Chapter 10 - Taming Fate (5th E)

Ren emerged into a small cave, its walls completely covered in luminescent crystals that bathed everything in an ethereal, spectral blue light.

But he could barely appreciate the chamber's beauty. 

The ancestral fungi kept spreading, each pulse of the infection scraping away every bit of his flesh and soul.

"Please..." he whispered, his vision blurring. "I don't want to die here… they would never…"

His spore fought valiantly, its own mushrooms creating barriers against the yellow infection, but it was losing.

Ren felt his consciousness fading, his body growing colder by the second.

But the memory of that sweetroot stew he had promised to eat pushed him forward one last time…

Then he saw it.

At the cave's center, bathed in crystal light, stood a plant that seemed like...

It reminded him of the one in his father's stories.

"The plant..." he mumbled, crawling closer as the yellow fungi continued spreading. "The one that helped mother..."

His fingers brushed the luminous stem just as darkness began claiming the edges of his vision again, faster than before.

With trembling hands, Ren pulled the glowing plant free. The yellow fungi kept spreading, but something subconscious told him this was what could save him.

'This plant can…'

Though he didn't fully understand.

His father had found one like it, almost 12 years ago, in another tunnel. The 'miracle medicine' that had allowed his mother to conceive.

But this one was different, where his father's plant had been firm and robust, this one was delicate, ethereal.

This was the 'stamen', his father had found the 'pistil'.

As his last strength withered, Ren brought the plant to his lips. The taste was like liquid light, like remembering a dream.

And then he felt it.

A deep resonance with something already existing in his body, dormant power and altered genes inherited from his mother, the echo of the first half of the medicine that had made his existence possible.

The two halves of an ancient medicine, separated by hundreds of years and hidden tunnels, finally reunited in his blood.

The effect was instantaneous.

Pure white light emanated from his skin, so intense that the yellow fungi withered and fell like ash.

His spore, that supposedly useless creature, began pulsing with a new rhythm, perfectly synchronized with the energy now flowing through his mana veins.

To any observer, the spore would have appeared exactly the same, small, apparently weak. But Ren could feel that something had inherently changed within.

As if it had evolved into a completely new variant, one that no one had ever seen before.

What Ren didn't know, what he couldn't know, was that he had just completed an ancient recipe, a tragically never finished medicine that required three specific ingredients: the male plant, the female plant, and something unique, a host born with altered genes from one half of the formula.

He was the missing key.

Ren fainted. The mushrooms in his hair returned to their usual color, as if nothing had changed. But in the depths of his being, a dormant power had just awakened.

A power that would change everything.

♢♢♢♢

Hunger awakened him first, a voracious void that made his hands tremble as he pulled the bread with stew from his backpack.

He ate desperately, savoring each bite as if it were the first food he'd ever tasted.

The mushrooms in his hair shone way brighter than before, casting shadows that danced with the lights.

Ren noticed, but he'd survived too many horrors that night to worry about such a small change.

As he chewed the last piece of bread, the reality of what he'd done began to hit him.

He'd been seconds from death, multiple times.

If the Moon Toads had caught him…

If the Excavator had found him…

If the Mantis… if the Ancient Spores…

His parents. What would have become of them if he...?

"I should go back," he murmured, guilt weighing heavier than exhaustion. "This was madness. I..."

«Return.»

The voice was so soft at first he thought it was his own mind. But there was something different about it, something ancient and wise that resonated deep within his being.

And then it began.

As if someone had opened a floodgate in his mind, knowledge began to flow.

He saw his spore, not as the weak creature everyone mocked, but as something with huge potential. He understood, with crystal clarity, every step required for its cultivation.

The exact way to feed it different types of fungi. The precise cultivation to strengthen the bond. The correct sequence of evolutions. The bifurcations in its path to power.

But it didn't stop there.

The Mirror Mantis, he saw how its plates formed, how it channeled light and mana, the weak points in its exoskeleton where cracks always began.

Its life cycle…

The Night Excavators, the way they built their tunnels, the patterns they followed, how they conserved energy during times of scarcity…

The Moon Toads, the mechanism behind their hypnotic eyes, the exact composition of their acid, the mating rituals that determined their hunting patterns…

The ecology and biology of the creatures he'd encountered became clear to him now.

It was as if he could see the invisible threads connecting all creatures, understand their most intimate natures, their strengths, their weaknesses, their secrets.

"What... what is this?" he whispered, overwhelmed by the avalanche of information.

The mushrooms in his hair pulsed softly, and for the first time since obtaining his spore, Ren felt he could see the path before him.

Not just his own.

All creatures' paths.