CHAPTER 5 — “Rot and Ruin” #3
I push myself to my feet. The Sporomother is lurching toward me, half her sensory cluster torn away by Johnson’s earlier attack, acid still eating at her base. She’s hurt. She’s pissed.
And I have zero mana and thirty-one HP.
“Johnson. Can you move?”
Slowly. I see him stagger upright across the chamber, favoring one leg. I can distract her. Maybe.
“Don’t die.”
Wasn’t planning on it. Same to you.
The Sporomother screams again. My vision blurs, but the mental barrier holds—barely—and I charge.
No plan now. No strategy. Just me and a cleaver and whatever stubborn spite has been keeping me alive since the day my best friend stabbed me through the chest.
I hit her base first—the damaged section, where the acid did its work.
The cleaver bites deep, tearing through weakened flesh, and something inside her ruptures with a spray of luminescent fluid.
She shrieks, tendrils flailing, and one of them catches me across the chest hard enough to send me flying.
I hit the ground. Roll. Come up somehow, body screaming, cleaver still in my hand.
Johnson is on her again—smaller target, faster, harder to hit. He’s tearing at her remaining sensory nodes, and she’s thrashing blindly now, screams becoming erratic, less coordinated.
I see the opening.
One spot on her central mass, unprotected, pulsing with something that might be a vital organ or might be nothing at all. Either way, it’s my best shot.
I run.
Three steps. Four. The cleaver goes up, comes down with every ounce of strength I have left.
The impact jars my arms, my shoulders, my entire body. Something gives way with a wet, final sound. The Sporomother shudders—once, twice—and then she collapses, her massive form deflating like a punctured balloon, tendrils going limp, screams fading into silence.
I stand there, embedded in her corpse, too exhausted to move.
Well, Johnson says from somewhere nearby. That was unpleasant.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐│ FLOOR BOSS DEFEATED ││ \[Sporomother\] --- Level 7 │├─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤│ XP gained: 250 ││ Bonus XP: Solo clear (+50%) ││ Bonus XP: Underleveled challenger (+75%) ││ Total XP: 593 ││ ││ LEVEL UP!
││ Level 5 → Level 7 ││ ││ HP: 85 → 105 (+20) ││ MP: 24 → 32 (+8) ││ STR: 12 → 14 (+2) ││ AGI: 14 → 16 (+2) ││ INT: 16 → 18 (+2) ││ WIS: 18 → 20 (+2) ││ DEX: 15 → 17 (+2) ││ LCK: 5 → 6 (+1) ││ ││ NEW SKILL UNLOCKED: \[Alchemical Synthesis\] Lv.
1 ││ --- Create potions and compounds from dungeon ││ materials with increased efficiency ││ ││ "Two more levels.
You're practically a real ││ adventurer now.
Almost. Kind of. Not really." │└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
I pull myself out of the Sporomother’s deflating corpse and immediately collapse against the nearest wall. Everything hurts. Everything is covered in fungal residue. I’m pretty sure I have mushroom bits in places mushroom bits should never be.
Johnson limps over, looking almost as bad as I feel. One of his ears is bent at an angle that can’t be comfortable, and there’s a patch of fur missing from his side, but he’s alive.
We’re both alive.
“That was awful,” I say.
That was Tuesday. He settles next to me, too tired to maintain his usual distance. Or whatever day it is. I’ve lost track.
“We need to loot the room.”
We need to not die first. The looting can wait.
For once, I don’t argue with him.
We sit there in the ruins of the boss chamber, surrounded by fungal debris and the stench of victory, and I let myself feel something I haven’t felt in a long time.
Pride.
Not much. Just a flicker. But it’s there.
I killed a floor boss. A real one, not just goblins. I used magic—actual magic, even if it was accidental. I’m Level 7 now, with skills that are starting to matter and stats that are starting to climb.
I’m getting stronger.
And somewhere out there, the people who killed me are getting weaker.
You’re doing the brooding thing again, Johnson observes.
“It’s not brooding. It’s planning.”
It’s brooding. I can tell by the way your jaw gets all clenchy. He nudges my leg with his head—carefully, like he’s not sure he’s allowed. But I suppose you’ve earned a bit of brooding. Today.
I look down at him. At this impossible creature who chose to follow me for reasons I still don’t entirely understand.
“Thanks,” I say. “For the mental shield. And for… all of it.”
Don’t get sentimental. I have a reputation to maintain. But his voice is softer than usual. You did well. For a pathetic human wearing a borrowed body.
“High praise.”
The highest I give. Treasure it.
We sit in silence for a while longer, letting our HP tick slowly upward, letting the reality of what we just accomplished sink in.
Then I push myself to my feet.
“Come on. Let’s see what she dropped.”
Finally. I was starting to think you’d forgotten about the treasure.
