The final monster in the second clearing fell. Unlike the slimes, where the different colours grew in power and reward, these were mostly the same. The only difference was the effect of the spores. These red clouds induced sleep. Every bit as lethal as the yellow, should they take hold, but just as useless if they didn't.

  Actually, my Stamina had dropped by five points, proving I wasn't completely protected from the clouds. Still, it wasn't enough to worry about.

  Once again, motes of light rose up from the fungal mat, forming my second treasure chest—in this dungeon, one appeared for each cleared clearing. Not that they were really worth waiting for. The first had contained only a small pile of bronze coins, and while some interesting items did drop, there was nothing valuable or amazingly useful.

  This time around, it was something that looked much like a skill crystal, except for the fact that it was the wrong colour.

  Yup, interesting, but not particularly valuable. That was worth two monster kills if the one hundred was pre-multiplier, or a small fraction of one if it wasn't.

  Pre-multiplier, thankfully. Still, it wasn't as if waiting for the chest to form cost me any additional time. The paths in this place were annoying to find. The clearing was ringed with mushroom-trees, but there was more than enough space between them to pass through. It was only a half-dozen layers of mushrooms away from the clearing that they grew dense enough to block passage on all but the 'official' paths.

  Perhaps, with a Skill like the bandit leader's, I could make new paths of my own. Although even then, I'd need to know where I was going.

  Again, the guild's information proved itself. The pathway that led to the boss was marked by mushroom trees with a specific pattern of markings. Not anything obvious, like an arrow. Just a number of circular spots equal to the number of the next clearing, so in this case, three. How much Reasoning and Memory had it taken someone to spot that?

  Path identified, I moved into the third clearing. This time, the monsters were green, and their spores were poisonous. Again, my mask and Constitution proved up to the task, and six of them fell to my daggers.

  As usual, the evolved Skill twisted reality in small ways, my daggers slipping into the next batch of monsters with slightly less resistance than the fungal flesh should have offered. Blue, this time, whose spores would leave their victims trapped in blissful illusions, believing they were feasting and drinking while the fungus fed on their flesh.

  The fifth and penultimate clearing held a purple variant of the monsters, whose spores would drive their victims into an uncontrollable rage, causing party members to slaughter each other. Ironically, despite being the final clearing before the boss, it was the one area that was largely safe for me; I had no party, so were I to be affected, I'd simply take my berserk anger out on the monsters.

  Alas, the treasure chests offered nothing more than another few handfuls of bronze coins. I was going to need to change them all for larger denominations at some point, or they'd weigh down my backpack. Or perhaps I shouldn't have picked them up in the first place? They were only coppers, after all, and even if I filled my pack with them, would they be worth as much as the reward I'd get for clearing the missions? My serf upbringing screamed that throwing away money was wrong, but recent events had kinda skewed my sense of value...

  I slipped the final handful of coins into my pack anyway—I could always throw them away later—and then it was on to the boss.

  In the final clearing, a monstrous creature waited. The shape of a boar, but considerably larger, and lacking any features that one would usually associate with an animal. The 'head' was the fruiting cup of a mushroom, the eyes patches of red colouring. The legs were stalks, which didn't end in feet, but entwined themselves with the fungal mat below. The body was a terrifying mess of fungal matter, stalks and caps poking out seemingly at random.

  Despite obviously being a fungal mass in the vague shape of an animal, the thing roared.

  I roared back. I knew its abilities. Its strengths and weaknesses. I was hardly going to let it intimidate me. If I thought it stood a chance of victory, I wouldn't have come.

  It charged, but in a strange way. One leg at a time detached from the fungal mat, shifted through the air, then planted itself elsewhere. The monster had no conventional joints, and the way it moved was simply wrong, grating against my sensibilities. Limbs warped, contracting and expanding, and the body bent and flexed.

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  Despite its odd movement, the thing got up a decent speed. Not nearly as fast as me, though, so I simply sidestepped as it reached me, slicing with my main dagger. This was one occasion on which I would have liked a larger weapon, but I needed to make do with what I had, and it certainly wasn't immune. One of the caps budding from its back fell to the ground.

  Thanks to its strange locomotion, the monster didn't need to decelerate and turn. It simply stopped dead. One of the mushrooms on its back flexed, ejecting a yellow cloud. I ignored it; it was no different from the yellow spores in the first clearing. I went for another slice, instead, but this time the boss reacted, curving its body so that my dagger only cut through half of a stalk. The wound repaired itself in seconds as the mycelium knit itself back together.

  More mushrooms flexed, releasing clouds of various colours, but none of them posed a threat. Mere rehashes of what the mobs had already done. Had it had variants that didn't need to be breathed to be dangerous—acid spores, or spores that germinated inside my armour, or other such horrors—I'd have been in trouble.

