All hours, all day and night, I felt and heard the digging and scratching of the ants beneath me. This had been going on for about a week now. If I had required sleep, I would be more than just a little annoyed at this point, but as a mushroom I never slept. I had not realized that I had never slept until now, which was strange. How did I convert from human into mushroom so easily?
Was this the system molding me to handle being a mushroom? I had never really specifically liked being a human but had never thought of what it would be like to be a mushroom. Even though I researched them, the thought of being a mushroom never quite occurred to me.
During this week I had spawned a few more sugardrop mushrooms, as the ants were now larger they needed exponentially more food. I spent most of my excess mana on the sugardrops now, and it was still not enough to feed all the ants. The ants themselves though, were now a true threat to any lower-tier creature in the forest. Their hunting party regularly brought back boar-looking creatures. The ants ate the organs and meat but left the furs and bones on my mycelium. The bones were worth a little bit of mana, but the furs were not. The plant matter and wood that the ants brought back were also bigger, which helped my storage fill up.
I spent a few hours trying to figure out the logic behind decomposition. An acorn was so far the most effective "drop" I''d ever gotten. Of course the goblins were worth the most, but for its size, the acorn was the best. After a few hours of trying to inspect the bones and furs, I finally reactivated the mana vision part of my [enhanced senses].
I had been an idiot. I could clearly see that the bones had mana, but the furs looked empty. So the more mana something contained, the more valuable it was for decomposition? There might be more factors that played in, but I had no way of knowing right now.
-
The second piece of evidence I found that would point to me being an idiot was that I had not looked at the research tab enough. I do not know when, but I had unlocked research for the ants. It was in a different tab than the "general" research. And in the ants tab, I found three options for the first tier research.
[Soldier Ants] Allows the psychic ants to create a soldier caste. These ants are larger, tougher, and have stronger psychic attacks.
[Mycelium Ants] Allows the psychic ants to birth ants that can help spread mycelium. The spit of these ants grows mycelium as long as it is connected to your mycelium. These ants lose all psychic capabilities other than telepathy and grow larger but weaker to physical attacks.
[Ant Upgrade] Upgrades the psychic ants in general. More speed, more strength, and stronger psychic capabilities.
These were all useful, but I could not bring myself to simply choose for the ants. I also had to bring up another issue with Taressa. At this point the ants would probably win against the enemies that I was supposed to protect them from according to our contract. So where do I stand with these ants now?
I focused my mind and quickly found Taressa deep in the ants nest. I had improved my telepathy already, I usually practiced it when I had a little bit of downtime.
"I need to ask about our contract." I was a little bit nervous still when speaking to Taressa. She was my subordinate but could clearly destroy all of me if she wished.
"What about the contract?"
"You are strong enough to fight against your previous enemies, so my part of the contract is no longer necessary."
"That is true."
I waited for what felt like an eternity, but it was probably a minute or two.
"We gain more by being subordinate to you than to fight you. We have no issue with taking orders from you, as long as we are not ordered to die pointlessly."
"I value you and your childrens contribution, I swear that I will not order you to die pointlessly."
"Then that is fine. We swear our allegiance to you again."
"With that matter handled, I have unlocked research options to improve you and your children."
"Oh? What kind of improvements?"
I went through the options with Taressa and explained that when the research was done, it would likely unlock other upgrades that were along the same line as the one researched. This is where Taressa surprised me with her choice.
"You must choose [Mycelium Ants]."
"Why? Do you not prefer to grow stronger?"
"This territory is not big enough for growth. My children have already grown stronger, but we cannot increase in numbers with a small patch of the forest under our rule. Strength is good, but numbers guarantee survival."
It was the choice I wanted, of course. The more I could grow, the more I would gain. Just the fallen leaves of a greater territory would improve my mana and exp gain, albeit minutely. I did not question the choices further and went ahead and started the research.
[1000 psychic ant corpses required for research.] Fuck. I did not check the requirements.
"Taressa, the research requires 1000 corpses of your children."
"Must they be fresh?"
"I don''t know, it does not say."
"Then we will bring some of those that were culled earlier."
The entrance to the ant nest was slightly outside my mycelium, towards where their previous nest had been. Out of the entrance came a thousand ants, each carrying a slightly decomposed ant corpse. They had brought all of them down to their nest for food after the culling. I had not dared ask about some for decomposition, as I thought it might be insensitive.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
The ants placed the corpses in piles around me. When they were done, I activated the research, and it worked. The ant corpses were absorbed quickly into the ground, or rather into my mycelium. It took only a minute for all thousand corpses to disappear as if they were never there.
[Research initiated, time to completion: 8 days]
Alright, 8 days is not horrible. The problem would now be further research. From my calculations there should be about 60,000 corpses minus the ones the ants had already eaten. Most of them would rot away in a couple of weeks, even though the nest underground should be quite cold. So what would we do months from now when we wanted to improve the ants?
"If the requirement for the improvements of your children is their corpses, what do we do when the corpses from the culling are gone?" I decided to ask Taressa directly.
"If it is for improvement, it is not a pointless death. Any of my children would willingly die for the nest. More children will be born."
That was quite cold. Then again, I am using my own morals of the value of life, and the ants had thought differently from the start. For a human, not only does it take 9 months to give birth to one child, but the child must also be taken care of for a long time before it becomes an adult. Had we as humans spawned by the thousands and grown into adults pretty much instantly, would we also be so flippant about death?
"Understood. I will place the choice of the improvements on you. Anything regarding the future of ants, I will counsel with you first."
"Appreciated."
