"What is a challenger?" I asked Toqlan, who still knelt before me in tears.


    It took him a good few moments to collect himself, and after wiping his tears and snot from his face, he started his explanation.


    "Firstly, I have the skills [Analyze] and [Discerning Eye], which make me able to see most of others statuses and skills. If they do not have a high-level skill to counter it, at least. His voice was a bit hoarse from the previous outburst of tears. "A challenger is a creature, most often humanoid, summoned by a defeated god to challenge the god that defeated them."


    "Alright, but how does that make me this challenger? I was summoned, yes, but I am a mushroom. If a defeated god summoned me, shouldn''t they have given me... more?"


    "On our world I spent a good few years teaching the younglings, and it is where I got my [Discerning Eye]. It allows me to see the potential of a person. Some people with great potential never become anything, and some without any potential become great rulers and warriors. But, in general, potential decides how fast you gain experience, how easy it is to acquire skills, and your stat growth." Toqlan had gone into a full-on lesson, with an appropriate teacher voice void of any of the earlier emotion.


    "I met two summoned beings in my life, before you. They had a potential of 51 and 54. Other than those two, I have never seen anyone above 30. 30 is what I saw in great adventurers and warriors, some of them hunted dragons in our world. The one with 54 potential was unfathomably stronger than the one with 51. They were both high level and both used swords. But at that level, the stat growth and skill accumulation had created a massive gap in between them."


    "You are the highest I''ve ever seen, at a 76." Toqlan''s eyes shone with some emotion I could not quite place. Was it greed? Or hope? It was hard reading his expressions, as his tortoise-like skin made him slightly different from a human in his facial movements.


    I remembered the faceless man saying that a 76 was fortunate for me, if only I wasn''t a mushroom. So that referred to a hidden stat called potential. It kind of makes sense, I had leveled to 10 with a few goblins and some scraps of leaves and other decomposable materials.


    "So, me having 76 potential makes me a challenger automatically? It is not possible to have it without having been summoned by a defeated goddess."


    "Well, I assume it is technically possible without a god, but that is not the case for you. You have a title. [Chosen of Omnia]."


    I looked through my system menus, trying to find titles anywhere. I couldn''t. There was a possibility that Toqlan was lying, but to me it seemed he had no reason to. One can''t be too cautious, though.


    "Toqlan, do you agree to having your mind read?"


    "Yes." The answer was instant, without hesitation.


    Taressa had been by my side during our conversation, and she did not wait for me to give the order. Toqlan''s eyes closed, and he seemed to be in pain as Taressa tore through his memories. I should try to get mindreading abilities myself, as Taressa seemed too hostile towards humanoids that she might break anyone too weak to take the psychic attack. I waited for half an hour or so, and when Toqlan''s eyes opened, I asked Taressa.


    "Was there anything suspicious, and is what he was telling us the truth?"


    "No, he is what he claims to be. He has been telling the truth." Taressa''s voice was still arrogant, but through our mindlink I could tell she had softened her stance of hostility against the beastkin somewhat.


    "Okay. So that is a whole lot of knowledge to handle. I guess what I am wondering now, Toqlan, is what to do with it? What do you plan to do, and what do you want of me?"


    "If it is alright with you, I would wish to stay here. The kids are safer here as well, if you''d allow them to stay. I have knowledge that can help you, and I can use my analyzing skills to your benefit. I''ll be your subordinate."


    "Why are you so quick to decide?" I did want the beastkin to stay, as it would help me in my growth, and my mushroom programming was all about growth. But loyalty given this quick? It was suspicious even though his mind was read.


    "In our homeworld, Omnia was revered and worshipped by all. She gave us good harvests, safe childbirth, and access to the pact. There were no wars amongst the different tribes, as she declared it forbidden. There was always an abundance of food, and our tribes focused on arts and craftsmanship. It was a beautiful, green and blue paradise. We lost to the humans of this world. When a god loses control over their world, they are exiled, and their powers are almost all removed. The only thing exiled gods can do is summon challengers at different intervals." Toqlan slipped right back into using his teacher voice. Then he changed to a tone that sounded almost ashamed.


    "As Omnia gave us everything, all that we can do to bring her back is to support her challenger. You are right, we met not long ago."This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    He inhaled a big breath and continued in a more decisive tone. "However, that title means more to me than anything. If you asked me to take a knife to my throat, I would, simply because you are the one that my goddess chose. No matter what you do in this world, those who are faithful to Doloran will attack you."


    "Doloran? Is that the god of this world?"


    "Yes, to his followers, you will have a darkness about you. The higher their level, the more pronounced it will be to them."


    "So all humans of this world will hate me?" I did not want that. I was planning to integrate with human society as I spread, but if all of humanity hates me, that would be hard.


    "Not all, just those that fully believe in their gods virtues and rules. However, there are many amongst the humans who are faithfuls."


