Penicillium - Chapter Forty

Sporemageddon

Mosses and moulds tended to be the odd-one out in... well, many respects. Back in the before, I could remember a number of spirited debates on their nature, which usually devolved into biology memes.

Moulds weren't plants, they were... kind of mushrooms, but not quite, and they hopefully weren't animals. They were one of those things that looked at human classification systems and chortled to themselves before messing the entire thing up.

In this new world, moulds were, if anything, worse. Mostly because they tended to have magical properties or just do stuff that didn't make sense.

I couldn't hybridise a moss and a mushroom together. But two mosses, or a moss and a mould? That kind of worked.

Combining [Sludge Moss] with [Green Spirit Mould] and [Blur Glow Lichen] both ended up with new hybrids.

[Ectoplasm Moss] - Uncommon

A thick moss that grows best when feeding off the ectoplasmic remains of the ghostly undead. A valuable alchemical reagent.

What was I even supposed to do with this? There was a certain church that might be interested in it, but... I wasn't sure if that was the case. This just grew around dead ghost stuff. I really needed some contacts in the alchemist's guilds to sell this stuff to.

The next result was a little more promising.

A moss that glows in the presence of toxicants, and which itself is mildly poisonous to the touch.

This was the result of mixing [Sludge Moss] and [Blur Glow Lichen] and it was fantastic. Or it would have been if it wasn't so depressing. The stuff glowed no matter where I placed it, even within a glass container. The very air I was breathing was toxic enough to set it off.

That did mean that I had a new lightsource for my farm though, and it did glow brighter around some cans of food and some water samples. So I had a means of checking for things that were more toxic than usual, which was neat.

I filled a few old glass tubes with the moss and hung it from the ceiling. It wasn't as bright as a lightbulb, but it was free lighting, so who was I to complain? Mom found the one I hung up at home cute, though I was disturbed by just how bright it was there.

Maybe my farm had enough things absorbing toxicants that it was cleaner, in a way? That was something.

The moss was poisonous to the touch, which of course meant that I had to touch it repeatedly. It caused a sort of long-lasting rash that broke out into boils and which stung like jamming your hand into a wasp's nest, and that was with all of my resistances.

The moss broke up too easily to cover my explosive mushrooms with, and in its broken down, powdered form, it neither glowed nor caused the same itch.

Oh well, the itching was worth it for the levels in [Poison Handling Expertise] and [Basic Poison Resistance].

The [Tubershroom] was the mushroom I was most excited to start combining, and for obvious reasons. An edible mushroom that had decent healing properties? That was the golden egg.

In the end, I focused on combining it with my most successful strains and mushroom types first. Sure, I could have tried combining it with everything but I only had so many hours in a day and so much room in my farm to grow stuff in, and a lot of that space was dedicated to growing other foodstuff and useful mushrooms, as well as fungal bombs and poisonous mushrooms--the latter of which I was eating regularly, much to my gut's chagrin.

[Tubershroom] and [Healing Chime] grew together and combined fabulously into these wide-capped bell-shaped mushrooms with dangly little balls hanging from the underside of its cap. The mushroom's main meat didn't seem to do much, though it tasted alright. The little clappers (the name for the striking part of a bell, which seemed more suitable than calling them 'dangly bits' all the time) was the real gem.

[Feronie's Bell] - Epic

A tasty and hearty mushroom packed with nutrients. This mushroom has small protrusions beneath its cap which are magical in nature and which contain powerful healing properties.

An epic mushroom. My third, actually, though this one blew the others out of the water.

The description wasn't wrong, the [Feronie's Bell] tasted like oven-fresh bread, with just a hint of spices added to it. It had a nice crunch to it, but the interior was soft and just the right kind of mushie. I had to work to keep Sir Nibbles away from the rack that held them because the little bastard quickly developed a taste for them.

The clappers beneath weren't as tasty, but they were potent. They set off the magic-detecting lichens I had and when eaten, they made my entire body shiver and sweat, though without any fever to accompany it.

That didn't feel healthy, but I couldn't deny that I felt better afterwards. Sir Nibbles gobbled the things up if I let him too, and I kind of trusted his nose... a little. He liked stuffing his face in trash so there were limits there.

Interestingly enough, the mushrooms that I'd kept around that were combinations of [Healing Chime] and other mushrooms all combined well with the [Tubershroom]. There was some real synergy there.

[Tubershroom] and [Brown Healing Horse] created the [Tubular Healing Horse], which looked a bit like a horse if I squinted.

[Tubular Healing Horse] - Rare

A fast-growing mushroom which imparts some of its speed onto its eater.

That one literally made me faster. It wasn't a huge difference, but it was still there. I could feel the world slowing down in waves around me for a good half hour after eating the mushroom. It also made me exceptionally sick, but that seemed to mostly be because of the changes to my inner ear.

Maybe someone with a class that had physical boosts could use it without that side effect kicking in?

Combining it with [Puffy Healer] created the [Long Puffy Healer].

[Long Puffy Healer] - Rare

A rare 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.

That was the exact same description as the [Puffy Healer] and I couldn't see any improvements here. A side-evolution, maybe?

[Purple Eye Mushroom] combined with the [Tubershroom] was another side-evolution of dubious quality.

[Long Eye Mushroom] - Rare

A mushroom which, when eaten raw, will improve the eater's farsight.

I ate a few anyway, but I didn't notice any immediate changes. On the plus side, I might not need glasses in the future if I kept it up.

The final and last mushroom combination became my fourth Epic, and this was one I'd be keeping close for a while.

It was the combination of the [Tubershroom] and my [Healing Bottle].

[Marching Man's Friend] - Epic

A mushroom filled with potent healing characteristics. When consumed, 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. A powerful appetite suppressant, this mushroom is extremely nutritious and can replace a day's worth of meals.

The mushroom itself was about the size of two fists together, and had a pair of watery pockets within it. It tasted earthy and filling, but not as good as some of my other mushrooms. More like unseasoned oatmeal than anything, but once I'd eaten half of one I was hard pressed to eat more.

The fact that the mushroom didn't need too much tending or anything particularly special to grow made it a nice emergency supply. It also kept well, refusing to rot for weeks on end.

I was a week into my experiments, with the occasional break to just zone out after poisoning myself, when someone knocked a familiar pattern on the door of my farm.

I went over and opened it, then stepped aside to let Bet into the farm. "The Union is giving out food," she said before placing two cans onto my workbench.

"Huh," I said.

The cans had faded labels. Beans in sauce.

"They're giving these out where?" I asked.

"In all the markets. The Bullies tried to stop them at first, but then the people lining up for food got really angry, and it started another riot. I heard a bully died."

That was... not surprising. Plenty of rioters had died already, so there was more than enough violence to go around. It was bound to turn onto one of the bullies. And when they were dealing with former workers who were desperate... well, some of those people would have skills that when used creatively would be dangerous to even a bully.

"You brought me a can?" I asked.

She nodded. "I got two."

"Thanks," I said. "Hey, do you want to taste something interesting?"