PoV of Mafu

  I felt extremely lonely as everyone left, and disappeared into the darkness outside of my territorial vision. More than that, I felt disconnected from the world.

  It was as if I was now watching a patch of forest, not living in it.

  I had theorized about what the different functions were between my heart and my central mushroom. But when my people exited this world through the portal with my heart, most of my questions were answered.

  My heart is my feeling of self. It is my sense of touch, and more than that, it carries what I would consider my "body." My central shroom seems to be some weird mix of my eyes and my legs. It is how I perceive the world.

  But without feeling the earth breathe and the other shrooms sway slightly in a faint breeze, I no longer felt connected to anything.

  When the archer had exploded my central mushroom, I had been locked in darkness. I think that was because all energy went to recovering my central firecap. If I wanted to, I might have been able to keep my sense of touch, being connected to all of my mycelium.

  But I do not think I can act while either my central firecap or my heart is disconnected.

  When I put my heart in the fungal pool, it might still have counted as it being connected to me, as it was still in my pool. I also never felt so alone and disconnected back then.

  Now that my heart was no longer in this world, what was left was an extremely boring movie.

  I did not have a sense of time either, but after what could have been weeks or a month, the system provided me with a message.

  [Mycelium Heart] is located in a different location. Do you wish to replant your central firecap above the heart?

  I had never answered yes faster. Get me out of this shitty movie.

  ---

  PoV of Jod, orc village.

  Jod could feel the feast of the previous night this morning as he woke up. The orcs did not hold back, not when it came to food or drink at least.

  Jod rubbed his eyes and tried to force his headache to subside and looked around the dimly lit tent. There were a few embers left in the middle where a fire had been burning brightly the night before. Now the morning sun was illuminating the tent faintly through a small opening in the tent's "door."

  He exited the tent and saw that a few others were sitting in the middle of their plaza, eating breakfast. He walked up to Uther and sat down with a bowl of dried meat and some sort of tuber that the orcs had provided them.

  "How are you feeling this fine morning, Uther?" Jod asked in a pained tone as his headache flared up again.

  Uther laughed a hearty laugh as he looked at Jod. Uther did not look any worse for wear, even though he had consumed as much alcohol as some of the orcs last night.

  "I see you are not a drinker, Jod. Do not worry, you will learn with age!" Uther bit off a bit of dried meat as he continued to look at Jod with joy in his eyes.

  "I don't think I want to learn, if I am to be perfectly honest. Have you seen Toqlan or Taressa yet?"

  "Yeah, the ant queen went outside with Oran this morning. I think they went towards the entrance we used yesterday."

  Before the feast yesterday, the three orcs of the council had held a speech in front of most of their people where they explained who the guests were and what the plan for the future was. It seemed the orcs were honest people in general; they did not hide much from anyone.

  Then, they had buried the king's heart in the middle of the plaza that had become the temporary home of the refugees. The orcs had expected something called "the heart" to be something... more? They had been slightly disappointed with what they had seen.

  Jod finished up his breakfast and walked towards the entrance they came through earlier. He was stopped by a guard by the gate but was soon let through as he told the guard that he wished to meet with Taressa.

  When he got out of the village, Taressa was nowhere to be seen, but he saw Oran further down the hill, slightly off the path. He walked up to him.

  "Good morning, where might our ant queen be?"

  "Morning, Jod!" Oran said with a big smile on his lips. "Are you okay after last night?" The question was asked with a laugh, as Oran could see Jod's headache in his eyes.

  "Never drank much back in my world, so I might have done better with less drinking last night."

  Oran laughed, a full belly laugh that seemed to assault Jod's head even more.

  "The queen is digging her nest, to answer your question." Oran pointed to an unassuming hole, just big enough for Taressa to fit through. The entrance was towards the village, so Jod asked,

  "Are you sure it is okay to have the ants live under the village?"

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  "It was cleared by the council, as Taressa told us about how the nest would be built. And I think we can trust an ant to be better than us at digging a nest that doesn't collapse." Oran answered with the usual orcish honesty.

  Taressa exited the nest, while widening the entrance while doing so. She looked at Jod and Oran, and said:

  "You two, follow me. The king is about to awaken."

  The three of them hurried back towards the refugees plaza, and when they got there they joined up with Toqlan, who was waiting with a group of beast-kin, humans and orcs. He had informed the people that Mafu was about to awaken, as he felt his connection with him growing stronger.

  While he might not look it and did not call himself by that title, Toqlan was still a king in the mushroom territory.

  It took about ten minutes for the central firecap to grow to its usual size, and when it had, Jod and everyone from the territory felt a slight connection to their minds. They had not noticed it disappearing, but now that it came back, it felt familiar.

  The orcish council approached, and stood beside Jod. The Farseer asked:

  "Is this your king, then? Can we speak with him?"

  Jod simply looked at Taressa for an answer, and then felt the mushroom talking to everyone around it.

  ---

  As I woke up, and looked around my surroundings I was surprised.

  ORCS! Holy shit, there are orcs here. Like, orcs as in from video games, green skinned muscular warriors!

  It looked as if my people were still here, and they did not look distressed. I guess the orcs are friendly, then? How do I approach communicating with orcs, though? What did their society look like, and what was taboo?

