The Curse of the Giant Mushrooms (2)
To Karem, the words "mushroom monster" had always been something that stirred childhood nostalgia.
Back when he was still a kid, he'd come home from elementary school, get his parents' permission, and head straight to the PC bang. That was where he first encountered online games.
It was MapleStory, back before the cataclysmic patch that flipped the entire foundation of the game on its head.
You explored the world, took on all sorts of moving, ridiculous, or fascinating quests, slaughtered all kinds of monsters, and watched your little avatar of zeros and ones grow stronger by the day.
Of course, actually leveling the damn thing had been a pain in the ass.
Fucking hell, taking a whole week just to finish second job advancement? Was that for real or just a fart?
Anyway, for Karem, mushroom monsters had been a subject that called up those hazy, half-forgotten memories floating somewhere beyond the fog of his mind.
Even after he grew up and ran into all sorts of mushroom monsters in other games—starting with the classic myconids—that feeling never changed.
But right now, the childhood innocence he'd cherished all the way from his previous life felt like it was about to shatter into pieces.
Screeeeech—
A massive mushroom golem shaped like a giant walnut, big enough to casually overpower a bear, swung its cute little white fist. The blow slammed into the tower shield of the adventurer who'd stepped forward to meet it.
BOOM!
The adventurer slid back several paces, dispersing the impact. A tangible shockwave rippled visibly through the humid air against his shield.
When Karem turned his head, another mushroom golem—looking like a huge walnut with smaller walnuts sprouting all over it—came charging in, its short tentacles thrashing. It swung a thick tentacle tipped with a mushroom like a club.
An elf adventurer dodged the heavy, vicious strike with an acrobatic twist and loosed a rapid volley of fire arrows.
The arrows punched into the golem's body. The impact points blackened and browned, smoke and flames blooming outward.
Through the sizzling came the rich aroma of mushrooms… and, somehow, the mouthwatering scent of well-cooked beef. It teased Karem's nose.
"Wow, that smell is incredible."
"Doesn't mean you can just go eating them. They look like giant Aku—well. Maybe it doesn't matter for a little guy like you."
"Do I look crazy enough to eat that? Who even knows what kind of mushroom it is?"
"Hm?"
"Huh?"
Somehow the conversation had gone completely off the rails.
Karem watched an adventurer bat away an egg-shaped mushroom the golem had thrown, then turned his gaze toward Catherine.
"I survived by eating all kinds of things back in Moston, but mushrooms? Unless I was absolutely, one-hundred-percent sure, I didn't even look at most of them."
"No one said anything about edible mushroo—ah."
"There wasn't exactly anyone around to tell me which was which, so how was I supposed to know what to eat?"
Even experts couldn't guarantee one hundred percent certainty with mushrooms. That much was the same whether it was his previous life or this one.
Karem could say that with absolute confidence, because he had watched with his own two eyes as the village's best mushroom expert—the forest keeper himself—picked mushrooms he swore were edible and then promptly kicked the bucket after eating them.
In his past life the only mushrooms Karem had ever really dealt with were the tiny handful of edible ones sold at markets and supermarkets. The forest was full of mushrooms he had never seen before in his life.
Trying to pick out the edible ones from a colony like that was a fool's errand. Catching rodents and bugs for the next day's meal was the far more nutritionally sound choice.
Standing beside Karem and watching the chaotic free-for-all between the adventurers and the mushroom golems, Narke fidgeted with her drooping ears.
"U-um, Lady Atanita… is it really okay for us to just… stand here and watch?"
"Hm? What's the problem?"
"Well, how should I put it… they're under attack, and we're just standing here all peaceful. It, um, kind of pricks my conscience?"
"Doesn't matter."
Catherine tapped the ground lightly with her staff a few times, then leaned against the carriage.
"I paid a fortune to hire these adventurers. Might as well make them earn their keep."
"Looks like it's wrapping up."
Karem had to admit the adventurers Catherine had hired were the real deal. The swarm of giant walnut-like golems—more than twice the number of the ones escorting the carriage, the smallest of them as tall as a grown man—were soon lying on the ground one after another, leaking slippery fluids and giving off that delicious aroma.
