Chapter 1: Mushroom Farmer |
985.M30, the 985th year of the 30th millennium, or 29985 AD.
Segmentum Solar, Hive World Epimet (Epiphyte).
Lower Hive, Eighth District, loading platform.
Inside a train car waiting to be loaded, several workers hid in a corner out of the overseer's sight to rest.
A taciturn boy walked into the car and set down the Metal Box in his hands.
Though panting from exhaustion, the boy ignored the slacking workers and made no complaints.
The workers in the corner watched him leave, exchanging glances and snickering.
"What a foolish kid."
"With him around, the rest of us have it so much easier."
At five o'clock Terra time, the last crate of cargo was loaded onto the train, marking the end of the day's physical labor.
The overseer walked over to tally the goods. He pulled out a stack of plastic cards and handed them to the loading crew's foreman.
"Take it. This is today's pay—twenty ration cards per person. There's another trainload to move tomorrow morning. Be here on time; don't be late."
"Yes, boss. I'll remember."
The foreman slipped five ration cards into the overseer's pocket with a fawning smile.
"A little token of respect from the boys. Make sure you save us a plum job tomorrow."
The overseer grunted softly, quite satisfied, and walked away with his hands clasped behind his back.
The foreman waved his subordinates over.
"Come, come, gather around. Twenty ration cards each. Except for you, Lino. You only get ten."
The foreman slapped the ration cards against the boy's chest, speaking in a profound, earnest tone.
"Lino, after your father died, we didn't give his job away. We let you take it on, purely out of respect for him. You're still young, and you don't have anyone else to feed at home, so your burden is much lighter than ours. Therefore, you take a little less, and we take a little more. You don't have a problem with that, do you?"
Lino was the taciturn boy in the loading crew. He was fifteen years old.
He had just finished studying Low Gothic and mathematics at the Lower Hive Academy when he received the tragic news that his father had been worked to death in a renovation factory.
There was no such thing as workplace injury compensation on a Hive World, let alone any financial aid or bereavement funds.
After losing his father, the family's income was completely cut off. Lino was forced to abandon his plans to learn a trade at the academy, stepping onto the loading platform to begin a life of grueling toil.
Faced with the foreman's utter hypocrisy, Lino was like an empty void.
He swallowed all the negative input from the outside world without reflecting a single ripple of emotion.
Tucking the ration cards away, he walked toward the factory gates. His retreating back was lonely and desolate, making him look as though he had yet to recover from his father's death.
Once Lino was far enough away, the workers grinned and jeered, their faces brimming with the smug satisfaction of a successful petty scheme.
"Boss, you really know what you're doing. Tricking a dumb kid into doing our heavy lifting is a breeze."
"Haha, not only do we work less, we don't even have to pay out of pocket to grease the overseer! Life is good!"
Surrounded by his men, the foreman beamed with pride and waved a large hand.
"Let's go, boys. Off to the nearby tavern for a good time."
The group excitedly hurried toward the gates, chasing the promise of cheap alcohol and rocking bedframes.
What the workers failed to notice was that the boy who had left alone was currently watching them with an impassive gaze.
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'What a pathetic bunch of Lower Hive scum. Why should The Emperor's glory ever shine upon you?'
Lino withdrew his gaze from the workers and walked briskly toward his home.
Everyone else thought he was just an orphan going through the agony of losing his father.
That wasn't the truth at all.
He was a transmigrator.
Seven days ago, the original owner of this body had literally cried himself to death in bed over his father's passing. Lino, meanwhile, had been sent flying by a dump truck in his original world. His soul had crossed over and taken possession of this body.
From that moment on, the owner of the body was no longer an innocent, sheltered teenager.
Lino knew exactly what the foreman had done to him.
Oppression, exploitation, and wage theft—a complete display of humanity's ugliness and hypocrisy.
But Lino harbored a plan to change his fate, so he had no time to bicker over such trivial matters.
Today was the critical day to execute his plan.
Once successful, he could forever bid farewell to a life of exchanging intense manual labor for a meager income.
He walked in silence until his residence appeared before him.
It was a tin-roofed shack passed down from the original owner's father.
Lino took out the ration cards hidden under his bed and stuffed them into his pockets.
Between the original owner's inheritance and the wages he had earned himself, he had scraped together over a hundred ration cards.
Leaving the house, he headed straight for a roadside stall selling mushrooms.