    Well, shit. My mind was racing at this point, trying to evaluate my plans going forward. I told Toqlan I would talk to him more later, and he went back to the others at the makeshift camp. What could I do if all the believers of a world religion were to hunt me? Also, it is a religion of a god that invades and destroys other worlds. I couldn''t even run away since I am a mushroom.


    Was this Omnia really sane? Maybe she lost her sanity while being exiled. Alright, back to being serious. If I will have enemies no matter what I do, I need to build defenses and an army. I need to grow and attain more resources and stronger units to play this RTS game. Preferably, I''d like to get more of the beastkin, as they seemed to have an unbreaking faith in their goddess, and therefore their loyalty to me would be unquestionable.


    First though, I needed to use my pool to research more things. In any RTS game, better technology is the way to win against more numbers. So, I asked Taressa to give me 10 ants that could dip in the pool.


    After I had studied the stats and skills of the first ant, I got a notification.


    [Psychic Ant analyzed]


    [Progress to new understanding 1/50]


    The ant was nothing special really, it was level 4 and only had the skill [Psychic Scream]. But after that notification, I asked Taressa for more ants, and a few hours later I unlocked this new understanding.


    [Psychic Ant understanding level 2 unlocked]


    [Creation of Psychic Ant unlocked in the Fungal Pool]


    Oh, I can create them now. Not that it is that useful, Taressa has purposefully kept her ant numbers in check to match our territory size. And it seemed it took quite a bit of mana and quite some time to just create one ant. I mentally shrugged, it was better than nothing, and I had increased my actual understanding of how the ants worked during my examinations. The [Psychic Scream] had two important components to it. It was at its most cost-effective when used by around 1000 ants toward one target. After that, the efficiency of adding more ants would just increase the effectiveness of the attack by a small amount. It also suffered a big debuff if used on a larger target than yourself, with decreasing efficiency the bigger the size difference.


    Now I could fix the size issue, but the numbers part would then suffer. If I made the ants the size of buses, I could not in any way maintain 1000 of them. So my next thought was that maybe I could give the ants a different method of attack. I liked the general approach in most of these choices anyway. It is best to be able to adapt to any situation.


    After dunking another ant into the fungal pool, I got the next milepost.


    [Psychic Ant understanding progress 51/500] Oof. This is going to take a while. If I just half-assed it and lightly examined each ant, the understanding would not go up. I had to make sure to check all parameters, stats, and skills.


    Before continuing my mad ant science, I asked Taressa to increase the patrols of ants around the borders. I assumed that if the humans are as bad as Toqlan paints them to be, they would never let go of four escaped slaves. If they sent anyone after them, we''d have to catch them and kill them as soon as possible. I asked my mushroom warriors to guard the makeshift camp.


    The first harvest from the forestry was done, and I took the [Fungal Timber] and placed it in my pool. It did not look like wood, it had a dark grey color, and it was elastic. It felt somewhat like rubber, and it stretched a tiny bit as the forester carried it into the pool.


    It was an amazing material, though. It had the aforementioned elastic properties but also had self-regeneration. It was as tough as normal wood and even better if you hit it with a blunt instrument, but it was slightly weaker to piercing instruments. I think this would make an amazing material for a shield, probably mixed with a solid frame of normal wood to protect better against arrows. As I was thinking about it, do the humans of this world use bows and arrows? Or are they already into gunpowder?


    I had a serious lack of understanding of the technology of this world, as I had just assumed it was medieval in nature since my mushroom warriors were equipped in medieval fashion. I added that question to my ever-growing list of questions. I''d have to talk to Toqlan later. For now I continued my advances in science, and next on my plate was the usage of the materials I had extracted from the soil.


    I had quite a lot of metals, although I could not tell what some of them were. I had copper, tin, and iron. Most of it was iron. I took out a bit of the materials that had question marks applied to them in the system and placed them in the pool.


    [Cordium metal identified] Alright, from the examinations, this metal is more frail than iron when smelted into an ingot but harder. It is extremely heat resistant. The uses of metals eluded me quite a bit, I was a mushroom scientist in my last life, not a blacksmith or metallurgist. My first guess of the usage of this metal would be to make heat shielding in a forge. But then how would you smelt it to begin with... Ahhhh screw this, metals can wait until I find a blacksmith or unlock the fungal blacksmiths.


    I then continued my ant examinations and kept doing it as the days went on. As I was on my 472nd ant, I heard a slight noise that jarred me out of my pool examination. I don''t know what it was about the sound, but it was a creak that did not quite fit with the forest I knew. I tried to locate where the sound came from, and I saw a shimmer in a tree, maybe 10 meters away from me.


    Then all I knew was pain. I swung my vision back towards my central firecap and saw that an arrow was lodged through the cap and stalk and pinned it to the ground. I looked back at the shimmer in the tree and saw a man wielding a bow. He notched another arrow and released it.


    I felt the explosion rip my mushroom out of the ground, and then my senses disappeared.


    [Time until regeneration of central firecap: 34 days and 12 hours]


    All I saw was darkness, and all I could do was think.


    I guess they do use bows in this world.


    Shit.