"Whoa, look at that visual. Seriously…"
A walnut that fit in your fist was one thing. Once they got that huge, they just looked like giant brains waving tentacles as they charged. Exactly the kind of alien you'd see in some B-grade Hollywood flick from the eighties or nineties.
While the adventurers looted the spoils, a sharp-looking adventurer with slicked-back hair finished cleaving the last mushroom golem in two. He reversed his grip on his longsword and approached Catherine.
"Lady Atanita. We've eliminated every golem that attacked us. We're cleaning up the site now."
"Ah, good work."
"The village that's our destination is in that state. What are your orders?"
It was a fair question. The mushroom golems that had ambushed the carriage were all dead, but the village ahead was still being hammered by well over a hundred of the things in every size imaginable, barely holding on.
Just in case, Karem asked the adventurer,
"What about the mushroom… golems in the village? Think we can deal with those too?"
"Hmm. If they get an offer they can't refuse, most of them would at least try."
The slick-haired adventurer sheathed his sword and eyed the giant mushrooms surrounding the village.
"We could probably handle double our numbers. But three times or more? Doesn't look good."
"I wasn't expecting that much from you anyway. Just finish gathering the loot. More importantly… so the Akusare mushrooms turned into golems? I'll have to look into that."
Catherine adjusted her grip on her staff and strode forward. The amber set into the tip of the staff—symbol of the ancient empire's third conquest—began to glow with a pale light.
Sky-blue mana raced out from her hand along the adamantium circuits of the staff. The moisture hanging in the air condensed all at once and fell to the ground as droplets.
"Ha! This is why the cold northern countries are the best."
Catherine's eyes blazed with vivid sky-blue light as she gave her staff a casual wave.
And over the village of Fungusby, surrounded by mushroom golems, an unseasonable deep freeze came crashing down.
Fungusby.
The village that had come under the Mage's Tower's fief was one of the rare peaceful places in Iceland—few monsters or beasts, and the forest didn't grow at an alarming rate either.
Its specialty product was the Akusare mushroom.
The fist-sized, walnut-shaped mushrooms were popular not just throughout the Seophon Kingdom but across the entire continent. Whatever remained after taxes was bought up entirely by the lord, so the village had always been prosperous.
Daily life in Fungusby wasn't particularly complicated.
When spring arrived they did what they always did—hired adventurers on the village's behalf to clear out undead and prepared for the mushroom harvest. That was when the trouble began.
A large force of undead came pouring out of the forest.
Fortunately, even though the village was wealthy, there weren't any mid-tier undead they couldn't handle. Every last one was a low-rank monster that even ordinary villagers could fight. Of course they were stopped by the wooden palisade that had been reinforced with all the money from selling Akusare mushrooms. The undead that did make it through were wiped out in no time by the adventurers already in Fungusby.
But that wasn't the end of it.
Pushing through the trees came huge, massive mushroom golems—so many of them that the earlier undead suddenly looked like a joke.
Luckily Fungusby always stockpiled more supplies than necessary, the palisade was solid, and they had adventurers on hand, so defending the village itself wasn't difficult.
"But once or twice would be one thing. They just kept coming a third time, a fourth time…"
The mushroom golem attacks continued for four days, then ten. The palisade could be repaired—worst case they could tear down buildings for materials—but food was another story.
They had plenty of wood and weapons, but the food stores were visibly dwindling. They had been carefully rationing the last few days' worth of provisions when Catherine's magic finally exploded across the battlefield.
Karem, who had been quietly listening to the Fungusby village chief's report alongside Catherine, asked,
"Lady Atanita. So what are you going to do?"
"Well, first I'll contact Coldon and put up a subjugation request. That takes priority."
"Oh. I thought you'd go clear them out yourself."
Catherine pointed her staff toward the dense forest beyond the palisade.
"How am I supposed to search that entire forest by myself? Even if I took the adventurers we hired now, it would be impossible. Impossible. My time isn't that cheap. In situations like this it's far more efficient to use the adventurers who just finished wintering and have empty pockets. Chief!"
