Everyone Reincarnates as a Dragon or Warrior — I Became a Mushroom and Built an Underground Kingdom!

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Everyone else who gets reincarnated becomes a dragon, or at least a goblin.

[00:00:03]Me? I came back as a mushroom, rooted in the cold, damp, dark of the deep levels.

[00:00:07]No hands, no feet, no [music] eyes. I cursed out whoever was responsible for this in my head, while slimes, lizardfolk, and every kind of weird, ugly monster wandered past me. [music] Me, a tiny mushroom with a level cap of 10. Bottom of the food chain. Any one of them could squash me without breaking stride. But whatever god or cosmic force turned me into a mushroom was at least kind enough to include two extras.

[00:00:26][music] First, a status panel showing my stats, stamped with the title hero, plus a one-time skill selection.

[00:00:32]>> [music] >> Choose one of three. Second, a vague instruction manual that basically said, "Great things are expected of you. Go save the world." [music] I checked my status panel. 10 HP. A slime could sneeze on me and I'd be dead. I stayed quiet for a long moment, then opened the skill selection screen. Option one, accelerated spore breeding. Option two, [music] life detection. Option three, greed, the seventh sin, randomly seizes a skill or permanent buff from a corpse.

[00:00:54]Steal skills from the dead, randomly.

[00:00:56][music] But it means as long as I stay alive and break down enough dead things, I can take their abilities for myself.

[00:01:01]Mushrooms live off decay. This is literally just turning my nature into a cheat code. [music] I picked greed without a second thought. Then came the real problem, staying alive. Those early days, honestly, brutal. [music] A 10 HP mushroom surviving in the deep levels came down to two things. One, mushrooms are boring. Most monsters couldn't be bothered to step on me. Two, things die in dungeons constantly. Dead bugs, dead slimes, dead small monsters.

[00:01:23]I'd quietly [music] spread my mycelium over them in the dark, break them down, absorb them, and wait for a notification. The day I seized heat resistance level one, I nearly shook my cap right off. One measly resistance skill. Back then, it felt like a lifeline. After that, the goal was clear. Claim territory, [music] build a grove, grow my forces, reach the surface. I have no idea how long it took. There's no day or night down here.

[00:01:43]My only clock was how fast my mushrooms grew. Roughly two or three years, and inch by inch, I claimed a territory with my mycelium. Rocky walls on two sides, only a few tunnels up front. Easy to defend, hard [music] to attack. I built a farming zone, a mining zone, a ranching zone, stocked with slimes and armored beetles slaughtered on a schedule to grind skill proficiency, I, [music] Rin, Lord of Mushrooms, had carved out a corner of the dungeon and built a tiny kingdom that would make absolutely no sense to anyone else. One day, [music] I was directing my mushrooms through their work routines when something uncontrolled dropped into the grove, a pink cap, [music] blindingly obvious against all the gray and teal. It knocked over three rows of mushrooms, flattened [music] a mycelium mat, and turned the whole grove into a mess. I had the surrounding mushrooms close in around [music] it, then forced a mycelium connection into the mycelium network. The moment the link opened, the other end [music] exploded. A shriek blasted straight into my consciousness, loud enough to freeze the entire grove.

[00:02:31][music] I pulled up its status panel. I went silent for a full 5 seconds. Inana Sinclair, over 3,000 HP, full element resistance level six, [music] dual element tier four mage. How does a mushroom have a build like that? But then I saw the fixed effects, permanent polymorph, church blessing, mark of vengeance. This wasn't a dungeon born mushroom. This was a human who had been forcibly transformed and dumped down here. I eased the surrounding mushrooms back a little to give it some breathing room. Then stated in the calmest tone I could [music] manage that I had no intention of killing it, and asked it to settle down and talk. It was clearly terrified. Its first reaction was pure defiance, the kind you get from someone who figures they're dead either way and wants to go out with some dignity. Once it understood I wasn't actually going to do anything, it slowly let its guard down and told me everything. Inana, daughter of a duke, lured to Amethyst Dungeon by two traitors from her own household, hit with a permanent polymorph that locked her into mushroom form, then kicked into a crack in the floor that dropped straight to the deep levels. That's how she ended up here. I looked at her status panel again. What a build. Must be nice to have a powerful father. Useful. I'll keep her around. I kept her talking and gathered as much information as I could. This world has nations, races, a church, and humans are currently at war with vampires. The two traitors were almost certainly bought by the enemy. Her father, Duke Amara, is a level 70 powerhouse. The moment he finds out she's missing, he'll move heaven and earth to get her back, which means a ride to the surface is basically guaranteed. I just need to wait for it to show up. That thought made me feel considerably warmer toward this pink mushroom. When she asked how to get back to the surface, I didn't hold anything back. I told her straight, "The only route up is guarded by a level 64 magma fiend. My scout mushrooms had seen it.

[00:04:01]The level gap was so wide the status panel couldn't even display the details.

[00:04:05]Picking a fight with it right now would be suicide." That landed hard. Her cap drooped visibly, probably thinking about what the traders had said, worrying about her father, wanting revenge, and suddenly realizing she was a mushroom with zero combat ability. A lot to process all at once. I didn't have time to deal with her feelings right now.

