Sunro Mushrooms

There were a great many Gob-rings. Their numbers looked to be somewhere in the hundreds, and hunting them was a different kind of exhaustion from catching Big Rats down in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the sewers. I could drop five at a time, but there was still a real gap between picking them off one ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠by one and fighting a swarm whose attacks came screaming in from every side.

Even so, the recovery potions kept it from being difficult. The method was a little scummy, I'll admit, but I knew a way that made losing impossible, and I used it without hesitation.

"Kerek? The human's gone."

"Kerrk?"

There was no point putting on a circus act — mana gone, attacks still flying, ducking behind a tree until it came back. If there had been fewer of them, I might have practiced dodging Gob-ring spit, both to get a feel for a real fight and for the training itself. Dodging dozens of globs whipping in at once, though, was close to impossible.

So whenever my mana was about to bottom out, I opened a hundred and fifty meters with Leap Slash and hid. The instant I vanished from sight, the Gob-rings grew wary and started scanning the area, and spotting me a hundred and fifty meters out was no easy thing. A brief lull would settle in. They'd begin to look around, little by little, and right about then my mana would fill back up. I'd return and hand them hell.

Anyone watching could call it cheap, dirty, and underhanded. When you're taking on more than a hundred Gob-rings by yourself, though, there is no wiser, smarter, or finer plan. In Farming World, this kind of hunt was perfectly ordinary. Solo players, especially, spent most of their mana recovery just taking a walk, whenever they could get away with it.

The combat-tip posts and videos said the same thing from the start. If you weren't skilled yet, don't even think about fighting bare-handed. Build the habit of fighting safe — a clean little click of mana, whenever you can. Try to look cool on an empty bar, show off between dozens of Gob-rings, and die to a blind spit, and the only one who loses is me.

Even then, there were a few moments that would have been genuinely dangerous without the recovery potions, so I was all the more careful to attack only while I still had mana. Maybe that was why clearing the Gob-ring village took longer than I'd expected. Once their numbers dropped by more than half, terror took them and they broke into a run. Chasing them down ate even more time.

"Easy. Easy."

The Gob-ring village was a chaotic mess, and filthy besides. Far more of them than I'd imagined had crammed themselves into a place too small to live in, huddled together in shoddy wooden huts. Even with the Gob-rings gone, the disorder lingered somehow. I took my time looking around.

It was a forest thick with trees, so the village itself didn't have much worth carrying off. Near it, though, there was a mushroom field the Gob-rings had been tending.

"Don't tell me these are Sunro Mushrooms."

Dark mushrooms packed across dozens of trees. They looked like something I'd seen somewhere before.

What people usually mean by truffles. You could call the Sunro Mushroom the dungeon version of one. They were genuinely rare — so many people around the world were hunting for them that a single fist-sized mushroom routinely commanded a price in the hundreds. The taste and aroma carried that truffle feel, but gourmets insisted something ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠about them was different. A deeper flavor. More savor.

People like me had never tasted a truffle once in our lives, let alone appreciated the difference. I'd simply seen them so often that the moment they were in front of me, the thought landed — wait, is that it? — and I checked.

"What even is this map?"

More than anything, it was faith in the Rift Dimension, I suppose. Whenever a similar kind of resource showed up, the first thought was always could this be it? — and I let myself hope. That was the biggest part of it.

"This is insane..."

The Sunro Mushroom trees in front of me alone numbered in the dozens. The farm spread wide, left to the wild, and that was precisely why it felt more natural — and vaster.

"...Hold on."

Did the Gob-rings grow these? Or did they spring up on their own? I didn't know. What I did know was that slaughtering every last survivor might be worth a second thought. Clear the quest first. Think after.

The quest completed when about a dozen Gob-rings were left. Their village could no longer function as a village at all, and the survivors were pitiful things — almost no fight left in them, will broken, trembling with fear.

I gathered the remaining thirteen Gob-rings in the center of their village and made them kneel.

"Kerek... kerrk..."

I couldn't make out what they were saying, but I wasn't worried.

The slave system in Farming World is a lot like the NPC system. The only real difference is that you can grind them however you please, a little more conveniently. As a rule, slaves are something you use on intelligent monsters rather than on NPCs — creatures desperate to live, reading your mood, ready to obey. The system simply asks, on its own, whether you'll take them.

"I accept."

Accept, and they become mine.

On the original map, the moment the slave system appeared, a tutorial quest would pop up and walk you through how to use it. Maybe because I'd accepted them on the spot, the quest never even showed itself. It simply completed. The reward was a petty 500 Farm and a single stat point, but little things pile into mountains. I meant to keep collecting.

"Gob-ring One through Thirteen."

I renamed them without ceremony. They muttered among themselves as if they had complaints, but this time I could hear them too.

"Human... scary..."

"He's going to tear us apart and kill us."

"Our kin... already all dead."

"Don't want to die."

"That zombie wants to eat Gob-ring meat."

One advantage of the slave system is that you can actually talk to these monsters. Only the ones you've taken as slaves — but being able to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hold a conversation with intelligent monsters does make controlling them a good deal more convenient. I clapped, pulling every Gob-ring's eyes to me.

"Want to live?"

"Kerek..."

Gob-rings One through Thirteen nodded.

"Just listen to me. Do that, and I'll let you live, feed you, and grant whatever you want, within reason."

"Kerrk."

"Lies..."

"Don't listen, and I kill you."

"Master."

"Kerek. Gob-rings. Listen well. Kerrk."

Honestly, I think the slave system is exceptionally well made. Isn't it appealing? On the vast map of Farming World, you don't use monsters only as things to hunt. You can tame them and put them to work. There are countless ways to farm resources in that world, and looking over the different kinds of monsters, the same thoughts kept coming back. This one would be good for mining. This one would be good for hauling. This one would be perfect grinding fields all day. And here was a system that could actually make those thoughts real.

On top of that, each Gob-ring had its obedience floating over its head, which made them easy to manage.

I gave them a task at once. Before the task, though, came an investigation that was closer to a question.

"There were Sunro Mushroom trees near your village. Did you grow them?"

"Kerrk. Mushroom field! That is our field!"

"Grow mushrooms and offer them, kerek. Predators, kerrk, let us live."

"Tribute day soon! Kerek-kerek."

So I'd been right. The Gob-rings had been growing Sunro Mushrooms and offering them to other predators in exchange for recognition of their territory. More precisely, it looked like a bribe that only bought them enough mercy that monsters from other levels wouldn't cross the border of the Level 0 Biome and tear the place apart.

"The mushroom trees. Can you grow more?"

"Kerrk? Already planted every patch where mushroom trees can grow. Kerek! To plant more, must go to the Black Monkeys' territory."

"Is that right?"

They were cooperative enough. Maybe because they'd only just been taken as slaves, and I was holding a sword. Then again, if a lunatic psychopath who'd massacred their kin alone an hour ago asked a question, of course they'd answer diligently.

So that was how it stood, for now. An already fairly wide Sunro Mushroom farm — and I could expand it even further.

A follow-up quest had appeared.