"Y-yes!"
Catherine pulled parchment and a quill from her robes, scribbled something rapidly, rolled it up, sealed it with magic, and handed it to the chief.
"Get this document to the Mage's Tower in Coldon as quickly as possible. Follow-up support and a request to the Adventurers' Guild should go out together. How many adventurers do you need as escorts?"
"N-no need, my lady! We still have the ones the village hired. That will be plenty!"
The chief bowed repeatedly, praising his merciful ruler, and backed away.
Catherine said it wouldn't take long for the support and adventurers ordered by the Mage's Tower to arrive in Fungusby.
After all, the distance between Fungusby and Coldon was only half a day's walk.
Her request—more of a command, really—would be delivered to Olivier. While Olivier prepared the supplies, a request would be posted at the Adventurers' Guild, a subjugation party assembled, and the first ones to accept the job would arrive in Fungusby with the supplies. At most it would take two days.
Of course, that was still later. Not that far off, but later.
Karem followed Catherine and Narke up onto the palisade and looked out at the hardworking adventurers and villagers.
Clang! Clang! Crunch! Clang!
While some of the adventurers and armed villagers kept watch on the surroundings, the rest swung tools under the village chief's direction, smashing the rock-hard frozen mushroom golems to pieces.
"They're already frozen solid. Are they just cleaning up the battlefield?"
Karem tilted his head as he asked.
"Well, strictly speaking the mushroom golems aren't… dead yet."
"Not dead? In that state?"
While Catherine closed her eyes in thought, Narke answered for her.
"G-golems aren't actually dead until you destroy the core somewhere inside the body. That's why."
"Sounds like a real headache."
"R-right? Ah, look over there."
Karem turned his head to follow the tip of Narke's staff.
A group of adventurers was hauling something out of a mushroom golem so huge its head reached the top of the palisade—a grotesque mass of fused crystal and flesh with mushrooms and mold growing all over it.
"D-depending on the environment, a golem's core can take just as many forms as the golem itself. Th-that thing they're pulling out right now is the mushroom golem's core."
"So you have to separate that from the body for it to count as dead?"
"O-or just smash it."
"Then why are they extracting the cores like that?"
"W-well… an intact golem core with no damage is worth a decent amount of money? Normally you have to destroy the core to silence a golem."
"Well…"
There was nothing he could say to stop them.
Who would sit around bashing a golem body when you didn't even know where the core was?
His thoughts must have shown on his face, because Narke shook her head.
"W-we're lucky they're mushrooms. If they were rock or metal, this place would've been wiped out ages ago."
"…Metal?"
"Sure. There are lava golems and water golems made of molten rock or liquid. Ice golems too."
"Then yeah, mushrooms are a relief."
Just imagining it made Karem shudder. Even these mushroom golems produced visible shockwaves from pure blunt force. A lava golem made of molten rock? A water golem made of flowing liquid?
Sure, destroying the core would finish them, but he never wanted to face one even in his imagination.
Of course a chef like Karem would never have to fight them himself… but he'd rather not even look at them if he could help it.
"All right, I've decided."
Catherine, who had been standing with her eyes closed, uncrossed her arms and opened them.
"Kid. I feel like eating some kind of mushroom dish for dinner tonight."
"…I thought you were seriously thinking about something important, and that's what you came up with?"
"What could possibly be more serious than that?"
Catherine jerked her chin toward the outside of the palisade.
"The village is short on food as it is, and with things looking like this, how good could any hospitality they offer possibly be? I'll just eat whatever dinner you make. And Narke."
"Y-yes!"
"Until dinner, you're coming with me. We have work to do."
At Catherine's gesture Narke nodded and followed after her. Karem no longer had any reason to stay on the palisade either, so he climbed down after them.
"Oh, right. Take this."
Halfway down, Catherine plopped a pouch of silver coins into Karem's hand.
"If you're short on any ingredients, buy them yourself. You haven't had any snacks either, so get everything ready as fast as you can."