They Wanted a Hero. They Made a Monster: Born at the Bottom
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 34: Surrounded by Puffcaps
At the foot of the stairway between the Fourth and Fifth Strata, a campfire burned quietly. Its flickering light illuminated the cross sections of the circular stone steps around it.
Inigo and his Pantherkin companion, Miro, rested against the wall.
Their original plan had been to reach the Fifth Stratum in half a day. In the end, the journey took a day and a half.
The reason was simple. They had gotten lost.
They assumed their memories from two years ago would guide them down easily, so they had not bought a map.
Only after entering the dungeon did they discover that those memories were not nearly as clear as expected.
By the time they finished wandering in circles, exhaustion forced them to rest.
They did not take turns standing watch. Confident in their safety, both slept at once.
For one thing, they were inside a stairway, a safe area no monster could enter.
For another, the keen senses and instinctive vigilance of Beastkin would awaken them as soon as another adventurer approached.
That was precisely what happened now. Two faint puffing sounds made Inigo’s ears stand upright even in his sleep.
He did not move immediately. Instead, he opened his tiger eyes to narrow slits and glanced toward the source.
A mutated Puffcap stood at the entrance, a place no monster should ever have been able to reach.
The Puffcap appeared equally surprised to encounter them. It remained motionless in the doorway.
After a long moment, it began to retreat quietly. It stretched its pair of short legs as far as possible with every slow step, this time without making even the faintest puff.
It had almost withdrawn to the Fifth Stratum when the Pantherkin moved before Inigo could even rise.
Like a streak of black lightning, Miro vanished. In the blink of an eye, he returned to the fire with half a Puffcap in each hand.
He tossed the two halves onto the ground. There was no triumph on his face. Instead, he frowned.
“No wonder the Guild issued this quest personally. I’m afraid it won’t be simple.”
Inigo nodded in agreement and studied the creature’s exposed interior.
“It ignored the dungeon’s rules, displayed obvious intelligence, and its structure has plainly undergone extensive mutation.”
“Should we go back and prepare more thoroughly?”
What Miro meant was that they should recruit one or two more Gold-rank adventurers.
Their healer and support specialist had died in the mists of the islands, leaving only two offensive fighters in the party.
It was an extremely unhealthy composition.
They had only just returned to Hushwind in disgrace and had no time to gather information before seeing the quest.
An A-grade commission on a relatively simple stratum like the fifth had looked like easy money.
Even without support, two Gold-rank adventurers should have been more than enough.
Now, however, a monster had entered a safe zone in defiance of common sense.
Miro suspected the quest might be far more dangerous than expected.
He was beginning to consider retreat.
Inigo stared into the fire for a moment, then crushed the Puffcap on the ground beneath one foot.
“We’ve come this far. We keep going. These walking mushrooms are strange, but they aren’t much of a threat.”
Turning back now would make him a laughingstock among the people who knew him. Still, as a precaution, he added one condition.
“If we find real danger, we can retreat then. Even if we can’t win, surely we can escape.”
Inigo’s confidence was not unfounded. As feline Beastkin, both he and Miro possessed skills related to speed.
If they could not escape even by running at full strength, something would be terribly wrong.
This was only the Fifth Stratum.
Miro found no fault in the reasoning and nodded his agreement.