Another World Where I Can’t Even Collapse and Die

CHAPTER 12 – BE CAREFUL WITH MUSHROOMS (3)

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Sniffing the air, Liliana dazedly whispered to herself, “I, I feel very hungry…”

“What’s this smell? Is someone cooking?!”
“… I’m hungry too…”

The smell was tantalizingly mouthwatering and a pang of hunger rose inside of me.
Suddenly, I realized what it was and grabbed the hands of Lukitas and Liliana, who were nearby.

“Fikar, grab those two!”

Fikar nodded and grabbed Marth and Leonardo by the neck as they were about to walk away.
The himekoryuu made a higher-pitched KueKue! than usual while facing upward.

“Everyone, attention~ That’s the himekoryuu’s warning sound.”

“Oi, I don’t care about that.
Let’s go to the source of that smell.”
“That’s right, I’m hungry!”
“Sumire-chan, I can’t take it~”
“I’ll listen properly after this…”

“That, that! I’m telling you, it’s dangerous.”

The children, who were complaining about being restrained by Fikar and I, tilted their heads at that.
I suppressed my hunger and put on a serious face.

“If you lose to this delicious smell, you’ll die.”

“What?!”

“And you will suffer while you die.”

“Iyaa~ But I’m hungry~”

“Could it be?… Is this the smell of a shikui mushroom1?”

Leonardo, who was always with his best friend, his book, guessed the correct answer.

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“Good job, Leonardo.
That’s right, this is the smell of one of the most dangerous mushrooms, the shikui mushroom.
It smells good, doesn’t it? Let’s go see what it looks like.”

“What’s so dangerous about a nice-smelling mushroom?!”

“You’ll see once we get there.”

“Sumire, this way!”

I tried holding back the children, but they pulled me along through the forest.
The himekoryuu was chirping shrilly, racing back and forth in front of the group.
Su also tried stepping in front of Fikar to block his path, but was only pushed out of the way.

“Su and the himekoryuu know it’s dangerous, so they’re trying to stop us.”

“Is it really that dangerous? It might not be if we go there.”
“Isn’t there an adventurer making milk soup?”
“Right?~ Maybe there’s a candy store there~”
“Maybe they’re smoking meat.”

“Yep, that’s it! That’s the trait of shikui mushrooms!”

“Ehhh? What’s that?”

I pointed that out as I pulled back the children, who were trying to go ahead of me like excited puppies.

“What does it smell like to you guys?”

“What are you talking about, Sumire? Isn’t it definitely milk?”
“Oi, what’s the matter with your nose? This smell is walnut pie no matter how you look at it.”
“Eh~ It’s totally different~ It’s fruit cake~”
“… It smells like smoked deer.”

“Everyone smells something completely different, right? They’re all your favorite foods.”

The scent of a shikui mushroom was a different kind of hallucination from the popolicus, making you think that you’re smelling what you most want to eat.
Moreover, it simultaneously stimulated your hunger center.

By the way, I smelled curry.
When I first encountered shikui mushrooms, I was able to realize the weirdness of the situation because I hadn’t had a dish that even remotely resembled curry since I came to this world.
I wanna eat curry…

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“They make you really want to eat.
Look, they’re growing right there.”

We crossed over some low-hanging ivies and saw a cluster of mushrooms growing about 2 meters away.
Around then, Su started barking loudly.
The children stopped in their tracks, and the himekoryuu confronted them for extra measure, baring its teeth.

“Su, it’s okay, we won’t get any closer.”

“Gaooooo! Gaoo~!”

“Here, everyone… take a good look… hey, Su, be quiet.”

Su, who was barking to warn us, was silenced by Fikar’s physical ‘persuasion’.
Though she still looked worried with her teary eyes, she seemed to have been convinced that we had no intention of going any farther.

The cluster of shikui mushrooms didn’t look very poisonous.
They were shaped like king trumpet mushrooms, stood the standard 10cm-15cm tall, and had a milky color throughout.

“Do you see how the cluster of mushrooms is shaped like something?”

“Hey, Fikar, lift me up a bit… Oh! I see, it’s an avaleyu cow!”
“It does… The curved horns and the shape of the legs look exactly like an avaleyu cow.”
“It does? Hey, Sumire, lift me up, too.”
“Isn’t that impossible?”
“Um~, isn’t that small thing a kinobori rabbit2?”

The large colony was shaped like a running avaleyu cow on its side, with a smaller bunch growing at its mouth in the shape of a small kinobori rabbit with a big tail.

“I see, there’s an avaleyu cow and a kinobori rabbit.
Do you know why they’re shaped like that?”

“Dunno, but it smells good.”

“The correct answer is that if you eat these mushrooms, you’ll bleed to death on the spot, and they’ll start growing all over your body.”

“E–hhh…”

When I told the four of them it would be extremely painful, they seemed to calm down a bit.

