Chapter 10
The few new researchers were busy tormenting the test subject when the lights throughout the laboratory suddenly went out.
Everyone froze.
“W-What happened?”
“Did the power go out?”
Cold sweat began to bead on the new researchers’ foreheads. Memories of what had happened before surfaced in their minds, and they rose to their feet, visibly tense.
“Why did the power suddenly go out?”
“I don’t know...”
“Maybe a circuit breaker came loose. I’ll go check.”
“I’ll go too.”
They hurried to their feet, trying to leave the laboratory. The researcher who’d gone too far was startled to see them scattering so quickly. “Hey, you’re leaving me here by myself?”
“W-Wait for me!”
Panicking, he got up and rushed after them. But it was too dark to see anything, and he suddenly tripped over something and fell hard. By the time he recovered, the others had already left the laboratory, their footsteps fading into the distance. A rustling sound behind him made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He didn’t even dare look at what he’d tripped over, scrambling toward the exit on all fours.
After the last person had left, Tang Xiao waited five minutes. When no one returned, he finally emerged from a hidden corner.
The laboratory was pitch-black, exactly as it had been when he first entered 428’s territory.
Honestly, if he’d had a choice, Tang Xiao would have turned around and left. But he knew that if he didn’t do something now, everything he’d done before would have been for nothing.
Once his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, Tang Xiao took a deep breath, saved his game, and walked into the danger zone, nerves taut.
The moment he stepped inside, something seized his ankle, pulled him to the ground, and dragged him deeper into the room.
“428!” Tang Xiao cried out, gripping his weapon tightly. But the next moment, he looked up and met those many orange-yellow eyes.
The mass of mycelium kept gathering and spreading, like a chest rising and falling with each breath. Its orange-yellow vertical pupils stared fixedly at Tang Xiao, full of murderous fury. The mycelium, which had been gathered into a small clump, spread out until it covered almost the entire room in an instant—completely at odds with the weakness 428 had shown just moments ago.
Tang Xiao could even hear the bones in his ankle cracking under its grip.
And so, he understood almost immediately: it had been pretending to be weak. The reason... was probably to lower those people’s guard.
If that was true, then 428 was far more intelligent than anyone had imagined.
Of course, holding a grudge and taking it out on him were only natural.
“Listen to me! I’m not one of them!” Tang Xiao hurriedly called out. “Remember? We’re partners. I came to help you!”
As he spoke, he saw not the slightest wavering in the monster’s eyes. Instead, the emotion in them began to fade, returning to the state they’d been in during the previous runs, when he’d been devoured again and again.
This was bad.
A chill ran through Tang Xiao. He knew he was gradually losing the monster’s trust.
He had to do something to make up for it.
...
‘I’ll protect you. I’ll help you grow.’
Liar.
Looking at the conspicuous white lab coat Tang Xiao was wearing, 428 thought, How had it forgotten? He was one of them too.
Those people in white lab coats had injected it with countless drugs, performed all kinds of strange experiments, and repeatedly cut open its body with sharp scalpels.
But if that were all, it could still just barely endure it. 428 had almost no pain receptors, and it had gradually gotten used to it.
And beyond its instinctive desire to survive, the greatest longing written into 428’s genes was to evolve.
But it didn’t know how. Only what the people in white coats described came close to its idea of evolution. For that, it endured one experiment after another. Yet the researchers who’d once praised it as a masterpiece of the Creator, marveled at the uniqueness of its life form, and declared it would become something new and great... were all gone.
In just a few months, their eyes had begun to grow shifty. They subjected it to more and more experiments, grew irritable, and started cursing at it. In the end, they left, labeling it a failure—a piece of trash, a useless thing.
It had thought he would be different.
When 428 first saw that unusual young man in the laboratory, some strange attraction made it regard him as food, as prey. But in that dark kitchen, and in that laboratory, the way the young man looked at it was entirely different from everyone else’s.
But now it seemed those words had been nothing but lies. He’d only humored it to stay alive.
