Why did I agree to do this? Bernard asked himself as he approached the Rift with a heavy rope tied around his torso. He wasn't sure if he wanted to know why Margaret knew how to tie this particular style of rope harness. It certainly wasn't a climbing harness. "You guys are ready to pull me out right?" He asked for the fourth or fifth time as he approached the hole in reality.

"Assuming the rope idea works and neither the Rift nor the voidlings inside it cut you free? Yes."

Bernard wasn't sure he liked Margaret all that much anymore. His initial impression had been favorable, but he was well on his way to changing his mind. "That wasn't very reassuring."

"I'm not a very reassuring person." She replied matter-of-factly. "Good luck!"

"Next time we go fishing for monsters, someone else gets to be the bait." Bernard muttered as he tentatively poked at the Rift. His finger was swallowed by the shadows. Oddly enough, it was still visibly a finger, it was just completely black. It should have been invisible against the black background, but it wasn't, and he wondered if it worked that way for everyone or if his heightened senses let him see the shapes in the void better.

"Stop lollygagging and stick your head in there!"

Bernard grumbled complaints and promises of violence he knew he wouldn't follow through on as he took a deep breath and stuck his head through before he could second guess himself any further.

He learned a few things in that moment. First and foremost being that you could not partially enter a Rift. Once a significant portion of your body crossed the entrance, it slurped you to the other side. He had absolutely no idea how whatever he had seen hadn't exited the Rift. Unless there hadn't ever been anything on the other side at all. Maybe he just saw things pressing in from the void itself, unable to cross the barrier?

The thought sent an icy shiver down his spine. At least the monsters made a bit of sense. Even the partial glimpse he got of it protruding from the Rift disturbed him, he definitely wasn't in a hurry to see all of whatever it had been. If that sort of thing is what Aegis was protecting them from then he was all for it.

The other side of the Rift entrance was… clear of monsters at least. It was incredibly humid, and Bernard was surprised when his Hyphal Network began feeding him information. He had been under the impression that it connected him to the forest, but this place was certainly not his forest. He was surrounded by mushrooms. Mushrooms that consisted of staggeringly varied sizes and shapes. Some were as tall as trees, while others were remarkably tiny. Some resembled those flat ones he saw growing from the sides of trees, only here they were on the side of the giant mushrooms that towered over him.

"It just had to be mushrooms." He grumbled. The rope went taut and he was yanked back through the Rift. The sensation he got as he passed through was exceptionally unpleasant. Like passing through a slimy wool sock. He thought with a wince. "Well, at least the rope worked." He called to the others when he was back in the little glade the Rift occupied.

"Well?" The others, except Peytah all demanded in near-unison.

"I don't know where that crazy tentacle monster thing I saw looking out of the Rift went, or if I was just seeing things, but all I saw on the other side was mushrooms."

"Mushrooms? That's it? Well, maybe they're edible? We should get some to test." Leo seemed somehow both disappointed that was all Bernard had seen yet excited to have discovered something new. It was probably a scientist thing. Sure, Leo was a geologist, but he no doubt spent a lot of time with experts in other fields studying things in the Amazon. It was one of the few places biologists and whatnot could still find new species of animals and plants after all. On land anyway.

Or it had been. Now you could discover some new creature by standing in the open for long enough. Eventually a new monster would just pop out of thin air and try to eat your face. It made trying to catalog and study all life on Earth rather futile and pointless. Maybe if humanity manages to pull together well enough to reestablish dominance of the planet they could renew their scientific progress and resume studying things like insects and plants.

"I don't know if that's a good idea. When I said 'mushrooms' I didn't mean all one kind of mushroom. Everything I saw on the other side was literally a kind of mushroom. Some were as big as trees, with those shelf mushrooms growing on their stalks, teeny tiny mushrooms were all over the ground, and they were all different shapes too. Some looked like the kind you get from the store, others were those weird net shaped ones, and some were upside down and filled with some kind of slime.

"All I know is that a lot of fungus is dangerous and this is all alien fungus. I didn't see a single animal of any kind, no insects, no voidlings. We have no idea if it's safe to go exploring over there. For all I know I breathed in spores and might turn into a mushroom man or something."

