Death Cap - Thirty-Nine - Interesting Enough to Study

There were two final new hybrids developed from the [Ghoul Button Mushroom] that I found interesting enough to study.

The first of these was the combination with my [Faerie Fire Cap]. The mushroom which had the most magical potency to it.

The result was a rather lumpy mushroom which was on the smaller side. It had a bulbous middle to its stem, which acted as a sort of sac for its spores which could, with a squeeze, be sprayed out of the many little holes on its top.

[Dead Fae’s Lament] - Rare

An inedible mushroom which grows in rings around the location where a fae was buried for its final rest. These mushrooms react to any necrotic magic by releasing their spores, which will light themselves on fire on contact with undead flesh and will disrupt necrotic magics.

The only thing I had to test this one was my [Blight] skill, which did make the mushroom react.

Placing a few of the mushrooms down in a culvert that was out of sight, then spraying [Blight] near them made the mushrooms burst apart, sending scintillating spores through the air. They weren’t too bright, and touching them revealed that they weren’t hot enough to actually burn.

Maybe they’d burn undead flesh but not my still-alive flesh? I had no way of testing that.

I would maybe approach some of Dearil’s people one day. Those priest’s entire goal was to fight the undead, so I imagined that a biological weapon designed to burn zombies and ghouls would be valuable to them.

For me, it was little more than a curiosity. I’d bring some with me into the dungeon, I supposed, in case I ran into any undead, but I hadn’t heard of any in the Ditz Dungeon.

The other interesting combination was with my new healing mushroom. This one was quite the opposite of the previous.

The [Healing Chime] was a mushroom whose effects I couldn’t quite pin down. It was meant to accelerate healing, but I had the impression that that didn’t really do much. It wasn’t a magical cure-all, certainly.

Even healing twice as fast, which would be an impressive boost to one’s healing speed on paper, still meant that a serious wound would take weeks to heal instead of months.

[Healing Chime] - Rare

A small mushroom that accelerates healing when eaten raw.

Combining that with the [Ghoul Button Mushroom] produced an interesting offspring.

[Ghoul Chime Mushroom] - Rare

A mushroom that, when consumed by the undead or grown on their body, will replace lost flesh with a fungal simulacrum.

I had no idea how that would work, and I didn’t have the first clue on how to test it. I took note of it, but chose not to continue growing this one. I had one wall of my farm entirely dedicated to experimenting with hybrids. The other two walls were split between growing interesting and useful mushrooms, and keeping up my production of edible shrooms, which I was only barely able to manage. Space being a premium meant I had to discontinue growing some samples.

Some of the next ones though, they would certainly be replacing some of my mainstays.

The [Healing Chime] had a similar issue with hybridization as the [Ghoul Button Mushroom] did. While the undead mushroom seemed to never work when hybridised with edible mushrooms, the [Healing Chime] just refused to combine with any mushroom with harmful effects.

Once I’d figured out that particular limitation, I went on to try and combine the mushroom with every potential hybridization match and even a few existing hybrids. It combined surprisingly well with most, though the results were often underwhelming.

[Horse Head Mushroom], [Brown Chanterelle] and the hybrid of the two, the [Brown Horse Head], all produced similar results, the greatest of which was the hybrid offspring that I was currently using as my main food source.

[Brown Healing Horse] - Rare

A cultivar of several popular mushroom types. Grows rapidly, and is both nutritious and healthy. Promotes healing and has a soothing effect on the digestive system.

It tasted pretty alright raw. The mushroom was brown, with some white speckles atop it. It was earthy, with a bit of an almost salty aftertaste? It reminded me very faintly of ketchup for some reason.

I obviously tried to cook some with garlic and butter, and the results were quite satisfying. I wasn’t sure if I could sell these though. They were verging on the magical, and I didn’t need people to start spreading rumours about my mushrooms being able to heal stuff. That would just ask people to line up with issues that I couldn’t do anything about.

Still, for private consumption, these were perfect. My mom commented that they tasted interesting, and so I slotted these in to replace my at-home mushroom meals. They grew fast too, which was a bonus. I could, if I focused and spent mana without a care, grow these from mycelium to mushroom between morning and evening.

Since I couldn’t combine the [Healing Chime] with anything lethal like my [Dead Man’s Cough] I ended up going back and trying to combine it with one of the mushrooms that created my favourite mushroom.

That resulted in a strange looking mushroom that was thick and thin, like an upright sausage.

[Puffy Healer] - Rare

An uncommon mushroom which, when squeezed, releases a thin cloud of spores which can reknit broken flesh and assist in healing minor lesions. The resulting clotted skin becomes a vector for the mycelium to grow within.

I didn’t want to test this on myself, but it did have some potential. The problem was the risk inherent in having mushrooms grow out of your skin. That sounded absolutely awful. I took notes about it, but didn’t want to take any risks on myself, and it didn’t seem effective as a strange weapon, not if it required that an opponent be covered in wounds already.

If I could manage to get someone bleeding, then it would be more logical to just finish them off than try something like this.

The only possible exception was if these reacted strangely with any healing effects but... well, it was an idea for later, maybe.

I only had two other hybrids of my [Healing Chime] left. The first was with my [Purple Horse Head] a kind of mushroom I was quietly cultivating for a rainy day, though only in really small quantities.

[Purple Eye Mushroom] - Uncommon

A mushroom which, when eaten raw, will improve the eater’s eyesight.

That was one of the shortest descriptions I’d seen, but maybe it didn’t need to be much longer than that. The utility here was obvious. I ate one to see what would happen--pun intended--and found that very little changed.

Maybe my vision was sharper? I didn’t exactly have the equipment to test it before and after. Then again, my eyesight was one of the few things which weren’t too bad with my young body. The description didn’t say temporary, so it was possible that the healing was somewhat permanent in nature.

I wouldn’t over-consume these, just in case. Too much healing could be as bad as not enough at times. Still, maybe these would prevent me from needing glasses in my old age.

I snorted. As if I’d ever get old enough to have to worry about that.

I expected that combining the [Healing Chime] with some [Blackbottle Night Watcher] would lead to similar results. After all, low-light vision was low-light vision. Instead, I ended up with something entirely different. Maybe it was the added rarity that made it better? I couldn’t tell, but I wasn’t about to complain about the results.

[Healing Bottle] - Rare

A mushroom with potent healing characteristics. When consumed in its raw form, the mushroom will encourage rapid healing in the consumer until the mushroom passes through the digestive system. Spores will grow within the consumer’s faecal matter.

I could do without the last part, but still. The mushroom was about the size of my fist, entirely purple on the outside with a glossy texture, and it was spongy and soft, almost fragile. Squeezing it too much ‘broke’ it, revealing a beige interior.

It tasted surprisingly sweet, like cotton candy, almost, but with a smoky aftertaste. Dirt-flavoured cotton-candy, maybe? It certainly melted in the mouth in a strange way.

The effects on eating it were much more pronounced than eating a [Healing Chime]. I could feel a tingle across my body, and my heart beat a little faster for a while. “I... think that worked?” I asked.

Sir Nibbles raised his head from his blanket-pile. Then made a sort of dismissive grunt.

“Hey, don’t knock it, this stuff might save your skinny badger butt one day,” I said. I plopped the rest of the mushroom away, then got to cleaning. So far, things had gone pretty well.

I was disappointed that I couldn’t weaponize things as much as I wanted, but I’d gotten some decent new mushrooms to play with, and at the end of the day, that’s all I needed to be happy, I think.

***