(Apparently, I've accidentally made two updates today. Please save and recommend it, your support is my greatest motivation)
"This is a beauty that only exists in heaven." Vivian said, dreamily looking at the scene before her eyes, unable to suppress her praise, "It's a fairyland in the forest, just like in fairy tales. Are we really still in the living world? Or have we entered a dream?"
What appeared before the four of them was a colossal space, a huge area with at least two to three hundred thousand square meters. The dome of the space was concealed in darkness, invisible to the naked eye, and the ground of the space was covered by a faint radiance. The glow, although dim, illuminated the entire ground, casting light within a radius of half a meter from the ground.
As they breathed, countless specks of light poured out from different heights within the massive space, frantically shooting towards the high sky, then gradually spreading out and drifting down. For a moment, millions of specks of light danced within the immense space, like stars, embellishing the immense space as if a brilliant night sky. Under the illumination of millions of stars, the environment around the people in the space became clear.
This was a tremendous natural cave, with the humans standing in the middle of the cave appearing as insignificant as grains of sand. Within the enormous cave, countless mushrooms of varying heights were dotted about. The shortest ones were one meter high with a stem that could be embraced by a person, while the tallest ones were hundreds of meters high with a stem diameter exceeding ten meters. The mushroom caps were in a staggered pattern; they varied in sizes—the largest cap had a diameter of a hundred meters.
The numerous luminous points were actually countless glowing mushroom spores, they gushed from beneath the mushroom caps and slowly descended after floating in the air for a while. Some fell to the ground through the gaps between the densely packed caps, while others slowly accumulated on the lower mushroom caps, glowing, waiting for the newly formed spores to continue their downward journey during the next eruption.
As the light points gradually fell, the high sky was once again engulfed bit by bit by darkness. However, the girls knew that they would not forget the splendid sight of the countless starlights falling throughout their lives.
"This is the Spore Forest, also known as the Mushroom Forest. These mushrooms are demonic plants and are the most friendly demonic creatures to ordinary mortals within the huge cavern system. They sporadically spray out large quantities of spores. Other than making people cough, these spores are completely harmless to ordinary creatures. Yet, for magical creatures, the spores just sprayed out are the most dangerous poison. If a weak magical creature touches a bit of it, it will die. Even a powerful magical creature would hardly survive if it is fully covered by spores." Mr. Pannis said as he took out a piece of silk from his backpack, used it to cover his mouth and nose, and left the area of the pool.
The girls that followed closely stepped onto the ground from the pool and found that their feet were not touching the hard rock, but something as soft as stepping on a layer of carpet. Observing the ground carefully, they discovered a thick layer of spore powder had accumulated on the ground. When they stepped into it, the spore powder almost reached the surface of their feet.
"Is this the potent poison for magical creatures?" Aware of the spore ocean beneath her feet, Catherine asked, "What if we carry some with us? We can easily defeat the magical beast if we come across one, right?"
"Impossible," Mr. Pannis slowly stepped into the area of the Mushroom Forest and said, "These spores lose their poisonousness to magical creatures five minutes after they are sprayed out from the mushrooms, and they lose their ability to glow three hours later, turning into ordinary spore powder. For magical rats, demonic wild pigs, demonic burrowing apes, demonic mesas, and other omnivorous or herbivorous magical creatures, these inactive spores are the most delicious food, so from time to time, some weaker magical creatures will come here to forage for food. But as the spore eruptions are unpredictable, any creature that ventures too deep will become a corpse and serve as food for the mushrooms."
"An interesting cycle." Catherine removed her gloves and reached out to stroke a mushroom stem. The touch of the stem was rough and dry, yet as hard as a rock, "So hard? Strange, why doesn't anyone make armor with this material? It could bring in a fortune."
"Don't bother thinking about it," Mr. Pannis pointed to the thinnest mushroom, "You will understand once you cut it down."
"I see, the texture changes when it's cut." Catherine murmured and didn't stop her hand, channeling her Aggression into her knight sword to cut off the mushroom stem. Gold Rank Aggression made the knight's sword invincible, and with a loud, grating sound of metal collision, the less than one meter tall mushroom fell over. Touching the broken mushroom, Catherine was startled. "It's amazing, it's as soft as a regular mushroom."
"Let's go." Mr. Pannis didn't dwell on this issue further and waved his hand, "More than half of the day has already passed, we still have a long way to go. We have to at least reach the next resting point."
"A resting point? We have to rest at designated points?" Catherine frowned, she was worried, "This usually means that danger will be encountered frequently everywhere else. This same logic applies here in the cave, right?"
"Yes," Mr. Pannis said, "Moreover, even the resting points are not absolutely safe; they are just relatively less dangerous."
As they conversed, the four people had already walked to the edge of the Mushroom Forest, the end of the spore carpet. The further out they moved, the more spaced out the spores on the ground became, a minor area further out reverted back to total darkness, giving the impression that if they stepped into it, they would fall into an endless abyss.
"It's dark again," Lina murmured discontentedly, "I don't want to walk into it. I have the feeling that there are monsters hidden inside. Hey, Vivian, what are you squatting there for? Hurry up and catch up."
It was unknown when Vivian had stopped. Squatting on the ground, she was staring attentively at the thick spores on the ground, occasionally picking up a pinch to examine carefully, and even rubbing some at the tip of her nose. She was so engrossed that she didn't hear Lina calling her.
