They Wanted a Hero. They Made a Monster: Born at the Bottom
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 37: What If We Cannot Return?
Dylan felt that he had entered a life of semiretirement.
Every day, after rising from the coffin lined with hyphae, he cooked himself a bowl of mushroom soup.
He gathered the ingredients from the forest. Boss had said he could eat any of the gray mushrooms he liked.
As a man who had partly become a fungus, however, eating mushrooms felt subtly wrong.
The broth also carried a persistent, bland earthiness. Only a few grains of rock salt could awaken any flavor.
Perhaps because Dylan had mentioned how dark the stratum was, the mushrooms had recently begun glowing with Bioluminescence.
Solving the illumination problem was welcome. Watching his soup give off an eerie glow was not. It made him feel as though he were drinking a witch’s potion.
Fortunately, the work was easy. Apart from trips to the surface, Boss rarely assigned him any tasks.
Occasionally, adventurers left equipment or items behind and Dylan had to estimate their value. Otherwise, he had little to do.
He sometimes used the free time to hunt on the upper strata and bring back edible monsters.
After all, he could not live on mushrooms forever.
The last time he asked Boss for a monster to improve his meals, several damaged Puffcaps had been delivered to him. Dylan immediately understood that he would have to find his own meat.
Eating his coworkers would be a little too much.
Boss did not object to his hunting on the upper strata. He actually encouraged it, asking only that Dylan throw the unused remains into the marsh.
To improve his life on the Fifth Stratum, Dylan even applied for an empty plot near the edge of the forest and began building a wooden cabin.
Unfortunately, work found him as soon as construction began.
Boss first asked whether he knew anything about some kind of mana fluctuation. Dylan was a purely close-combat fighter. How would he know about mana?
He was immediately sent to the surface to gather information. Boss seemed to consider the matter urgent.
Dylan did not dare delay. Familiar with the route, he reached the surface in half a day.
There, he encountered three official Adventurers’ Guild personnel guarding the dungeon entrance.
He recognized their leader, a middle-aged adventurer named Marshall who had been active in Hushwind ten years ago.
Marshall was a Gold-rank adventurer, and he had stopped entering the dungeon after joining the Guild.
Seeing the entrance blocked made guilty sweat bead on Dylan’s skin.
What had happened?
Why had they sealed the entrance?
Would they inspect him and discover his Mimicry?
Dylan swallowed, forced himself to straighten his back, and walked outside.
The Guild personnel merely glanced at him and allowed him to pass.
Four adventurers approaching the dungeon were stopped instead.
The red-armored warrior among them struck the stone floor with the pommel of his sword.
“What gives you the right to keep us out of the dungeon?”
Sparks punctuated the challenge. Across from him, Marshall stood with folded arms, perfectly calm.
Adventurers were always like this. When they encountered a problem, they raised their voices first. Marshall was used to it.
“Monster Tide warning. The dungeon is sealed by order of the Guild.”
The instant they heard the words Monster Tide, the adventurers’ anger vanished.
Each dungeon experienced a Monster Tide only once every decade or more, so most adventurers had never encountered one.
Yet every adventurer knew the name of the greatest disaster a dungeon could produce.
No one would object to sealing the dungeon because of a Monster Tide.
The four huddled together and muttered for some time before asking uneasily, “How long will the closure last? What about our timed quests? We can’t just let the deadlines pass and fail them...”
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