This Dungeon Grew Mushrooms

Tentacles lashed out like whips, tearing through the air.

Another slime’s core was split cleanly in two.

Number Thirteen flicked his tentacles in disgust, shaking off the vile residue clinging to them.

That made sixteen.

Among the jagged gray-brown rocks in the distance, several more bouncing figures were already closing in.

These slimes were not strong—at least, they posed no real threat to Number Thirteen, who possessed a knight puji body.

Compared to these annoying but weak evils, what troubled him far more was his own situation.

He had been suddenly dumped into this barren, desolate fringe region where mycelium was sparse. No task, no instructions, and even his inquiries sent to the fungus lord had sunk without a trace.

Of course, it was perfectly normal for the fungus lord to ignore an individual mushroom. But given the circumstances, it left Number Thirteen feeling deeply unsettled.

He had tried moving toward areas where the mycelium was denser, only to discover that he was barred from entering them—clearly a restriction imposed by the fungus lord.

He… seemed to have been exiled.

Had he done something wrong?

Number Thirteen stopped idly flicking his tentacles and began seriously reviewing his recent actions.

Leading the black demon to eat Numbers Seven and Eight, only for the demon to have an unusually good appetite that day and chew him halfway through as well.

Hiding the black demon’s glass orb in someone else’s mushroom house, then watching the demon follow the scent straight to it.

Making plans with Number Twelve to explore the dungeon’s off-limits caverns, then immediately turning around and tattling to the fungus lord through the fungal network.

Hmm… thinking it over carefully, none of that seemed especially excessive, right?

Could it be that the other mushroomfolk had voted together and expelled him from mushroom citizenship?

Number Thirteen was quite aware that his kin did not like him very much.

Lately, they had been avoiding him from far away.

He had reflected on this as well. Perhaps he really should stop constantly setting up other mushrooms.

But every time he succeeded, the emotional fluctuations he sensed through the fungal network—shock, confusion, fear, even rage—were simply irresistible.

If he were to just behave and be a proper mushroom, what would be the point of mushroom life?

He felt his biggest flaw was probably a lack of patience. Every time he spotted even the tiniest opportunity to create a “small accident,” he could never resist acting immediately.

Still, a mushroom being eaten by the black demon once or twice was hardly a big deal.

Only the first few times had caused significant emotional waves.

Later on, even when caught, his kin would at most complain a bit in the fungal network about “having to respawn again, how annoying.” When Number Seven was swallowed, there had even been some strangely excited emotional feedback…

The result was that Number Thirteen never got to fully savor those complex, wonderful emotions he craved. Instead, by repeatedly sabotaging other mushrooms, he ended up completely isolated and ostracized.

He had just resolved to seriously correct his lack-of-patience problem—only to be dumped in this hellhole the very next moment.

Sitting atop a small patch of thin mycelium, Number Thirteen drooped his mushroom cap, pondering where to go when he had mycelium beneath him but was forbidden to return.

Then suddenly, he locked eyes with two non-human figures in the distance.

…

A panting succubus and an old goblin who looked on the verge of falling apart were leaning against one another behind jagged reef rocks. They looked exactly like people who had just finished a life-threatening marathon.

“Did we… lose them?” the succubus, Moya, nearly collapsed against the stone. Her chest heaved violently, her tail limp on the ground. She casually stomped flat a slime that had hopped too close, splattering sticky fluid everywhere.

“Shh—quiet!” the old goblin, Stinky Fish, raised his pointed ears and held his breath, listening carefully. Only after confirming that there were no sounds beyond slimes bouncing did he let out a long sigh. “The false trail I left… probably worked. We should be safe for now.”

“I’m exhausted to death!” Moya wailed, tilting her head back as sweat ran down her alluring face. “Those bullies who only pick on the weak! If they’ve got the guts, why don’t they charge the Empire’s regular army at the port? Chasing two old, weak civilians through three ravines—what kind of accomplishment is that?!”

After catching her breath, she couldn’t help complaining again. “This damned road from the port to Highfort is way too dangerous! Human adventurer squads everywhere… At this rate, the west coast is going to be flying human flags again before long. What on earth are those big shots in the Empire thinking?”

Stinky Fish wiped the sweat from his face, his voice hoarse. “What can they do? There’s only so much sea route between the Empire and the port. Lately, ship losses are nearly fifty percent! Who dares to go out to sea now? Any officer who dares say the word ‘set sail’ is guaranteed to accidentally fall overboard the next day and become monster feed.”

The more he spoke, the angrier he became, jabbing a bony finger at Moya. “And whose fault is this, huh? Yours! Still obsessing over running into that damned human again. The mission was already over, yet you lingered here so long you missed the last ship back to the Empire! Now look at us—can’t go back even if we want to!”

“I’m a succubus, okay? Seeing a rare good man and being unable to walk away—what’s wrong with that?!” Moya flipped her purple hair, utterly unapologetic.

Stinky Fish laughed in disbelief, exposing uneven yellow teeth. “And did you get him? Huh? Noble succubus lady? Last I remember, the way he looked at you wasn’t any different from how he looks at me, an old wrinkled goblin. All this wishful thinking, and now we’re reduced to fleeing like stray dogs!”

“You… you… I saved you last time…”

“Let’s not talk about the past. Without me these past two days, how many times would you have been butchered by human adventurers?”

The two bickered back and forth, voices gradually dropping.

In the end, almost simultaneously, they both deflated and slumped onto the cold stone.

After a long silence—

“So… what now?” Moya asked weakly, her tail tip listlessly sweeping the ground.

“Gamble on luck and keep pushing through human adventurer territory toward Highfort,” Stinky Fish replied flatly. “Or… turn back to the port.”

“Back to the port? We can’t just keep hiding in that crappy place forever, can we?”

Stinky Fish rubbed his face and analyzed seriously. “We won’t be hiding forever. If the Empire manages to deal with the mess at sea, the shipping lanes will reopen and we can just sail back. But if they can’t…”

“If they can’t, the port loses its value. Pouring more manpower and supplies into it would just be a waste.”

“After some time, orders will probably come down for an organized, large-scale land evacuation. When that happens, we can leave with the main group. That’s a lot better than the two of us trying to break through alone right now.”

Moya nodded, then sighed several times in a row.

Waiting with the main force was safer, sure—but it also meant wasting who knew how much more time. By the time she finally made it back to the Empire…

She didn’t even dare imagine how her sharp-tongued superior would deal with her delay.

Maybe her next special assignment would be to send her straight to that legendary place where “spies disappear faster than morning dew”—Mordu.

After resting briefly and recovering some strength, the two demons dejectedly turned around and started heading back toward the port.

At that moment, Moya’s peripheral vision suddenly caught sight of a lone figure in the distance.

“What is it?” Stinky Fish immediately noticed her pause and lowered his voice warily.

Moya pointed her slender tail toward the distant puji, sounding uncertain. “Do you think… could that be a mushroomfolk?”

“Mushroomfolk? The Empire scattered so many people and still couldn’t find one, and you think we’d just run into one here—” Stinky Fish scoffed out of habit as he turned around, but his mocking words stuck in his throat halfway through.

His cloudy old eyes narrowed as he stared fixedly at the puji.

At the same time they were observing it, the puji seemed to sense their gaze and slowly lifted its round mushroom cap.

Although a puji had no facial features, Stinky Fish still felt as if it were looking right back at them.

And this was a fringe area with extremely low mycelium coverage—ordinary puji almost never lingered here.

More importantly, the behavior of this puji seemed different from normal ones.

Stinky Fish’s voice turned hoarse with anticipation.

“Could it really… be a mushroomfolk?”