The Mushroom's Silent Struggle Chapter 2

Adrian An walked for a long time.

After many nights and days, the distance he had moved on the map was only as wide as the fingernail of a human pinky finger, but he was still a whole finger long away from the northern base. He had no human means of transportation, so he didn't know how long it would take to get there.

Finally, he smelled the damp and dark smell gradually disappearing, and felt that the soil under his feet was finally becoming harder and harder.

In the evening, the sun sank like a deep red eye, and the black mountains in the distance accepted it like eyelids. The sunlight gradually disappeared, and dusk and the aurora emerged together. Adrian An tried hard to recognize the words and symbols on the map.

The dry river he just walked past was the border of the "Abyss". Behind this border was a place called "Plain No. 2". Plain No. 2 had a three-star danger level and a two-star pollution level. Large arthropod monsters and rodents lived there. It was no longer covered with mushrooms, but mainly with ordinary low shrubs.

Indeed, the undulating terrain in the abyss, the rift valleys everywhere, and the shadows of tall trees entangled in the night, all disappeared here. This place has a wide view and a panoramic view of the scene - flat and endless twilight.

But Adrian An felt uneasy.

The dry air on Plain No. 2 did not seem suitable for the survival of mushrooms. They could not find soil from which to absorb nutrients and could only use human ways to restore their strength, such as sleeping.

So he walked for a long time and finally found a slightly sunken area with green and yellow grass growing here and there. He sat down with his knees hugged and found a suitable position to curl up.

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

The sleep of mushrooms is to stay quietly in one place, waiting for the passage of time, but human sleep seems to be different. Soon after closing his eyes, the boundless darkness flooded over him like a tide, and his body became lighter, or he seemed to be gradually losing his body.

He didn't know when it was, but the sound of whistling wind rang in his ears - it was the sound of the wind in the wilderness, his favorite thing in the past.

But the sound of the wind is meaningless now, it lost its spores when it rolled in a favorite wilderness. The sound of the wind can be heard by humans, but he can't remember the syllables clearly, only a few of them, and when it is changed to human language, there are also fragments of words that cannot be pieced together--- "very... strange, very..."

"...how?"

"Take...a sample...here."

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

---Fear spread throughout his body in an instant, and from then on he began to be afraid of the sound of the wind and lived in a cave.

My heart was pounding, and a feeling of fear suddenly came over me - the fear of losing the spores.

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

He knew the source of the fear - a black creature stood in front of him.

Two blood-red compound eyes glowed dimly. Adrian An's whole body tensed up and his eyes moved downward. The huge body - as long as an adult human - with three pairs of thin and sharp sickle-shaped forelimbs shone with a color as cold as moonlight.

After realizing what this thing was, his body trembled, a distant feeling, the trembling of the first ancestor tens of millions of years ago - the mushroom would die from the bites of a group of termites.

The beasts in the "abyss" may look down on mushrooms, but the arthropod monsters in the second plains may regard mushrooms as a rare delicacy.

As soon as this thought came to his mind, Adrian An subconsciously rolled to the side!

There was a dull thud that even shook the ground, and the sharp forelimbs of the arthropod monster suddenly stabbed into the mud beside him - that was where he had just been lying.

Adrian An quickly grabbed his backpack, turned over and climbed up, running towards the bushes not far away. The dense footsteps of the arthropod monster rang in his ears. When the sound became a little quieter, Adrian An looked back. Under the aurora, he finally saw the whole appearance of this thing - a giant black monster, like an ant magnified thousands of times.

Fortunately, this thing's body seemed too bulky, and humans could run faster than it. All he had to do was run into the bushes in front--- He fell.

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

Adrian An's sleeves were suddenly empty, the fabric hung limply, and it didn't cut anything.

This seemed to take the monster by surprise, and it paused.

At the same time, the mycelium spread and grew again in Adrian An's sleeves, forming a complete human arm again.

He rolled down on the ground, barely avoiding the monster's next attack, then supported himself with his arms and threw himself into the low bushes. Two thick bushes blocked his body.

But this was not enough for him to escape the monster's eyes. Adrian An took a few quick breaths, and his body began to change at this moment. The outlines of his arms, fingers, and all other limbs became blurred. Something was surging underneath, turning in the direction of the mycelium, preparing to escape in a more flexible way.

At this moment---

"boom!"

A streak of white light streaked across the air and hit the joint between the monster's head and abdomen like a meteor.

After a dull crash, a white light exploded silently, mixed with red flames.

Adrian An lay in the bushes, watching the huge thing break into two pieces in the middle and fall to the ground with a thud.

