Death Cap - Thirty-Seven - Slow and Careful Preparations are Rewarded with Quick Victories

Death Cap - Thirty-Seven - Slow and Careful Preparations are Rewarded with Quick Victories

Death Cap - Thirty-Seven - Slow and Careful Preparations are Rewarded with Quick Victories

The cushion exploded with a burst of spore-y shrapnel and then a cloud of [Dead Mans Cough].

I shifted my aura towards the door, to a box theyd left next to it. It exploded apart as well, releasing more spores into the room.

That wouldnt be enough, of course. Each [Dead Mans Cough] only had so many spores, and the warehouse was relatively large and my dispersal wasnt perfect.

Which is why I had brought a lot of mushrooms.

Three more bursts came from near the ceiling, and soon the room was filled with [Purple Starball] spores and even more toxins from my [Dead Mans Cough] mushrooms hidden in the rafters.

Now that they were appropriately distracted, I reached over to the copper wire of the lights, grabbed a rusty old pair of wire cutters Id found and wrapped in plenty of cloth, and I grunted hard as I snipped the wire.

The room, of course, went dark. To the muggers whod just been outside it might have been debilitating.

To me, the chaos was beautiful.

Of course, it wouldnt last. While Jack went down coughing, hands grabbing at his throat, the other boys werent so unlucky. A couple of them had pulled up their shirts and were covering their mouths, while somehow Averell was just outside of the area my mushrooms were in when they went off and was spared from the death cloud.

I pulled something out of my bag. That jar filled with nails and explosive mushrooms. The jangle had William and Joe looking up, and they caught sight of me through the thin haze of spore dust in the air just as I tossed the jar over to them.

In mid-air, I filled it with mana, then I reeled back, taking Sir Nibbles with me so that wed be behind some partial cover.

There was a loud bang, much louder than the previous ones, as if someone had just dropped a stack of bricks onto the ground.

One of the boys started screaming, but I was more concerned with the nail that appeared in the ceiling right next to me, planted in the wood point-first with a thump.

That was dangerous. I made a mental note not to be within the fragmentation range of any explosives I set off in the future. That could have hit me somewhere important, and then I would have been in all sorts of trouble.

I glanced over the edge again. The boys had taken that blast full-to the face, but it seemed as if their clothes were enough to stop most of the shrapnel from penetrating. Unfortunate, but not too surprising. The force pushing those bits of glass and metal around wasnt that concentrated.

Id work on it.

In the meantime, they were all now covered in little scratches and cuts. William, who had covered his face with a scarf to keep the spores off, had lost the scarf and was now wheezing on all fours.

I waited another five minutes, hoping that the kerfuffle hadnt called too much attention to the warehouse. I doubted the boys were quiet neighbours, so some banging and shouting would probably be dismissed as normal.

Five minutes of no-movement was a decent indicator that everyone below was dead. It also gave the spore powder time to settle into a fine dusting over everything. Still... I tossed some [Bottle Pops] next to everybody and let them bang apart.

When none of them moved after that, I just waited another minute for things to settle once more, then I made sure Sir Nibbles mask was well fixed to his face, and I made my way down.

I needed to clean the crime scene, at least enough that no one would know that mushroom-based poisons were involved.

The obvious solution was fire, but fire was overly destructive at times. This building was connected to dozens of others, and people likely lived nearby. So I went to the washroom, found some clothes and plugged the drains.

I went around picking up the biggest chunks of mushroom I could find, then I flushed them down. Then I opened the taps and let the flooding begin.

The muggers had a few weapons around. Knives and bats and such. I spread them around. The room already looked like a fight had taken place in it, more weapons around would point towards those being used.

It was a little grisly, but I stabbed a few of the boys and left the knives there. Anyone looking quickly would assume that this was some sort of retribution or a reverse mugging.

Then, finally, I checked the safe behind the couch.

It wasnt much of a safe, just a rusty old thing. That didnt matter when I started pulling out the contents.

Coins. Entire pouches full of coins. Most were just stacks of halfpennies, but one had nothing but shillings and another, smaller bag had a couple of dozen pounds in it.

There was some jewellery too. Nothing too intricate or beautiful, but some silver brooches and brass earrings with little bits of quartz or other semi-precious stone embedded into them. This is a real jackpot, I said.

Sir Nibbles sniffed. He didnt care.

Alright, but if you dont want a share, then thats on you, I said as I scooped everything up into my satchel. Water was starting to wash across the floor in a slow, seeping wave, some of it bloody, a lot of it brown with dust.

I grabbed both kerosene lamps, tossed them onto the couch hard enough that their containers broke, then I lit a match.

The place was filling with brackish smoke as I left.

Hopefully, the fire wouldnt spread too much.

***