"Mr. Pannis, hold on." Lina called out to stop Mr. Pannis, "I'll go and drag that idiot over. She's having her old problems again. Though usually, she wouldn't be like this during an adventure."
"Hey, hey, Lina, what do you think you're doing?" Vivian was hoisted into the air by the collar by Lina, who had run back to her side. She flailed like a cat, "Put me down, put me down, that's a treasure, the most magical treasure, let me go, I need to check it again."
"What do you mean, 'check'?" Lina scolded with a huff, "If we don't hurry, everyone will leave you behind. Get a move on."
"No, absolutely no." This time, Vivian did not back down, "If I'm not mistaken, this could result in the greatest invention of the past two hundred years. I'd rather die with these spores than let it slip away."
"Okay, okay." Seeing that Vivian had already been dragged over, Catherine gently rubbed Vivian's short ponytail that hung outside her helmet and consoled her, "You won't miss it Vivian, we'll pass this place again on our way back. Then you can study it to your heart's content. By the way, Mr. Pannis, will we pass through here on our way back, if I remember right, you said there's a passage here, right?"
"Yes." Pannis nodded in confirmation, "And in the lower cave, there are three known Spore Forests. This is the largest one, and there are two more in the vicinity. The area where we will be resting tonight is actually one of the smaller ones. We will have plenty of time then."
"You see, Vivian." Catherine patted Vivian's shoulder and soothingly said with a smile, "So let's get going."
"Uh, okay." Vivian glanced at the spores spread out on the ground with a face full of struggle and reluctance, quickly squatted down to scoop up a handful and put them in an empty bag. Her voice almost turned into a whine, "Let's go."
Looking at Catherine's apologetic smile as she tried to explain something, Pannis just shrugged, "I understand, avid researchers are all like this. I've actually seen a lunatic who dissected himself."
Leading the three girls, Pannis once again stepped onto the dark ground. As they advanced step by step, the glowing Spore Forest gradually faded behind them. Even though they were once again engulfed by darkness, the girls seemed to have adapted to the boundless darkness around them after experiencing the beautiful spores forest, and reverted back to their usual adventurous state, completely free from the tension they initially felt when they entered the lower cave.
Just as they were about to reach one of the exits of the huge cave that Bernard remembered, he stopped in his tracks.
"What's the..." Catherine immediately unsheathed her knight sword and entered a cautious state, but seeing that there was nothing unusual around, she started to ask, but before she could finish her sentence, she was silenced by a gesture from Pannis. Using the faint light emitted by the light-attribute Crystal on his helmet, one could see Pannis's ears, which were exposed outside his helmet, twitch subtly. Meanwhile, he was sniffing around, trying to pick up the scent around him, "Bad luck, things always happen when we are in a hurry. Let's go, we gotta head back."
Without hesitation or question, the girls of Nellie's adventure team turned and ran with Pannis, stepping on the Spore carpet until they returned to the area of the Mushroom Forest. Pannis then surveyed the surroundings and pointed to an umbrella cover twenty meters high and more than ten meters in diameter, "Let's go up there."
Catherine glanced up to assess the surroundings of the umbrella cover, didn't reply, but simply hoisted Vivian onto her back. With her aggression ignited, she bounced off the uneven umbrella covers four times and furnished herself on the top of the umbrella cover.
Only when he saw Lina, too, effortlessly jumping and climbing in the umbrella forest, poking her head out from the edge of the umbrella cover in a few seconds, did Pannis follow suit and jumped after Catherine's trajectory to land twenty meters above the ground.
Unlike many other mushrooms, the mushroom Pannis chose had a very small tilt on top of the umbrella cover, it was almost flat. Plus, the texture of the umbrella cover was very rough, so there was no need to worry about slipping even if one were to stand on the edge of it.
Being twenty meters above the ground, they were out of the range of the shining Spore carpet on the ground. The surroundings turned dark again, with only some other mushroom umbrella covers, both near and far, low and high, still emitting a weak light due to the residual spores that hadn't fallen off their tops. Only after seeing Pannis settle down at the edge of the umbrella cover did Catherine voice out her confusion, "Are there any magical creatures?"
"Yep." Pannis' gaze was fixed on the exit they were just about to pass, "It smells like Cave Apes. They should have been nearby and were attracted by the scent of the spore eruption."
"Demonic Cave Apes?" Lina pondered, "A Bronze rank, herd creature, lives in caves. Lost climbing ability but developed powerful forearms for fast movement in narrow caves. Its sharp claws can easily tear through armor. Is this the magical creature that you're referring to?"
"Exactly that one." Pannis was a bit surprised, "Have you seen one before?"
"Humph, of course, I've seen them." Lina gave a smug humph, adding, "It's on page 497 of the Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures. But a mere Bronze Rank magical beast, what's terrifying about that?"
"Nothing to be afraid of, really. Unless they usually appear in herds of at least a thousand. I've heard that there was a sighting of a large herd of over fifty thousand a couple of years ago." Pannis discussed the chill-inducing topic with an easygoing tone, "Luckily, Miss Vivian delayed us a bit, otherwise we would've bumped head-on with them. If it's a small herd, it's not a problem. But if we encounter a large herd, I'm afraid we're not going anywhere without a whole day of fighting."