...He was just a liar.
The moment the young man stepped inside again, 428 stopped suppressing the longing buried deep in its soul. It wrapped mycelium tightly around the young man’s ankle, just as it had when it first captured its prey, and dragged him toward its mouth. The young man’s clothes were disheveled as he struggled, revealing a stretch of pale nape.
The mycelium was drawn to it almost instantly. The weak point of nearly every mammal was its neck, something 428 had learned through countless hunts. Instinctively, it wrapped its mycelium around the young man’s neck.
Yet almost in the same instant, it felt the prey beneath it go rigid, then slowly relax.
“...All right.” The captured prey stopped struggling. Instead, he raised his eyes and looked at it helplessly with dark, affectionate peach-blossom eyes. “Eat me.”
What... was he saying?
The young man straightened and spread his arms. As 428 watched in bewilderment, he offered the hunter his most vulnerable spot of his own accord. “I know you’re uneasy.”
“In your eyes, I’m human too—one of the people who experimented on you.”
“I’m no different from them. I admit it: I want to see you evolve into your ultimate form too.”
“But there is one difference. I will never give up on you.”
The young man gently rubbed the monster’s blood-red mycelium with his palm and said softly, “I’m sorry I came so late.”
“To make it up to you...”
Tang Xiao tugged open his lab coat with his fingers, revealing the pale, sharply defined line of his collarbone beneath. “You can devour me right here. Get stronger.”
“...”
At that moment, 428’s neurons sent out an error signal.
Unable to understand.
This was the first time prey had approached a hunter’s claws and teeth on its own, offering its vulnerable neck directly to the hunter.
The utterly unthinkable act threw 428’s immature mind into complete confusion. Its intelligence had only recently awakened; it was nowhere near capable of understanding a complicated creature like a human.
With no resistance from its prey, the process of devouring it should have been delightfully easy.
But for some reason, 428 felt a pang of emptiness.
N-No, that’s not right. Don’t forget, he’s a liar.
The mycelium remained still for a long time, but at last it wrapped around the young man’s body. Its soft strands carefully slipped past his delicate clothing and into the space between fabric and skin, their tips piercing his pale flesh.
Tang Xiao’s expression didn’t change. He’d already activated pain suppression. Since this wasn’t the fusion from the run with the monstrous tree, but a process of decomposition and devouring more like the first run, he didn’t even feel the terrifying itch. If he had to describe it, it was a strange sensation of watching his own flesh turn gray and then shrivel away.
428’s devouring process was like decomposition in nature, only accelerated to an extreme degree. The experience people normally had after death was something Tang Xiao had gone through two or three times while still alive. It was rather interesting.
He didn’t even bleed, because the mycelium was sucking on his blood vessels too. A faint scar remained from the time his wrist had been cut open. A few strands of mycelium rubbed against it with obvious fondness, then slowly climbed toward his chest.
Just as the mycelium was about to pierce him, Tang Xiao reached up and grabbed it.
“Don’t rush into my organs or limbs,” Tang Xiao said quietly. As the mycelium twitched in displeasure, he guided it down to his abdomen. “This part is more nutritious. See? I’m not resisting. I’ll let you eat until you’re satisfied.”
And so, the mycelium was tamed, slowly moving from his palm to the skin of his abdomen.
The process of putting a leash on a ferocious beast required a great deal of care.
Give it food. Give it warmth. Let it vent its unease.
Only then could you seize it when it was most unguarded.
Tang Xiao’s gaze swept over 428’s mycelium, growing more vivid as it absorbed nutrients. Its magnificent color no longer looked anything like veins. It was more like a gemstone flowing with pure red, occasionally reflecting brilliant flashes of fire.
428’s original state was like an animal, yet also like a plant. But perhaps it was just his imagination; Tang Xiao couldn’t shake the feeling that it was moving closer to becoming human.
The paused project materials he’d looked up earlier flashed through Tang Xiao’s mind.
A flesh-and-blood factory that transcended the laws of biological evolution—that was the secret of the most dangerous King of Fungi in the Fungal Kingdom.
