Chapter 44: Sunspores

Aside from his parents, of course.

The first time he encountered death in Immoræ was during the early days of his thousand-year confinement in the library, during the time when he struggled to remember anything from the myriad of cultivation texts and scrolls around him.

It wasn’t a human body. Instead, it was a beast.

Well, his master liked to call them pests, but it was an animal with some amount of sentience nonetheless. Like dogs and cats and birds.

They were called Bookwyrms.

Despite the ethereal grandiosity of their library, it was still susceptible to animals who liked to feast on mystical knowledge and forbidden texts. They started as little creatures, Bookwryms did, but allow them to fester around cultivation knowledge for too long, and they could quickly turn into a real problem real fast.

Eren cried when he first dissected the Bookwyrm. He was barely ten years old then. Its blood was still warm in his hands, staining his scholar robe as its fainting pulse continued to leak out blood from its opened chest.

"Look at its blood. Watch as it drains from its body, the pulsing scales. Look closely. Figure out how it died. Figure out its critical spot."

For a second, his concentration on the Mind Palace waned.

The image of Tristan ambushed his vision. Lying on the ground, blood already cold, pooling underneath his body...

Eren shook his head. He was getting distracted.

Emotion drained on his face as he focused his attention back on the Apothecary section of his Mind Palace.

This section of the library always reminded him of a school science laboratory. Except, instead of sterile, white walls with complicated measuring machines on tall desks, vines grew around the walls and the floor.

Tables made out of thick and hefty stumps of trees became the tables. Dirtied flasks, mortars and pestles, and cauldrons were placed haphazardly on its surface.

Dark oak cabinets lined around him. Its upper halves had glass-encased shelves containing opaque bottles topped by corks. While the bottom halves were simple drawers with an acorn for a handle.

All the knowledge about apothecary was stored right here, written in leather scrolls.

He found the cabinet meant for herbs and materials useful for cultivation.

After opening the very bottom of the drawer, a stack of scrolls stumbled chaotically to the front of the box. He rummaged through its contents until he found the text dedicated specifically for sunspores.

He took out the scroll and untied its string knot.

Once unfurled, a symbol of overlapping, circular Ræzoňic patterns opened up to him. He stared at this design until the image seared into his mind.

Finally, the information hidden in the scroll washed over his mind, like the inexorable waves of the infamous bloodsea.

[The sunspore. Found primarily underground where Heat energy is sparse. They thrive upon the coolness and dampness of an environment, making it ideal as a source of light to cultivate the Fragile Sun Herb.

Upon breaking the stem of the Sunspore, it would provide illumination for a 1/10ths of a candle’s length...]

The Immortal Library of Ræzoň fizzled out in his vision, replaced by the dark cavern in reality. Gone was the calming scent of books. Back was the unnerving cold of the Subterranean Burrows.

He fiddled with the sunspore in his hands. It had no difference to the sunspore back in Immoræ.

It seemed Phantoms weren’t the only ones that had made a home here on Earth. Even herbs, vegetation and other cultivation materials found themselves capable of growing here as well.

He shouldn’t be surprised. If Pixies were here too, then something as simple and as widespread as sunspores should be a given.

"I got them all," Celeste said, breaking Eren’s ruminating thoughts.

She held a bundle of sunspores in her hands, their collective dim light creating a hue that illuminated her face white.

There were about a hundred of them in total. She gave half of them to him and pursed her lips. "I don’t think this would be enough. We’ll have to be conservative with our use of it. Agree to alternate?"

The entire cavern was now devoid of sunspores.

According to the scroll, a single one of them could give an entire minute of illumination upon breaking its stem. If used consecutively, their inventory would only last them about an hour and a half of light.

This was not a good sign for their upcoming journey through the Subterranean Burrows.

Eren didn’t know how large this maze was, but if it spanned throughout the entirety of the school, then they’d definitely need to replenish their sunspores on their way.

At least... if he didn’t know a way to replenish their light.

The apothecary scroll gave him a way to refuel the lost energy of these mushrooms. After all, like most herbs from Immoræ, the sunspores used the Ræzoň innate in their body to create the light they emit.

All he had to do was imbue Ræzoň into the sunspore as if he was Reinforcing his fist for a Primal Strike. Exactly like it.

The good thing about the Foundational Movesets was that they were the basis for all Martial Manuals.

It may be basic, but it was also extremely versatile.

He cracked the stem of the sunspore in his hands. Its red, flesh-like bulbous cap radiated with a bright white light.

"We better hurry," Celeste said. "It’ll only last for a minute. You can run, right?"

"I can. But we better not."

His words confused the violet-haired girl. It took her a moment to understand his meaning. "The traps. Kaiser did say there could be pitfalls in here."

Eren nodded. "We’ll move fast while we have a sunspore activated. If we don’t, we’ll slow to a crawl."

"Agreed. I’ll take point," she said, taking the sunspore from his hands and walking towards the cavernous tunnel in front of them.

Eren wasn’t going to disagree with that.

And so, both of them walked into the dark tunnel, leaving behind Tristan’s dead body on the pit.