Shikui mushrooms weren’t the best at reproducing, since they couldn’t send their spores through the air.
Instead, they used their fragrance to attract hungry creatures and once they were eaten, they would swiftly kill the creature and use its body as a source of nutrients for the next generation.
As such, shikui mushrooms grew densely in the shape of their victims.
It was an eerie species, truly worthy of its “death eater” moniker.

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“By giving off a nice smell and making you feel hungry, it makes your appetite win over your reason.
That’s why these creatures get tempted, then get turned into food.”

“But Sumire-chan, it smells so good and I’m hungry~”
“Me, too.
I won’t eat it, so let me get closer!”

“No, no, no.
If you get closer, you’ll only want to eat it more.
It’s dangerous.”

The four of them, being restrained by Fikar and myself, were still struggling to get closer.
It’s said that young ones and less-intelligent animals are more susceptible to being tricked by shikui mushrooms, but even an experienced adventurer could fall victim to them if he encountered them on an empty stomach.

“Kue!!!”

The himekoryuu snapped its mouth open and cried out as if scolding Marth for continuing to squirm around while Fikar was holding him up by the back of his neck.
Between the rows of its jagged teether, a small flame exploded with a bang.
It was a small thing that reminded me of an experiment where I lit incense next to oxygen in a test tube, but it was enough to distract Marth.

“Himeko threatened me!”
“… A himekoryuu’s threat, that’s very rare…”
“Eh~? I didn’t get to see it~”

It was also my first time seeing a threat from the warm and friendly himekoryuu.
While we were impressed, Su moved stealthily towards the mushrooms.

Are you going to eat them? I was worried that she might eat them, and then she opened her mouth like the himekoryuu.
The children screamed as she got into position to take a big bite.
Shikui mushrooms were so poisonous that even a dragon might be in trouble.

“Su, it’s dangerous–”

Before I could finish my warning, flames spewed out of her mouth, which was lined with hooked teeth much sharper than the himekoryuu’s.
The flames, which were so big that I wouldn’t be able to wrap my arms around them, were like a flamethrower, easily engulfing the giant cluster of mushrooms on the avaleyu cow.
The small rabbit-shaped cluster was burning as well.

“S-Su, amazing!”
“So this is the power of a fire dragon…”
“It’s all burning~ But, Sumire-chan~…”
“The smell, it’s getting stronger…”

Maybe because they were being roasted, the scent of the mushrooms became stronger and they started to smell even better.
Although I was supposed to keep the children under control before they started rampaging, I could feel my stomach growling.
It smelled like well-done beef curry with freshly-cooked rice, pickled vegetables, butter chicken curry, and freshly-baked naan.
Just how much do I want to eat curry?!

While I clutched the childrens’ hands firmly, the smell slowly changed to that of char, presumably because the shikui mushrooms had finally burnt out.
Still, Su continued spitting out flames, laying waste to the area until nothing but charcoal remained, then finally letting out a huff of black smoke.
The color of the surrounding plants had changed a little, but there was no sign that the fire would spread, probably because of the high water content in those plants.

And then, a brown rabbit with green vertical stripes popped out of the bushes.
Perhaps it was lured in by the scent of the devilish mushrooms’ deaths.
It jumped into the ashen area, where it was so conspicuous that the group naturally fixed their gazes on it.

Su quickly caught the kinobori rabbit and swallowed it in an instant.
The sound of her munching filled the air, and the six people and one animal watched for a while.

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“Ah! Su-chan ate the rabbit-san~”

“Err… Su worked hard and got hungry.”

The Jurassic-esque scene allowed both the children and I to calm down from the smell of the shikui mushrooms.
Marth and Leonardo, who had been held by Fikar, were gently lowered down, but they no longer wanted to get closer to what was left of the mushrooms.

“Well, that was close, but it smelled really good, didn’t it?”

“… I think I would’ve eaten them if I were alone.”
“Me too~”
“Hmph, you’re so weak.”

Even though Lukitas was saying that confidently, he’d tried to approach the mushrooms with considerable force…

“Shikui mushrooms are dangerous! If you ever come across them again and have food on you, try putting some in your mouth to ease your hunger.”

This quest was only for children and I had properly registered it, so I was only carrying some snacks for coming to this area, but adventurers who went to areas with a lot of shikui mushrooms usually carried loads of preserved foods.
It’s said that always having a piece of dried meat in your mouth makes you less likely to be filled by the shikui mushroom’s smell.

I took out some dried salt mushrooms from my handbag and handed them out.

“These are made from the salt mushrooms we’re going to pick~ Aren’t they delicious?”

“Sour! Blehh!”
“Sumire-chan’s idea of delicious is strange~”
“… is this a failure?”

The dried-plum taste wasn’t well-received by the three.
When I gave one to Fikar, he chewed slowly, hiding his mixed feelings behind his expressionless face.
The himekoryuu didn’t even come near me.

Slightly hurt, I felt a tug on my arm.

“I don’t mind it, this delicacy.
It’s really sour.”

“Lukitas…”

I decided I would teach Lukitas how to make night-dried salt mushrooms later.