After entering the room, Hera had to go down a long flight of stairs. Surrounding the walls were several different types of moss and mushrooms that would grow in the dark. She looked up, trying to see Kadhan, but the man was gone. Feeling a bit uneasy, she called Daskka out. Armory and Scythe were already on her head, but they couldn't do much in a fight.
'How are you doing?' the Empress asked her herald, who had been very quiet since yesterday.
'I… don't know, mum. This feels weird. I keep thinking that I shouldn't be here,' Daskka replied.
'Why is that? Do you actually think you shouldn't be here, or is it something else?'
'I think it's something else. I know I should be here, and we are doing something good, but it's like I'm doing something wrong, and I know it.'
'Do you think that feeling can cause some problems?'
Daskka shook her head, 'No. I don't think so. If I notice anything holding me back, I'll let you know. Promise.'
Hera smiled and patted the snake's head, 'Thank you. How about you two? Everything ok?' the Empress turned to the court members that were currently out.
'Almost. I'm not feeling anything, but this place is creeping me out,' Armory replied.
'Why is that?' Hera asked.
'Look at the ceiling,' Scythe said.
Hera looked up. At first, she couldn't see anything, but when she paid a bit more attention, she realized that there was a trail of skulls going across the entire ceiling of this staircase. Most of them were animal or monster skulls, but there were a couple that seemed too human to be from a beast.
'Do you think he killed all of this himself?' she asked.
'Hard to say. If he did, it's impressive,' Armory replied.
'If he did, this place is not as safe as we were thinking,' Scythe added while staring at one of the human-looking skulls.
Not long after that, she finally arrived at the bottom of the staircase. To her surprise, the place was very well-illuminated. But it was artificial light or artificial sunlight, to be more precise. In the center of the room was a large stone structure where several pots and vases were spread out with different types of flowers and various plants. Hidden in the shadows, in places where the lights wouldn't hit directly, there were more flowerbeds, but those were being used by mushrooms and other types of vegetation that could only grow inside caves. The light coming from a mana crystal in the ceiling also heated up the place. All in all, this was a very rudimentary version of a greenhouse.
"Welcome!" Kadhan held both his arms out, almost as if he was starfishing in a bed.
"Thanks. Wait, how did you get here before me? You were upstairs," Hera asked.
"Have a spell. Become one with the moss. The moss take my body, and make me new one here," Kadhan explained, his voice echoing even more when he said the word 'moss.'
"Hang on. The moss makes you a new body? What happened to your old one? The one that was upstairs?" Hera tilted her head.
"Yes, yes, yes. To travel fast, it's quicker to make a new body. All fake, don't worry, it won't happen to you" Kadhan started to move around the room, reaching the closest of the flowerbeds, "Come, Tell me what you know about these plants."
"What do you mean fake? Is the teleportation thing or… is your body fake?" Hera asked.
"Body fake. Made out of moss. It's easy to make a mistake when I'm experimenting. Better to have a fake one than use my real one. Much easier to recover, much quicker to heal from injury. Much less painful."
"So, where is your real body?" Hera walked closer to the witch doctor, who just placed one finger on his lips.
"Not telling. Too soon for you, maybe in the future, never in the past, but not in the present," he pointed to a green mushroom that looked a bit like a tulip but had a red center that would grow in tendrils to the sides. Those vein-like structures were moving and reached out for anything that got close to them, be it Hera herself, another mushroom, a plant, or even a pebble falling from the ceiling. However, it wasn't moving fast, so unless someone were to sleep near one and not realize that they were being grabbed, it should be easy to get away from it, "Now say, what is this for? Pain? Fever? Nausea? Itch? Food? Decoration?"
Hera used her [Inspect] on the mushroom, trying to learn more about it.
Reaching Vein of the Emeralds.
Very common mushroom that can be used in a variety of potions and other medicinal treatments. It is mostly used as a binding agent, but it does have some minor antipyretic properties. It is not fit for consumption since the red vines that exist inside the mushroom would try to attach themselves to the esophagus. The mushroom is very resilient and can survive being cooked or frozen.
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It grows by spreading its tendrils to anything around it, but it cannot differentiate between what it can eat and what it can't.
"Technically, everything can be a decoration. But this one should work better as other medicine for fever or something to help make other potions," Hera replied.
"Better to make others? How so? What makes you say it? Already have an idea?" Kadhan continued with his odd habit of moving his body while talking, almost as if he was a child that couldn't stand still. In contrast, his head was in the exact same position as it was at the start of this conversation.