The Sporomother’s loot is better than the goblin chief’s.
Much better.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐│ DUNGEON CLEAR NOTIFICATION ││ Floor 2 --- Fungal Caverns │├─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤│ Status: CLEARED ││ Time: 4 hours, 12 minutes ││ Deaths: 0 (somehow, again) ││ ││ LOOT SUMMARY: ││ --- \[Spore Essence\] x8 ││ --- \[Glowcap Mushroom\] x12 ││ --- \[Mindmoss Sample\] x3 ││ --- \[Sporomother Heart\] x1 (Rare) ││ --- \[Recipe Scroll: Acidic Mist Flask\] ││ --- Assorted coins: 2 silver, 34 copper ││ ││ SPAWN RATE REDUCTION: 50% (temporary) ││ Note: Floor will repopulate in 96 hours.
││ ││ TRAIT UPDATE: \[Fragmented Soul\] ││ --- Mana recovery rate: 2.
1% (accelerating) ││ --- Note: Emergency discharge triggered ││ latent recovery pathway.
Recommend ││ continued dungeon clearing to maintain.
││ ││ "Mana recovery jumped from 0.8% to 2.
1%. ││ Almost dying really does wonders for ││ your personal growth.
Who knew?" │└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
The Sporomother Heart is the real prize. I hold it up, examining it in the faint bioluminescence of the chamber—a crystallized organ about the size of my fist, pulsing with contained energy.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐│ ITEM DETAILS ││ \[Sporomother Heart\] (Rare) │├─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤│ Type: Alchemical Component / Mana Battery ││ Quality: Rare ││ ││ Properties: ││ --- Contains concentrated life energy ││ --- Can be used to craft high-tier potions ││ --- Can be consumed directly for +50 MP ││ (one-time use, not recommended for ││ humans with low mana capacity) ││ --- Can be refined into a permanent ││ mana capacity upgrade (+5 max MP) ││ ││ "Options!
You have options! This is new." │└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
A permanent mana capacity upgrade. Five points doesn’t sound like much, but for someone with only thirty-two max MP, it’s significant. And if I can refine it properly…
You’re thinking about crafting, Johnson observes. I can see the gears turning.
“I’m thinking about growth. Permanent growth.”
Same thing, for you. He hops onto my shoulder—gingerly, favoring his injuries. Let’s get out of here. This place smells like death.
“It smelled like death when we came in.”
Yes, but now it’s our death. That’s worse. Come on.
The walk back through the cleared dungeon is almost peaceful.
The shamblers are dead, the spores are settling, and the bioluminescence seems softer now—less threatening, more like decoration. I collect a few more samples as we go, [Herb Sense] working automatically to identify anything useful.
My mind wanders.
The mana surge—that moment when my power exploded outward and destroyed the shambler—it wasn’t skill. Wasn’t technique. It was pure instinct, my body remembering what it used to be capable of even if my conscious mind couldn’t access it.
I was an Archmage. Level 97. Fifteen thousand mana capacity and the knowledge to use every drop of it.
Now I’m Level 7 with thirty-two mana and a single accidental spell to my name.
But the recovery is accelerating. The trait says so. Every floor I clear, every step I take toward the dungeon’s heart, more of my power comes back. The Mary Harvest is reversing itself, pulling my stolen mana back through whatever connection it created.
And if my power is returning to me…
Then it’s leaving them.
Dario. Persephone. Gorath. Sylva. Anton.
They’re going to start feeling it soon. The fatigue. The weakness. The gradual erosion of everything they stole.
Good.
Let them wonder. Let them worry. Let them lie awake at night trying to understand why their invincibility is fading.
I’ll be here. Getting stronger. Getting closer.
And when I’m ready—when I’ve reclaimed everything they took—I’ll show them what it feels like to have the ground disappear beneath your feet.
You’re doing it again, Johnson says.
“Doing what?”
Smiling. In a way that would concern most mental health professionals.
“I’m not smiling.”
Your face is doing something. It’s either a smile or a stroke. Should I be worried?
I shake my head, forcing my expression back to neutral. He’s right—I was smiling. A cold, sharp smile that belonged to a version of me I thought I’d buried.
The Archmage isn’t dead.
He’s just waiting.
We emerge from the dungeon into late afternoon sunlight, and the first thing I see is Mariella.
She’s sitting on the collapsed wall of the barn, legs dangling, watching the dungeon entrance with an expression I can’t quite read. When she sees us, her eyes widen—taking in the fungal residue, the blood, the general state of disaster that is my current appearance.
“You look terrible,” she says.
“Thanks.”
“I mean really terrible. Like something chewed you up and spat you out.”
“Something did chew me up. It didn’t spit me out, though. I killed it first.”
Technically I helped, Johnson adds, though she can’t hear him. I deserve at least partial credit.