The white tigress did not let them linger near the gate for long.
"You should move," she said, her voice smooth as cold water. "The present condition of Alexandra Vogel and Emma Tannenbaum is no obstacle to the task ahead."
Joanne looked openly doubtful at that.
Emma, still pale from the Berserking Strawberry backlash, had to lean on her sword arm just to stand properly. Alex was worse. The Sympathy Enoki had saved her life and stabilized the damage, but she still moved like her body had been stitched together by sheer stubbornness alone.
The tigress's eyes narrowed faintly.
"You mistake my meaning. Violence will only drag the colony farther from what it was."
That made the team go quiet.
Because they understood.
If the civil war among the Mushroomoids was already twisting them into Mushroompires, then fighting their way through the problem would likely make it worse. More fear. More chaos. More pressure. More conversion.
Dominic exhaled slowly and nodded.
"Then we go see first."
The white tigress dipped her head once.
That was enough.
So Team Nemean left the gate behind and moved deeper into the bog lands of Floor 2.
The terrain shifted gradually as they advanced, the stone underfoot grew wetter, air turned heavier, rich with damp soil, rot, and fungal sweetness. Thin vapors clung low to the ground. Strange growths pushed through black mud in pale clusters, and the cave walls here and there had become furred with moss and lichen that pulsed faintly under dungeon light.
No one rushed.
Without Phong, they lacked a farmer's instinct for plant territory, and without their strongest members at full strength, caution became even more important. Dominic kept the pace slow, Jack watched the ground while Jake and Camille checked the edges of the mist. Emma walked near the middle, conserving every scrap of energy. Alex did the same, one hand brushing the wall once in a while when her balance threatened to slip. Alexei and the animals took charge of the rear, making extra sure that their downed members were well protected.
They found Mushroomires first.
The little fungal beings waddled through the bog in loose, aimless paths. They were still vaguely humanoid, with squat bodies, soft caps, and tiny arm-like protrusions, their forms more awkward than threatening. At first glance they almost looked harmless enough to pity.
But not peaceful enough to ignore.
Not anymore.
The Mushroomires flinched at movement.
Not just when they noticed Team Nemean.
When they noticed each other too.
One waddled too near another and both jerked back. A third froze entirely when Jake shifted his stance. A cluster near a wet stone shelf scattered in alarm when Emma coughed.
They all had the kind of wariness that born when something familiar had become dangerous.
Alex narrowed her eyes at the nearest Mushroomire, who was peeking out from behind a swollen stalk of fungus as if trying to judge whether the humans were another threat or simply another bad omen.
"This is spreading," she said.
Nobody argued, nobody asked, they all knew what she meant.
The bog itself felt tense, the air carried that foul smell of rotten fungal bodies mixed in with invisible pressure for Mushroomires to go violent.
Far behind them, once Team Nemean had moved out of sight, the white tigress remained near the gate for a little while longer.
Then her form shifted.
Snow-white fur blurred and shrank, wind legs dissolved. Bone and flesh rearranged with the effortless wrongness only a floor boss could make look natural. In the tiger's place stood an old woman, her back slightly bent, her hair long and white, her robes pale enough to stir in the draft like lingering cloud.
She looked once toward the path Team Nemean had taken, satisfied enough, and then left.
The Tigress next destination was Em.
The mountain of flesh sat where it pleased, as it always did, vast and unpleasant and wearing the shape of a problem too old to be solved by decency. It various eyes and mouths vanished, signs of injuries given by the Azure Dragon as punishment.
It noticed Bai Hu at once, of course.
It always noticed.
Bai Hu stopped before it with the calm expression of someone who had known chaos too long to be impressed by it.
"I have kept Team Nemean away from the war to come," she said.
Em's mass shivered in what passed for amusement. The folds of flesh shifted, and the thing that might have been a mouth curled.
"So elder sister Bai Hu stirs at last."
Bai Hu did not rise to the teasing.
Em's eyes, or the nearest things it had to eyes in its current shape, gleamed with interest.
"What do you want?" it asked. "And why help me now of all times?"
Bai Hu shrugged, the motion small and almost human despite the age in her form.
"I want this Camp Stymphalian to take a more active role in the conflict ahead."
Em went still enough to count as attention.
Bai Hu continued.
"But unlike you, I respect the eldest brother verdict." Her voice stayed level. "I will not interfere with Floor 1."
That made Em's grin widen.
Bai Hu glanced toward the deeper dungeon, toward where Team Nemean now moved through mushroom bog and quiet fear.
"Giving them a request while they are already on Floor 2," she said, "does not challenge the eldest from my point of view."
Em smirked.
That was fair, in its own sly way. She was not touching Floor 1 directly, didn't crossing the line the Sky Emperor had drawn. She was only making use of those already elsewhere.
And yet Em kept one very important thing to itself.
Humans had telecommunication.
