“Is this the ancient ruins?”
Rosie stood on the platform, gazing forward.
The edge of the platform opened onto a cliff.
Calling it a cliff was a slight exaggeration; it was only about seven or eight stories high.
The cliff face was steep, slick with dark moss and damp water streaks, but it didn't block her view of the scene below.
There stood a massive structure.
Surrounding the building was a forest of mushrooms, spread out like giant unfurled umbrellas in an orderly scattered pattern around the structure.
They emitted a soft bioluminescence, casting a dreamlike halo over the dim subterranean space.
“It's so beautiful!”
Emily stood beside Rosie, the soft glow of the mushroom forest reflecting in her eyes.
Then, she let out a sudden cheer.
“Hahaha! Emily's gonna be famous! The Greenstone family is finally getting a great scholar!”
Her voice echoed across the open underground cavern, bouncing off distant stone walls into a series of fading echoes.
The halfling spun around twice in excitement, her braided hair swinging behind her head.
Rosie's gaze drifted past the glowing caps and settled on the large building.
It stood silently amid the mushroom forest, cloaked in an undefinable ancient atmosphere.
That was her true objective on this trip.
Whether treasure, weapons, or quest rewards, everything was waiting for her inside.
“Emily, don't you want to take a closer look?” Rosie reminded her.
“Oh! Right, right, right!”
The halfling snapped out of her daze and slapped her own cheeks.
“Emily needs to bring some artifacts back to prove her discovery! Hehehe.”
She giggled, rubbing her hands together, looking as if she wanted to dash down right then and give the building a big kiss.
“Let's go then,” Rosie said.
Unlike Emily, she had zero interest in scientific exploration.
She just wanted to find valuable loot, swap her chipped shortsword for a decent weapon, and turn in the quest to collect her reward along the way.
As for what era these ruins belonged to, or how the gnome civilization rose and fell... she'd leave those headaches to the scholars.
“Don't run off randomly down there, okay?”
Emily wiped away her silly grin and put on the serious face of a professional archaeologist.
“Ancient ruins might be full of traps and mechanisms.”
Rosie nodded. “I'll stay behind you.”
As she spoke, she tightened her backpack straps, securely adjusted the round wooden shield on her forearm, and gripped the salvaged short spear in her right hand.
Emily nodded and led the way down the stone staircase that stretched downward.
The stairs were carved from the same grayish-white stone, their surfaces slightly weathered by countless years of damp air, yet structural integrity remained completely intact.
The two descended the stairs, their footsteps soft echoes in the vast cavern.
Emily moved carefully, taking measured steps as her eyes darted between the steps, the cavern walls on either side, and the mushroom forest in the distance.
“Looks like no one's been here in a really long time,” Emily said as she walked. “Nobody's set foot here for at least several thousand years.”
“If someone had, would there be anything left for us?” Rosie replied casually from behind her.
Emily blinked, then chuckled. “Fair point.”
Stepping off the final stair, the world before them opened up completely.
She had already thought the mushrooms were massive when looking down from the cliff, but standing beneath them made the sheer difference in scale terrifyingly real.
Every single mushroom stood taller than three people stacked on top of each other, their broad caps casting expansive shadows over the ground.
Their thick stalks felt somewhere between wood and fungus, tough and fibrous to the touch.
Up close, their luminescence was even softer, and the damp air smelled faintly of moist soil mixed with a unique fungal fragrance.
“Are these mushrooms poisonous?” Rosie asked.
Emily stepped closer to a stalk, lightly scraped the surface with a finger, and sniffed it.
“I don't think so. Judging by the color and smell, it should be a species of cave phosphorescent fungus. These types are usually harmless; they use light to attract insects that help spread their spores. Poisonous ones are typically brighter in color or smell much harsher.”
“Good. I'd rather not get randomly poisoned,” Rosie said.
The moment the words left her mouth, the massive mushroom right in front of them trembled slightly.
Then, a caterpillar crawled down from the upper section of the stalk.
Calling it a caterpillar was generous—it looked more like a giant slug-moth larva, nearly half a meter long, bright blue-green, with a row of dense, pale-yellow fleshy spines along its back that twitched as it moved.
Its dark-brown mouthparts gnawed on the mushroom stalk, leaving a slick, wet trail in its wake.
The hair on Rosie's arms stood straight up.
