Dragon Crystal

"What's wrong?"

Not long after they entered the Mushroom Forest, Hopp noticed Carl's brow tightly furrowed.

"I don't know, but I keep feeling like there's something bad in this place."

Rubbing the bridge of her nose, Carl looked around nervously, as though she were guarding against something.

There were fewer beasts in the Mushroom Forest than either of them had expected.

Along the way, Hopp and Carl had yet to encounter any troublesome monsters.

But precisely because of that, Carl became even more cautious.

Powerful beasts marked their territories.

The Mushroom Forest should have been considered a rather favorable environment within this dungeon, yet few beasts lived here.

That probably meant there was a powerful creature somewhere in the forest.

Most people on the Continent of Khorvaire viewed psionic power with a certain degree of superstition.

They believed that those who awakened psionic powers could foresee fortune and misfortune, even the future.

Having grown up in Zhuomu, Hopp's understanding of psionic powers carried the same prejudice.

"In that case, let's set up camp here first. Those mushrooms look sturdy enough. We can build a wooden hut on top of one."

"Which one do you mean?"

Before Carl could confirm it, Hopp had already nimbly climbed onto a massive mushroom whose stalk had a radius of at least three meters.

The cap of the mushroom she chose was relatively flat. After roughly estimating it, Carl figured its surface area had to be at least two hundred square meters.

As long as they cut down some nearby mushrooms for lumber, they could quickly build a decent wooden hut on top of it.

The only problem was that its stalk was too tall. Going up and down with the materials would be quite troublesome.

"Have you considered building the camp somewhere else?"

Climbing up after Hopp, Carl looked at the swaying backside in front of her and asked in a muffled voice.

The moment the words left her mouth, Carl ran straight into Hopp.

"Please. Do you think everywhere is as peaceful and stable as your hometown?"

"This forest definitely exists for a reason. If we want to gain a foothold here, the best way is to rely on what makes this forest special."

As she spoke, Hopp's devil-like tail suddenly flicked, giving Carl a light but solid smack across the face.

It was impossible to tell whether she had done it accidentally or to get back at Carl for bumping into her.

"Fine. You have more wilderness survival experience than I do. I'll listen to you."

Following Hopp's path upward, Carl obediently trailed behind her and soon reached the point where the enormous mushroom's cap connected to its stalk.

The mushroom's material had completely turned woody. Perhaps because of that, however, there were several cracks in its cap.

Carl had not noticed them from below, but once she climbed up, the gaps became impossible to miss.

Following one of the cracks, Hopp and Carl climbed onto the mushroom cap.

Looking up, they saw Bioluminescent Mushrooms even taller than this one growing unevenly all around them. The two of them looked like tiny people who had wandered into a land of giants, exceptionally small.

"To be fair, if we really establish a camp here, it won't be very conspicuous."

Looking at the surrounding scene, Carl took more than ten seconds before she finally spoke.

"Hmph! Now you understand how right my choice was, don't you? I'll go down and chop wood and hunt later. You get things ready—we'll start a fire and cook."

Seeing that Carl had so quickly understood her good intentions, Hopp planted her hands on her hips and declared this with great confidence before turning around and climbing back down the mushroom.

Compared with climbing up, Hopp descended much faster.

Without seeming to make any particular movement, she simply "slid" straight down the mushroom stalk.

"Looks like she wasn't joking when she said she often lived in trees."

Watching her figure vanish into the crack, Carl felt deeply impressed.

But she quickly got to work, drawing and writing on the ground.

"I remember learning how to build wilderness cabins at school. We can make two Ropes of Climbing to transport materials later. If only I were level three already. A level-three Artificer can create a set of tools with magic—I could make a processing machine!"

As Carl planned out the work ahead, she found herself looking forward to reaching a higher level.

Before long, Hopp returned with the Bag of Holding.

"Giant Lizard meat, stones, and some tender Bioluminescent Mushrooms... Are you sure we can eat these mushrooms?"

After taking stock of the Bag of Holding's contents, Carl discovered that Hopp had brought back quite a few Bioluminescent Mushrooms the size of her palm.

"I don't know, but I saw that young Giant Lizard feeding on them."

Washing the blood from her body with fresh water from the Alchemy Jug, Hopp frowned as she answered Carl's question.

Carl carved Giant Runes representing fire onto the stone slab Hopp had brought back, then roasted the Giant Lizard meat as before.

She did not rashly touch the Bioluminescent Mushrooms.

There had been so many cases of mushroom poisoning among people back in the southwest in her previous life. Since she was not proficient in alchemy and did not understand plant toxicity, she did not dare experiment recklessly.

As for why the Giant Lizard had not died after eating them?

Reptiles and mammals differed greatly in how they absorbed various substances.

Even among mammals, different creatures did not share the same diet.

Take dogs, the animals people were most familiar with—chocolate was deadly poison to them.

Still, Carl did not waste the Bioluminescent Mushrooms Hopp had brought back.

After removing their moisture, Carl wove their plant fibers into rope and attempted to turn it into a magical item—a Rope of Climbing.

A typical Rope of Climbing was roughly twenty meters long and could support an object weighing nearly one ton. Its user could activate it with a command word and order its other end to move toward a designated destination.

The user could also command it to bind tightly around a designated object, or to loosen, knot, untie, and coil itself.

For adventurers who needed to climb up and down, it was an exceptionally convenient item.

If Carl could make a Rope of Climbing out of Bioluminescent Mushrooms, their work afterward would become much easier.

"Wait!"

Just as Carl crushed a handful of Bioluminescent Mushrooms with a stone to squeeze out their juice, Hopp suddenly stopped her from continuing.

Following Hopp's gaze, Carl discovered why she had intervened.

Because Carl's actions had been somewhat rough, Bioluminescent Mushroom juice had splashed onto the cap of the giant mushroom.

At that moment, that patch of mushroom cap was emitting an increasingly brighter glow visible to the naked eye.

Not only that, a cluster of crystals was piercing through the cap's surface and slowly growing outward.

Within the crystal seemed to swirl an orange-red Energy Vortex, and the surrounding magic power gathered around it as it grew.

On Eberron, such a thing had a standard name—an Eberron Dragon Crystal, a crystallization of the power of Eberron, the Dragon Below.