Walking for another half hour, Poe soon discovered that the giant mushroom was waaaay bigger than he thought at first. They had already walked for half hour, but they had only made it half the way to the mushroom forest and the giant mushrooms in the distance, just kept getting bigger and bigger.
Soon, Poe, Lucia and Ivy came to stand in front of the giant mushroom forest. The giant mushrooms were in all kinds of colors, with brown stem and cap being the most common around.
The smallest mushrooms were easily more than three meters tall, while the highest was over 10 meters tall.
Having walked for the last hour, Poe and Lucia were both a little exhausted and tried to convince Ivy to rest for some time before entering the mushroom forest. Ivy refused at first, but after Poe asked Ivy, she agreed without a second thought.
"So… What are the monsters inside the mushroom forest?"
Poe asked as he looked at the restless Ivy staring into the mushroom forest just in front of her.
"No idea! That is why I want to enter the mushroom forest to find out!"
Ivy said as her desire to enter the mushroom forest rose to another level.
"Hah… I see…"
With nothing else to do, Poe walked up to one of the giant mushrooms at the outskirts of the mushroom forest and inspected it.
[Giant Mushroom Sapling (brown)]: a sapling stage giant mushroom tree. Tastes the same as normal mushrooms… Maybe. Edible.
Seeing it was edible Poe was immediately excited as he broke a part of the giant mushroom of and made his way back towards Ivy and Lucia.
"Look Lucia, I got some of the mushroom! And it's edible too!"
Saying so, Poe showed off the part he had broken off the giant mushroom sapling earlier to Lucia, who looked at it with interest.
[Part of a Giant Mushroom Sapling (brown)]: A part of the giant mushroom sapling. Edible.
"Ooooh, this is a part of those giant mushroom trees?"
Lucia asked while looking at the giant part of mushroom Poe brought back with him.
"Yes! Can we eat it?"
Poe said while looking like he could eat the giant piece of mushroom at any given point of time.
"Yes, but it taste way better if cooked into something!"
"R-really?"
"Yes! How about we make a mushroom soup and get something to eat before entering the mushroom forest?"
Saying so, Lucia took the giant piece of mushroom out of Poe's hands and headed towards Ivy.
Poe, who did not even get to answer Lucia's question was left standing empty handed, while starring towards the leaving Lucia in shock.
To think she took his precious food! However, she said she would make it taste better…
Stuck in a difficult dilemma on whether to become angry or not.
"Poe, come here and help me prepare the ingredients! Ivy will get a fire started."
Hearing Lucia, Poe returned to the world and decided that it would be best if the food tasted better. Having come to this decision, Poe made his way towards Lucia to help her out.
"By the way, where is Ivy going to find something to start a fire with? There is only mushroom trees around here…"
Standing beside Lucia, Poe looked at Lucia taking several cooking utensils out from a small bag strapped to a belt around her waist.
"And how does all those things fit into that bag…"
Poe said as he looked at the little bag at Lucia's waist in curiosity.
"Ah, this? It's a space bag, a space mage casted the spell storage on the bag making it able to carry way more than before."
"Storage can also be cast on items!? From what I heard the magic storage cost 10.000 mana to cast once… How is it placed on an item…?"
"Ah, Storage does indeed cost a lot to cast and to permanently use it on an item makes the mana cost go up as well. However, this issue is solved quite easily; a mage just needs to use a mana formation and borrow the mana in the surroundings to help casting the spell. This way, even if it cost much more mana, it would still be quite easy to cast the spell."
"Then are mana formations not suuuuper strong in battle!?"
Poe said as he looked at the bag at Lucia's waist in amazement.
"Not really, a mana formation takes a long time to set down and it also needs time to gather mana."
Hearing this, Poe was not surprised, if mages were able to do something like that, Poe wondered why they would even bother training their own mana in the first place.
With his confusion gone, Poe returned to chopping the giant mushroom piece into smaller and finer pieces. Lucia was preparing other stuff besides Poe, like salt, pepper, butter, garlic and so on.
Lucia made Poe start chopping onions, as he finished chopping up the giant piece of mushroom.
"I'm back~"
Ivy soon made herself known as she came back dragging a giant log with her.
"W-where did you get that?!"
Poe asked, as he looked at the giant log speechlessly.
"Ah, I asked a few warriors if some of them had a [living log of wood] from the swamp area earlier~ Guess I was lucky, hehe~"
Saying so, Ivy smiled as she looked shyly towards Poe while scratching the back of her head.
Poe ignored her and inspected the log on the ground.
[Deceased living log of wood]: This is the corpse of a living log of wood, who did not pass on and was left in the world even after its death. Rare drop from living log of wood! High quality firewood.
"…"
Poe chose to ignore the things the description showed and returned to chopping onions without saying anything else.
Soon, Lucia managed to make a fantastic mushroom soup and the group sat down around the fire and ate the mushroom soup.
Poe was unusually quiet, as he slowly ate the mushroom soup while looking at the fire slowly burning.