After getting a bit accustomed to the changes in his body and making sure that everything was okay with the pods, Lucius got back to building the cottage.
Everything went way smoother than the first time he had built this as he already had all the right assumptions about the required dimensions and other minor details that could possibly be miscalculated.
Of course, that's not to say that things went perfectly. There were a few instances where he cut up the planks wrongly or had to redo crucial steps due to new problems arising, such as slight differences in ground elevation.
He finished building the cottage about 5 hours after the photosynthesis session, making sure to build it around the two pods so as to keep them safe.
After asking Pagan to heal him to get rid of the fatigue, he decided to pay a little visit to the shroom.
He wanted to secure some food before nightfall, and though he was certain he could easily kill anything around the same size as him, he wasn't sure where to even begin looking for them.
*
"Ah, finally. Did you bring me food?" the shroom whispered in greeting.
"That's actually part of the reason I came here. I wanted to ask if you knew any good hunting spots," Lucius replied.
The shroom took a moment to think, before looking up at Lucius with a sadistic smile.
"I know of a place... though its denizens are quite dangerous, toxicly so," the shroom replied musingly. "Of course, it won't be a problem for you, seeing as how you are nearly two times bigger than the last time you visited," the shroom continued, taking note of Lucius's now humongous size.
"Hmm, this sounds more like a luxury request. Why do I need to hunt down dangerous prey, don't you know any safer spots?" Lucius asked.
Though he was more than willing to hunt down poisonous prey as practice for the Dark Forest, he wanted the shroom to understand that he was doing it a favor by taking this risk. And as such, it would have to act accordingly.
"Think of it as a favor from one of your future subordinates. I never had the luxury of tasting the flesh of a poisonous creature," the shroom replied, realizing what Lucius was getting at.
"A future subordinate, huh?" Lucius replied with a smile, before taking a seat in front of its cell. "Tell me about the creature."
"We call them the eight-legged beasts. They are a tier-4 hunter species, with poison many times stronger than ours," the shroom started. As it described the creature, Lucius could tell that it was similar to arachnids from back on Earth, however, a few things made him wonder whether his comparison was fair at all.
"Wait, so they are nearly two times larger than I am, have tails that shoot poison, as well as fangs that can inject venom into your flesh?" Lucius asked for clarification, to which the shroom nodded in agreement.
"And let me get this straight, their skin is, and I quote 'harder than stone'?"
"Indeed," the shroom replied.
"Just how did your people hunt these down?" Lucius asked, unable to believe that this thing was hunted down by mere shrooms.
"We didn't. These are merely observations my clan made on the few occasions we encountered them. We found one of them nesting around one of our old clan dwellings, forcing us to move," the shroom explained.
"I see..." Lucius whispered thoughtfully, wondering whether he should go after this or not.
"If you hunt it, I can show you a technique my clan used to produce poison resistance concoctions. Of course, with such high-quality poison, I'm sure it will be many times more effective than what the others of my species are capable of making," the shroom continued, as if realizing that Lucius was about to give up on the idea.
~Poison resistance?~ This was news to him. He hadn't thought that the shrooms would be smart enough to concoct such substances.
"Hmm, and this concoction won't kill me?" Lucius asked.
"I don't know," the shroom shrugged in response. "But if you actually do get the Shri'kilian, then I'm certain it will work on you as well. Besides you already have a resistance to poison, so why wouldn't it work?" the shroom continued.
~Resistance to poiso- ahh, it's talking about how its poison had no effect on me the first time we encountered each other,~ Lucius realized. However, he wasn't very well going to explain the confusion, if the shroom believed he was resistant to poison then it could work to his advantage.
Though he was in the process of gaining its trust, he knew that it wouldn't forgive him for what he done to it so easily. So for now, it was best to keep relations on the scale of business partners rather than actual comrades.
"Very well then. Tell me where I can find it," Lucius said after some careful consideration.
The shroom gave him very detailed directions, using something called endiems as a unit of measurement. One endiem was apparently the length covered by 10 trees standing in a straight line beside each other.
The leafling instructed him to follow the river going south from here, till he reached the outskirts of the Green Forest, just before the Dark Forest. After that, he would have to walk 10 endiems west from the river, and there he would find a large quarry of rocks.
Amongst them was a hole, a small cave that the creature was nesting in, well, if it was still living there of course.
"What do you suggest I take along for the hunt?" Lucius asked after making sure he had the directions taken down right.
"A strong heart, if you try running, you'll die..." the shroom warned.
"So no weaknesses you are aware of?" Lucius asked, ignoring the shroom's taunts.
"As I said, my kind has never hunted it before. However, its eyes are the only part of its body not cloaked in its rough stony carapace, so perhaps that might help," the shroom replied.