In her past life, even a thumb-sized stinging caterpillar would make her give it a wide berth, giving her goosebumps from her arms to the back of her neck.
Now, staring at a half-meter-long monstrosity, her scalp felt as if someone had yanked it violently.
“Watch out! That caterpillar looks poisonous—” Emily shouted.
Rosie didn't wait for her to finish.
Driven purely by instinct, she thrust her short spear forward.
Pfft!
The instant the tip pierced the creature's body, a burst of green fluid squirted out, splattering against the stalk and the ground.
Rosie didn't try to pull her spear back. She reflexively let go and stumbled back several steps, putting plenty of distance between herself and the bug.
Pierced by the spear, the caterpillar squirmed wildly.
It dropped off the stalk onto the soft ground, its plump body rolling about in agony as green fluid oozed continuously from its wound.
“Eww...”
Rosie stared at the thrashing bug, her face a mask of undisguised revulsion.
She vigorously rubbed her hand that had held the spear.
A few breaths later, the caterpillar's struggles slowed until it went completely still.
Emily carefully walked over and crouched beside the dead bug.
She poked its skin with a finger first, then leaned in to sniff the fluid oozing from the puncture wound.
Finally, she flicked out her tongue and took a quick lick.
Rosie's eyes widened in horror.
Emily smacked her lips as if tasting a fine wine, then nodded approvingly.
“Hmm, my bad. This little guy isn't poisonous.”
She reached out, grabbed the short spear lodged in the bug, pulled it out with a grunt, and tossed it to the ground.
Then, she pulled a small vial from her belt pouch and held the rim under the slowly seeping wound to collect the fluid.
Rosie walked over, pulled a clean rag from her pack, picked up her spear, and wiped it down. “What are you doing? Collecting it for research?”
“Nope.”
Emily shook her head, holding the filled vial up to eye level.
“This is a great natural beverage. The mushroom must ferment inside the caterpillar after it eats it. It has a faint, sweet aroma similar to dwarven mushroom wine!”
She held out the vial toward Rosie. “Wanna try some?”
Rosie stared at the vial of light-green liquid harvested straight out of a bug corpse, then at the chubby, dead bug lying on the ground. It took every ounce of her willpower to keep her expression neutral.
She gently pushed Emily's hand away.
“No thanks. I don't drink alcohol.”
Emily shrugged, unbothered, and took a small sip herself, letting out a satisfied, “Ahhh...”
“Tastes really good... Maybe we should take a few of these caterpillars back and see if we can farm them.”
Rosie was silent for a moment. “Uh... we're here to investigate the ruins.”
Emily blinked, then laughed sheepishly, stowing the vial back into her tool pouch.
“Ah, sorry, sorry! Halflings can't resist good food—we tend to forget what we're doing whenever delicious stuff is involved. Let's go, let's go!”
With that, she continued forward through the mushroom forest.
Rosie fell in step behind her, holding her round wooden shield across her chest with her left hand and gripping her short spear in her right, her eyes alertly scanning every shadow in the mushroom forest.
“Those caterpillars shouldn't be dangerous,” Emily said as she walked ahead. “They move slowly, have no hard shells or sharp claws, and their only defense mechanism is probably those fleshy spines on their backs. But those shouldn't pose much of a threat to you.”
Rosie remained silent.
She knew the caterpillars' combat power was basically zero.
But the threat of some creatures lay not in their combat prowess, but in their sheer appearance.
Just like how some people struggled to walk on a good day, but could instantly leap into the air the moment they saw a cockroach.
As they walked, Rosie suddenly asked, “Emily, do you think caterpillars have natural predators in this underground world?”
Emily stopped in her tracks and gave it some serious thought.
“There should be. In any mature ecosystem, no single species is allowed to multiply indefinitely... Why do you ask?”
Rosie was about to reply.
A noise came from overhead.
Bzzzzzz...
Rosie whipped her head up.
Above the mushroom caps, several dark shapes were circling.
They were about half a meter long, their silhouettes faintly visible in the glow of the phosphorescent mushrooms—giant bees.
Six long, slender legs were tucked under their abdomens, while two pairs of translucent wings vibrated at high speeds.
At the tip of their abdomens hung sharp stingers, glinting with a cold, metallic sheen under the bioluminescence.
Without needing Emily to identify them, Rosie could read the clear message from their size, stingers, and cold compound eyes:
These damn things were definitely poisonous.
Rate on N.U.
