Nicau glanced back at Calarata, torch flickering weakly in his hand. Morning rose, low and flickering, over the Alómbra Mountains to light the city in strands of gold—soon everyone would wake up to see the obviously, painfully, visible pair.

Romei dug into the mountainside, splashing through the stony shore, blood pebbling under her cracked fingernails. "Not yet," she muttered, glancing back so he could point her more in the right direction. "We're so close—just one bloody scale and we'll go back. The Dread Pirate won't be able to turn us away." Her eyes burned. "I'm going to be rich."

Nicau looked at her. "We."

A pause. "That's what I meant."

"...okay."

Romei gritted her teeth and muscled more rocks aside to look underneath, wet sand sloughing away. "What about here?"

He closed his eyes, clenching his fist not holding the torch—he could feel thin, spidery trails of draconic mana, like memories of its flight, crisscrossing over the entire cove. "It should be there," he said, brows furrowing. The lack of sleep made him hazy but it shouldn't be to the point where he couldn't sense scales buried in the sand, especially only two days after the dragon's fall. "I don't know why–"

They both broke off.

Beneath one of the boulders, a crack spanned deep into the mountain, choked with sand and black beyond. Nicau could hear the echoing drip of water inside, promises of some larger cavern, and the muffled skitter of some creature; a proper cave, one hidden for potential centuries.

And, more pressingly, the steady buzz of draconic energy.

"In there," he murmured, hesitantly inching the torch forward. It cast shadows over the stalactites like a fanged maw. "Something's in there."

The crack was small, had to be if it had remained hidden for so long, but they were both street-starved orphans from an illegal pirate city. If anyone would be thin enough to squeeze through, it would be them.

Romei's eyes burned. "Let's go."

"Are you mad?" He hissed, unable to avoid another glance back at the waking city. "We don't know where the cave goes—it could go right out the other side of the mountains and drop you in the middle of the Leóro Kingdom. Or all the rumors of the goblin nation, and the stone-drakes, and that's without all the monsters living in there–"

"Do you want to join the Dread Crew?"

"...what?"

Romei cracked every bone in her body as she stood, blood dripping from her fingertips. She towered over him. "Do you want to keep catching pigeons for a living, unranked with no chance of even reaching Bronze, scrounging in the scraps and knowing that everyone in Calarata would kill you without batting an eye? Or do you want to be worth something?"

Nicau narrowed his eyes. "I want to join the Dread Crew."

"Then you'd be willing to dig through this mountain for a chance, wouldn't you?"

He hesitated for a second too long.

Romei snatched the torch from his hand, flames spluttering weakly through the scraps of oil they'd managed to steal. "Then go back to Calarata." She shifted the torch to her mouth, shadows thick in the hollows of her face, and dropped to her stomach. Sand shifted under her stomach as she started to worm her way into the mountain crack. Fearless.

She'd gotten what she wanted. Tricked him into leading her to the scales and scared him from going any further. Played him like a fiddle, really. Both of them knew damn well he wouldn't muster any courage to go tell a member of the Dread Crew about her plan.

Nicau looked between the crack and Calarata, between salvation and stability.

Gods, he really was a coward.

-

The mushroom was growing.

My many points of awareness circled over the entrance to my lair, prodding at the white flesh. I hadn't noticed it in the midst of the fight, but when I'd shove my metaphorical weight over the lizard to try and get past his thick fucking skull my mana had been drained, nearly three points of it. Neither him nor the snake had absorbed any, too caught up in their pissing contest, but they'd been fighting on top of my little fungal bait field.

And now one of the mushrooms was changed.

Its stalk had grown thick, cap reaching for the ceiling—the same proportions but swollen thrice past its original. Even its coloration was more of a pale green, as if it had leached life from the algae it grew from. I gave it a mana-filled poke.

It absorbed another spark.

Living creatures in my realm had two ways of gathering mana—active consumption, the killing of others. The second, however, was much more passive, my mere presence imbuing mana through the air.

For plants, their only way of growing was the second; unless, apparently, I shoved mana into them. It was hardly the most efficient plan—I'd wasted three points on this one mushroom and I doubted it had ended up with even a tenth of that—but there was potential there. All dungeons craved the evolution of their creatures.

And given how my idiot of a lizard would end up dead with all the fights he so loved meandering into, evolution would be my best chance to kill the bastard outside.

My cave spiders, still trembling in their metaphorical eight boots, slowly crept back down to the fungal garden. I nudged them with all the care of an absentee parent towards the largest mushroom, guiding them to build their webs right alongside its base. Maybe the deaths of nearby insects, no matter how small and insubstational, could guide its evolution.

Actually…

I twisted to glance at my core. The mana I'd all but drowned the lizard in to heal his injuries had been a painfully large amount but so had been what I'd absorbed from the snake's death, leaving me crawling towards three-fourths full.

I waited a second to at least fake thinking it through before grabbing a full point of mana and shoveling it into the mushroom's core.

It shuddered, billowing out to reach a peak of nearly two feet tall, swaying with its impossible height. The spiders clustered around its base fled like the little cowards they were. I narrowed mental eyes and latched onto another half point, trying to inject splinters instead of going all at once. The lizard raised his head as if he could sense the normally delicate procedure I was merrily tripping my way through.

The mushroom swelled and started to glow a pale white, growing fat and plump with mana, the faintest undercurrent of silver visible under its flesh, until–

Your creature, a Whitecap Mushroom, is undergoing evolution!

Please select your desired path.

Lacecap (Uncommon): Learning from the spiders surrounding it, this mushroom trades its pacifism for sticky webs that trail to the ground, trapping small insects to serve as bait for larger creatures.

Glowlight Mushroom (Uncommon): Without needing light itself, this mushroom has become bioluminescent to attract those that would carry its spores, spreading far and wide with even a single sprout.

Fungal-folk (Rare): The influence of pure mana has given this mushroom a mind to think; growing stubby legs and a fanged maw, this beast hungers endlessly and attacks any in its path.