Sporemageddon - Volume Five - Psilocybin One

Psilocybin One 

Summer break was going to start in three days, and I was planning on using it to sell a lot of mushrooms.

The Eden-Powell Academy year had carried on relatively safely and easily. The death of one nouveau-rich man at the school early in the year had raised some suspicions, but it was quickly overshadowed by the sudden deaths of four members of the nobility in one night, the night of a student here’s birthday no less...

So far, no one had pinned the assassinations on me, so I must have done a decent job covering up my tracks.

The Union, Ratesco’s Union, was happy with the job. I got a fat purse-full of pounds for each dead nobleman, and a small extra for a job-well-done. 

The money was nice. The very subtle reputation was nicer.

The union, at least those in the know within it, now had someone who could take down high-value targets in a somewhat discreet way. I was hoping that they’d use that to better the conditions in the city.

In the meantime, I sat back and studied.

Part of that was reading the newspapers and their speculation about what the political elite were doing, and part was talking to classmates whose parents were the political elite. 

The situation in City Nineteen had taken a turn. There was now a subtle by rampant level of paranoia amongst the rich.

Many of them assumed that the deaths were all coincidence, that it was just a bit of bad timing.

More were starting to hire guards and cast suspicious glances at each other. A full tenth of the students in the Dragons, the class-group I was in, left for early vacations, and not all of them returned when the situation settled down.

Another part of the studying I did was of the more classical variety. 

The Academy library wouldn’t let a little firstie like me take any books out, but it would let me read in peace... and I might have snuck some books out anyway. If I was willing to kill then a bit of theft, especially from an organization instead of a person, was well within my moral bounds.

I did feel a little bad about stealing books though, and tried to return those that I could. Fortunately, lazy upper-year students were quite common, and they often returned books late. Tossing a few more into the return pile was barely worthy of note.

In any case, my time at the Academy from the point where I’d done my work until the end of that first year went by relatively calmly. There was drama, and maybe a few close calls, but I kept my head down and did my best to grind the more academic skills I had access to. 

My goal was to grow as much as I could while I had access to the privileges that these other students were taking for granted.

There was a gulf between the speed of growth that a common-born person had and the scions of the elite gained just on account of being born in the stations they were from.

I’d grown as well. Not so much in my more druid-natured skills, but in the more social ones. The Academy was the perfect training ground to learn how to lie, pick up lies from others, fib in class and learn how to learn. It was, I imagined, a purposeful part of the curriculum. A lot of the card games played in our dorms were poker-adjacent, and things like liar’s dice. Social games, designed to train social skills to nurture the next generation of leaders.

In higher years, there were electives to learn public speaking that I dearly wanted to participate in, but I knew that my time at Eden-Powell was coming to a close.

Still, I took a moment to look over my growth in the last almost-a-year, and I was pretty satisfied. 

Name: N/A

Alias: Ginger, Gunther Killua

Race: Human {Common}

Age: 11 Years

Mana: 100/100

Primary Class: [Feronie’s Crusader {Epic}]

Secondary Class: [Angel of Death {Rare}]

Afflictions

- Child of Poverty {Common}

Blessings

- Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

No great changes there, but losing the affliction that caused my lungs to seize up was beautiful. Seeing it absent reminded me to take deep, grateful lungfuls of air whenever I could. 

The changes to my first class weren’t all that impressive. 

Feronie’s Crusader Class Skills - Level Three Hundred and Thirty-Eight

- Aura of Growth {Rare} - Level Eighty-Nine

> [Shaped Aura] 

> [Careful Casting]

> [Unrestricted Growth]

> [Sustained Growth] 

- Blight {Epic} - Level Seventy-Nine

> [Persistent Death]

> [Rigour Mortis]

> [Infection]

- Ritual of Sporemageddon {Legendary} - Level Twenty

> [Apocalypse Walker]

- Druid Sight {Uncommon} - Level Seventy-Seven

> [Druid’s Sense]

> [Druid’s Ear]

> [Health Sense]

- Mushroom Magic {Rare} - Level Seventy-Three

> [Super Shroom Zoom]

> [Mushroom Remaker]

> [Potent]

Blight was right on the edge of hitting level eighty, which would mean a new subskill, but I think I’d hit the upper-limit of how much I could train the skill on nothing but the empty air. For further growth, I’d need more challenging targets. Druid Sight had been growing at a slow, but steady speed. The rest... eh, I’d get around to training them soon enough.