Bai Hu, who spent her existence inside the dungeon and paid almost no attention to the test subjects except when they became personally interesting, did not really understand that. To her, distance still meant separation. Busy on Floor 2 meant absent from Floor 1.
Em, however, knew better.
And because chaos loved an edge kept hidden until the right moment, it said nothing.
It only cracked its wet, ugly smile and let its elder sister believe she had neatly tied one thread out of the coming knot.
Team Nemean made camp before the bog could swallow the last of their strength.
Dominic made the call after watching Alex and Emma for the better part of an hour and deciding there was no point pretending otherwise. Their stats had crashed so far from the Berserking Strawberry extreme weakness that even walking through damp ground and mushroom-choked air had started to wear them down too fast.
Single-digit constitution was cruel like that. No stamina.
A healthy body could carry fatigue.
But a wrecked one, it collected it like debt.
"We stop here," Dominic said.
Alex looked up from where she had been leaning against a black root shelf, face tight with frustration. "I can keep moving."
"No," Dominic said.
He didn't need to raise his voice, but the rest of team Nemean were already start to prepare the camp for the night.
Emma, seated nearby with one knee drawn up, let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "For once, I'm grateful he said it first."
Alex glared at both of them.
Dominic folded his arms. "You'll exhaust yourself into the ground if we keep pushing."
She hated how right he was.
Still, after one more second, Alex looked away and muttered, "Fine."
That was all the agreement he needed.
A small camp was quickly set up in a patch of firmer bog ground near a broken stone rise, just enough cover to matter if something stupid wandered too close. Jack hated the terrain but made do, because to him now everything was miles better than the obsidian rocks of floor 3. Joanne set warning lines, planted Alerting carrots around the camp sight. Jake and Camille checked the nearby paths, making sure that there were no hidden pathways or cracks big enough on the wall for ambushers to hide. Janet took first watch with Séline. Emma lowered herself onto a rolled blanket with the careful dignity of someone who did not want witnesses to how weak she felt.
Alex sat not far away, one arm wrapped around her middle, breathing slow and deliberate through pain and irritation.
Dinner was inelegant.
Canned food, ration bar, and some moletatoes taken from camp.
Bruno and Nyx, however, immediately decided this was a social event.
The two animals had taken surprisingly well to the Mushroomires' existence, or maybe they just responded to anything small and vaguely pathetic with curiosity. Either way, once the first few passive fungal beings had wandered close enough to stare at the camp from a safe distance, Bruno nudged one of the moletatoes toward them and Nyx, after pretending not to care, did the same with another.
Jake looked up. "Are we feeding the mushrooms."
Bruno wagged once. "They look hungry."
Nyx flicked her tail. "They also look stupid."
One of the nearest Mushroomires, barely ten inches tall, waddled forward with enormous caution and tapped the moletato like it expected betrayal.
Then it took a bite.
Its whole body seemed to brighten.
That was apparently enough to trigger a movement in the bog.
More Mushroomires emerged.
Then more.
Then hundreds.
Then so many that the team had to stop talking just to watch.
They came from the mist, from behind fungal shelves, from mud hollows and root gaps and low caverns in the bog floor. The smallest were barely ten inches tall, little more than waddling caps with stubby limbs and huge uncertain eyes. The largest rose nearly ten feet, broad and towering and still somehow carrying the same soft uncertainty as the little ones.
Thousands.
Camp became crowded with them in slow, cautious circles.
The smaller ones kept nearest, drawn by food and the warmth of other living things. The larger ones stayed farther out, wary but protective of the smaller mushroomires.
Joanne stared around at the sea of fungal bodies. "Oh, I hate this."
"Why," Dominic asked.
"Because they're cute enough to become a problem."
That was when the team started to consider sharing food more seriously. Obviously they wouldn't share so much that it bankrupt their camp stock, but it would be a lie to say they weren't curious about what would happen.
The smaller Mushroomires accepted it with timid, almost desperate gratitude. Even Jack softened a little when a tiny one took a piece of food from his hand and bowed like it had just received a royal favor.
Emma, who had been quiet while eating, looked out over the gathered colony and then slowly lowered her spoon.
Her expression changed.
Dominic noticed. "What."
Emma looked from the smallest Mushroomires to the larger ones hanging back in anxious clumps, then toward the deeper dark where the Mushroompires likely roamed.
Then she said, "I know what the White Tiger gave us."
Nobody liked that tone.
Jake pointed his ration spoon at her. "Go on."
Emma rubbed her forehead. "It's an escort mission."
Silence hit the camp.
Then Joanne said, with deep disgust, "Absolutely not."
Emma nodded grimly. "Yes."
Dominic's face hardened as the same logic landed in his head.
Because of course.
Of course it would be that kind of quest.
The most annoying kind of quest that every single person who had played video games would hate with every fiber of their being.
