Little Mushroom

An Zhe walked for a long time.

After many nights and days passed, the distance he moved on the map was only a little as wide as the fingernail of a human little finger, but he was still as long as a whole finger from the northern base.He has no human transportation, and he doesn't know how long it will take to get there.

Finally, he smelled the damp and dark atmosphere gradually disappearing, and felt that the soil under his feet had finally become harder and harder.

In the evening, the sun sinks like a crimson eye, and the continuous black mountains in the distance accept it like eyelids. The sun gradually disappears, and the twilight and aurora float up together. An Zhe struggles to identify the writing and symbols on the map.

The dry river he just walked over is the boundary of the "Abyss". Behind this boundary is a place called "No. [-] Plain".The No. [-] plain has a three-star danger level and a two-star pollution level. It is home to large arthropod monsters and rodents. It is no longer covered with mushrooms, and it is dominated by ordinary low shrubs.

Indeed, the undulating terrain in the abyss, the cracks that can be seen everywhere, and the shadows of tall trees entangled in the middle of the night are all gone here.The place has a great view of the scene—a flat, endless twilight.

But An Zhe felt uneasy.

The dry air of the No. [-] Plain seemed not suitable for mushrooms to survive. He couldn't find soil that could absorb nutrients, so he could only use human methods to restore his physical strength, such as sleep.

So he walked for a long time, and finally found a slightly sunken depression with scattered green and yellow grass growing on it, sat down with his knees wrapped around him, and curled up in a suitable posture.

A mushroom spends most of its life sleeping, but this is the first time he has fallen asleep in a human position.

The sleep of mushrooms is to stay quietly in one place, waiting for the passage of time, but the sleep of human beings seems to be different.Not long after closing his eyes, the boundless darkness flooded up like a tide, and his body became lighter, or he seemed to be gradually losing his body.

At an unknown moment, the sound of whining wind rang from his ears—it was the sound of wind in the wilderness, his favorite thing before.

But those wind noises mean nothing now, and it loses its spores--while it wallows in a favorite wilderness.There will be human voices in the wind. He can't remember those syllables clearly, and he can only remember a small part. In human language, there are also intermittent fragments that cannot be put together——

"It's...strange, very..."

"……how?"

"Take... here... samples."

The next moment, an indescribable pain radiated to all parts of the body.The feeling was light but deep, a hole in his consciousness that could never, never be filled, and he knew he had lost the most important thing ever since.

——Fear spread all over his body in an instant, and since then he has been afraid of the wind and lived in a cave.

My heart was pounding, and a sudden fear came over me—the fear of losing the spores.

An Zhe opened his eyes suddenly, and he immediately realized that he was dreaming, and only humans can dream.The next moment, his breathing stopped completely.

He knew the source of that fear—a black creature standing in front of him.

Two blood-red compound eyes were faintly shining, An Zhe's whole body was tense, his eyes moved down, they were huge - as long as an adult human, and three pairs of thin and sharp sickle-shaped forelimbs shone with a cold color like moonlight.

Realizing what it was, his body shuddered, a distant feeling, the trembling of the first ancestors thousands of years ago-the mushroom would die from the bite of a group of termites.

The beasts in the "Abyss" may dismiss mushrooms, but the arthropod monsters of the Second Plain may regard mushrooms as a rare delicacy.

As soon as this idea appeared, An Zhe subconsciously rolled to the side!

With a dull blunt sound, even the ground shook, and the sharp forelimbs of the arthropod monster suddenly plunged into the soil beside him—that was where he was lying just now.

An Zhe quickly grabbed his backpack, turned over, and ran towards the bushes not far away. The dense footsteps of arthropod monsters rang in his ears.When the sound was a little quieter, An turned back and looked back. Under the aurora, he finally saw the whole picture of this thing—a giant black monster, like an ant magnified thousands of times.

Fortunately, the body of this thing looks too bulky, and the running speed of humans is better than it, as long as it runs into the bushes in front——

He fell.

In that instant, he was enveloped by the shadow cast by the monster, and amidst the sharp sound of the wind, the thing's forelimbs slashed towards his arm.

An Zhe's sleeves suddenly became empty, and the fabric sagged, and it didn't cut anything.

This seemed to be beyond the monster's expectation, and it paused.

At the same time, the hyphae re-spread and grow in An Zhe's sleeves, forming a complete human arm again.

He rolled down on the spot, narrowly dodging the monster's next blow, then propped his arms on the ground, and plunged into the low bushes. Two thick bushes blocked his body.

But this was not enough for him to escape the monster's eyes, An Zhe took a few short breaths, his body began to change at this moment, the outlines of his arms, fingers and all other limbs were blurred, and there was something underneath Surge, change to the direction of mycelium, prepare to escape in a more flexible way.

Right at this moment-

"boom!"

A white ray of light flashed across the air, hitting the joints connecting the monster's head and abdomen heavily like a meteor.

After the dull impact sounded, the white light exploded silently, mixed with red flames,

An Zhe crouched in the bushes, watching helplessly as the huge thing broke in two from the middle and fell to the ground with a bang.

