(Just a note on your stats: they should be 10/10, 21/22, and 12/12.  Remember that your initial stats don't change unless specifically told that they do, like with the Potion of Luck.)<br/><br/>Once again you reach for the parchment, only this time it is lying amidst a pile of broken bones.  Unfolding it, you see a map of a room with a drawing of a hideous creature inside it.  Beneath the monster is a rhyme which reads:<br/><br/>'Should you meet the Manticore,<br/>Of its tail beware.<br/>Shield yourself against the spikes<br/>Flying through the air.'<br/><br/>You fold up the piece of parchment and put it in your backpack.  Repeating the rhyme over and over to yourself, you walk across to the alcove.<br/><br/>At the back of the alcove are some steps leading down into a cellar.  Cobwebs brush your face as you descend.  The cellar ceiling is quite low, and the floor is strewn with rubbish and debris.  In the middle of the wall opposite you is an archway which leads into another crystal-lit tunnel.  There are large mushrooms growing on the debris to your right.<br/><br/><em>Your choices are to step through the archway, or to stop to eat some of the mushrooms.</em>