  Then again, had it had variants like that, no way would the dungeon be E-rank.

  We traded blows for a few seconds, but we were both equally ineffective. Any attack I made that didn't outright sever a chunk of flesh healed within seconds, but conversely, its spores were ineffective against me and it wasn't fast enough to hit me physically.

  I ended the stalemate by leaping backward. I needed it to leave another opening. A chance for me to attack without it having a chance to react.

  It charged again, letting me swipe as it reached me, severing another cap from its body. It seemed less dexterous when one of its legs was in the air, less able to react to me and dodge. A little fact that hadn't been mentioned in the guild's notes, but one I continued to make full use of, baiting it backward step by step, then rushing forward to inflict whatever damage I could before it could firmly replant itself.

  Five minutes more, and the spore clouds it was releasing had noticeably begun to thin. Another five and they ceased completely, the last cap that was releasing them severed from its body.

  The monster roared again, despite the way it had largely fought in silence, and then it seeped into the floor. Almost literally. The creature unravelled, its body of intertwined stalks splitting apart, undoing the boar shape completely. Each stalk then merged into the fungal mat that spanned the entire dungeon, twisting and weaving themselves in. The cap that had been the head was left supported by a single stalk, now pointing upright and not moving, doing a pretty good impression of a regular mushroom, aside from its size.

  "Time for phase two..." I muttered, keeping a close eye on my feet. Whatever they may look like, this dungeon contained no regular mushrooms.

  A series of bulges formed beneath the mat, one right between my feet. I jumped out of the way just as each one erupted, a sea of sharpened stalks bursting upward and reaching a full metre in height. Had I not moved out of the way, the one between my legs would have caused much unpleasantness.

  Taking the opportunity while most of the boss's flesh was occupied, I charged the remaining mushroom, but the stalks instantly sunk back into the mat. The pattern repeated several times, fungal spears bursting from the ground then sinking back for another attempt, the cadence shortening as I approached the part of the boss that remained above the surface.

  The thing was merely an enlarged version of the mobs. On the one hand, that meant more spores—the single mushroom releasing all five colours at once—but on the other, it meant weak points.

  I dodged one final barrage of spears, then plunged my daggers into the eye-like whorls.

  The entire clearing trembled, but this was a boss, not a mere mob. A veritable forest of spears burst from all around it, forcing me backward. I had to repeat my approach twice more, stabbing out six of the whorls in total, before the thing crumpled. The cap lit up, glowing, and then dissolving into motes of light. The decay process spread down the stalk, but once it hit the fungal mat, it didn't stop. Instead, the mat itself decomposed, disintegrating in a neat circle centred on the boss-mushroom that expanded until it passed the edges of the clearing, leaving nothing but bare dirt behind.

  It took a while, but victory was mine.

  As in the Slime Pit, motes of light rained down upon the dungeon floor, building up into my shortcut out of here. Unlike the Slime Pit, though, it wasn't all the motes. This dungeon produced chests, and a part of the light formed a cube a little larger and more gaudy than the ones that had formed in the clearings. Letting my expectations grow a little, I threw it open.

  There was a skill crystal inside. Exactly the same as the ones produced in the Fluffy Meadow.

  "If you've just given me a [Farming] skill crystal, I'm going to get annoyed," I warned the dungeon.

  It didn't answer, so I plucked the crystal from its chest.

  Well, that was just bloody typical... I'd finally gained access to a shop that sold combat Skills—one that would have sold me that exact Skill once I got promoted, even—and then the very first skill crystal I found was for a combat Skill.

  Oh well. It was compatible with daggers. At only two skill points, it was worth putting my plan to evolve [Dagger Expertise] into [Dagger Mastery] on hold for a single level to buy it.

  There was nothing else for me here in the dungeon, so I stepped into the teleporter. White light flared, reality warping around me, and causing a brief moment of disorientation. Once the world stopped shimmering, I found myself staring into the eyes of a rather confused wolf.

  Several other wolves were peering at me, too. A pack of half a dozen were surrounding the tree up which I'd stashed my cart.

  The wolves weren't, strictly speaking, monsters, and so they didn't immediately fly into a homicidal rage at the sight of me. Rather, my sudden appearance, presumably in a bright magical flash, seemed to have shocked them to the point of not knowing how to respond. It took a few more seconds for them to complete the animalistic flee/eat/mate calculation, but when they did, they settled on eat. That was fine by me. If they wanted to save me the effort of hunting them down for my adventurers' guild job, I had nothing for them except gratitude.

  And also my pair of daggers.