The stall owner was a white-haired old man who made a comfortable living selling edible mushrooms.
The mushrooms he sold tasted mediocre, but their advantage was that they were free of pathogens and pests. You wouldn't get sick even if you ate them raw.
These mushrooms had a faint, sweet scent reminiscent of the legendary milk, which was why the Lower Hive residents called them Milk Mushrooms.
"Fresh Milk Mushrooms, three ration cards a box. Slightly yellowed ones, one ration card a box. Which do you want?"
The stall owner sat in a rocking chair, swaying back and forth in a leisurely manner.
The primary food source for the residents of the Lower Hive was Synthetic Starch, usually served in the form of starch gruel.
Three ration cards could buy a large bowl of starch gruel at the starch vat, roughly the equivalent of one full meal for a loading worker.
A box of Milk Mushrooms would, at best, only fill a worker halfway.
From a purely nutritional standpoint, the cost-effectiveness of a Milk Mushroom was far lower than that of starch gruel.
However, because starch gruel tasted terrible and contained various trace minerals harmful to the human body, the mushroom stall's business was always booming. Even the yellowed Milk Mushrooms would sell out completely.
Lino patted his bulging pockets.
"I'm not here to buy mushrooms. I want to buy Milk Mushroom mycelium, growing medium, and nutrient solution."
The stall owner stopped rocking his chair and narrowed his eyes to study the boy standing before him.
A hidden gleam of greed flickered in his eyes, as if he had just spotted a fat sheep.
"One bottle of mycelium costs eighty ration cards. The matching growing medium and nutrient solution will run you another twenty ration cards. I can tell you the cultivation method for free, but I have to warn you right now. Growing mushrooms isn't as easy as you think. If they fail to sprout, I won't give you a refund."
"I know," Lino said. He pulled out his ration cards and placed them on the counter.
The old man sat up straight. He took the money with one hand and handed over the goods with the other.
The mycelium was sealed inside an opaque, brown glass bottle.
The growing medium was packed into several large bags, weighing over three hundred kilograms in total. Its primary ingredient was uncontaminated soil.
The thirty liters of nutrient solution were divided into five watering cans.
"Listen carefully to what I'm about to say."
The stall owner leaned back into his rocking chair, swaying as he spoke:
"When you get back, find a few clean containers first. Pour the growing medium in, cover it up, and let it sit tightly sealed for two days.
"On the third day, use a shovel to turn the medium over and spray it with the nutrient solution. Once the solution is all used up, sow the mycelium into the medium.
"Every day, you need to go to the Water Guild to buy purified water and spray it over the medium. If all goes well, on the sixth day, you'll see the Milk Mushrooms sprouting out of the soil. Seven days after that, they'll be ready for harvest."
The stall owner paused, flashing an amiable smile.
"Did you memorize all that? Don't say I didn't warn you, but growing mushrooms isn't something you usually succeed at on the first try. If it doesn't work out this time, you can come back and buy another batch of mycelium from me. I'll give you a twenty percent discount."
The stall owner repeated the Milk Mushroom cultivation process again, acting perfectly dutiful and sincere.
The quality of the goods the stall owner sold was quite decent, and no one had ever come back to argue or demand a refund. But when Lino asked about the finer, critical details of mushroom cultivation, the old man remained deliberately vague.
He avoided mentioning the proper room temperature.
As for humidity and lighting requirements, he merely told him to do whatever.
He kept completely tight-lipped on whether the crop needed ventilation after sowing, or how long each ventilation session should last.
Let alone the timing and amount for spraying the "pinning water" and "fruiting water".
These were the true deciding factors in whether the mushrooms could grow successfully.
The stall owner's intention behind hiding these key details was obvious. He just wanted to groom a sucker who would endlessly buy more mycelium from him.
Lino wasn't going to fall for his trick, nor would he become the man's cash cow.
Before transmigrating, he had been a master's student at an agricultural university, majoring in applied mycology.
Due to his heavy academic workload, he hadn't had the time to date or play video games. At most, he watched gaming videos online, effectively serving as a "cloud gamer".
As far as the Warhammer 40K universe was concerned, he was a textbook cloud-hammer.
After transmigrating, it took him a full two days to adapt to the filthy, chaotic environment of the Underhive.
The good news was that, just like other transmigrators, he had received his very own system.
This had become his beacon of hope for surviving the desperate straits of the Lower Hive.
