For a moment, Merrick wasn’t able to register what had just happened. He laid there, prone on his stomach with his eyes crossed, staring at the teal mint leaf resting on his nose. It was only when the tangy scent started to make his eyes water and caused him to sneeze that he snapped out of his daze.

  “Well, I knew it was a hail Mary. There isn’t much to do about it now but go take a nap,” Merrick set the glowing mulberry light source into the alcove to scatter its light around the tight space he was located in. Not only did he have to check for any sort of hints carved into the horn, not that he thought the perpetually smooth walls were going to show any change at that junction, but he also had to locate his hard-[[merged]] mulberry mint leaf that had fled his face in nose-generated wind.

  “Sure enough, no blemishes. It sort of looks like I crawled into bone now that I think about it.” Merrick managed to locate the mint leaf tucked near his left elbow without crushing it accidently. Although grinding it down was part of making a potion, doing so outside of a pestle and mortar would waste a large portion of the plant’s medicinal efficacy. While holding the leaf he did a cursory glance around the red-illuminated space and didn’t spot any sort of code or hint for the puzzle solution.

  The only place he hadn’t inspected was the alcove. Just looking at the thing was starting to become a trigger for the young man so he resolved to inspect it last. Having only used his eyes, he knew that he should run hands across the surface as well. In theory, the mulberry he rolled along with him should have cast shadows from any engravings, but Merrick couldn’t rule out dungeon hijinks. The thing had already shenan’ed him once that day, he wasn’t going to ignore the possibility of it shenan-again-ing him.

  “Blood loss,” Merrick muttered out loud for the benefit of nobody but himself. Holding the leaf in his left hand, he groped around the silky-smooth surface of the cornucopia attempting to feel any engravings or shallows in the surface.

  He even applied slight pressure in case there were any pressure-plate based mechanics to be located. After a few minutes, he swapped the leaf over to check his left side. When it came time to check overhead, Merrick set the leaf down on the alcove out of habit so he could roll over without crushing it.

  Almost as if giving him grace, the alcove waited until Merrick had successfully maneuvered himself onto his back to reject the leaf and it floated back down onto his nose.

  “That was silly of me. I’m lucky it didn’t float back under me while I was rolling back and for-” Merrick trailed off while staring at the leaf, cross-eyed due to his placement. His head jerked backwards, smacking against the floor and eliciting no reaction from him, as his eyes shot to the alcove.

  The glowing-red watermelon sized mulberry was still resting there where he’d set it out of habit, unrolled despite its obviously round shape.

  Squinting, Merrick could even see a very dim glowing ring around the face of the alcove as well.

  “Oh!”

  Merrick snatched up the mutated mulberry, thankful that the alcove hadn’t locked it in as his submission, and began to shimmy his way out of the seventh segment of the dungeon cornucopia.

  “Mulberries. The dungeon is called the Mulberry Grove, I should have guessed that was what it wanted. Damned thing, or person I guess, could have at least made it more obvious,” even though he was loudly complaining as he sat up, having finally shimmied his way backwards enough that the cornucopia’s sloped shape afforded him enough space to stand, there was a massive grin on Merrick’s face as the mulberry mint leaf floated off his nose onto the large red mulberry he was holding.

  Finally, there were no more theories required. No more testing. Just brute force combinations of the mulberries from the plentiful bounty located outside of the horn-o-plenty, until he merged a mutated mulberry. Though, if he had time, he wanted to merge a second tier mutant.

  Theoretically, he had enough time for that and he wanted to see if there was a bonus-bonus reward for going above and beyond the secret objective.

  Manically, Merrick skipped through the fields and shook entire trees worth of berries into his wheelbarrow. A few of the berries were probably bruised along the way, some squished, but what he was going to lose in efficacy he was making up for in buckets of efficiency.

  After filling the wheelbarrow to near-max, Merrick practically ran the thing back to his workbench. A few berries fell out of the wheelbarrow in his mad dash but he figured he had more than enough to get started anyways. It’d save more time shaking a new batch down into the wheelbarrow than it would save by going slowly.

  He caressed his purple-cushioned throne before plopping down and letting out a deep sigh. The first thing he did was mix up several more of his new and improved rejuvenation potion, knowing he’d need them to get through what he was about to attempt.

  True to his previous experience, the [[Merge]] attempts for the mulberries consistently felt like they were a full tier higher than they were in actuality. Thinking back on it, each of the plants probably had some slight variance in difficulty merging as well, with the goodberries being the most intensive out of the twenty-seven, not including the mulberry mint due to its wild variance in shape and size making it artificially more difficult.