[00:04:21]First priority, food. I had Nana lie down on a mycelium mat to absorb nutrients through the network. Her cap cycled through several colors of alarm.

[00:04:28]Hunger won in the end. She went quiet for 3 seconds after settling in. Then through the mycelium network I felt it.

[00:04:33]A wave of pure overwhelming contentment, followed by something almost wistful, like she couldn't believe how good it felt. Then came a long stretch of self-scolding. How could she think that?

[00:04:42]Was her brain turning into mushroom, too? I kept my thoughts to myself. When I first became a mushroom, I spent my first week trying to convince myself it wasn't real. Accepting reality takes time. Whatever. After she ate, I gave her a tour of the mushroom grove.

[00:04:53]Farming zone, mining zone, ranching zone, division of labor zone, the whole thing. Halfway through I noticed she had completely crashed. She was still processing the concept of a mushroom running a ranching operation. When we reached the mining zone, she spotted the purple crystals embedded in the rock walls. Her whole cap lit up. She identified them as mana crystals instantly, listing off their uses.

[00:05:11]Crafting magic items, powering spell formations, serving as casting materials. Her voice thick with genuine grief at seeing such valuable resources being used as fertilizer. I showed her another use for mana crystals. Stuff one into a mushroom pit, flood it with mana, push it past the limit, boom. The blast wave sent her tumbling. She climbed back up, looking like she'd just had her entire worldview detonated, and proceeded to explain in detail the grade and market value of the crystal I had just blown up, making it very clear that I had just used the primary ingredient of a silver rank staff as a disposable bomb. I didn't see the problem. I'd been down here 2 or 3 years. Not knowing mana crystals had monetary value? Completely fair. Even if I'd known, there's nowhere down here to spend money, and regretting it now wouldn't unexplode it. What actually caught my attention was what she said next. Maybe she could channel spells through a mana crystal, she said, bypassing the limitations of a mushroom body. Every strand of mycelium I had stood on end. Dual element tier four mage. I had no magic. She did. I immediately retrieved my finest grade A mana crystal, perfectly clear, as long as an arm, the kind I'd been casually sticking in the dirt as fertilizer, and had a mushroom carry it over to her. The look on her face said she had never seen anything so beautiful entire life. I struck while the iron was hot and offered her the crystal in exchange for helping me hunt monsters. She agreed almost instantly. Give someone something they truly want, and it speaks louder than any words. The first time she cast bog bind through the grade A crystal, it sank a test mining mushroom into the floor. An ice blade carved through a level four chitin shell three quarters of the way before stopping. The bone deep cold and the far greater than expected power made me file away one quiet note, future plans can now include her magic. Not long after, I decided to deal with a problem I'd been putting up with for too long. A swarm of flame midges kept harassing the border of the mushroom grove. Mosquito-shaped, a little bigger than a mushroom, average level 20, flying, evasive, pack hunters, and they treated stray mushrooms like snacks. I'd been putting up with them for a long time. I'd kept them around because killing them was grinding my heat resistance. That resistance was maxed out now. No more reason to keep them alive, and it would give Inana some real combat experience. I assembled 120 mushrooms, 40 cannon units, 40 slime spray units, 20 hallucination units, 20 heavy labor units, lined up in clean formation along the grove's border.

[00:07:15]Inana stared at them in silence for a long time, absorbing the reality of a disciplined mushroom army standing at attention. Then she very carefully asked if the target was an earth boar. When I said flame midges, her cap visibly relaxed. She fell in and followed. We ran into a few flame midge scouts on the way. Inana's first instinct was to fire.

[00:07:31]Her ice blade went straight into the ceiling, missing completely. I told her to conserve her mana. She pulled back, a little embarrassed. The scouts turned and fled to report back. Inana asked if we should chase them. I told her to let them go. That was exactly what I wanted.

[00:07:43]Taking them all at once beats picking them off one by one. At the flame midge nest, hundreds of them swarmed under a steam-filled dome. Their abdomens flashed orange, and they came straight at us. Inana couldn't hold back. She fired off a water serpent first, grazed one, and it just shook it off and kept flying. I didn't scold her, just reminded her to save it. Wait for the right moment. The slime spray units doused the front ranks, the hallucination units followed with a fog wall, and the ground became a death trap for the midges. The fight turned into a grind. Inana started finding her rhythm.

[00:08:11]Targets packed so tight she barely needed to aim. Ice blade, water serpent, alternating, dropping them one after another. She started talking more, her cap shifting colors with excitement. It was her first real kill in actual combat, nothing like a supervised hunt.

[00:08:24]I could feel the adrenaline through the mycelium network, but while she was riding that high, a flame midge broke through our fire line and skewered one of her guard mushrooms. She went quiet immediately. The lesson landed without a word from me. She asked urgently what to do. I told her to switch to radiance flash. I wasn't actually sure it would work, just a hunch. The deep levels are pitch black year-round. Flame midges have eyes, maybe they're light sensitive. The result was better than I expected. The moment radiance flash hit, the front rank midges reacted like they'd been struck in a vital point.

[00:08:50]Instant disorientation, crashing into each other, some tumbling straight down into the hallucination fog below. Inana and I both paused, then realized at the same moment just how effective this was.