That was also why there were so many strange-looking creatures in the wild. They were the King of Fungi’s handiwork. By some unknown method, It had accelerated the evolution of species, even turning ordinary animals into monsters, then controlled them through fungal parasitism.
And now humans were trying to master this secret.
Unfortunately... the project had failed a long time ago. 428 hadn’t shown the ability to freely select genes. The King of Fungi’s spores could freely absorb the genes of plants or animals and use them as their own, but they couldn’t select which genes to take. That was why 428 had grown into such a strange form.
Nor had it evolved the ability to control other fungi, something humans had long dreamed of.
But now, things seemed different.
Because he was so close, Tang Xiao could even see that something resembling organs had truly grown behind the mycelium. On closer inspection, the number of orange-yellow eyeballs was gradually decreasing, while structures resembling vocal cords had appeared in the necklike area.
That was it.
It was evolving at an astonishing speed in an incredibly short time.
Tang Xiao had never imagined he’d witness this process. He could barely tear his eyes away. His love for abnormal creatures, which he’d thought had cooled, flared back to life like embers reigniting. He couldn’t help opening his eyes wide, watching this growth that defied the laws of nature with his own eyes.
The fear in 428’s heart was gradually soothed by the warm flesh. It felt languid all over, as if it were soaking in warm, damp, dark soil.
Its orange-yellow vertical pupils remained fixed on the young man’s dark eyes, only to find no fear in them at all—not even the sharpness from before. Instead, they were filled with a strange fascination. 428 had occasionally seen that look in researchers’ eyes, but never before had it felt so strangely at ease.
But the emptiness inside it wasn’t soothed.
Instead, in those dark eyes that seemed capable of drowning it, the emptiness took up more and more space.
It even overpowered its instincts for a time.
The mycelium’s movements grew slower and slower.
Just then, a human voice suddenly came from outside.
“Huh? Where did those people go?”
The mycelium stopped moving. 428’s sluggish mind finally cleared for a moment, and it stared fixedly through the glass window.
The darkness couldn’t block his vision. The little monster clearly saw a man in a white lab coat approaching from outside, heading straight toward this room.
There was no time.
428 instinctively looked at Tang Xiao, only to find that the young man showed no sign of struggling or calling for help. He just looked at it calmly, with even a hint of urging in his gaze.
“...”
Its reason prevailed. It knew the man in the white coat would soon turn on the lights, and many more would come. If someone died here, it would soon be dealt with.
More importantly, it couldn’t devour Tang Xiao here. If it did, it might never see him again.
The mycelium slowly, reluctantly, released its prey.
Tang Xiao lay on the floor with his head lowered, as if he hadn’t realized what was happening. So the mycelium insistently wrapped around him and carried him to the exit.
Only then did the young man react. He took a tentative step forward, and nothing stopped him.
Beneath Tang Xiao’s bangs, his eyes trembled, and an almost imperceptible smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.
In the darkness, he clutched his communicator tightly in his palm. It was still on the text-message screen, with Rocky listed as the recipient.
It seemed he’d won his gamble again.
Tang Xiao took another two steps, drawing closer and closer to the exit. But just as he was about to leave, he felt resistance behind him. Mycelium had wrapped around his ankle.
Tang Xiao’s heart, which had just settled, leapt again.
He turned around and saw that the terrifying mass of blood-red mycelium had taken on the faint outline of a human figure in the darkness.
The blood-red figure split open at the chin, revealing a mouth that had just finished evolving.
It opened its mouth wide and kept moving it, like a mute using its vocal cords for the first time.
“Xi... xi... ao...”
“Xi... ao... Xiao.”
Xiao Xiao.
Tang Xiao’s pupils slowly contracted. For the first time, an expression of surprise, completely outside his plans, appeared on his face.
It was trying to call his name, struggling to use its voice for the first time.
Earlier, when those people had bullied it, it had used its not-yet-fully-evolved throat too...
To call for help.