A Single Stroke

"Did you do it?" Pearl asked Alex after he had returned from talking to the Dragon Emperor.

"I was supposed to give it to him for the trade anyway," Alex said. "It's only right that I do it before I don't get the chance to. He was this close to figuring out about the mushrooms."

Pearl fell into a thought, and Alex did the same. It was true that they both didn't want the Dragon Emperor to get stronger, but there was no choice on Alex's part this time around.

"What do we do now?" Pearl asked. "If he can make pill clouds frequently, won't he ascend?"

"No, don't worry about that," Alex said. "Those three by themselves won't be enough for him to make pills frequently, and the World Defying Mushrooms aren't that common either."

"He might be able to form pill clouds every 100 pills now, instead of every few hundred," Alex said.