[00:08:59]Flash on, flash off, flash on, flash off. My mushrooms navigate by mycelium, light doesn't touch them, but the flame midges broke down fast, their numbers collapsing under the strobing. The last survivors remembered what fear felt like and scattered. The nest was empty. Inana sank into the mycelium mat, mana spent, not saying much, but through the network I could feel she was still buzzing, like someone who just seen a real battlefield for the first time. The heavy labor mushrooms moved in to collect the bodies. The cannon units dumped their remaining mana into the larva pool.

[00:09:26]Clean sweep. Just as I was preparing to pull back, Inana suggested there might be something at the bottom of the pool keeping the temperature up. She said we should check. I acknowledged the possibility, but I can't swim. A waterlogged mushroom just bobs there, completely immobile. I'd tested this.

[00:09:40]Before I could figure out a solution, Enna jumped in with a splash. Right, she has aquatic adaptation level six. I'd forgotten. She climbed back out a moment later, a water serpent carrying an orange glowing shard behind her, radiating heat, turning the air around it to steam. Strange thing was, the shard had a status panel. Living things have status panels, dead things don't.

[00:09:58]That was everything I'd learned since arriving in this world, and yet, artifact, sunstone shard. That was it.

[00:10:04]No description, no stat breakdown, just those words. I stared at it for a long time. We just wiped a swarm of level 20 mosquitoes and got an artifact drop. Is this drop rate system broken? Whatever, pocket it, study it later. Enna asked if I knew what it was. I said no, but it looked useful, good for keeping the mushrooms warm. I had a heavy labor unit wrapped in mud and carried it back. She had no objection, she just watched the shard get carried away, and there was something in her expression, a quiet grief she didn't put into words.

[00:10:29]Meanwhile, far above on the surface, another group was losing their minds over the Enna situation. Duke Amara learned his daughter was missing and crushed the arm of his chair with his bare hand in rage. He nearly abandoned the front lines to go himself. His butler talked him down. Instead, he commissioned the nearest diamond rank party, Silverthorn, to enter the dungeon and find her. The reward he offered was an entire city. Silverthorn's four members debated it at a tavern for a long time. Two votes in favor, one against, one undecided, and in the end decided to take the gamble. Down in the dungeon, I knew none of this, didn't need to. The ride to the surface would come. I just had to wait. With the flame mages handled, it was time for the real objective, hunting an earth boar. Earth boars are massive, armored in solid rock, level 45 and above, built to superheat stone until it crumbles and drill through it with rotating mouth parts. Standard field guidance says you need a full gold rank party to take one down safely. What I wanted was its skill, magma boar. Get that, and I could tunnel a secret passage straight through the rock to the upper levels. No detour through the magma fiend's territory required. I'd tried once before, took heavy losses and walked away with nothing. The reason was simple, when an Earth borer starts losing, it drills underground. Thick HP, fast burrower, impossible to pin down. This time was different. I had Inanna's bog bind.

[00:11:39]Earth borers hate soft ground. Once their legs sink in, they can't move.

[00:11:43]That's the only way to actually keep one in place. For this operation, I went all in. 400 mushrooms, 100 over the grove's normal operational limit, pushed to maximum capacity. Every mana crystal I'd been using as fertilizer was dug up and repurposed as bomb material. Mana collection efficiency dropped by half, and it wouldn't recover anytime soon. 10 specialized self-destruct mushrooms packed full of crystals, grade A among them, designated for the opening strike.

[00:12:06]This time, I was betting everything.

[00:12:07]Before we moved out, Inanna kept pacing in place, cap drooping, bringing up the Earth borer's level versus her own level over and over. The subtext was clear.

[00:12:15]The gap was insane, and she felt completely unsafe. I reminded her she'd already received her payment. She reached up and touched the grade A mana crystal sitting on top of her cap, paused, didn't say no. I'd paid too well. She couldn't bring herself to back out. I also threw in a bonus. Told her if things went truly sideways, she had full permission to run, and I wouldn't take the crystal back. Her cap dipped in a nod. Agreement reached. Giving her an escape option wasn't charity. If a retreat was necessary, it beat losing her for nothing. Mushrooms can be regrown. Crystals can be re-mined. A magic-capable ally who actually listens, where would I find another one of those?

[00:12:46]The route was much longer than the Flame midge job, but we didn't run into anything too troublesome along the way.

[00:12:51]Just one large black and white spider that lost its head to Inanna's tracking ice blade. Her aim had improved massively since the start. After reaching level 30 and getting elemental favor, even an off-target ice blade gets pulled back on course by the elemental spirit, a built-in tracking system. The days of blades disappearing into rock walls were over. Our destination was a cavern chewed apart by Earth borers.

[00:13:10]Drafty walls, tunnel openings everywhere, more new ones than the last time I'd scouted it. I positioned the self-destruct mushrooms and mana crystals in the center of the most intact section of the floor, with cannon units spread out around the perimeter. I had Inanna hold position at the tunnel entrance we came through. Easy access to fall back if needed. Then I began slowly feeding mana into the crystals. The mana pulses radiating off so many crystals at once were thick enough that even Inna, with no mana sense at all, scrunched her cap and whispered that the air felt suffocating. I told her that was normal.

