Lucius didn't speak for the next ten minutes, sulking in bowl form and waiting for the water to cool down. Vivi poked her finger into the water, testing whether she grew rashes. It seemed fine. She drank straight out of the bowl.

"Ugh," Lucius said in her head. "Don't we have any more elegant solutions?"

I can't think of anything more elegant than drinking straight out of a demigod's spirit.

Lucius's emotions consisted of defeated helplessness. He understood that this was the only option for Vivi to drink. Her well-being was more important than his pride. He didn't even complain; he was just quietly humiliated.

Unluckily, it didn't end there. Vivi still had to eat. Which meant she had to boil mushroom roots. She argued for a few minutes before Lucius agreed to get back into the boiling pot. Vivi distilled another pot full of venerium water. While the distillation was ongoing, Vivi moved to the Dirt Mound boss's corpse. Tallhead mushrooms were poking out from the soil. Worms had been pushed out when the boss was reanimated.

The soil and the mushrooms were still poisonous. Vivi picked the mushrooms along with their roots using her sword—her normal two-runed sword to avoid getting venerium poisoning to her food. She laid the mushrooms on the ground and began cutting the roots off. According to the guidebook, the roots were safe to touch. She'd need to cook it at precisely twenty degrees below the boiling point.

That wasn't too difficult for Vivi. She used Lucius's bowl, filled with distilled water. Lucius could heat up water, just as he could cool it. "Why have we been using strife runes if you can light fires and heat things up anyway?" Vivi had asked.

Lucius just mumbled something and turned his attention away.

Vivi tested the water's temperature with her finger until she felt that it was close to correct. She told Lucius to keep the temperature constant. Then she dropped in the mushroom roots.

The water turned a purplish red as it sucked poison out of Vivi's food. Her smile twisted awkwardly as she watched the roots get cooked. This would be what she had to eat?

Vivi decided that it was probably best to cook the roots another time, until the water was perfectly clear. She distilled another bowl of water and cooked the mushrooms a second time. This time, the distilled water changed its color only slightly.

Vivi still didn't trust them. She distilled a third round of water. Lucius was growing used to boiling alive; his complaints were more annoyed than pained now. Still, he agreed that boiling the roots multiple times just to be safe was better than getting poisoned.

The water was finally clear. Vivi picked up the mushroom roots, took a deep breath, and put one of them in her mouth.

Biting into the root was like eating strings of wood. The taste was akin to the most bitter raw potato Vivi could imagine. She focused on the tastes to feel if anything tasted poisonous. She couldn't tell. The whole root tasted suspicious.

If I get poisoned, I guess I won't have to worry about gathering food, Vivi told herself. She would be dead, after all. She ate the rest of the roots stubbornly. Her teeth ached near the end, and the taste was starting to get vile.

But she didn't die. The guidebook hadn't lied. The mushroom roots were edible.

"That's one of our problems figured out," Vivi said. "We have food and water. We can keep traveling."

Lucius didn't look happy. "If you want to live on mushroom roots for the next however long we're stuck here…"

Vivi definitely didn't. But she didn't want to head back to the grey wastelands either. At least the blight could keep her head distracted with monsters and survival.

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"We'll keep going," Vivi said. "We'll find the way down eventually. Whether it takes weeks, months, or years… This forest is our home until then."

As Vivi said that, a pack of tongue devils attacked her from three directions. Vivi quickly killed them and trotted deeper into the blight.

***

The blight grew more jungle-like the deeper Vivi went. Trees reached up to the low ceiling, where they twisted around and started growing downward. Some trees grew all the way back to the ground, where their branches sprawled out, making the ground difficult to walk on.

Vivi cut the branches with her sword and made paths for herself. Each time she cut a patch of branches, she was hoping to find a hole or a burrow hidden beneath that would miraculously lead them to the fifth level.