"Not likely." Julien replied as the others took a step back from Bernard. "I asked about parasites and stuff like them when I got my class. Anyone with a class is basically immune to things you can't see with the naked eye. Leeches, mosquitoes, anything like that will still get you, but part of the whole leveling thing makes it hard for smaller stuff to stay alive. The worst we probably have to worry about in Shroomland is poisoning. Basically, Aegis cured the flu and the common cold, but gave us monsters in exchange."

"So we can go through?" Leo asked.

"Depends, how are you at surviving being poisoned? Because I don't think I'm all that great at it myself, and I've never been good at identifying normal mushrooms that are safe, let alone weird ones from another dimension." Julien answered with a shrug.

"I am not going to eat strange mushrooms to see which ones are poisonous." Bernard said flatly, crossing his arms defiantly. "Are we going in to explore or not? We don't have to taste the mushrooms in there, just see if it's a monster infested death hole." He paused for a moment. "On second thought, I'm alright with not going back in and just having someone guard the exit."

"I vote we check it out. How do we tell what kind of Rift it is? Whether it's attached to another world too, I mean." Margaret asked, glancing around hopefully. Her face fell after a minute. "No answer. Stupid alien system thing."

"My guess is that we would learn that by exploring it and seeing if there's another exit in it. Or non-human intelligent people show up in there." Leo said with a shrug. "We're burning daylight though, I want to go in."

"I'd rather not." Julien said with a shake of his head. "I don't trust mushrooms."

Peytah looked at Bernard for a few seconds. "I wish to see this other place." He was clearly conflicted over opposing Bernard's will.

Bernard sighed. "Three to two, guess we're going in. I'll make sure it's still clear and tug the rope once if it is. Two tugs to pull me out of there." He re-entered the rift, wincing slightly at the uncomfortable sensation again. It was just as unpleasant the third time around. He still didn't see anything moving, or anything that looked like a threat, and was about to tug on the rope when a thought crossed his mind.

He bent and picked up a rock, grimacing when the slime coating it got on his fingers, and threw it into the distance. He half-expected some hidden monster to move when it hit the ground. He did not expect the mushroom it hit to explode. Nor was he expecting that explosion to set off a series of explosions that ripped their way across the fungal forest floor. He yanked furiously on the rope as he jumped backwards towards the rift entrance.

He landed in a heap on the other side, wheezing and coughing. It hadn't been smoke and flames, it had been clouds of spores and chunks of mushroom that filled the air in that brief moment before he made it back to the entrance.

"What happened?" The others asked in near unison.

"I threw a rock to see if anything would react." He wheezed. "Some of those mushrooms explode. The person that discovers something gets to name it right? I'm calling them boomshrooms."

"Did anything else move, or jump out, or anything?"

I don't know, I was a little busy trying not to die. You're more than welcome to hop through and check though." His tone was harsher than he really meant for it to be, but he did just get blown up.

Congratulations! You have slain twelve level 8 Fungal Mimics!

Congratulations! You have slain nine voidlings ranging in level from five to nine!

Congratulations! You have earned enough energy to advance to level eight! Would you like to advance now?

"Uh, there was definitely something in there I didn't see. I just got kill notifications and a level. I don't know what a Fungal Mimic is, but there was at least twelve in there, and nine voidlings. I guess those boomshrooms were stronger than I thought?"

"That, or their spores were really poisonous."

"So, back to the zone? We should probably come up with a name for the place, I'm getting sick of just calling it the zone. All I know is that I am not going back in there right now. We can check on it, post a guard, or whatever, but I'm done with that place for at least a week."

"Yeah we should probably head back. I'm kind of disappointed by the dungeon experience in Aegis. They're supposed to be an adventure, explore a strange place, fight monsters, and get rare loot. All we got was an angry tank covered in bits of mushroom." Bernard was surprised that it was Margaret making the video game references. He was having serious trouble reading her.

They walked through the night to get back. They didn't talk much, everyone was rather disappointed with how the day had gone and were wrapped up in their own thoughts. They hadn't really had any expectations when they set out, but they got excited about the things Rifts could provide them when they learned what it was. Having it turn out to be filled to the brim with as-of-yet-unidentified threats they couldn't risk engaging yet was aggravating.

As they finally re-entered the zone Leo glanced at Bernard. "On the bright side, none of the mushrooms tried to eat you."

Bernard didn't deign to grace him with a response.