Keep vulnerable, passive, nervous Mushroomires alive and somehow stop them from being turned further was the real objective.
Because if the Mushroompires wanted their colony to grow more aggressive, then attacking Mushroomires was the easiest way to force the change. Every assault would create even more fear and anxiety, pushing more of the Mushroomires toward the harsher variant. It was a runaway effect waiting to happen.
Emma gestured at the crowd around them. "The enemy's victory condition is built into the civilians."
"That is vile," Janet muttered.
"And efficient," Camille said.
"And vile," Janet repeated.
Alex closed her eyes briefly. "That tiger really is awful."
Nyx, seated atop a supply crate like a judgmental queen, looked at the nearest Mushroomire trying to drag half a ration cracker and said, "I am beginning to dislike this floor boss more."
Bruno wagged once at a cluster of tiny Mushroomires nibbling around him. "I still like the mushrooms."
"You like everyone. Well, almost everyone."
Dominic sat back a little and thought through it.
The biggest problem was obvious. They needed Phong.
Not because he could solve everything.
Because their farmer understood plant-based life better than any of them. Especially given how the Mushroomoids seemed to react to external stress just like the plants of camp Stymphalian. What counted as stress, what kind of environmental changes could calm or worsen this sort of transformation? If anyone could see a path here that was not just violence and damage control, it was him.
"We ask Phong," Dominic said.
Everyone agreed fast.
Joanne had the group chat open in seconds.
The signal amplifiers at Wraith Fort and the setup they had worked to establish made contact more stable. Not perfect, but stable.
Dominic sent the message first.
Then Alex.
Then Emma.
A quick explanation. Mushroomires. Passive colony. White Tiger quest. Need advice.
They waited.
Nothing happened.
Jake frowned. "Maybe he's asleep."
Alex shook her head. "Not with the elves."
Another minute.
Still nothing.
Emma checked the chat again and looked annoyed. "He's not answering."
Joanne tried a call.
No response.
Then, without warning, the chat lit up.
One look and they knew it was not their farmer typing pattern.
Phong overthought a lot of things. He tended to be self-conscious about him being a non-native speaker, and would check his message twice for grammatical errors and typos before he hit send.
Only one menace in existence could have this erratic of a typing pattern:
Rico!
There was a pause around the fire as everyone stared.
Then... hell broke loose.
Jake blinked. [Why is the raccoon in the group chat?]
Message sent.
Joanne's brows shot up. [How is the raccoon in the group chat?]
The answer came immediately.
[I saw and memorized farmer password long ago.]
Silence.
Then Emma said, "That is somehow the least surprising part of today."
Rico kept typing.
[Phong busy. Big human war problem.]
Dominic straightened. [What war problem?]
The messages came in bursts, sloppy and too fast, clearly dictated by a raccoon who knew what mattered and not much about elegant reporting.
[Josh leading big push against trolls. Media say hero again.]
[Phong figured out he wants reach mountain and expose camp by body count since cameras bad.]
[Phong now hiring mercenaries to help trolls. Lizard queen involved.]
The camp went quiet.
The Mushroomires around them kept nibbling, peeking, waddling and shifting in the dark, oblivious to the shape of the larger problem closing elsewhere.
Emma read the messages twice.
Janet swore softly.
Jack looked toward the gate as if Floor 1 might somehow be visible through stone.
And Alex, despite the penalty from the strawberry made her brain felt like mushy peas, felt the last piece click into place.
She looked up into the bog dark where the White Tigress had long since vanished.
Now she understood.
What concept the White Tigress floor boss represented.
War.
The White Tiger had kept Team Nemean on Floor 2 with a quest that demanded presence, patience, and time. And by doing that, she had removed them from Floor 1 right when Josh's push toward troll territory was building.
Alex's fingers tightened around the edge of her blanket.
"She knew," she said quietly.
Dominic looked at her.
Alex's voice hardened.
"She wanted this."
Emma followed the thought immediately. "You meant the wars?"
Alex nodded once.
"The Mushroomoid civil war here. The troll war there." Her eyes stayed fixed on nothing, seeing the shape of it now. "And by keeping us here, she isolate Phong, forcing him to escalate, making both worse."
No one had a good answer to that.
Because it fit too well.
The White Tiger had not attacked them, but she had simply given them a quest in a situation where refusing would have its own consequences.
And now Team Nemean sat in a bog surrounded by frightened fungal civilians, while on Floor 1 Joshua Harlan was gathering public force toward Death Peak and Camp Stymphalian's secret.
Emma looked down at Rico's messages again and said, "War."
Across the fire, one tiny Mushroomire tugged gently at a moletato bigger than its whole body and fell over backward with it. Bruno hurried over to help. Nyx watched with profound disappointment in the world.
Around them, thousands of Mushroomires shifted and breathed and waited.
And somewhere above, another war was already beginning without them.