Hera looked back at the mushroom, trying to remember the things she had learned from Risli. Some of the terms shown in the [Inspect] seemed too advanced for the past, and she wasn't sure if her knowledge from the future was added to the window, "Those red veins are reaching out to things. Usually, this means that the mushroom itself can eat food very well. If not, it wouldn't be so aggressive when hunting. When an animal has to be careful about something, they have some way of noticing that thing and staying away from it. A simple example is the eyes of a monster. They can see when something bad is coming so they can run away. If it's really that strong. The mushroom should be able to eat whatever you put in a mixture and then let the potion be created inside it. I just don't know how you would safely take the potion out of it."
"But these are mushrooms. Why you say they are like animals?" Kadhan got closer to Hera, almost close enough for her to call out her legacy, but she stopped herself.
'If he tries anything, Daskka, I'm counting on you,' the Empress said mentally.
'I'll turn that moss into mush!' Daskka replied while staring at the man.
"Because plants can make their own food. If you leave a plant where it has water and light, then that's that. The plant can live its entire life there without a problem. Mushrooms and fungi can't. If you lock them inside a barrier with just a little bit of dirt and water, the mushroom will end up dying after it eats everything around it," Hera explained what Risli had told her a long time ago. At the time, she even showed Hera an experiment where they placed a small plant inside of a glass case with dirt and water and sealed it. Then she did the same with some mushrooms. The mushrooms didn't last very long, while the other mushrooms she was feeding grew for a long time. On the other hand, the plant thrived just as if it was living outside," she hoped that this wasn't too advanced, but in the end, it was the kind of thing that anyone could have figured out, and knowing that mushrooms were closer to animals than to plants wasn't exactly the type of science that would revolutionize history in her opinion.
Kadhan started to jump around and make a little dance that made him seem even more like a monkey, "Good, good, good. Very, very good. You are much smarter than I expected. You know your plants very well, or maybe too much. What did you do? How did you learn?" he stopped the dance and took a more aggressive stance in front of her as if he was waiting for an attack to come.
"I studied under an old shaman. Or that's what she called herself. But if I'm being honest, I don't know most of the plants that are here. She only taught me about the ones that grow in deep caves where the sun never shines," That was a partial lie. Hera knew more than just those types of plants, but it would be easier to explain things if she pretended that she didn't. She said everything with a shrug as if it was something that didn't matter, but when she blinked for a bit longer than normal, Kadhan's face, or his bonehead helmet, appeared uncomfortably close to her face.
"And why was she teaching you that kind of thing? She want to do something? Or was it just a whim?"
"Okay, can you please take a step back? I don't want to taste your skull thingy," Hera stepped back herself, making sure not to touch the mushrooms in the wall," Kadhan did as she asked, but he was still very close, "She told me those are the basics. I had to start from there and then learn more about other things. Something about everything started underground in the dark, so we have to first learn about that part before learning about those things who live in the light," she was paraphrasing Risli, although the meaning was vastly different. The old shaman was only saying that Hera should learn about the seeds first and then the actual plants.
"And do you trust? Was she right? Wasn't she hiding her meaning?"
"I trust her. But I'm sure she was hiding something. After all, aren't we all?" Hera smirked, trying to seem more cocky than she normally was.
Kadhan froze for a moment before starting to laugh loudly, making the cave echo with his numerous voices, "Such truths are real. I must agree. We all have our hidden skeletons, even if some were more visible," he tapped his skull helmet, "But the real secret is what no one else knows, wouldn't you say?"
"Yes? No? I honestly do not understand what you're trying to say," Hera replied, but that phrase might be a confession. Maybe it meant that he was doing something in secret. Then again, it was hard to follow when half of what he said sounded like either riddles or presumptuous philosophy.
Kadhan stared at her for a moment, "Neither do I. No matter. Today I have potions to make. You will help. I'll teach you as we go."
During the rest of the day, they worked and prepared a number of potions that would be used in the next hunts. Whenever Kadhan asked for a specific plant or mushroom, he would explain what they did and why he placed it in the potion. When the first batch was complete, he stopped and went back to the ingredients explaining to Hera how each of them should be grown. The Empress had to admit the Witch Doctor really knew his work. He was almost as good as Risli but had some more unique ideas. Some of the things he was making would increase one attribute or another but at the cost of reducing a different attribute. In some situations, that might be a problem, but reducing one's charisma in exchange for increasing their strength in the middle of a fight would hardly be an issue. Another thing she never considered was a potion that would heal you but had a drawback of reducing all your attributes. This meant that the potion could be extremely effective as long as you are willing to pay the price. According to Kadhan, those were only kept in the village and used when someone came back injured. But every hunt team had a couple of those potions for emergencies. After all, it was better to get a debuff and still be able to run away than to just lie on the ground and wait to be devoured by a monster.
Hera ended up missing lunch, which was not a problem by itself. She tasted a few of the herbs and mushrooms that were in the cave. Only those that Kadhan deemed safe. And when dinner came. She met everyone as they gathered at the end of the table to discuss what they did during the day.