“I didn’t think a Mi-go could get much uglier, and the universe proved me wrong,” Briggs stated with a sigh.

“Zrrrt.” I gave him a noogie. “Pseudos come from Outside Creation!”

He opened his wide mouth, closed it, scowled at me, and then relaxed. “Ah, so the universe didn’t surprise me. That’s okay, then!”

“Hahahaha!” The clear laughter echoed in heads and turned eyes as a certain bat-winged ohmyfreakinggodshestoogorgeous succubus furled her wings and slid down the air on Featherweight, having clearly learned the proper technique for dealing with a Stillflight Field. Next to her was Haul, on top of it a single twenty-gallon stone jar.

She alighted somewhat more gently then a falling leaf, her smile dazzling from ear to ear. “One haul of Elder Mu Spore gut goop and gore, Itemized to the fourth!” she announced with an airy sniff. Yep, 44 Charisma and max that Diplomacy, casual slang sounds like formal traditional speech, with just the right touch of tempt-you demonic accent on it.

All eyes turned on that urn. Jar. Treasure chest for the company pension fund. Stone container carrying 4^3 times its volume in very pricey and premium Elder Mu comps.

Maybe two thousand gold a gallon for Premium, twenty gallons, times sixty-four...

“Get the nexal core?” I asked calmly. Sure, sure, she had just retrieved two and a half million gold, five thousand goldweight, in Mu guts. But given how behind she was on Gear, she needed all she could get.

She waved her hand elegantly, Haul rotated in homage, and the chest-sized piece of crystallized organic I-got-no-idea-what-that-is was leaning against the back of the jar. I looked at the thing, which was still oozing, and undulating, and leaking quintessence ooze that was evaporating in the air.

“That one’s yours to carve, Fuzzy!” I fobbed off cheerfully, and he grumbled under his breath. Phrenic shit was like carving slippery soap as hard as corundum. Felt slimy on the Vajra. I had lots to work on already, no reason not to spread out the load.

The Obelisk here was long toppled, the pseu-nat Mi-go had really, really hated us being Beyond Law and Chaos, and was horribly discomfited by Close Quarters Fighting. They had like seven limbs and kept trying to grapple so they could perform combat surgical eviscerations, and so kept losing all their limbs and lives at rather I-don’t-breathe-aie!-taking speed. Their mycoid servants, some of them the size of treants, had gone down with some hacking, exhortations about their bad breath, and banefire.

Nobody at all was complaining that Bane to Plants was a useless thing to have around anymore. Strange, that.

There were still some of the flying fungi-things around, which had been properly classified into kingdom and phyla as sqviggles for the little ones, vriggles for the medium ones, and ziggles for the big ones, further separated into Eww, Uggh, and Blegh species. Veis and the gnomes had it all worked out; the zoologists proclaimed it a fine example of proper scientific naming conventions; and so such beasts were duly entered into the lexicon with formal pomp and circumstance, along with the names of their discoverers, all honors to Mimir, Lord of Knowledge and data-obsessed librarians.

The dragons liked Ugh, found Eww too greasy, and Blegh was just unappetizing. Everybody a critic, in the end. Although, they spent some of their share of Mu goop frying up various fungi, making a light batter, broiling, baking them into cakes, and were generally quite pleased with the results. Even Blegh came out alright deep-fried in butter, Mu goop, and cut into fritters...

The cakes were actually pretty good, but nobody without a Diamond Vajra had the slightest wish to taste them, even Wayfair. They were all amazed that I could get the spores to stop trying to explode and inflate to ten thousand times their mass, and just act like normal yeast... kinda fun what all those Ranks of Cooking and Alchemy give you together. Hyperactive flesh-eating spores popping in the mouth like sugar snaps, like fireworks of inspiration going off...

We had soooo much Mu Goop. It was occupying all the Disks as we waited for Hazé, who would be with us as soon as she pulled a thousand people out of some Southern border town through petrifying them, shrinking them down, and then Tapestrying the lot of them before Gemjumping back to Branch. Oh, and bringing a warehouse worth of Itemized supplies, too.

Several warehouses worth, that is. Doing the Good Work, she was...

There weren’t any more Mu Spores visible on the horizon. After gutting the city, ruining many a street with fallen Mu Spores and driving the resale values right down into fertilizer range, hey, suddenly the Mu Spores in the distance decided they had mounds of fecal matter to toss, and they all disappeared.

Couldn’t understand why, we’d only killed like twenty, two dozen, thirty of them, something, sheesh...

“There’s absolutely no damn way that’s all of the Mu Spores,” Briggs murmured, his teeth clenched. “You know, we really should go hunt them down.”

I glanced at Brother AA, off looking into the horizon as usual, thinking dire thoughts of killing creatures that should have died off long ago. “This Zone is at least three hundred by near a thousand miles. They can freaking hide themselves just by burying themselves in the ground. The Brother can track them, but it would just be fruitless for the rest of us, a total waste of time. I’m sure the lads don’t mind hewing down endless forests of shrooms and fungi-drow just so we can collect Mu goop and Karma.”

“If shit like that gets out when we take down the key Obelisks...”

“If it makes you feel bad, consider that there’s seven more spatial Shards in this ring, and they all have multiple mushroom Zones, too.”