Making five trips back and forth between the stall and his shack, Lino finally hauled everything inside.
He locked the doors and windows, drew the curtains, and turned on the indoor Promethium Lamp.
Its pale blue light illuminated the single bedroom and living space. The furniture inside shared a uniform, bare iron style, looking shabby and crude.
Lino opened the brown glass bottle containing the mycelium, stared at the gray substance inside, and silently chanted in his mind:
'Analyze mycelium.'
"Ding—"
Following the ethereal chime, a white screen of light surfaced in his vision.
[Name: Modified Milk Mushroom Mycelium]
[Analysis Results:]
[Good quality strain, high purity, dense and vigorous mycelial growth, strong vitality. No contamination, pests, or toxins detected.]
[This mycelium has been modified to significantly increase mushroom yield. The trade-off is that the mushroom spores lack viability and cannot grow into new mycelium.]
Spores were a mushroom's "seeds".
After initial development, spores would form mycelium, and as the mycelium continued to grow, it would turn into mushrooms.
This was the developmental process of basidiomycete fungi—which people commonly referred to as "mushrooms".
Mushrooms had a cap, and the spores were typically hidden inside the gills beneath the cap.
The Milk Mushroom mycelium in front of him had been biologically altered.
While the crop yield was boosted, the inactive spores meant they could never develop into mycelium, let alone grow into new mushrooms.
This undoubtedly severed the possibility of repeated cultivation.
All the Milk Mushrooms at the stall had been grown using this exact type of mycelium.
It wasn't a big problem; Lino could accept this.
"Start simulated cultivation of Milk Mushroom mycelium."
[Simulation is about to begin.]
[During the simulation, the system will provide the required sunlight, water, and air.]
[Please select the growing medium and nutrient solution you wish to use.]
Lino gestured over the bags and watering cans with his hands.
"Just use these things in front of me."
[Please set the simulation parameters.]
Lino pondered for a moment before rattling off a string of details.
"Standard atmospheric pressure, room temperature 30 degrees, relative air humidity 80%, light intensity 400 lux, moderate ventilation, keep the growing medium temperature around 30 degrees, avoid blowing air directly onto the fruiting bodies, and use clean water to irrigate the mushrooms."
[Simulation parameters set. Beginning simulated cultivation.]
[Day 1: You ferment the growing medium.]
[Day 3: The growing medium fermentation is complete. You spray the nutrient solution to ensure even moisture, then sow the mycelium.]
[Day 4 and 5: You notice the temperature of the growing medium has reached 32 degrees. You utilize moderate ventilation to cool it down.]
[Day 6: You spot mycelium breaking through the soil. You decide to...?]
'I can already see mycelium sprouting on the sixth day?'
'As expected of the Warhammer universe, the mycelium growth is incredibly fast.'
Lino clicked his tongue in surprise and answered in his mind:
'I decide to spray fruiting water, using a larger volume—at least twice the usual amount. Increase the ventilation rate, and maintain the relative air humidity at 80%.'
[Day 6: You spray fruiting water on the mycelium in the soil and increase ventilation, maintaining the relative air humidity at 80%.]
[Day 9: You notice small mushroom primordia appearing in the soil. The surface of the primordia looks slightly shriveled...]
"Wait." Lino halted the simulation and ordered, "Restart the simulated cultivation. Adjust the relative air humidity to 85% and lower the light intensity to 300 lux. Keep the other parameters unchanged."
[Simulation parameters adjusted.]
[Beginning second round of simulation.]
[Day 1: You ferment the growing medium.]
[...]
[Day 9: You notice small mushroom primordia appearing in the soil. The primordia's surfaces are plump and round, indicating sufficient moisture. You spray them with pinning water.]
'Mm, very nice. The previous air humidity was a bit too low, and the light intensity was a little too high, which caused the primordia to shrivel up.'
'The adjusted air humidity and light intensity are just right.'
Lino nodded to himself and continued to review the simulation log.
[Day 13: Under your meticulous care, the mushrooms grow to standard size. You harvest the crop, yielding 30 kilograms of Milk Mushrooms.]
[Simulation complete.]
[Simulation protocol recorded.]
[Congratulations on your successful cultivation.]
[Consume the growing medium, nutrient solution, and mycelium used in the simulation to finalize the results, and you will receive 30 kilograms of Milk Mushrooms.]
[Do you wish to finalize the results?]
'Woohoo, mission accomplished!'
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