[00:13:40]Don't worry about it. She stared at the pile of crystals in silence. Still grieving the great A1's being used as bombs most likely. In her world, any one of them could be refined into something worth a fortune. I pretended not to notice her expression. Some opportunistic monsters showed up first.

[00:13:54]Black and white spiders, assorted weird little things, all cleared in a few shots by the perimeter cannons. No trouble. A level 35 minotaur also wandered in. Classic monster, smarter than average. It took one long look at our setup from a distance and disappeared into another tunnel. Any other day I'd have considered making contact. Fellow intelligent creature and all that. But not today. Let it go.

[00:14:12]Finally, vibration rolled up from underground. Pebbles bounced across the floor. Gravel rained from several tunnel openings. One unlucky mushroom got crushed into my mycelium by a falling rock. The operation's first casualty.

[00:14:23]Inna's anxiety came through the mycelium network loud and clear. Asking when to cast bog bind. Could she cast it now?

[00:14:30]Her whole consciousness a coiled spring of barely contained panic. I told her to stay calm. Wait for my signal. My own voice had shifted when I said it. Not from nerves, but from something I couldn't keep down. Pure excitement. I'd been waiting for this fight too long.

[00:14:42]The floor on one side of the cavern exploded downward. A massive earth borer erupted from below and 20 mushrooms vanished into its jaws without a trace.

[00:14:50]Level 49. The right one. The borer curved midair and dove straight for the crystal pile at the center. Every mushroom held position. I held Inna back too. Not yet. Not quite yet. Mana surged wildly into the crystals. An overload tremor rang through the cavern. The moment the pulse hit its peak, the earth borer's jaws came down and swallowed the self-destruct mushrooms and every last crystal. I counted one, two, boom. The detonation tore through the earth borer from the inside out. Meters of stone armor shattered and blew outward. Flying rock hit our lines hard. We took real losses. The earth borer's entire maw was gone, but it wasn't dead. It thrashed.

[00:15:23]Its massive body slammed into the cavern walls, and its remaining legs began clawing furiously at the floor. It was going to dig its way out. My command detonated into Inanna's mind like a cracked shout. Bog bind, now. Her pink cap snapped. In an instant, the floor beneath the Earth Boar churned into a deep brown glutinous bog, thick and heavy like the weight of the world pressing down on that one creature. Its legs sank in one by one. It couldn't pull them back out. Half a second of silence in the cavern. I felt Inanna's emotion through the network. A trembling mix of shock and exhilaration, like she hadn't actually believed it would work.

[00:15:54]400 cannon mushrooms locked onto the struggling half-submerged Earth Boar and began charging simultaneously. We had this fight more than half won. All that was left was finishing it. I watched the Earth Boar's HP drain bar by bar on the status panel. Victory was right there. I was already calculating how much mana I'd extract once it was broken down. The ground shook again, from a different direction. No time to think. I slammed the command into Inanna's mind as fast as I could. Run back. She didn't fully react. Got two steps back. The next second, a second Earth Boar erupted from the ground directly in front of her. Its protruding rock armor swept across her like an uppercut and launched her entire body into the tunnel behind her.

[00:16:29]Inanna's signal in the mycelium network went dead. I pulled up her status panel fast. 400 HP gone. Not dead.

[00:16:35]Unconscious. Lucky she had over 3,000 HP. That hit would have reduced any other mushroom to fragments. I immediately dispatched four mushrooms, two to carry the unconscious Inanna, two for the great ape crystal on the ground, and pulled them back deep into the tunnel. Inanna was safe for now. The battlefield was another story. The second Earth Boar crashed through the cavern unchecked, grinding down huge numbers of mushrooms. Without Inanna maintaining the bog bind, the ground began to harden. The first Earth Boar's burrowing speed visibly picked up. No time to figure out what drew the second one. I pushed all remaining fire onto the wounded one, trying to zero its HP before it escaped. It wasn't enough. The barely alive Earth Boar drilled back underground on its last sliver of HP, leaving behind a collapsed cavern and countless mushroom remains. Roll call after pulling back. 23 mushrooms and one very confused, recently conscious Inana, that was all that survived the hunt.

[00:17:20]Huge numbers had gone dark during the cave-in and the second boar's rampage beyond recovery, written off. The retreat was clean, no additional attacks, probably because the mana shockwaves from the fight had scared off everything in the area. Small mercies.

[00:17:33]Once Inana came to and pieced together what happened, she wasn't particularly upset. In her view, we just organize another hunt. It couldn't be two earth boars every time, right? She was even visibly pleased to confirm one thing, the grade A mana crystal on her cap carried back by the mushrooms the entire time she was out. Officially hers now.

[00:17:49]The way she understood it, she'd earned her payment by getting knocked out. I looked at her satisfaction and said nothing about how much this operation had actually cost. I had bet the entire mushroom grove, every fertilizing crystal, every combat mushroom, every resource I'd accumulated over two or three years. One battle and I had nothing left to show for it. That earth boar, one more hit, just one. There's no lending down here, but I still have the grove itself. That counts for something, I guess. While I was quietly grieving over the wreckage, something new stirred outside. Silverthorn had arrived. I picked up their approach early through my scattered tunnel mushrooms. Four people, lowest level 52, highest 58.