-
While waiting for the ant research to complete, I tried overseeing progress on the territory in general. The forestry was working well as small trees looking like pine trees were growing at an astonishing pace. The trunk of the trees looked like a mix between fungus and wood, with a brown-grayish color. No tree had been felled yet, so I left inspections on the forestry for later.
The territory speed increase worked well, right now it seemed like the ants and my fungal workers moved about 10% faster. It was hard to tell, and the skill did not give me that information.
I had started to realize something lately. My thoughts seemed fractured, and my focus was bad. In the beginning of me being a mushroom, I had not felt different from when I was a human, mentally. But I forgot things now, like the ant research that I must have unlocked earlier. My theory is that it has to do with the growth of my mycelium, that the bigger it is, the more it strains my mind.
That thought was worrying, but it would not stop me from using the ants to grow even more. I felt this impulse, this need to grow and expand. I was quite sure this impulse was also not coming from me entirely, but rather what a mushroom would do. Would I eventually disappear into the mushroom as my thoughts became more sluggish?
[Research completed, designate new research?]
This time I did not think it over, I chose the ant upgrade. I had already talked it over with Taressa. I only needed to say what number of corpses I needed. It turned out to be 3000 corpses, and they were piled up around me before I knew it.
It took a couple of days, but the mycelium ants eventually were ready. I ordered them to spread mycelium evenly in every direction, unless they were blocked by something, in which case they were to report to me. The mycelium ants were about three times larger, with what looked like an oval capsule on their back. In the capsule swirled some sort of gray and white liquid.
Watching the mycelium ants work on the border, they sprayed their spit like a spray can from Earth. It even gave out a sound that I recognized as liquid under pressure. The mycelium grew in almost instantly as the liquid connected to the existing patch. This rate of growth was at least a hundred times faster than my normal growth rate.
As the days went on, I felt it, the sluggish feeling of my thoughts being slowed. Mycelium growth was the reason for my weakening thoughts, but I could still not stop myself from growing. When I tried thinking about it, I felt like a robot trying to violate its prime directive. I could not go against my coding, and my coding as a mushroom was to grow.
-
It had been a week since the mycelium ants started their work. I had stopped checking up on my territory, my skills, and research. I was entirely focused on trying to resist my will to grow.
[Level 10 achieved. Congratulations, you are now an adult!]
Choices of unique skills are:
[Fungal Pool] Allows the creation of fungal pools, where objects and creatures can be submerged to be augmented or researched. Unlocks the option to infuse objects or creatures with mana, elemental affinities, and ?????????
[Master of insects] Increases all stats of insects under your influence. Allows for granting skills to your insect subordinates and physical augmentations of insect subordinates. Allows for the creation of new insects.
[Psychic Mushroom Territory] Increases psychic attack power of you and your subordinates. Unlocks several psychic skills and allows the production of different poisons and hallucinogenics.
Instantly my mind cleared up, I felt as if I had become more intelligent as my thoughts no longer felt slow. I could focus. I ordered the mycelium ants to halt their work, as I needed to investigate the relationship between growth and my mind more before feeling confident in expanding.
[As you have reached adulthood, skills and new mushrooms will no longer be offered as you level up. New skills and mushrooms will have to be acquired through feats of strength or by attaining knowledge.]
Alright, so this is the last choice of skills. Was I playing the tutorial all this time? I did feel like the system was quite generous with unlocking skills all this time. Now, these unique skills require a bit of thought. Unique skills in games I played back on earth meant that I would be the only one in this world with that skill. They were also far more powerful than a normal skill.
Straight off the bat, I did not want the [Psychic Mushroom Territory]. That would mean I put all my eggs in one basket. If an enemy that could resist psychic attacks and poisons showed up, me and the ants would automatically lose.
So the choice is between [Master of Insects] and [Fungal Pool]. The creation of new insects is quite interesting, depending on how much freedom I would have in the creation of them. It also would be quite useful for me to focus on upgrading my ants and other possible insects. But the research tree already gave me the ability to upgrade the ants, and the research had not been removed now that I was an adult. And going all in on insects also seemed like putting all my eggs in one basket.
[Fungal Pool] seemed like the generalist type of skill. The question marks at the end were probably because I lacked knowledge. I always passively grew my mycelium and could not shut it off. That means that it is an exponential growth. As I grow larger, my growth rate would increase even if I did not level up. Therefore I will find more creatures other than insects. In that case the [Fungal Pool] seemed better, as I could probably also use it on the ants.
I spent a few more minutes thinking it through and then chose [Fungal Pool].
I was about to put it next to me, by my central firecap. But if it is a pool, it meant that it would be open for anything to drop into it. So, rethinking it, I should put it underground. I asked the ants to dig out an entrance and chamber next to me, as the ants were much faster at digging than my mushroom workers. It took them less than an hour.
I used the skill, and a pool spawned in the middle of the underground chamber. It was about two meters in diameter, perfectly circular. The walls of the pool were made of mushroom flesh and pure white in color. Inside of the pool, a black liquid swirled, it moved by itself in an irregular pattern. It was as if the liquid was alive.
I ordered one of my spearmen to the underground chamber. He obediently submerged himself in the pool.
My mind exploded with information, it was as if a thousand people spoke and gave me information at the same time. I endured it, and after a few minutes the voices quieted down. I looked at the system window in front of my vision, and all the information on the spearman was there. Not just the stats, but everything. Age, coloration of different parts of the body, movement speed depending on terrain, events he had been through. It was as if I saw everything that constituted what he was.
I decided this was enough. I ordered him out of the pool. I needed to start with something simpler than the spearman to understand this skill.
"We have intruders close to our borders." Taressa spoke.
Fuck.