  He supposed some part of him must crave experimentation and theory crafting when he stopped to make a note reminding himself to try and find a way to quantify the unknown energy costs for the [[Merge]]’s in an attempt to isolate whatever variables cause increased intensity. He was supposed to be brute force merging and he still couldn’t stop his mind from wandering.

  [Merge Successful. One Tier 2 Dungeon Groveberry merged. See More…]

  [Merge Successful. One Tier 2 Dungeon Groveberry merged. See More…]

  [Catastrophic Failure … See More…]

  [Merge Successful. One Tier 2 Dungeon Groveberry merged. See More…]

  [Catastrophic Failure … See More…]

  …

  [Critical Success! Merge successful. One T4 Dungeon Groveberry merged. See More…]

  The entire time he worked, the manic smile had never dropped from his face. Admittedly, it had changed form a bit after his fifth Tier four mulberry was successfully merged without a [Critical Success]. Minutes later, he was sure anyone’s joy would be strained when looking at eighteen watermelon sized collections of glowing red drupelets the size of grapefruits.

  “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do this.” Merrick was forced to confront reality and he swept the most recent pile of failure-generated dusts into their larger counterparts located in various large round-bottom flasks that had been provided for him. He was thankful for the funnel as well, already intending to pilfer the strange lightweight tool when he saw that dust seemed to be incapable of sticking to its surface.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  The issue he’d been trying to ignore was that the berries obviously needed to be at least a tier five to hit [Critical Success]. He’d hoped to brute force a mutation sooner by increasing the sample size but he had to accept the facts. He hadn’t done a tier six merge before, discounting combining the fifth tier pepper mutants together, though he still wasn’t sold on the fact that those were considered a proper fifth tier.

  Worse of all, they might even need to go beyond the fifth tier to gather enough magicka or potential or whatever it was that triggered a [Critical Success] in the first place. He’d just succeeded in [[Merge]]’ing something less than twenty-four hours prior and had no clue how his skill actually worked yet. Well, he had very little clues.

  “Sigh, okay I guess have way more clues than I would if I hadn’t been kidnapped by the dungeon. Still… a tier six merge…” Merrick scowled. After a few moments, he realized he’d been waiting for the tiny voice in his head to prod him with positive reinforcement but even that was still giving him the silent treatment.

  “Ah, screw it.” Merrick downed a fresh potion even though his reserves were not bottomed out yet. He once again experienced the over-full feeling he’d been tolerating while merging the mulberries, though it was no worse than when he quaffed a potion while completely exhausted. It appeared that there was a strict limit to the ‘over-full’ amount he would receive, and would probably get the exact same amount of overfill if he drank the potion while full on his reserves.

  Theoretically, that meant he wanted to be as wrung out as possible before imbibing the potions for maximum yield, but he was more concerned about not having enough reserves to complete the merge as is.

  “If it gets the job done, then it's not wasteful.” Merrick sorted the mulberries by weight using the massive gilded scale provided to him, grouping them with the ones more like-sized that way. Annoyingly, there was variance between them due to the wild array of mulberry size and shapes. His failure rate merging the tier two and threes had been much higher than the other plants as well for the same reason.

  Grabbing the three smallest mulberries first, Merrick channeled his innate skill.

  [[Merge]]

  Instantly, Merrick felt like every muscle in his body tensed and his stomach began cramping. Thankfully, the grid decided to super-impose himself over the desk in front of him and he was able to roll the three berries into place rather than having to pick him up while his arms were rebelling. Each berry that rolled into place felt like a sledgehammer to his skull and by the time the third was rolled into place, ending in the top left corner this time, Merrick felt just about tapped out on energy.

  [Catastrophic Failure … See More…]

  The words taunted Merrick but his head was pounding too much to sulk about them. He quaffed another of his potions, idly noting that he had five left over from his last batch of potioneering. Theoretically enough to finish combining the berries in front of him.

  “Well, there's a reason I grabbed extras. I’m not even going to lie to myself, I had a feeling that was going to happen anyways, considering each of those were [[Merged]] out of inferior tier fours.”

  [Critical Success! Merge successful. One T5* Dungeon Groveberry merged.]

  [SML: ::97.8%, GRW Mod: 0%, GTR Mod: 282.43%, RFN Mod: 0%, CFT Mod: 0%.]

  [Total 380.23% Potential. No Personal Blessings Detected. Vastly Improved Output.]

  The mulberry in front of Merrick was like none he’d ever seen. It almost seemed to be vibrating and was colored a metallic steely color, barely glowing at all.

