From Skaven to God of War

Chapter 266, The First Blood Mushroom Crisis

The moment of abundance is about to end.

In this small world, most places are slowly moving towards deathly silence.

The rich and varied plants gradually died as time passed.

First, the various delicate flowers, then the shrubs, the big trees, and finally even the vines clinging to the big trees all died.

The world suddenly lacks an important piece of the puzzle.

The production of food in the external environment stagnated.

This is a very serious problem.

The rats did not come to their senses for a while, and the breeding houses continued to reproduce disorderly and violently.

Until one by one the Big Claw Priests suddenly and directly realized the problem that could no longer be avoided.

Food, food, and more food.

There is no need to worry about the large number of young ratmen that are piled up on hand for the time being. All they can be done is to hand them all over the ratman caravans that travel back and forth between the front and rear.

But those immature young ratmen became a big problem.

Famine began to emerge in some areas of the Rat Empire, suddenly and abruptly, as if the rats had never thought about this problem the day before, but today they had to struggle for food.

During this period, the ratmen continued to expand their cities, and urban communities emerged one after another. Workshops and breeding houses became the most popular industries, and something that could not be ignored was missing in the normal operation.

Grow room.

It's not surprising that eating cave mushrooms is really a torture. Not only are the mushroom slices that have been dried in the shade and look like cowhide, but even the fresh and tender cave mushrooms are definitely not delicious.

When you take a bite, the strange and slippery mucus will fill the cavity, with an unbearable strange fishy smell and a hint of imperceptible sweetness. This is the experience that cave mushrooms can bring.

After a long period of cultivation, the cave mushrooms now grown in the Ratman Empire are no longer the same as the cave mushrooms that Du Yuan gave them at the beginning.

The Big Claw Priests did not work out a set of effective agricultural rules, but they were not stupid. They had detected and recognized the essence of the cave mushrooms and the mycelium spreading in the culture. At the same time, almost instinctively, they had already started breeding cave mushrooms.

Cave mushrooms that grew more numerous, larger, and more adaptable gradually appeared in the deep underground caves of the Ratman Empire.

The Big Claw Priests are very interested in growing mushrooms. After all, the gift from God that emerges from the blood pool takes the form of a mushroom, and they are very interested in blood mushrooms.

But no one would dare to offend those lunatics, because the temple guards would not tolerate any desecration of the temple of God.

The cultivation direction of cave mushrooms does not include a word, delicious.

This is what makes it taste so unpalatable and strange, but it also brings about a surge in production capacity. The rat people's cities are all supported by cave mushrooms.

Cave mushrooms are an important thing, and for a long time they were a necessity that people never had to think about how to consume.

Although it is disliked by almost all rats, its status is unquestionable. The white mushroom that became popular not long ago has not shaken the status of cave mushrooms at all.

In each ratman city, free people, workshop owners, mercenaries, warriors, and priests are ultimately a minority.

The real cornerstones of these cities have always been the countless slave rats, and these cave mushrooms are specifically provided for the slave rats.

The sudden abundance brought about several rounds of population explosions for the rat people, but it also buried a crisis.

The newly established city ignored the existence of the cultivation room in this moment of abundance. After all, those high-ranking rulers never ate cave mushrooms, and those respectable ratmen who had just gained freedom would never go back to eat these disgusting mushrooms to reminisce about their past.

In this abundant environment, there is no shortage of food as long as you send some ratmen to walk around.

There were signs of this crisis long ago. As time went by, it became increasingly difficult for the ratmen running on the ground to harvest excess food, but not many ratmen seemed to care about this.

Only now has the crisis become fully apparent and hunger has truly arrived.

The breeding house began to recycle the ratmen babies to reduce food consumption.

The price of cave mushrooms began to rise, and the economic system built by the ratmen based on the value of blood mushrooms began to fluctuate violently.

This stuff is really primitive.

In essence, the rat people simply added a link to the most primitive barter system, adding an extra thing that can interpret the value of everything: the blood mushroom.

Everything is tied to the blood mushroom.