  Taressa contacted me to tell me some information in an easily digestible format. She showed me a few visions of her talks with the orcish council and their plans for the future.

  I took a big mental breath and reached out to everyone around me and spoke.

  "Greetings, my people, but more importantly, our orcish hosts. I am Mafu, the king of the mushroom territory. I thank you for graciously hosting us inside your village."

  I focused my vision of the three orcs from the council, and saw that the Farseer was talking. However, it was outside my territory. I contacted the three councilmembers directly.

  "I am now speaking only to you, the council; if you wish to communicate with your words, you must approach closer. If you wish to continue with telepathy, you can stay where you are standing."

  The three of them shared a glance and approached me.

  "Greetings Mafu, we are happy to see that you could awaken so soon. We had heard that it might take a month?"

  "Yes, last time when my mushroom was destroyed, it did indeed take a month. This time I did not die, so the relocation was much faster."

  "Ah, I see." The Farseer seemed to be the one doing the talking amongst the three. "Has the ant queen informed you of what our desires are for the future?"

  "Yes, it is doable. If my expansion of my territory is not prohibited, I can indeed spawn as many mushroom warriors as needed. Queen Taressa can also increase her army of ants the more my territory expands, as I can produce more food to feed the ants this way."

  The three orcs looked satisfied, and they seemed to all relax a bit where they stood. The warchief then spoke:

  "We intend to fight with you, of course. And as we told the ant queen, we will swear fealty if you can eradicate, or at the very least make the hollow not be an existential threat for us. Do you have anything you require of us?"

  I thought about it. This was the same thing as when I took in the beast-kin. I did not know how to put people to use. I could make mushroom builders and warriors and produce food. My skillset covered a wide range of things, and if we could revive Demeter, things would be much easier.

  What was the best use of people? Just have them live on the territory to make Toqlan's stats grow? No, that made little sense. One could never have enough resources. I could have the orcs give me resources, I guess.

  "I do not know what your kind is good at; that is for you to decide. To beat the Hollow, we will need many things. Weapons made of metal would be the first on my list. Do you know of anywhere there might be metal? And do you have anyone with the skill to forge weapons?"

  The council looked bothered, and soon the totemkeeper answered.

  "No, we used to have weapons made of metal and stone walls. Before the Hollow came, we lived in large cities made of stone and had warriors in shining armor. But that was a millennium ago; these days we have no access to any ore."

  Okay. First problem encountered. I could extract some ore from the ground, but it was a slow process, and I did not want to wait decades to progress to basic metal weaponry. We needed to clear the way towards a place for a mine and safeguard the supply line to that mine.

  "Do you have anyone good at scouting that can move without the hollow seeing them?"

  "Yes, the ones who your people met at the portal, Oran and his cousin Otek. Oran is a [Great Beast Hunter] who can camouflage himself. Otek is a [Mirage Warrior] who usually copies the camouflage ability with his own skills and follows Oran when he goes on a hunt."

  "Good, then if they could look along the nearby mountains for signs of there being some sort of ore, preferably iron ore, that would be helpful."

  The council agreed and decided that Oran and Otek would set out the next morning. As the talk went on longer, the rest of the people left towards their own tents. Jod, Toqlan, Taressa, and the council stayed behind as we worked out how things would progress from here.

  The council told me about different areas of danger outside the village, and the totem keeper pointed out many places where different things could be found according to the stories. Ore was not one of the things mentioned in the stories, but two other things caught my attention.

  Firstly, dragons. There were dragons that lived on some of the high peaks surrounding the valley. The reason there was a massive grassland by the portal, where nothing grew, was because of this. Any living creature that tried to cross the grassland would be hunted down by the dragons.

  And the dragons kept burning the grasslands when something grew there, making it easy for them to hunt. They never burned the valley, however, but the orcs did not know why.

  Secondly, dwarves. The totem keepers' stories talked about small creatures with burly bodies who dug deep into the mountains to live in them. The stories talked about how they were fair trading partners and should never be attacked. I could only interpret these stories as dwarves existing.

  I mean, if orcs are a thing, then dwarves must also exist. I prayed they existed, as that would probably solve all our woes of not having weapons. If the dwarves were as similar as the orcs to the video games I used to play. But the stories did not tell where the dwarves lived, and we did not know if the hollowing was only happening to the orcs.

  My guess was it probably was not only the orcs who dealt with the hollow. If only the orcs were afflicted, then by now other creatures should have come by, and according to the totemkeeper, we were the first non-orcs to visit the village in a thousand years.

  There was also the mention of "the Great Plateau" on the other side of the mountains. It was a highland area that Oran and Otek usually hunted in. They could sneak their way there, hunt great beasts, and then sneak back.

  Usually the hollow would attack them on the way back, as the meat could not be camouflaged and the smell lured the hollow. Oran and Otek usually had to throw away half the meat on the way back to lure the hollow away from them.

  These "great beasts" seemed to be some type of mammoth creature. They did not seem to have tusks, but had a trunk and were extremely large, even for an orc.

  Okay, I now feel as if I am ready to start again. First on the order of business is to expand and see if the Hollow notices me. If not, this world seemed to not have a god, so expansion should be uninhibited.

  The mere thought of it made my mushroom self jump for joy.