[00:18:23]Every status panel showing a well-built high-level skill set. I couldn't understand a word they were saying.

[00:18:28]Communicating with Inana through the mycelium network was direct mind to mind, no language involved. But hearing actual spoken words from this world out loud, complete blank. I didn't need to understand them to read their intentions from their behavior. They were following a tracking signal straight toward the mushroom grove. 99% certain they were here for Inana. Whether they were here to kill her or rescue her, I glanced at their levels and gear, then at my 23 surviving mushrooms and rapidly dismissed any ideas about getting in the way. Even if I deployed my absolute strongest mushroom, there was no winning this fight. Better to watch and see what they actually wanted. When Silverthorn's four members reached the center of the mushroom grove, what they found was a pink mushroom, enormous mana crystal on its cap, mana surging off its body, posed as if it was ready to explode at any second. I'd set two guard mushrooms on each side of her. The presence was convincing. If a grade A crystal that size actually detonated, it would not be a small explosion. Al let clearly understood the threat. She moved first, fastest, and was immediately pinned by a spell from her mage teammate, locked in place. Someone on this team had a cool head. What happened next confirmed their intentions without any doubt. Nova took a knee in front of Enna and performed a proper noble's bow. I didn't know what he said, but Enna's reaction through the mycelium network said everything. First, a blank pause, then something she couldn't hold back. Joy and grief tangled together and pushing up all at once. Her father had actually sent someone for her. She had never brought up what the traders had said to her, but she'd been carrying it. Her father was fighting a war. She'd been turned into a worthless mushroom. Would anyone actually come? That fear finally hit the ground and dissolved. In the commotion, the four escort mushrooms quietly set down the crystal they'd been carrying.

[00:19:58]It was the second grade A mana crystal I'd sent over, her severance pay. She'd done her job faithfully, and that last mission nearly got her killed by a falling earth boar. That deserved something. At the same time, I sent a message through the mycelium network.

[00:20:10]Don't mention me to these people, and good luck out there. She didn't respond right away. After a long pause, what came back was a feeling, confused, and something that didn't quite have a name.

[00:20:20]She probably wanted to ask why I wasn't coming with them. I didn't give her one.

[00:20:23]The reason was simple enough. I don't trust adventurers. I especially don't trust powerful nobles like a duke. I don't know what I'm worth to someone with that kind of power, and even if I went along, I'd just be the duke's daughter's pet mushroom. And if Duke Amara ever figured out there was something to gain from getting rid of that pet, what would he choose?

[00:20:38]Hypothetical, but I will never stake my survival on someone else's goodwill. Not following Enna out the front door didn't mean I wasn't going to tail them. This diamond rank party was a ready-made path clearer. I watched them disappear into the tunnel, then quietly followed.

[00:20:49]Sunstone shard and the grade S mana crystal tucked under the shell of my strongest mushroom, 40 combat mushrooms, the only ones left, into the tunnel. The mushroom grove waited quietly behind me, the place that had kept me alive through the worst of it. Its job was done. I hadn't been following long when I noticed the direction was wrong. This path was heading toward the magma fiend's lair, that level 64 obstacle that had blocked my path to the upper levels for years, the one I still didn't dare face head-on. Through my scattered surveillance mushrooms, I confirmed something. There had been no recent combat near the Magma Fiend's lair, which meant this adventurer party had most likely come down directly through that territory, which raised one question. Had the Magma Fiend come back?

[00:21:24]The answer came fast. At the end of the tunnel, the lava pool erupted. Thick red waves heaved on both sides. A wall of smoke and heat rolled forward. A roar that was nothing close to human shook the entire cavern. It was back. I shrank into the shadows, keeping my true body completely out of sight, and watched a 10-m tall lava colossus pull itself out of the molten rock. A ring of smaller lava golems leaping up around it. Three Silverthorn members, Nova, Gar, and Evan, were cut off at the tunnel entrance. I ran the level gap in my head. The odds did not look good for them. Then Evan did something that surprised me. He took a grade A mana crystal and slotted it directly into the socket in his abdomen. I'd heard of this, information picked up from tavern gossip back when I still had scouts up there, but seeing it in person was another thing. Drawing power this way multiplies output several times over compared to a normal staff. The cost is mana slamming directly into your own nervous system. The pain doesn't need explaining. He cast anyway. Full power from the first hit. A frost ring expanded outward from all three of them, freezing the ground, locking the golems in place, and barely managing to solidify the surging lava wave. But it was only buying time. The Magma Fiend was already closing on the tunnel entrance. Just as I thought the three of them were going to be sealed in, Nova reached into his coat and pulled out a small branch with two tiny green shoots growing from it. Artifact, Life Thorn Core, damaged. Another artifact. He poured massive amounts of mana into it along with his own life force. Visibly, he shrank, cheeks hollowing fast, aging 10 years in seconds. Then he aimed the branch at a hairline crack in the Magma Fiend's chest armor. Just a crack, but the artifact found it. One green shoot became a flash of light, drove through the rock shell, and shattered the molten core inside the Magma Fiend's chest. The entire colossus crashed down, falling across the edge of the lava pool with one last dying cry. I didn't move. That creature had blocked my way for years, the one I'd planned to bypass with Magma Bore, planned to challenge once I was strong enough, the final obstacle in every plan I'd ever made, and it died just like that, from a crack. Probably took that damage somewhere outside while it was away. I stayed in place for a long time, absorbing that fact. Level is not everything, and an exposed weakness is always fatal, no matter how powerful the opponent. The three Silverthorn members collected most of the molten core fragments before the body fully cooled, then moved quickly in the direction Owlette had gone. Once they were gone, I came out from cover and sifted through the scattered rock armor until I found a fist-sized remnant of the molten core, roughly a tenth of the complete thing. I tucked it under the shell, felt the remarkable heat it was still radiating, and kept following.

