Chapter 11. The Toilet Paper Substitute

Emilia crouched beside a cluster of glowing mushrooms, her fingers hovering just above their caps. These aren’t the ordinary fungi she’d seen back in Japan. These are mooncap fungi, their pale blue glow soft and hypnotic beneath the shade of the towering Gloamspire Thicket trees. The same mushrooms she had used to create antidotes before.

Emilia crouched down in the undergrowth, carefully parting the thick layer of moss and ferns. Her eyes landed on a strange plant with broad, pale-green leaves that seemed to shimmer faintly in the filtered forest light. The edges of the leaves curled delicately, and when she touched one, it felt unbelievably soft, almost like silk.

Before she could react, a glowing notification appeared before her eyes:
[Silkfern – Absorbent, Soft, Non-Toxic. Excellent for Cleaning.]

Emilia’s jaw dropped so fast it nearly hit the forest floor. “Holy crap,” she breathed, clutching the plant as though it were the most precious treasure she had ever discovered. “It’s literally… literally a natural toilet paper plant!”

For a moment, she just knelt there, hugging the bundle of Silkfern like it was a long-lost friend. Memories of the disgusting bucket back in her hut flashed in her mind, and her whole body shuddered. “Goodbye, nightmare chamber pot,” she declared dramatically. “Hello, salvation!”

A soft chuckle floated beside her. Hikarimetsu, who had been standing watch with her arms folded, tilted her head, watching Emilia’s excitement with a mixture of curiosity and mild amusement. “You seem unusually happy and excited, Master,” she said, her tone dry but her golden eyes sparkling with humor.

“Of course I am!” Emilia exclaimed, practically bouncing to her feet. She waved the silky leaves in the air like a victorious warrior showing off a trophy. “You have no idea how horrible it’s been without this. This—” she shook the plant for emphasis “—is life-changing! Do you understand how revolutionary soft, non-toxic, absorbent plant leaves are?”

The problem is, they only grew deep inside this cursed forest. “Alright, little guys,” she murmured, leaning closer. “Let’s figure out how to grow you outside this death trap, shall we?”

Behind her, Hikarimetsu stood with her arms crossed. She looked like a war goddess amid the mist, her golden eyes gleaming with mild curiosity. “Master, you speak to mushrooms as though they can hear you,” she said, her tone both amused and exasperated.

Emilia shot her a look over her shoulder. “Don’t mock me. This is science. Or… well, magical botany, I guess. If I can figure out what they need to survive, I can teach the villagers to cultivate them safely. No more risking lives by coming here. And I can leave them without feeling guilty.”

Hikarimetsu tilted her head. “And how do you plan to do that? These plants thrive because of the mana saturation here. Outside this forest, they may wither.”

Emilia grinned, determination flashing in her eyes. “Then I’ll just figure out how to do it.”

For hours, she worked tirelessly, examining the mushrooms, the soil they grew in, and the strange glowing moss nearby. Her mysterious ability helped immensely. Whenever she focused, glowing text appeared in her vision, describing the properties of each thing she touched.

Emilia crouched, fingers brushing aside a mat of damp moss, and froze when her hand hit something hard and warm beneath the soil. The stone pulsed like a tiny heartbeat, a faint glow that seemed to thrum through her fingertips. She frowned, nudged it free, and set it in her palm. It isn’t smooth like river rock, it's veined with tiny runes and warm to the touch, a deep green that seems to drink in the forest power.

Hikarimetsu wandered closer. “Oh, that's nice,” she said. “That's not a rock, it's filled with mana, and actually it's the source of the mana that filled this forest.”

Emilia felt it, too: a subtle prickling at the base of her skull, like the first bubbles of a heady drink. She held the stone up and watched the runes pulse in time with that sensation. Mana, the thought slid into her mind as plainly as if someone had spoken it.

[Lumora—magic stone from Gloamspire Thicket. Store mana]
Can be refilled by putting in more magic or feeding it with the beast blood from Gloamspire Thicket; expires in six months.

Curiosity pushed her into action. Carefully, she tapped the small vial of Horned Maulbeast heartblood she still kept sealed in her pack, one of the things that she’d stored away. Just one tiny drop, nothing dramatic, and she let it fall onto the stone’s crevice.

The stone shuddered. The tiny runes flared, the glow brightening, and the pulse quickened as if someone had whispered a command. The air around them tasted metallic and alive. Warmth flowed into Emilia’s palm and up her arm, not painful, simply potent.

Hikarimetsu’s smile widened until it became sharp. “Ah. It drinks life,” she said softly. “Feed it blood, and it will hold the forest’s hunger for a time. Feed it magic, and it will sing.”

Emilia’s mind started ticking through possibilities. If the stone could store mana when fed with blood or magic, then maybe it could give mana when needed. Mooncap fungi and other magical plants in the thicket thrived in saturated mana soil, which was the whole problem.

They needed ambient power to germinate and grow. If she could bury a few of these stones in prepared soil, charge them with a safe source of mana, and control the release, then she could recreate the thicket’s conditions outside the forest.

Hikarimetsu said as she can read the thoughts in Emilia's mind. “It amplifies and releases. The stone is a conduit. Blood or magic charges it; it becomes a little lantern of mana.”

Emilia felt everything she thought start to solidify into a plan. If one stone could coax a sprout into being, she could build a bed of charged stones and engineer a small, stable patch of forest soil that would support mooncap spores or even silkfern. The stones themselves could act like a battery, slowly bleeding mana into the soil over days or weeks, long enough for seedlings to root and begin their own life cycle.

She imagined rows of shallow beds just beyond the village palisade: stones buried under rich compost, spores sown gently into the warmed earth, and thin wooden frames to keep curious animals away. If she taught the villagers to tend these beds, how to charge and conserve the stones, and how to harvest without destroying the mycelium, the Gloamspire’s gifts would no longer be trapped in danger.

Emilia’s grin widened. The hard knot of worry she’d carried since she first found that bucket in the hut loosened just a little. “We’ll start small,” she said, already rehearsing instructions in her head. “A few beds, one mushroom at a time. We’ll test soil mixtures, shade, and humidity. If this works, I’ll show them how to make the poison to hunt the forest's beast for the blood as the stone's feeder, then the antidote, and a soap from crushed silkleaf and ash, and then the toilet paper! Fuck, I can do this! We’ll solve the toilet problem next. We’ll make a system that doesn’t need magic!"

As she packed up more mushrooms and silkfern, a glowing notification appeared before her eyes:
Skill Acquired – Green Thumb (Level 1)
Your knowledge of plants and their growth has reached a new stage. You now have a higher chance of successfully cultivating magical flora outside their natural environment.

Emilia gasped and nearly dropped her bag. “Another useless skill!”

Hikarimetsu smirked, her tone dry. “Congratulations, Master. You are now officially the most dangerous gardener in this world.”

“Laugh all you want,” Emilia said, puffing her chest. “This skill could save lives and butts.” She patted the bundle of silkfern proudly.