The rat people are very accustomed to this pattern.

In the past, if two ratmen bought and sold a slave rat, there would generally be one or two rounds of arguments.

One ratman might think a slave rat is worth a hide, while another doesn't care about the hide and just wants a bowl of berries. This is a very troublesome situation.

Until this rough system was formed, all the ratmen now recognized a unified price, blood mushrooms.

A slave rat is worth three blood mushrooms at a certain moment. The price is not fixed at different times, and the price of slave rats also fluctuates accordingly. It may be more expensive or cheaper, but it doesn’t matter.

What’s important is that all ratmen recognize the blood mushroom’s interpretation of the value of slave rats.

Blood mushroom has a great advantage in this regard. It is naturally a precious and necessary thing.

For a very short time, blood mushrooms existed as a kind of currency, anchoring everything in the Ratman Empire.

This has brought great convenience to the expansion of the Ratman Empire, but there is a problem. After the blood mushrooms have completely anchored other things and the system has taken shape, it means that the blood mushrooms themselves are also included in the cycle and will change due to the turbulence of things in this system.

The rising price of cave mushrooms has led to the scarcity of blood mushrooms.

A very strange change, the increase in the blood mushroom should be tied to the war with the ratmen, although it may still be affected by one thing, those goblin farms, but it should not be linked to the cave mushrooms and this famine.

The ratmen's farms have been expanding steadily, and their foreign wars have been going smoothly, but blood mushrooms have gradually become scarce during this period.

The turmoil this brought affected the entire Ratman Empire, and even the most prosperous underground rat city was implicated.

The Ratman Council will distribute blood mushrooms to the Ratman priests who undertake some basic work in the city every once in a while. The number of blood mushrooms distributed is fixed and there is no change. Generally speaking, it is enough to meet daily consumption and there will be some left over.

This is the treatment that the most orthodox ratman priests can get.

An enviable treatment.

But recently, these guys have obviously had some troubles.

The Ratman priests have recently had some rigid needs. In the intense desire to compare, many things have become absolute rigid needs. A good-looking staff, that is for sure, will allow you to hold your head high when facing other Ratman priests.

Luxurious leather materials, objects engraved with divine patterns, stone walls carved by famous craftsmen, and strange things that come from heretics and have different stories related to the great gods.

These are necessities and cannot be lacking.

But there is a problem, these things all require blood mushrooms.

In a very short period of time, the prices of all kinds of things in the Ratman Kingdom began to rise, forcing these wealthy Ratman priests to quickly face a choice: whether to continue to maintain their own pomp or to save more blood mushrooms as their own food.

The impact of this famine was unexpectedly great.

The slave rats are the foundation of the Rat Empire and the wealth of the rat leaders.

After the financial system surrounding the blood mushrooms gradually took shape, the slave rats were priced clearly, but their situation actually improved.

With a price tag, it changes from a weed to an asset.

You may trample on the weeds on the roadside without reason but you probably won't damage your own assets without reason. Blood mushrooms are precious, and the slave rats that need to be exchanged for blood mushrooms naturally make these guys more valued.

In order to prevent problems with their assets, workshop owners, farmers, mercenary captains, big claw priests, and rat priests all began to buy cave mushrooms without hesitation.

This famine was actually not as serious as imagined. For the rat people, after long-term cultivation and breeding, the production of cave mushrooms had already reached an unreasonable level.

The plants in the world died on a large scale, but the tree trunks and dry branches were always preserved. These were the materials for the rat people to cultivate mushrooms.

Increasing the production of cave mushrooms is a simple matter for the ratmen.

How can I put it? These guys are really rude and barbaric.

After this problem arose, large quantities of stockpiles occurred, and within a very short period of time, the cave mushrooms that were originally ignored were sold out in one city after another.

And this momentum is still spreading.

Gradually, more and more ratmen realized a problem. Cave mushrooms seemed to have become incomparably important now.

This is really a disaster.

The cultivation room began to raise the price of cave mushrooms, and the breeding room soon followed suit. The slave rats also began to raise their prices, like the fall of dominoes.