He rolled his pale violet eyes, somehow looking quite intellectual despite the low brow. “Thanks. That’s really reassuring.” I beamed for him, and he grumbled again. “I heard that Krigglerward wanted to try some of those mi-gos?” He conveyed astonishment, even for a dragon’s appetite.

“Ah, unfortunately most of the corpses were heavily vivisized, and they’re immune to acid, doncha know, so the only way he could digest one is pour his lightning into his stomach and-“ I pointed skywards.

There was a rather horrendous vomiting sound, accentuated as it was with the sound of a thunderbolt going off, white and green clashing inside the frantically spewed lightning as it was hurled into the sky. The youngest Shield Dragon’s bronze scales were showing some definitely clashing hues of blue and orange as his head flopped to the ground, tongue lolling and crackling drool falling from his mouth with individual claps, like fists smacking the stones, pop, pop, pop...

“You know dragons, once they get something in their head, they’re going to try it, so why not make it a life lesson?”

“Don’t try to digest shit from Outside Creation?” he pontificated reasonably.

“And now all the dragons know, and can spread the word.” Blue and orange shades were flowing across his scales irregularly, and he definitely looked like he was going to hurl again, so everyone got away from in front of him.

His erstwhile Riders looked over at me helplessly, I gave them a thumbs-up. Enlightenment, and they tried not to smile as they regarded the nauseated dragon...

---

How often does a problem like this come up?

Elven Baneskulls. Drow definitely qualified as elves, and given that our next area was going to be more of these shroom-mutated, obsidian-skinned, off-their-rocker sorts, harvesting skulls was definitely a thing we were doing.

It was making the elves here a little fidgety. It wasn’t like they could use the things, as they’d be subject to the effects themselves. They were being used by human Powered, and the other races along with us.

My solution was simple enough. I sent off a message to the armies still fighting Warpbands that when they ran across Warped Rockborn, Derro, or ex-human Warp Champions, we needed a grand total of a hundred and forty or so Baneskulls of dwarves, humans, and gnomes developed by the elves at their own time and expense, to offset what we were making up here.

Everyone agreed that the Baneskulls were too nice a tool to let slip by against the vast numbers of drow we were looking at, or against them in general outside of this theater, and solemn promises were exchanged not to ever use them against fellow Alliance members. There was even talk about setting up exchange companies who could use the things in concert against their mutual enemies.

Elves using Dwarfbane against grey dwarves and derro, Rockborn using Elfbane against drow, each race on behalf of the other. Naturally every such Baneskull was now going to be enumerated and its history written down so that in the future it couldn’t be accused of being taken from the heads of one of their allies...

Given the blatant hostility of the human Empire to the south, I really had no issue if the elves kept some Human Baneskulls for swatting pests, rather astonishing them. The people in Alliance with them now generally weren’t the kind to worry about such things being used against them, as long as everything stayed on the up and up.

Of course, being able to call up and chat with the leaders of the other side at any moment really helped settle issues ahead of time. The alchemists of the elves, dwarves, and gnomes were going into conniption fits at finding out we had so much Mu Goo, let alone the humans contacted on the side. Thousands of goldweight of self-empowering Scrolls and Potions danced in their heads, and the implications for high-end Alchemy were impressive, indeed. Just the acids that could be rendered down were priceless...

And yet, nobody had the slightest protest who most of that stuff belonged to. The Ironblood had just received a truly massive capital infusion, courtesy of flying mushrooms...

----------

Someone else is now in 20...

“So, what should I be doing with all this?” Hazé asked. Even she was a little dazed as the stacked-up jars shrank down into the white cloth on the ground, turning from a rough 20’ cube to a painting on the cloth, which was quickly folded up for her.

After all, she had something like forty million gold in Mu Goo there. Even after she set aside some for the dwarves, gnomes, and elves, there’d be at least thirty million left.

“You know there’s not much time. Hit the big alchemical guilds and rival churches who want this stuff, they won’t have time to capitalize on it all. Suck the goldweight out of them. I’d suggest a quick auction or three run by the temple of Harse. They’ll be able to expedite payments and suck the money away...”

Hazé’s eyes moved on nothing. “A good sales pitch would be useful. I’m sure the Harsites will have ideas, but a good story will sell it, give them something to work with...”

“Mu Spores fresh from Yle Tyorm won’t do it, eh?” I rubbed my chin, and then grinned widely. “Hey, Wayfair?”

The far-too-attractive succubi Starsister was currently engaged in making Errant sweat silently, he having drawn her sweet, sweet attention after speaking up for her. Still, she let him off with a promising smile and sauntered over our way, her hips doing things the boys would be dreaming about forever.

“What might I be able to help you with?” she asked archly, giving her Archtheurge peer a startled once-over. She could see right through Hazé’s disguise, of course, and seeing a multi-Ten Caster of her age was a bit jarring even to the jaded succubus. She simply didn’t look that young in Markspace.

“Wellll...” I smiled in a predatory manner, which had Wayfair doing the same despite herself, clearly sensing something interesting about to happen, “We happen to need to trade away and/or auction off a lot of Mu Goo.” She glanced at the Tapestry being delivered to Hazé’s hands, and nodded slightly. “Now, the Mu are all dead and gone behind us, but that’s hardly a reason for us to not show the public what they are buying.

“How would you like to do some modeling for us?”