Chapter 97
Written by Bayzo Albion
Beyond them...
A field.
Stretching to the horizon, a luminous sea of white—ivory-dusted, ethereal. Mushrooms. The rarest prize, dubbed "tears of gold" in the capital's black markets. Perfect alabaster caps, polished smooth, arrayed in military precision.
Each one? A fortune. Each cluster? Power incarnate.
And now, they were mine.
A feral grin split my lips. Laughter tore free—not triumphant fanfare, but a ragged rasp, expelling the last venom from my lungs.
"Two contracts... one strike," I murmured, tasting copper and bittersweet victory. "You all owe me now. Every last coin."
I wiped my blade on the creature's pallid remains. It twitched no more.
A notification flared in my vision:
System: You have slain the Mushroom King. +1500 EXP.
System: Level Up! 0 → 1.
Stats Updated:
Name: Balthazar
Level: 1
Strength: 4
Dexterity: 6
Endurance: 3
Constitution: 6
Magic: 6
Will: 11
Soul: 11
I stared at the numbers, smirking.
So, level-ups boosted everything evenly—automatic, across the board. One point each, no exceptions. No customization. No freedom.
"I'm not the master of my power," I muttered. "Just a cog in someone's machine."
I flexed my fist. Muscles felt denser, breaths deeper, reflexes sharper. Undeniable gains... but scripted. I'd hoped for choice: pump Will or Soul, specialize as mage or warrior. Instead? This.
One more truth crystallized: Quests, no matter how grueling, yielded zero EXP. Not a sliver. Only kills counted.
*In this world, cunning, deals, survival smarts? Worthless.*
*Reward comes in blood alone.*
I glanced at the Mushroom King's husk, the epiphany igniting:
*Experience here means death. Someone else's death. And if I want to grow...*
*I'll have to kill.*
I dropped to my knees and began plucking the white-capped mushrooms, my hands shaking. Each stem snapped with a brittle crunch. With no basket, I stuffed them into my cloak and then my sack. Thick, syrupy sap oozed out, sweet with a rotting undertone, soaking into the fabric. The scent was strange—fresh earth, milky sweetness, and a faint tang of decay.
The mushrooms came away too easily, almost eager to be taken. A slice, a twist—another cap in my palm. I worked on instinct until it hit me: I couldn't carry all this. The sack filled within minutes, my skin sticky with sap, the smell clinging like glue. And the field stretched on endlessly, a white sea to the horizon.
I sank into the fungal carpet, palms on my knees, head throbbing, eyes burning.
"Damn it… what now?"
Ideas flickered through my mind like dying embers, each one more foolish than the last. Bury them? Stash them in some hidden cache? But these weren't ordinary mushrooms—they glowed faintly even through the fabric, their sap eating away at the material like acid. Wrap them in three layers of sackcloth, and the smell would still betray the secret. Any drunken villager stumbling by would sniff it out in an instant.
Hide the entire field? But how? The magical fog that had shrouded this place vanished with the creature I'd slain. Now, any goat-herding old woman could wander in and spot this white goldmine. Word would spread like wildfire. Adventurers today. Caravans in a week. A month from now, whole regiments would descend with plows, wagons, and priests in tow. And that would be the end of it all.
I stared at the rows of caps, hundreds upon thousands, each one worth a fortune—enough to buy a house, land, maybe even a noble title. But a title? To hell with that. All I needed was to survive.
"If I can't haul the field away... then I have to make sure no one else can claim it," I muttered, my thoughts hammering inside my skull like frantic birds trapped in a cage.
Burn it all? Leave behind a scorched scar on the earth? It was a straightforward idea, almost noble in its simplicity: take a handful for myself and sleep easy knowing the rest was ash. But the moment the thought formed, something inside me twisted in protest. Burn gold just to deny it to others? My very soul rebelled, screaming a defiant "No!"
Dig up the mycelium? Carve out chunks of those pulsing white veins and cart them off to cultivate my own secret garden in some remote cave. I ran my hand over the soil, feeling the network of roots thrumming beneath, alive and insistent in the darkness. But I had no tools, no expertise, no time. Mycelium was a fickle beast—it could wither and die... or turn on me and devour me whole in my isolation.
