The not-quite-formal meeting ran most of the day, and the two sides exchanged a fair amount of intelligence.
Accurately speaking, of course, it was Lin Jun unilaterally letting slip whatever information he felt was safe to share, as a show of good faith from the Puchi side. As for what the humans offered, nearly all of it was something Lin Jun already had — grasped directly through the fungal mats, or worked out from a wealth of clues. In the end the two sides reached a consensus on a few matters: opposing the Empire, holding back the Mist, and the like.
When the talks ended, Lin Jun extended four tentacles and shook hands with everyone present at once, then was scooped up by an Inanna who'd been waiting a long while. As she walked out, she kept gushing over the mycelial network about what "a lovely voice" he had, while behind her Alama's eye twitched.
Elsewhere, the Sword Saint — mentally wrung out by a whole pile of things at once: his identity exposed, his old friend's interrogation, the Boss's child voice — declined Lorenzo's offer to reminisce.
Right now all he wanted was to burrow into some empty corner of the Mushroom Garden and nurse his sanity, which was creeping toward its breaking point, back up.
One girl and two mushrooms took their leave.
"Your Excellency, what's your read?" Lorenzo asked.
"That was just a puppet. Beyond that, I can't tell for now."
Lorenzo wasn't surprised. He might not have the Hero's convenient panel, but he had his own means of gauging rough strength. That Puchi just now hadn't been weak, exactly, but it had clearly fallen far short.
"Alama, and you?"
Alama mulled it over. "I trust Airaven's judgment. Besides, the Kingdom is already bound tightly to the Puchis — nearly a third of our people have chosen mycelial symbiosis. I'm afraid we have no other choice. In fact, that this Fungus Lord can carry himself so mildly already surprises me a little. With the terms we just discussed, he could plainly have demanded far more had he pushed harder."
"Indeed. No choice at all." Lorenzo sighed. "At this rate, in a few years at most, humanity will have merged with the mycelium completely."
He paused. "Still — let's keep a fallback ready. Hold back a portion of pure humans, together with the other matter, as our last resort."
The two spoke without hiding anything from Sophia; as the Hero, she was naturally entitled to know everything.
For now, though, Lorenzo steered the conversation back to business.
"So — before we formally ally with the Mushroom Fortress, what are your thoughts on the question of domestic messaging?" He glanced around at them. "You should know, dangerous talk about the mycelium controlling minds and the like has been pouring in from the Mountains lately. Some groups have even begun to oppose it openly. To suddenly go public with this now could stir up no small commotion."
In the end they decided to put out some rumors first, watch how the public reacted, and respond from there.
In fact, for certain reasons, the public's anti-mycelium clamor ran higher than Lorenzo realized, and was trending worse — though Lin Jun had countermeasures of his own for that.
In the central plaza of Norwood City, a crowd had gathered in a ring.
A travel-worn merchant stood at its center, the hem of his robe still caked with mud from the mountain roads, his voice loud enough to carry down the whole street. "Whatever you do — do not, do not, do not accept mycelial parasitism!" He waved both arms. "That mycelium will burrow into your brains, seize control of your thoughts, and in the end turn every last one of you into contract beasts of the fungal mat!"
"What rubbish are you spouting!" Someone in the crowd hurled a rotten mushroom that caught the merchant square on the shoulder — a man whose face was crawling with mycelium, his expression furious.
The merchant wiped the bits off his face. Rather than lose his temper, he turned to the others nearby who bore the same mycelial traces. "It's the absolute truth! Haven't you noticed that ever since the mycelium took hold, you've grown more and more obsessed with Puchis, fungal mats, all of it? Don't just argue for argument's sake — think back honestly: did you really love those round little things this much before?"
The plaza went quiet for a moment. A few Puchi Masters' eyes drifted, as if genuinely casting their minds back.
But someone soon stepped up. "Liking a tool that serves you well — what does that prove?"
His words drew a chorus of agreement.
The merchant pressed on. "This is only the beginning of mind control — like a master-servant contract before the order is given. When the moment comes, the true control will descend. Or why else do you think the Empire suffered such a crushing defeat before the Mushroom Fortress in the north? Do you really believe that pack of exiled demons brought down two of the Empire's Dukes?"