A strange situation arose.

On one hand, there was a shortage of food and a large number of slave rats died of starvation. On the other hand, there was a shortage of food and the breeding room raised the price of the slave rats it produced.

As the two vicious situations interacted with each other, the price and demand for slave rats began to soar. They had never been so valuable before.

It also brought about a severe economic turmoil.

Everything started to go up in price, as too many things were associated with slave rats.

As if it was a farce, or as if it was a mutual follow-up, everything in the Ratman Empire began to increase in price impatiently, as if by doing so, more blood mushrooms would be embraced by these guys who run the industry.

Then, as expected, the blood mushrooms began to become scarce. No ratman was qualified to regulate the value of the blood mushrooms, and no ratman had the ability to control the output of the blood mushrooms. Such a thing that was not defined and controlled by the ratmen was a gift from God.

After being incorporated into that simple economic system, it is inevitable to be affected by other things in this system.

The problem has become even more serious and absurd.

In a very short period of time, the price of a slave rat reached twenty blood mushrooms.

The big claw priest who maintained the planting room and the breeding house seemed to have made a profit all at once. For every cave mushroom and slave rat sold, a huge amount of blood mushrooms would be put into his pocket.

The rat-man priests who maintained the caravan seemed to have made a profit, as the blood mushrooms that the caravan could earn from a round trip increased tenfold.

All the ratmen seemed to have made a profit, and a large amount of blood mushrooms were put into circulation in this system.

No matter what you do, you will get more blood mushrooms. But there is a problem. The more blood mushrooms you get, the fewer ratmen can afford to eat them every day.

Everything requires blood mushrooms, and the amount of blood mushrooms needed is increasing.

All of a sudden, things seemed to have returned to the starting point. The more you take, the more you have to spend. It can only be said that the rats have been messing around and have caused themselves to inflate.

But blood mushrooms do have a limited production capacity. Blood mushrooms are truly precious things, and the rats are actually consuming blood mushrooms every moment.

Despite the concerted efforts of all parties in the Rat Empire, the inflation of the rats does not seem to be stopping.

Gradually, the output of blood mushrooms began to fail to keep up with the daily growing demand in the Ratman Empire.

To make an analogy, it is probably that a country's printing press is beginning to fail to keep up with the demand for currency. You know, blood mushrooms are not just a piece of paper, you can print any number you want.

And there is no substitute. The economic structure of the rat people relies entirely on blood mushrooms for guarantee. All goods output is false. The motivation of the rat people to engage in buying and selling activities is also very simple. Everyone really needs blood mushrooms.

And now, the blood mushroom is being held hostage by the inflated prices.

A real famine ensued.

A very absurd situation.

The rats obviously have no shortage of food, the breeding houses have no shortage of young rats, the workshops have no shortage of weapons due to the output of slave rats, the victory in the war has brought a large number of sacrifices, and the expanding rat farms are also producing a steady stream of goods.

The Ratman Empire was clearly spiraling upward, but the blood mushroom, the support point for all these connections, exchanges of things, and buying and selling activities, had collapsed.

A spear now requires more than a hundred blood mushrooms, and the Eastern Expeditionary Force needs tens of thousands of spears for one purchase. In other words, the number of blood mushrooms needed for one transaction reaches one million.

What's more, there are many other miscellaneous things, so large in scale that even if all the blood mushrooms in the entire Ratman Empire were taken out, it might not be enough to sustain the resources consumed by the Eastern Expeditionary Force in a war.

This is a very absurd situation, but none of the parties involved in causing this are willing to give in.

If the prices return to their original state and you loosen up, you can sell the items you have in a batch. This is very simple and they won't be unsalable. But there is a problem. If you do this and the other items remain at the same price, then you're doomed.

If you sell 10,000 slave rats, the blood mushrooms you get from them cannot even replace the amount needed to breed 100 slave rats.

No one is willing to take this risk.

Everything in the Ratman Empire is gradually coming to a standstill.

An extremely absurd situation actually happened in the Ratman Empire at this time.

(End of this chapter)