The leaves of the bushes rustled and fell all over Adrian An. The monster's head landed less than half a meter away from him, its blood-red compound eyes still looking at him.

direction.

Adrian An had seen a creature in the "Abyss" that was cut into three parts, but each part was still able to move. He was just about to get up and stay away from this thing when he suddenly heard a sound not far away.

"The last uranium bomb is out. We'll go back to the base after picking up the bodies." A man's voice with a thick tone.

"Arthropod shells are not cheap. I didn't expect to make a profit from them in the end." Another man's voice was sharper than the previous one.

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

---Humanity.

After Ethan An's death, Adrian An hadn't seen a human being for a long time. He quietly raised his head from the bushes.

The bushes rustled. The man who had spoken first growled, "Beware!"

The next second, three black gun muzzles were pointed at him.

Adrian An looked at them.

He inevitably recalled the chaotic memory of the night when he lost the spores, but Ethan An's presence made him see the kindness and friendliness of human beings. He thought about his current situation and said, "Hello... Hello."

Under the illumination of the aurora, the scene in front of him was clearly visible. These were three humans in dark grey clothes, all male. They had wide brown leather belts around their waists with magazines tied to them. The one standing in the middle was tall, and the other two were slightly shorter.

The man in the middle was the one who first mentioned "the last uranium bomb". He said in a steady voice: "People?"

Adrian An hesitated for a moment, remembering the weapon that blew the monster in half, and said, "Yes."

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

"Adrian An, 3261170514, lost."

The man frowned and looked down at him. He had thick black eyebrows, black and white eyes, a high nose bridge, and thick lips. This combination of facial features did not make Adrian An feel dangerous like the beasts in the abyss. He pursed his lips and looked back.

Three seconds later, another man beside the man, a short dark-skinned man, reloaded his gun with a click, looked at him threateningly, and said in a low, fast voice, "Take off your clothes."

Adrian An stood up from the bushes and unbuttoned the first button of his gray shirt, then the second, revealing the skin at the collar. His skin was a smooth milky white, a bit like the color of his mycelium.

The next moment he heard a whistle from a third man, a man with pale red skin, blond hair, and many wrinkles on his face, which indicated human aging. His eyes were gray-blue, with the corners of his eyes raised, and he was looking straight at him.

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

The man with gray-blue eyes approached him, whistled a second time, and began to look him up and down.

This man's gaze was extremely sticky, like the saliva of a beast in the abyss. After looking Adrian An over, he walked around to his side.

The next moment, he grabbed Adrian An's wrist, rubbed his fingers on the skin of Adrian An's wrist, and rubbed his thumb on his wrist bone, and asked in a slightly shrill voice: "What is this?"

Adrian An looked down at the back of his hand and wrist, which had some messy and irregular red marks on them. These were scratches from the bushes when he was trying to avoid the monster's attack. He turned his head and pointed at the bushes behind him: "Leaves."

There was a brief silence. After a while, the man smacked his lips and said, "Do you want to take off the rest yourself, or do you want me to take it off for you?"

Adrian An did not move.

He probably knew what they were doing, as similar scenes existed in Ethan An's memory.

Genetic contamination can occur between monsters and between humans. The first way to confirm whether a stranger is contaminated is to check whether he has any wounds on his body.

But the man behind him made him feel uncomfortable, just like how it felt when he was still a mushroom and the snakes swam through his stem and cap.

So he looked up at the man in the middle. He had seen many ferocious beasts in the abyss and could roughly judge their degree of danger. Now, he intuitively felt that this man was the least aggressive among the three.

"Leon Huo." After a brief eye contact, the man spoke again, his voice was very deep: "Don't get sick in the wild."

Leon Huo sneered and looked at Adrian An even more brazenly.

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

Adrian An obediently followed the man around to the back of the monster's head. There were indeed no wounds on his body except for the scratches caused by the branches and leaves of the bushes.

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

Adrian An thought for a moment and replied, "One day."

"You are very lucky."

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

"But there are a lot of bugs." This man always speaks briefly, but he also seems reliable.

An unbuttoned her clothes, looked at him, and asked quietly: "Are you going back to the northern base?"

The man replied: "Yeah."

"Then..." Adrian An said, "Can you take me with you? I have food and water."

"I have no say." said the man.

As soon as he finished speaking, the man stepped out and looked at the other two people: "He's not injured. Should we take him with us?"

Leon Huo smiled, crossed his arms and looked at Adrian An, blew the third whistle, and then said: "Why not take him? It's not too much."

Then he looked at the remaining man and said, "What do you say, nigger?"

Adrian An also looked over and met the dark-skinned man's gloomy gaze.