  Merrick glanced at the output results in his [Skill Log] and saw that the creation was deeped a ‘Vastly Improved’ result which surprised him because it looked like a failed merge to him, lacking all of the luster he expected to see.

  Thankfully, the second merge took marginally less effort from him which meant a large portion of the strain he felt from the previous one was due to the inherent resistance of incompatible materials. He assumed he’d be able to tell the difference between ‘this is just a hard merge’ resistance and ‘this isn’t going to work’ resistance with enough practice.

  For now, he was supposed to be brute forcing so that was what he got back to doing.

  [Critical Success! Merge successful. One T5* Dungeon Groveberry merged. See more…]

  [Critical Success! Merge successful. One T5* Dungeon Groveberry merged. See more…]

  [Critical Success! Merge successful. One T5* Dungeon Groveberry merged. See more…]

  [Merge successful. One T5 Dungeon Groveberry merged. See more…]

  Even though the final four merges were all successful, Merrick couldn’t help but feel aggrieved. All four berries looked vastly different. Ignoring the standard tier five berry, a red-violet colored berry where each individual drupelet was the size of a cantaloupe, the three mutated berries were all odd.

  The first he’d made was steely-gray and seemed to vibrate in place, though when he picked it up it felt like there was no movement at all even though it appeared to keep shaking. He double checked by placing it into a bowl of water and even though it continued to appear to shake, there were no ripples.

  The second was a silver color and almost seemed to be a mirage. Every time he tried to pick it up, he’d miss it somehow. If he tried to scoop it up with his right hand he’d find it was farther left than he expected and vice-versa. It was only by scooping with both hands coming from both directions that he was able to pick it up. Even then, it appeared to float a few inches above his hand even though he could feel its weight in his palm.

  The third was a metallic white color and felt sharp to look at. Merrick wasn’t even sure that was a way you were supposed to be able to describe something, let alone a fruit. Logically, he knew that a knife was sharp but looking at one wouldn’t make Merrick feel like he was being cut. The fruit, however, made his eyes have prickly feelings as if they were being jabbed with dozens of needles. Rather than trying to pick that one up, he used tongs to set it off to the side for now. He was fairly pain-adverse, after all.

  The fourth of the mutated berries was the closest to standard. It was a deep purple color that appeared to have rich swirls if black and gold contained within it. It didn’t seem to cast light so much as consume it, he noticed. The shadows around the berry were much darker, and the colors within a radius of it were also less vibrant.

  Using the scale, Merrick was able to confirm that all four berries were the exact same weight. He’d half expected that the three metallic berries would be heavier than the purple one but he was once again surprised. Merrick had a little over 40 minutes left, to the best of his estimations, until the puzzle was either completed or forfeited. He wasn’t sure why the tiny voice in his head had been so confident about that but it’d been drilled deep into his subconscious at that point that he had a time limit.

  He’d wanted to make three of the same mutant berry and combine them all again for bonus credit but hadn’t been so lucky. Although the three metallic berries looked slightly similar, his deductions up to that point told him that they would absolutely fail to [[Merge]]. Even if it wasn’t a guaranteed failure, the massive difference between the three told him that the difficulty of even employing his skill would rise exponentially to the point that he couldn’t combine them even if he wanted to.

  It was a shame, too, because he needed only one berry to complete the challenge. Having three left over felt like bad luck, probably because he’d begun to consider three an unlucky number after years of failure enumerating his innate skill. He couldn’t even plant the things, considering the fact that they were metal by every measure he could test and the fact that dungeon plants seemed to be infertile in other environments. Attempting to sell them before skipping town would likely get him apprehended for questioning, and trying to sell them elsewhere would also like cause an inquisition.

  “Am I really going to have to leave these here and yield them to the dungeon for free?” Merrick scowled down at the berries as he rapped his fingers on the table. Unlike the other mutated plants he’d already begun sorting and storing in his torn travelers pack, the mulberries were too conspicuous and had an obvious source of the Mulberry Grove. It wouldn’t do well by future-Merrick to carry such hot potatoes forward with him.

  He closed his eyes and continued to drum his fingers as he basked in how warm and comfortable the cushions on his chair were when a sudden bout of inspiration seemed to up his spine before ringing his brain like a bell.

  His eyes snapped over to the teal mulberry mint leaf mutant he’d left sitting on the desk and then darted over to the comparatively fragile peppers he’d left atop the desk with the mutated fungus.

  Perhaps there were a couple more experiments he could fit into his rapidly depleting time in the dungeon while he still had access to top notch equipment.