She found nothing, of course. The ground was covered with poisonous vegetation all around her. Randomly stumbling across an entrance to the fifth level would be nearly impossible. She'd have to clear an impossible amount of ground, and there was still a chance she'd accidentally walk past if it was hidden well.

A reanimated monster attacked her from underneath a cluster of branches. It was another ghoul, but stronger and far more scary. Its skin was wretched, and its sharp claws almost looked rusty. The deeper Vivi went, the more wretched the monsters became. There was something wrong with the ether that reanimated monsters here.

Still, the ghoul dropped five wisps, and Lucius could collect them normally. Vivi picked up two more void wisps.

"The next problem is shelter," Vivi said. "I'll need to sleep eventually."

She summoned the guidebook again to recall what it said about sleeping. Antonio Giovann essentially summarized sleeping in the blight with one sentence. He wrote, "Good luck."

Monsters were common enough everywhere in the blight that sleeping in the open was a no go without allies to protect those who slept. Building shelter was possible, but there was a high probability that a surge would hit. Most things in the blight were alive, meaning that anything dead, such as buildings, attracted a lot of surges.

Disregarding monsters, sleeping on redsoil would cause rashes and the worms would eat her alive. The stone ground would burn her skin, and sleeping on vegetation was never a good idea.

"This place just isn't friendly, is it?" Vivi asked.

Lucius floated beside her. "It's almost like there's a spirit connected to you that has warned you a dozen times that the blight is not a place where you want to be."

Vivi smiled at Lucius. "I haven't heard you get witty in a while."

Lucius frowned. "I'm not witty. I'm totally serious. Even the guidebook man says that sleeping is impossible."

"He also said that distilling the corrupted water is impossible, and we did it," Vivi said. "He didn't have access to a demigod's spirit. You're a big advantage for me."

The compliment made Lucius blink, though he quickly grew annoyed again. "You're not thinking of doing something weird with me again, are you?"

Vivi studied her spirit. Could she solve the sleeping problem using Lucius as well? "Lucius?" she asked. "Do you know what a hammock is?"

Lucius gave her a look. "Drinking from me wasn't enough; now you also want to sleep on top of me?"

"You're alive, meaning you won't attract ether surges like a bed or a house," Vivi said. "You're also not full of worms, and you're not steaming hot. A hammock between trees would grant us a place to sleep, at least."

"I will also attract monsters," Lucius said. "I can't protect you with my claws if I'm stuck as a hammock. Not that my claws would do anything regardless. The blight's monsters are resistant to cuts. The only reason we're killing them is thanks to your venerium sword."

Abyss Destroyer, Vivi thought. Lucius really wasn't excited. He hadn't boasted about his abyssal origins a single time after escaping Zand. He didn't even call the sword by its ridiculous name.

"We can try it out," Vivi said. "You can still sense monsters approaching. Wake me up and I'll kill them."

Lucius thought about it. "Well, it's better than nothing…"

"Try it for me, please," Vivi said. "Make a hammock between these trees."

Lucius sighed. He floated between the trees. He turned himself into a web of ethereal strings. He attached himself in hammock form with strings to the trees. He seemed solid enough.

Vivi climbed on top. Lucius was surprisingly stretchy, falling nearly to the ground from Vivi's weight. He made the strings firmer to keep himself up, though that required slightly more ether to keep active.

"It's quite comfortable," Vivi said. She lay on her back. So comfortable, in fact, that she stayed there, staring at the low sky and the tree leaves above her. She hadn't properly rested in a while. She didn't close her eyes. Vivi just stared above her, mind fixated on nothing at all.

"Do I need to make adjustments?" Lucius asked.

"No, this is perfect," Vivi said. "Thank you."

Vivi got off, and Lucius turned back to a cat. He floated next to Vivi, watching while she stretched. "Does this mean you're heading deeper?"

"We have our essentials covered," Vivi said. "Let's see what the blight has to offer for us."

Vivi wasn't excited, but she readied herself for an adventure and trotted deeper into the blight.

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