to buy something for my lungs.

On arriving at the Ditz dungeon I found it about as busy as I could expect it to be for the hour. Lot of independent groups setting up, a few lazy bullies yawning over drinks they were sharing from metal thermoses and foremen yelling at workers who were clearly still weary from the hour.

I focused on the delvers. They had the good gear and were the ones who really dove deep into the dungeon. Now that I knew a little more about it, I could guess at why the different groups had such different loadouts. Clearly some of them were ready to tackle entirely different sorts of trouble.

There had to be guides or some sort of system in place to tell them what to expect. The delvers had too many members from too many different teams going to too many different parts of the dungeon for them not to have some sort of organisation system in place.

I just had to discover what it was and how it worked, which I realised was a tall order.

In the meanwhile, I found a spot close to where the delvers were set up and placed my table down. I made sure it was out of the way so that no one would bump into me and give me an earful about setting up there, but it was still close enough for the smell to carry.

Nibbles hissed as my burner lit up. “Shuck you, or I won’t give you any of the leftovers,” I warned as I tossed a bit of butter onto the plate and then some chopped garlic.

Soon enough it was sizzling and the air around me stank of garlic. Then I added the first set of skewers down and waited for them to warm up.

It took less than a minute for the first customer to show up. A few coins clinked into the purse tucked under my jumper and I grinned. Things were starting off pretty well.

Of course, City Nineteen being what it was, that’s when I got a surprise, though I wasn’t sure if it was unwelcome.

A group of kids wandered over my way. They were a bit older than I was, and scruffier. I was worried they might be coming for trouble, but I had a few ways to defend myself and if I called the bullies over, they might well side with me.

Then I recognized one of the kids at the same time as they recognized me.

“Uh, hi,” I said.

So much for an easy morning.

***