[00:23:35]Level 10, the Stone Pillar Forest, was the strangest place I had ever seen.

[00:23:39]Countless natural stone columns split the entire level into two worlds stacked on top of each other. The upper half belonging to winged wind serpents, the lower half a hunting ground for wolfkin.

[00:23:48]Following the trail Silverthorn had left saved me considerable trouble. No direct confrontations the whole way. Midway through, I passed a hidden channel cut inside the rock wall. Through a small gap, I watched a wind serpent use pure airflow control to drag away a fang beast the size of a brown bear. A creature with no claws hauling something that large using nothing but air currents. My interest in airflow sense went up considerably. Wrong time to make a move though. Filed it away. It didn't stay quiet. Wolf howls ahead.

[00:24:12]Silverthorn had run into something. I moved out of the hidden channel and spotted Gar and Owlette being swarmed from a distance. Silverthorn was blocking and pulling back steadily through the chaos. Inana was working the edge of the fight, letting elemental favor handle her aim, firing water serpents into the press. Actually helping. The overall situation was under control. They were retreating, but in order. Target the stairway entrance to level nine. On the final stretch, Gar unleashed a wide-range knockback skill that sent every wolfkin around him flying. The group pulled back into the tunnel fast. The wolfkin chased to the entrance and stopped. Not one of them crossed the threshold. So, that was the territorial instinct rule. Dungeon native species don't cross their own level boundary, written into them like code. While the wolfkin were still there and hadn't scattered, I made my move. No signal, just go. My strongest mushroom folded into a ball, rolling charge level five activated, and I rolled straight for the tunnel entrance. 40 mushrooms opened fire behind me, hammering out a path by force. One bold Greyfur Wolfkin charged through the fire, swung and missed, got a face full of rolling mushroom, hit the ground, and was immediately struck by seven or eight cannon shots. It was done. I made it into the tunnel, safe. The 40 mushrooms were not so lucky. No rolling charge for them. They held position while the Wolfkin turned back. 40 against 12. They didn't last long. All gone. One level and I'd burned through all of them. I really hope the rest of the way wouldn't cost this many mushrooms per floor.

[00:25:25]Level nine was the most revolting place I had ever seen. Tumors everywhere.

[00:25:29]Every monster looked like a failed genetics experiment. Wet, bloody, wrong in every way. I'm a mushroom with no sense of smell, and I still had a very clear idea of what this level must have smelled like. The route went smoothly enough. Silverthorn rested on this level for a while, and I sheltered in their shadow. The trouble started at level eight. When I reached level eight, Silverthorn's trail completely vanished.

[00:25:47]In front of me stood a stone-tiled hall, styled like ancient architecture, with four glowing spell formations spread across the floor. Inanna's signal and mycelium network cut out at the same moment. The party had already picked a formation and stepped in. Gone. I was alone with four options and no information. I wasn't about to step blindly into something that was obviously a trap. I only have one true body. One wrong step and there's no next time. I decided to fall back to level nine, grow a fresh batch, and probe the formations slowly. The moment I turned around, one of them lit up. Three unfamiliar adventurers stepped out of it, and we locked eyes. Less than half a second of mutual surprise. They attacked. I dodged. What followed was a draining brawl that burned through most of my mana. All three were above level 40, and their teamwork was tight. Every trick I had got shut down fast.

[00:26:29]Hallucination spores killed by antidotes, digestive slime blown apart by a wind burst, cannon shots dodged or blocked with ease, my escape route sealed off by an ice wall. Just as things were getting genuinely bad, I found an opening. The mage hit a gap between casts. I cut hard and dove into the formation on the right. The teleport light rose. The scene snapped to something else entirely. I hadn't even registered where I'd landed when an iron arrow caught up with me and punched straight through the rear of my strongest mushroom. Half my HP gone in one shot. Fortunately, my true body wasn't there, just a surface wound. The three adventurers didn't follow. It was a one-way formation. They likely knew the risk of coming through blind. They almost got Hero Killer as an achievement. Where I landed was a small stone chamber that made me stop completely. The mana in the air was so thick it was almost drinkable. The pulse radiating out from the pool at the center was denser than the entire mushroom grove running at full collection capacity, like swimming in pure mana. There was also a chest here.

[00:27:19]Non-native creature detected. Access to chest denied. The familiar invisible barrier. I pressed against it and waited. Hero title recognized.