The leaves of the shrubs rustled and fell off An Zhe's body. The monster's head fell less than half a meter away from him, and its blood-red compound eyes were still looking in his direction.

An Zhe had seen a creature that was cut into three pieces in the "Abyss", and each piece was still able to move. He was about to get up and move away from this thing, when he suddenly heard a voice not far away.

"The last uranium bomb is gone. Return to the base after picking up the corpse." A man's voice was very thick.

"Arthropod shells are not cheap. I didn't expect to find a handful in the end." Another man's voice was thinner than the previous one.

After a short conversation, they stopped talking, and the sound of footsteps came, the sound of thick-soled leather boots stepping on the sand, mixed with the sound of rustling.

--Humanity.

After An Ze's death, An Zhe hadn't seen a human being for a long time, and he quietly raised his head from the bushes.

The bushes rustled.The first man who spoke only heard a low shout, "Warning!"

In the next second, three black muzzles were aimed at him.

An Zhe looked at them.

He inevitably recalled the chaotic memories of the night when he lost the spores, but Anze's presence made him see the kindness and friendliness of human beings again.He thought about his current situation, and said, "You... How are you."

Under the illumination of the aurora, the scene in front of him can be seen at a glance. These are three human beings in dark gray clothes, all male.They wore wide brown leather belts with magazines strapped to their waists, and the man in the middle was tall, the other two a little shorter.

The man in the middle was the one who said "the last uranium bomb" just now, and his voice was very calm: "People?"

An Zhe hesitated, remembering the weapon that blew up the monster in half, and said, "Yes."

"What's the name? What's the ID number? Where are your teammates?"

"An Zhe, 3261170514, lost."

The man frowned and looked down at him.He has thick black eyebrows, black and white eyes, high nose bridge, and thick lips. The combination of such facial features will not make An Zhe feel dangerous like those beasts in the abyss. He pursed his lips and looked back.

Three seconds later, another man next to the man—a short, dark-skinned man clicked and reloaded the gun, full of threats, he looked at him, his voice was low, and he spoke quickly: "clothes take off."

An Zhe stood up from the bushes, unbuttoned the first button of the gray shirt, and then the second button, exposing the skin at the neckline.His skin is a smooth creamy white, somewhat like the color of his mycelium.

The next moment he heard a whistle from a third man, a man with pale red skin and yellow hair, with many wrinkles on his face, which meant human aging.The eyes are gray-blue, with the corners of the eyes hanging up, looking straight at him,

An Zhe lowered his head, unbuttoned the remaining buttons, and took off his shirt.

The gray-blue-eyed man approached him, whistled a second time, and started looking him up and down.

The man's gaze was very gluey, like the saliva of a beast in the abyss. After looking at An Zhe, he walked around to his side again.

The next moment, An Zhe's wrist was caught by him. His fingers wiped the skin of An Zhe's wrist, and his thumb rubbed against his wrist bone. He asked in a slightly shrill voice, "What is this?"

An Zhe looked down at the back of his hand and wrist. There were some messy and irregular red marks on it, which were scratched by the bushes just now to avoid the attack of the monster.He turned his head and gestured to the bushes behind him with his gaze: "Leaves."

A short silence followed.After a while, the man smacked his lips and said again: "You take off the rest yourself, or should I take it off for you?"

An Zhe didn't move.

He probably knew what they were doing, there was a similar scene in Anze's memory.

Genetic contamination occurs between monsters and between humans and monsters.The first way to confirm whether a stranger is contaminated is to examine him for wounds all over his body.

But the man behind him made him feel uncomfortable, the way snakes had felt when he was a mushroom, swimming over his stipe and canopy.

So he looked up at the man in the center. He had seen many ferocious beasts in the abyss, and he would roughly judge how dangerous they were.Now, he intuited that this person was the least aggressive of the three.

"Huo Sen." After looking at each other briefly, the man spoke again, with a deep voice: "Don't get sick in the wild."

Huo Sen sneered, and looked at An Zhe more presumptuously.

Three seconds later, the man said to An Zhe, "Follow me to the back."

An Zhe obediently followed the man around to the back of the monster's head. There was really no wound on his body except for the marks scratched by the branches and leaves of the bushes.

The man said: "How long have you been separated from your teammates?"

An Zhe thought for a while and replied, "One day."

"You have a lot of life."

"There don't seem to be many monsters here."

"But there are a lot of bugs." The man's words were always short, but he also seemed reliable.

Ann buttoned up his clothes, looked at him, and asked in a low voice, "Are you going back to the northern base?"

The man replied: "Yeah."

"Then..." An Zhe said, "Can you bring me? I have food and water myself."

"It doesn't count if I say it," said the man.

As soon as the words fell, the man stepped out and looked at the other two: "It's not hurt, should you take him?"

Huo Sen smiled, folded his arms and looked at An Zhe, whistled for the third time, and said, "Why not? Not one more."

Immediately, he looked at the remaining person: "Nigger, what do you think?"

An Zhe also looked over, and met the gloomy gaze of the dark-skinned man.