Report it to the guild? Claim the discovery, etch my name in the annals as the finder, collect my share, and gain their protection. But that meant surrendering any chance of keeping it all for myself. And my heart roared back: "No. No! It has to be mine—all of it!"
I clenched my fists until my nails dug into my palms, drawing blood that dripped onto the earth in dark, accusing spots.
"I need another way..."
And that's when my gaze landed on the corpses.
Six of them, maybe seven, frozen in their final agonies—arms outstretched, faces twisted in eternal torment. Armor hung from their frames, rings glinted on bony fingers, amulets dangled like mocking temptations. Everything shimmered in the dim light, taunting me. Even in death, they seemed to sneer: Here it is, wealth for the taking. But I couldn't carry even a fraction of it.
"At least a bag... just one damned bag with some kind of storage enchantment..." I grumbled, staggering to my knees beside the first body.
The stench hit me like a wall: musty cloth, congealed blood, and that sickly-sweet rot. But greed overpowered my revulsion. I rummaged like a feral animal, tearing away moss, unbuckling straps, yanking out knives, shaking out rotten pouches.
"Give me something... anything—a sack, a pocket dimension, whatever..." I whispered, half-praying without realizing it.
My fingers shook, my breath came in ragged gasps. My heart pounded faster with each futile find. I knew deep down: these bodies, this armor, these mushrooms—they held the key to a new life, an empire of my own. But without a way to gather it all, it would slip away to someone else.
I tore through pouch after pouch. Coins spilled onto the ground, skittering across the moss. Rusted rings, cracked amulets, dulled swords. It was wealth—and utter trash at the same time. I couldn't carry it anyway. But leave it behind? Impossible.
"Come on... come on!" I muttered, desperation clawing at my throat. "I just need one thing. One bag, and it's all mine. Everything."
The forest seemed to hold its breath, watching my frantic search unfold.
I paused, digging my nails into my palms to steady my breathing. My heart still thundered like a blacksmith's hammer, but my thoughts began to sharpen. These bodies... they looked too fresh. A month old at most. Hadn't the registrar mentioned that only the best had perished here? Silver-rank veterans laden with artifacts. But these? Mere mercenaries, their iron rusted through, amulets etched with sloppy engravings. I held one up to the light—inside was a shard of glass instead of a gem. Fakes.
I hurled the worthless trinket aside and circled back to where the white creature had fallen. Its remains were already sinking into the soil, as if it'd never existed. I crouched low and began methodically probing the ground.
An hour passed. Then two. Three. My eyes watered, my hands ached, but I persisted. And finally, I spotted it—a subtle depression in the earth near the roots, barely noticeable, like a concealed entrance just wide enough for that beast.
Every instinct screamed: "Don't go in!" But if the mycelium had built a lair, the real treasures had to be there. I sucked in my gut and, gasping for air, wriggled inside.
– – –
The tunnel was claustrophobic, pressing against my shoulders, scraping my skin raw. I crawled onward, sweat drenching my back, my lungs compressing like a blacksmith's bellows. Then, abruptly, the passage widened, and I tumbled into a cavern.
The first thing that struck me was the skeletons. Dozens. Hundreds. They lay in haphazard piles, as if swept in by some merciless tide and discarded without ceremony. Bare bones gleamed in the faint luminescence, sharp and cold like shards of ice.
And amid this macabre hoard—treasures.
I reached out to the nearest breastplate. The metal was solid, dark, with runes etched deep enough to chill my fingertips. This wasn't an illusion or forgery; it was masterwork, the real deal.
On another skeleton dangled a belt studded with crystals that pulsed with a soft blue glow, syncing eerily with my ragged breaths. Nearby lay a sword, its silver blade tarnished by time, yet still radiating the aura of a hero's weapon even after decades.
I froze, a tightness gripping my chest. This was it. True wealth. Genuine artifacts. The gifts of the fallen.
And all of it... belonged to me.
Here's a clean, natural English version:
I'm becoming a slave to my own greed. I know it won't end well, but when I lost my divine powers, I lost my morals along with them.