He paused, raising his voice, brandishing several records he'd carried back from the Mountains. "What's more, over in the Mountains there have already been several incidents of the parasitized attacking ordinary people — wounding them to the brink of death, forcing the victims to accept mycelial parasitism just to survive. This is the gospel truth. If you don't believe me, ask anyone who's just come back from the Mountains; they're sure to know of similar cases."
What the merchant described had indeed been happening lately in the Mountain Kingdom. Lin Jun had noticed it too — the faint shadow of the Empire behind those incidents. The Demon King clearly didn't want the Puchis expanding too smoothly into territory beyond the Empire.
Someone in the crowd still pushed back. "Then why hasn't anything like that happened inside the United Kingdom?"
"Has it really not?" The merchant's gaze swept the mycelium-marked faces around him. "Or has it happened, and been covered up? Among the dwarves the parasitized are still few, and the Pure Ones won't cover for anyone — but look around you: how many here have already been parasitized?"
"You're saying we've all been mind-controlled into accomplices?" One Puchi Master's face flushed red.
"No, I don't mean every Puchi Master. But let me ask you — can you swear that none of the other parasitized have been bewitched? And how would you know whether you yourself haven't been quietly influenced?" The merchant gave no ground, his words coming faster and faster. "From what I've heard, once the mycelium takes hold, your dreams change, to one degree or another. Some gain knowledge they were never meant to know; some step into the same shared dream. You think it's a good thing, you think it's fascinating — but isn't that the very proof that your minds are being eroded?"
It made a great deal of sense — and it still enraged the Puchi Masters in the square. Curses erupted; some accused him of slander, others rolled up their sleeves to come teach him a lesson.
The merchant's robe was yanked askew and the brim of his hat knocked to one side, but he didn't flee, and he didn't shut up.
He just stood there, urging the still-unparasitized ordinary folk again and again to keep away from the mycelium. He truly was worried for humanity's future.
And quite a few people sided with him — those who'd long harbored doubts about mycelial parasitism and never dared become Puchi Masters, and who also resented how the Puchi Masters had snatched away most of the work.
The two camps fell to squabbling fiercely in the plaza.
Most people stayed silent. They couldn't be sure which side was right — but there was no doubt the merchant's words had deepened their misgivings.
And just then, a Puchi crept timidly to the edge of the crowd.
The Puchi Masters, who'd been arguing red in the face, gradually fell quiet and turned, one after another, to look at it.
Those not connected to the mycelial network watched the scene in bafflement, not understanding what was happening.
Until one Puchi Master addressed the merchant. "Albright — was your younger brother carried off by demonkind four years ago?"
"How do you know my name, and that? Do you know me?" Caught off guard by his own name, the merchant asked warily. Still, seeing that everyone was waiting on his answer, he went on. "Four years ago my caravan was attacked by demonkind. My brother vanished — alive or dead, I never knew. It was never confirmed that demons took him. What do you mean by asking this?"
At his confirmation, every Puchi Master's face filled with astonishment.
"What do we mean?" One Puchi Master pointed at the Puchi. "Maybe you should talk to this mushroom that claims to be your brother yourself?"
"What? Do you mean to humiliate and mock me like this?" Struck where it hurt — the tragedy of his own kin — the merchant's voice took on an edge of anger.
The Puchi pattered through the crowd on tiny steps until it stood before the merchant, a trembling tentacle slowly extending a telepathy stone.
The merchant instinctively raised a hand to ward it off — and the telepathy stone pressed into his palm.
"Big brother."
The papers in his hand scattered across the ground. The merchant stared in disbelief at the utterly ordinary-looking Puchi before him, then dropped to his knees in front of it, trembling as he reached out to touch its cap, murmuring under his breath:
"By the God of Light—"
A follower of the Mushroom-Worshipping Cult in the crowd offered a helpful reminder. "Maybe you ought to say 'Praise the Fungus Lord' instead."
(End of Chapter)
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