The Alluring Mushroom

The Saint's Magic Power is Omnipotent — LNCrawler · All chapters

FALL IS A GREAT SEASON for playing sports or holing up to read, but most of all, it’s the season of food. Aside from it being the time when the fields are harvested, you can also gather all sorts of delicious food in the wild. At least, that was how it had been in Japan, and it turned out to be the same in the Kingdom of Salutania.

According to Jude, fall wasn’t just the time for harvesting rye and other agricultural products—you could also gather all kinds of berries and mushrooms in the forest.

I gasped in delight when I heard. So where did I go next? The forest, of course.

I got permission from Johan without delay and set off for the forest east of the capital. I brought Jude and two other researchers with me, along with two knights from the Third Order to be our escort.

Once we got there, we moved as a group. We left it to the knights to keep an eye on our surroundings while the rest of us focused on looking for herbs. As we searched, I also found berries and mushrooms, which were my real objective. Just as you’d expect from harvest season, I found a lot more of both than I had on our previous visit.

While I was picking, I spotted something curious. As soon as I squatted down to pick a nearby herb, I saw a mushroom inconspicuously growing in the shadow of a fallen tree. It was short, stout, and had a faint beige color. I couldn’t immediately tell whether it was safe to eat.

In such cases, it’s always best to ask.

I called Jude over and pointed at the mushroom. He frowned at it suspiciously, then his eyes widened and he stared at me. I reflexively leaned back from the force of his stare.

“Wh-what is it?”

Jude’s finger trembled as he pointed. “I-It’s a…”

His weird behavior attracted one of our colleagues. But the second they looked where he was pointing, they let out a cry of surprise and paled.

What in the world was going on?

“Is there something weird about this mushroom?” I asked.

Jude nodded vigorously before launching into an excited explanation.

The thing I’d found was known as a shadow mushroom. It was indeed edible and known for its delicious taste, but its aroma was even more famously appealing. We couldn’t smell it while it was growing, but once we cut it up, its fragrance would become clear. Some people even claimed that its aroma was so alluring that it could be used as an aphrodisiac.

Also, shadow mushrooms were so rare that they were also known as mystic shrooms. In fact, they were so uncommon that some said you could live ten lives and only hope to find one once. Furthermore, on account of that rarity, they could be sold for a fortune.

“Do you think Johan will tell us to sell it if we bring it back?” I asked.

“I doubt it. You’re the one who found it, so he’ll definitely let you do whatever you want.”

Really? I thought Jude just sounded that confident because the mushroom was so valuable that he couldn’t even predict how Johan would react, so he’d looped back around to certain.

But given everything I had just heard, I really didn’t want to sell it—I wanted to eat it. My bet was that Johan would choose the same in my position. Even though he was our boss, he was still a researcher at heart. He’d definitely prefer to learn what this incredible rarity tasted like for himself.

With confidence, I picked the shadow mushroom.

When we got back to the institute and told Johan, he was as shocked as we thought he’d be. The next words out of his mouth were: “All right, let’s see what it tastes like.”

That made me burst out laughing.

He didn’t let us down, either. We went straight to the dining hall and presented the mushroom to the chefs. They all stared and pointed, just like Jude had. It really was a once in a lifetime find. When I declared we wanted to cook it, they cheered.

I wasn’t familiar with this kind of mushroom, so I asked the chefs for advice before deciding what to make. Because we wanted to celebrate that fantastic fragrance, I elected to chop it up and use it to garnish a complementary dish.

I let a chef take care of prepping the shadow mushroom as I worked on devising the perfect accompaniment. Finally, I settled on chicken in a white sauce stew.

I sliced and sauteed onions and more run-of-the-mill mushrooms, and then let them simmer with the cooked chicken in a white wine. We unfortunately didn’t have heavy cream, so instead I added flour, milk, and butter. I didn’t forget to season it all with a moderate amount of salt and pepper, too.

At last, I scattered the pieces of shadow mushroom across the finished chicken, and the dish was ready.

Yup. It smelled mind-blowingly good. The moment we started chopping the shadow mushroom, an exquisite aroma filled the kitchen. It was sweet, yet at the same time, it…wasn’t. It was hard to describe! But I supposed it could be called kind of sensual. In any case, every inhalation was heavenly.

I selected the tiniest crumb of mushroom and popped it into my mouth for a taste. Even that tiny piece flooded my mouth with a flavor I couldn’t begin to capture in words.

“It tastes amazing,” I murmured dreamily. Not the most descriptive statement, but it was all I could manage.

I wasn’t alone either. The chefs nodded vigorously in agreement.

In the end, the white sauce went perfectly with the mushroom—that’s what you get when you trust the expertise of professionals!

Everyone reconvened to enjoy the meal, by which I meant the chefs, my colleagues and the knights who had come with Jude and me, Johan, and even Albert, who Johan had invited. Drawn by the scent, my other colleagues flooded into the dining hall as well.

Even the smallest bit of the shadow mushroom was deliciously pungent, so we only had to sprinkle a smidgen on a serving and it did the job. We somehow had enough to let everyone get a taste, which was important to me.

(I feared that the day we didn’t have enough of a new dish to go around would be the day we needed a lottery to determine who got to eat—and on that day, we would see bloodshed.)

In the end, though, I got to see everyone’s utterly satisfied faces, which made me understand why this mushroom so consistently captivated people. I, too, was now a devotee. It had been so unimaginably delicious.

If possible, I hoped to eat it again someday, but I couldn’t assume I’d ever get the chance. And using my Saint’s powers to wish for something like that would be a little too self-interested, don’t you think? Even so, I was tempted… What a good mushroom!