Tunnel Rat

Milo thought he was dying. He lay on the ground, his naked body trembling, cold sweat pouring off of him. His stomach knotted, and tried to eat his liver. Harry kicked him in the stomach, forcing that rebellious organ to throw up a stinking broth of half-digested mushrooms.

"That's about enough for today, you stink and need a bath, and you're a minute away from dying. Drink this" He forced a milky white potion down Milo's throat, then picked him up and packed him like a sack of fertilizer off to a large tub of water. Milo found himself dunked into the cold water. As he came up sputtering, a bar of soap hit him in the face. "Wash, and I'll get dinner ready."

You have gained 50 experience points in Poison resistance.

Poison Resistance is now at rank 2!

You will take 15 less health damage per round from each tier 1 poison in your system. (Higher Tier poisons may not be affected by your resistance. Upgrade to Strong Poison Resistance to increase your protection!)

You have gained 50 experience points in CON.

CON is now at rank 2.

Please add Amanita bisporigera, commonly known as the Destroying Angel to your list of things you don't want to eat.

Milo had a growing list of mushrooms that he should never eat and yet was consuming anyway. But what were a few hours of agony each day in exchange for raising his Poison Resistance? After much thought, Milo put five enhancement points into gaining the new ability. It only made sense if he was fighting poisonous snakes. If he was going to go through the agony of training the skill, he wanted it over in the least amount of time. It had taken two days to get his resistance to rank 2. As a happy side effect, that raised his CON by 2 points as well, giving him an additional twenty health.

Harry was working him hard in the mushroom farms, teaching him to harvest the different varieties, how to cook them, and how to use them in Mycology, a strange type of mushroom-based alchemy. Milo spent time harvesting poisonous mushrooms, learning about them, grinding them up, processing the poisons, and finally, he would ingest them and go through the torture of trying to not die.

Milo had a long-term plan of hunting copperheads. To do that, he needed resistance to their poison, and to raise the skill, he needed to eat something poisonous and deal with the effects. Luckily Harry had a large supply of poisonous mushrooms of all types. He had been quite happy to feed them to Milo each day and take notes on the effects.

The first part of the plan had several objectives:

1. Poison himself with mushrooms, and raise his poison resistance.

2. Gather tons of mushrooms for Harry from the caves and fight the low-level guardians for a bit of experience.

3. Process the mushrooms for Harry, learn mycology, and how to brew some potions to cure poison.

4. Eat lots of cheese!

Part 4 turned out to be essential to the plan. Not only because it made Milo happy but because it greatly increased his rate of healing. He was nearly killing himself each day and needed a lot of healing. This was what convinced him to use his last five enhancement points on Not-so-good Regeneration. Even the first rank of the ability made a difference when he was constantly poisoning himself.

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The trips to the caves for mushroom hunting went well. He was gaining a lot of foraging experience and a little combat experience from the Myconian Guardians. He hadn't encountered anything like Cronk and had only seen one buried guardian that seemed a bit bigger than normal. He was saving that one until the end of his grinding.

He spent hours each day with Harry learning about mushrooms. He studied them in books, learned the basics of growing them, chopped them up, ground them to dust, dried them out, mixed them into infusions...and then started over and did it again. At the end of the week, he'd earned 350 experience points and gained rank 3 in the skill.

That was enough to allow him to make the first of the potions he needed.

Mycology at level 0 had let him learn the recipes for mushroom powders and decoctions. These were the basic ingredients needed for many potions made by mycologists and alchemists. Rank three in mycology gave him recipes for resistance potions for poison and disease.

Each of those minor potions was needed. Minor Infusion of Poison Resistance would reduce poison damage by 10 for 1 hour. And Minor Infusion of Disease Resistance would give him a boost to resist the effects of mushroom and mold spores along with infections.

Harry had explained just how important the second one was if he was going anywhere near the gigantic myconid that was infested with the Yellow Trumpet Creeper. He said its fancy name in Troll was Campsis Radicans Malignant. The dwarfs called it Yellow Death, and the elven name translated to 'Thing of beautiful nature which steals the soul and mortifies the remaining shell.'

One puff of the pollen at close range to a blossom could be enough to put a man into the blooms thrall. The poor victim stood for days under its influence while the plant sent tendrils into its head and ate its brain, leaving the body behind as a zombie under the plant’s control. As the body died, the plant replaced muscle and sinew with roots and bark. The plant obviously worried Harry, and he was working on far stronger versions of the infusions Milo was learning to make.

Dinner that night was stuffed mushroom caps with cheese sauce. Now that Harry was cured of his ailment, he was relearning skills he'd let slide over the last few decades. His meals before Milo had been clay sandwiches and handfuls of candied earthworms. Tonight, he had stuffed the mushroom caps with a combination of chopped herbs and bacon, baked the meal, and then covered them in cheese sauce. After dinner, Milo consumed a pound of cheddar for dessert. The more he healed, the hungrier for cheese he got, and the more he needed to eat. As he lay back contentedly with a full belly, he was notified of a small change.

Through diligent snacking and binging, you have saturated your body with healthy cheese! It's not easy keeping to such a proper diet, and you have earned the reward: The Power of Cheese rank 2!.

Every day that you eat at least one pound of cheese, you will enjoy the benefits of +100 Health, +2 STR, and +2 AGI.

Any time you have gone 24 hours without cheese, you will suffer -1 DEX, -1AG, -3 WIS. Don't let this happen! Be smart and eat your cheese!

Milo felt better immediately. This was a fitting reward for a smart rat like himself. And perfectly timed. He was about to start Phase 2 of his cunning plan.

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