[00:27:26]Restriction lifted. That title gave me greed, removed the dungeon level restriction, and now it's unlocking chests, too. I'd assumed the hero title was basically spent after giving me greed. Turns out it keeps coming up. I kicked open the stone lid. Inside was a teal high-collar cloak, clearly designed for a human. On a mushroom, half of it dragged on the ground, and the collar got flattened into a ring by my cap.

[00:27:45]Status panel showed plus five agility and an activation ability that generated two phantom doubles. Free gear, no complaints. The real prize was the mana pool. I took my true body out from under the shell, settled it at the pool's edge, let the mycelium spread slowly, and started collecting. Time to rest here a while. Food, water, mana, everything. Consider it the first real vacation since I fell into this dungeon.

[00:28:04]Life in the chest room was comfortable, just incredibly boring. I drained the mana pool clean over time, and my level climbed steadily to 47. Then I broke down the molten core fragment I'd salvaged, gained another level, and seized a skill from inside it, self-destruct level three. No more needing mana crystals to make self-destruct units. The chest also refreshed automatically after a while and produced a magic ring that could cast Ice Lance three times, roughly on par with my cannon mushrooms. Completely useless to me. I grew another 40 mushrooms, equipped each one with five to seven skills, and had them all blast the stone door simultaneously. Nothing moved. The chest room was reinforced, couldn't be broken. Self-destruct the door? I didn't dare. I might take myself out with it. So, I just waited. Waited for the chest to refresh. Waited for someone to open the door from the outside. While I was counting days in the chest room, a man named Dilon was making a very dangerous decision on the outside. Stillwind town was the closest settlement to Amethyst Dungeon, built up on dungeon resources with an adventurer's guild branch and a constant flow of hunters and traders. But the town's most recognizable landmark wasn't its high-grade mana crystals or its monster materials. It was a place called the Rotting Willow Tavern. The drinks were famously terrible. People said you could kill a walking mushroom just by splashing the stuff on it, and the owner watered it down more than he poured. One copper coin a cup. That made it the gathering place of every bottom-rung adventurer in town. That's where Dilon found an old contact, a middleman everyone called Chubs. When Dilon pushed through the door, Chubs didn't show much surprise, just looked him over. Compared to 7 years ago, Dilon had aged hard. The calluses were almost gone. Whatever skill he'd once made his living with had clearly rusted away to nothing. Dilon skipped the small talk, asked Chubs directly if he was still running that particular operation, and pushed a bag of silver coins across the table. Chubs instinctively scanned the room before dropping his voice to an angry hiss, telling him to watch his mouth. Then he refused. Not because he didn't have the goods, but because he could see what state Dilon was in. Sending him in like this was sending him to die. Dilon went quiet for a moment, then reached over and grabbed Chubs by the collar. His eyes were shot through with red, and they held the look of someone who had run out of road. Chubs didn't move, just looked back at him. Dilon was the one who let go first. He folded, voice dropping low, and told him the truth.

[00:30:05]His daughter had contracted the blood curse on a border mission. The blood curse was the vampire's cruelest weapon.

[00:30:10]It didn't kill outright. It transformed the victim slowly and painfully into a blood ghoul, a creature that kept its memories but couldn't suppress the urge to feed, even on the people it loved most. The only cures were a church bishop performing the ritual in person, or 50 gold coins worth of blood cure serum. Both were out of reach for someone like Dilon. What Dilon was after was five packets of slumber dust, a substance used to paralyze parasite trees so their seeds could be harvested.

[00:30:32]Parasite seeds were controlled, illegal material used in certain mind-affecting substances. Illegal meant high profit, and because of how they had to be harvested, very few people knew the method. Delon's plan was to go into level five alone, harvest as many seeds from the swamp as he could, and sell them for enough money to save Bella.

[00:30:48]Chubbs knew Delon was probably going to die in there in his current state. He also knew that a father watching his daughter slowly turn into a blood ghoul was not a man who could be stopped. In the end, Chubbs took the coin bag and quietly slipped in two extra packets, saying it was on account of old friendship. With enough luck, one trip would be all he needed. Delon closed his fist around the packets and left the tavern quickly. Chubbs picked up his terrible cup of watered-down drink, took a sip, and sighed. Level five swamp. Mud water seeped between his fingers as Delon pressed himself against the rock wall. The puncture wound in his abdomen made every step feel like spending the last of something that couldn't be refilled. He had failed, and fast. He hadn't managed to get the slumber dust on that lone parasite tree before it spotted him. Now he was badly wounded, his weapon gone somewhere, and more parasite trees were converging on his position from a distance, drawn by some signal. He pushed down the metallic taste rising in his throat, and said his daughter's name quietly, Bella. Sharp and thoughtful. Already silver rank at her age. A future that should have left her worthless father far behind, so he couldn't die here. Four packets of slumber dust left. Still a chance.

[00:31:47]Except the way forward was now blocked by a solid stone wall, and the way back had been sealed off by the pale creeping roots of five parasite trees. With nowhere left to go, he grabbed the climbing vines hanging down the wall, thinking to climb, and pulled the whole mass down with him, revealing a stone door that had been hidden behind it. A hidden room. Delon had no energy left to feel lucky. He felt along the wall until he found a protruding trigger stone and pressed it, praying there was something on the other side that could keep him alive. The stone door opened. I had been waiting in there for who knows how long.

