After many nights and days had passed, the distance he had moved on the map was only as wide as a human pinky fingernail, yet he was still a whole finger’s length away from the northern base. He had no human means of transportation and had no idea how much longer it would take to get there.

At last, he sensed the damp, shadowy air gradually fading away, and the soil beneath his feet finally becoming harder and firmer.

At dusk, the sun sank like a deep red eye, and the distant, rolling black mountains received it like eyelids. The sunlight slowly disappeared, and twilight rose together with the aurora. Adam Carter strained to make out the words and symbols on the map.

The dried-up river he had just crossed marked the boundary of the “Abyss.” Beyond this boundary was a place called “Plain No. 2.” Plain No. 2 had a danger rating of three stars, a pollution level of two stars, and was inhabited by large arthropod monsters and rodents. Mushrooms no longer grew there; instead, it was mostly covered with ordinary, low shrubs.

Indeed, the undulating terrain, the ever-present ravines, and the tall, tangled tree shadows of the Abyss were all gone here. This place offered a wide, unobstructed view—flat, endless twilight as far as the eye could see.

But Adam Carter felt uneasy.

The dry air of Plain No. 2 didn’t seem suitable for mushrooms to survive. He couldn’t find soil to draw nutrients from and could only recover his strength in a human way—by sleeping.

So he walked for a long time again, finally finding a slightly sunken hollow, scattered with patches of greenish-yellow grass. He sat down hugging his knees, curling up in a comfortable position.

A mushroom spends most of its life sleeping, but this was his first time falling asleep in a human posture.

Mushroom sleep meant staying quietly in one place, waiting for time to pass, but human sleep seemed different. Not long after closing his eyes, boundless darkness surged in like a tide. His body grew lighter, or rather, it felt as if he was gradually losing his body altogether.

He didn’t know when it happened, but the sound of the wind began to wail in his ears—the wind of the open wilds, which used to be his favorite thing.

But that wind meant nothing to him now. He had lost his spores—when he was rolling in a field he loved. In the wind, human voices would echo, syllables he could barely remember, only fragments coming to mind, and even in human language, they were broken, scattered phrases—

“Very... strange, very...”

“...What is it?”

“Take... a sample... here.”

The next moment, an indescribable pain radiated through his body. The sensation was light, but deep—a hollow opened in his consciousness, one that could never, ever be filled. He knew he had lost the most important thing from that moment on.

—Terror instantly flooded his whole being. From then on, he began to fear the sound of the wind and lived in caves.

His heart pounded, and a sudden wave of fear swept over him—the same fear as losing his spores.

Adam Carter snapped his eyes open. He immediately realized he was dreaming—only humans dream. In the next instant, his breathing stopped completely.

He knew the source of that fear—a black creature was standing before him.

Two blood-red compound eyes glowed eerily. Adam Carter tensed all over, his gaze dropping to see the enormous—about as long as an adult human—three pairs of thin, sharp, scythe-like forelimbs gleaming with a cold, moonlit sheen.

Realizing what it was, his body trembled—a distant sensation, a shudder from the very first ancestor millions of years ago—mushrooms could die from the bites of a swarm of termites.

The beasts of the “Abyss” might disdain mushrooms, but the arthropod monsters of the second plain might see mushrooms as a rare delicacy.

The moment this thought appeared, Adam Carter instinctively rolled to the side!

A dull, heavy thud shook the ground—the monster’s sharp forelimb had stabbed into the soil right where he had just been lying.

Adam Carter quickly grabbed his backpack, rolled over, and scrambled to his feet, sprinting madly toward the nearby shrubs. The dense footsteps of the arthropod monster sounded right at his ear. When the noise finally lessened, Adam Carter looked back. Under the aurora, he finally saw the creature in full—a gigantic black monster, like an ant magnified thousands of times.

Fortunately, its body seemed too bulky, and a human’s running speed was faster. As long as he could reach the shrubs ahead—

He tripped and fell.

In that split second, he was already shrouded by the monster’s shadow. Amid the sharp whistling wind, its forelimb slashed toward his arm.

Suddenly, Adam Carter’s sleeve went limp, the fabric hanging down—nothing had been cut.

This seemed to surprise the monster; it paused.

At the same time, mycelium spread and regrew inside Adam Carter’s sleeve, once again forming a complete human arm.

He rolled on the ground, barely dodging the monster’s next strike, then pushed off with his arm and dove into the low shrubs. Two sturdy bushes blocked his body from view.