Angel of Death Class Skills - One Hundred and Sixty-Six

- Cherub of Death {Rare} - Level Thirty-Seven

> [Sin Sense]

- Guileless Eyes {Uncommon} - Level Forty-Six

> [Lingering Look]

> [Convincing Innocence]

- Unnoticeable {Uncommon} - Level Forty-Nine

> [Notice Me Not]

> [Forgetful Presence]

- Poison Blooded {Rare} - Level Eighteen

- Angel’s Touch {Rare} - Level Sixteen

Angel of Death had grown where Feronie’s Crusader had floundered. Several skills here had hit the levels where they unlocked new subskills. The Academy was a good place to train deceitfulness, and that was on top of living a double-life.

[Convincing Innocence]

You gain an instinctual understanding of how to present yourself as more innocent when under suspicion.

So far, the subskill had been a bit hit-or-miss. I already appeared rather innocent, so often times I just had this gut feeling that I should keep on looking as I did. Other times the skill almost felt like it was encouraging me to remove my disguise and appear more effeminate.

There was something cultural, even in City Seventeen, that made people hesitate before a girl more than before a boy.

Something to exploit later, then.

[Forgetful Presence]

Those who do notice you will more rapidly forget your presence once you are out of their sight and active thoughts.

A gift from Unnoticeable. I wasn’t able to outright test its effectiveness, but that maybe only proved that it was a good skill to have. I imagined that most people with Assassin-like classes had something similar to this in their repertoire. It might make finding work tricky, though, if people forgot about me.

Then there were my general skills. Those had jumped up a lot, though a number of them had started off rather low-levelled, on account of only being unlocked as I gained my second class. 

General Skills - Level Five Hundred and Fifty-Eight

- Running {Common} - Level Seventy-Three

> [Surefooted]

> [Sprint]

> [Runner's Breath]

- Knitting {Common} - Level Seventy-Two

> [Patterner]

> [Clicky Clacker]

> [Resizer]

- Basic Poison Resistance {Common} - Level Fifty-Nine

> [Mana Bleed]

> [Push Through]

- Social Manipulation {Uncommon} - Level Eighty-Four

> [Too Cute to Kill]

> [Bargain Maker]

> [Misinformer]

> [Thread the Needle]

- Poison Handling Expertise {Rare} - Level Seventy-Three

> [Iron Lunged]

> [Toxicant Sense]

> [Thick Skinned]

- Academic Mind {Uncommon} - Level Seventy-One

> [Penmanship]

> [Taught]

> [Cross-Referential Recall]

- Cooking {Common} - Level Thirty-Two

> [Eye for Sizes]

- Management {Common} - Level Twenty-Nine

> [Stock Knowledge]

- Quick Sleeper {Uncommon} - Level Forty-Six

> [Light Sleeper]

> [Alarm Reflex]

- Lie Detection {Uncommon} - Level Nineteen

> [Microexpression Reader]

[Thread the Needle]

You know how to say just enough, never too much, never too little. You can navigate conversations with precision, dropping subtle cues, leading people toward your desired conclusion without them realizing it.

A new sub skill for Social Manipulation, and one that felt like someone whispering in my ear. It took some getting used to, but it made handling social situations so much easier.

Was I growing charismatic?

Maybe, but it was only artificially so.

[Cross-Referential Recall]

Your brain builds a web of connections between everything you learn. Even if you don’t remember something directly, you can triangulate the knowledge through association.

That one helped with homework. 

[Alarm Reflex]

You tend to awaken when you ought to.

This one helped me wake up on time. 

[Microexpression Reader]

You have an innate ability to read a person’s expressions and tell what they’re feeling as they express themselves. 

And this one, as strong as it seemed, only really helped on the rare occasion when I ran into someone entirely unfamiliar with expressions I hadn’t yet grown accustomed to reading. I could only ask so much of a sub skill of an Uncommon skill.

All in all, I had taken my share from the Academy. If I never saw it again... well, I’d look back fondly on my time spent here.

But what I planned on doing might very well ruin the place.

While I was in the library, I’d run across an interesting alchemical tome, and from there, hatched a plan that might well lead to the downfall of the entire city, if I was clever about it.

***