[00:32:15]The moment the door opened from the outside, light fell in and landed directly on my true body. I got less than a second to appreciate it. Forty mushrooms snapped into formation and sealed the doorway. Outside the door, a badly wounded adventurer slumped against the stone frame, a puncture wound through his abdomen, HP dropping at a slow and steady rate. Further out, five parasite trees' pale root tendrils were still creeping forward. This adventurer hadn't been looking for a door. He'd been chased here. Whatever the reason, he opened the door and let me out. Fair exchange, I cleared the parasite trees.

[00:32:44]We were even. The problem was he was dying. Puncture wound HP bleeding out slowly on the status panel. If left alone, he wouldn't last long. I had no healing skills. Mushrooms were expendable by nature. If one breaks, you patch it with mycelium and move on.

[00:32:56]Wait. I looked at the remains of the parasite trees I just taken down and at their skill panels. Maybe, just maybe, mycelium could patch a person, too. I had my mushrooms drag both the adventurer and the parasite tree remains into the chest room. Then I started breaking down the trees as fast as I could, burning through a significant amount of mana to get Greed, the seventh sin, triggered. Skill seized. Fungal Merge, level one. My true body spread spores across the wound. With mana feeding through it, the mycelium slowly merged with flesh and blood, sealing the injury and restoring some of his HP. And so I did end up patching a person with mycelium. The human now temporarily connected to the mycelium network, registered as something I couldn't quite categorize. Not entirely human, but definitely not a mushroom. I had a persistent that the purity of my organization had taken a hit. Before he came to, he dreamed a pitch-black forest. He held a torch and called his daughter's name, searching. His voice growing more frantic with every shout.

[00:33:47]Then he found her, Bella, leaning against a tree, covered in blood, smiling faintly, saying one word, "Dad."

[00:33:52]When he pulled her into his arms, her hands wrapped around his neck. Her eyes opened, crimson. She whispered that she was so hungry. Dylan jolted awake and gasped. He took a moment to confirm he was alive, then looked up and saw Mushroom walking away from him. The chest room, the open stone lid, parasite tree remains across the floor. He pieced it together slowly. Something had sealed the wound in his abdomen. No pain, but when he saw what it was, something shifted inside him. Mycelium, with a tiny mushroom growing out of it. He'd seen this before, on people taken by parasite trees. Those people lost their minds afterward, turned into walking husks. But his mind was clear, and he wasn't restrained. He turned slowly, looking at the mushrooms around him.

[00:34:28]None of them threatening. Then at the parasite tree remains, seeds still hanging from them. He didn't know what the mushrooms intended, but only one thing was certain right now. He needed to take those seeds out, sell them, and save Bella. What happened to him after that didn't matter. He crawled to the nearest remains and carefully picked the seeds off one by one, tucking them against his chest. The surrounding mushrooms made no move to stop him. He collected every last seed in the room.

[00:34:49]Then he stood, holding what he had, and walked toward the stone door. Before stepping out, he looked back at the chamber. The mushrooms were the same as before, as if nothing had happened.

[00:34:56]"Strange," he thought. Then he stepped out. I watched him disappear into the dim tunnel. I hadn't said a single word to him the entire time, even though he was still connected to the mycelium network. Why he'd come to level five, who he was risking everything to harvest those seeds for. Through the network I'd caught something, a faint feeling, but I didn't look closer. That was his business. I took a walk through of the area around the chest room with my mushrooms, hunted a few things for nutrients, and used the monster levels to confirm my current location was around level five. The level eight warp maze made no sense. It dropped me from level eight directly to level five.

[00:35:26]There were probably formations in there that could throw you to level 10 or even the deep levels. That place needed to be approached very carefully from now on.

[00:35:32]Helping him was the right call. That didn't mean I trusted him. The mycelium inside Delon was positioned at a tipping point right now. If I chose to, I could take over at any moment, but that would be the complete opposite of why I'd helped him in the first place. Let him go. He opened the door and let me out. I saved his life and left him a room full of seeds. That was more than enough repayment. As for where to build the new mushroom grove, the swamp turned out to be an unexpectedly good fit. From what I'd seen moving through it, the terrain genuinely suited me. Adventurers hate swamps, slow going, easy to get stuck.

[00:36:00]But mushrooms are different. Light on their feet, nearly as mobile here as on dry ground, and my true body could be hidden directly beneath the swamp surface. Excellent concealment. The downside was the locals. The parasite trees were a serious problem. I underestimated them during the first encounter. A patrol through the area made it clear. They like to swarm, and when they did, they came with everything, all the skills and magic left behind by their previous hosts. A level 36 or higher mage class threat could appear from anywhere on the battlefield. I took some real losses learning that. The returns were modest.

[00:36:29]Parasite trees themselves had dull skill sets, and breaking down their hosts didn't yield much either. But, one principle didn't change. Before building here, this area had to be cleared. This was the first time since arriving in this world that I had truly set foot in the dungeon's middle levels. A real step forward. The new mushroom grove would be built right here.