[One Week Later]

As it turns out, expanding the caverns under the vault proved to be quite an annoying process. You see, above the cavern, were four floors, meaning, with no elevator, and no tools that would help speed the process. So, I was using some spare boxes, filled them with dirt, and had to drag them up the stairs that separated the floors.

The vault had an elevator, but, it was in a state of disrepair and unusable. At least there was one upside to this, as I got to practice my control over my carriers, now controlling four Carriers and dragging crates of dirt and rock to the surface where I proceeded to dump and spread them across the ground.

The once dead and dry arid ground that made the area around the vault's entrance quickly became more brown and green as I began spreading my plants above and around the vault's door.

At this point, I expanded the cavern by a good chunk, approximately 20%, nearly a quarter now, and the Myconoid Tribe, now named the 'Gardeners' had also expanded their fungi forest. That's right, the Fungi have grown to the point where it could be seen as a literal underground forest, as some species grew to be as tall and even taller than any human could be.

It was somewhat annoying to maneuver around the forest, so I set a 'path' where Fungi were not allowed to be grown, with the paths taking the form of rings with straight paths making a cross-section, basically, circles with a '+' going through the rings.

Other than that, due to our expansion efforts, we were actually growing more Fungi than I was expecting, meaning, I already had a couple of crates worth of fungi for sale and trade ready already.

To be more accurate, we filled a crate with 50 of each fungus, to make it easier to keep track of what we had. It would only make my job harder if I stuffed every crate full of the Fungi we had.

Of the fungi we had, none had been given an exact name, so, we've been calling them by the names of what they do or what they taste like.

For example, at this moment we had: Pain Killer Shrooms, Blood Stopper Shrooms, Water Shrooms, Chicken Shrooms, Bland Shrooms, Wood Shrooms, and Sleep Shrooms.

Not as wide of variety as I would like, but that would change with time, the Myconoids also informed me that they would be able to reproduce any Fungi that I brought them to, so perhaps I will be able to start supplying New Vegas with more than just medicinal and culinary fungi.

Enough about that, my efforts in both of my other colonies have also been progressing quite smoothly.

In Big MT, my...growth has expanded to the Y-0 Research Station, and I've gotten a majority of the rubble clear of and used the rubble to make a sort of protective wall separating Y-0 from the forbidden dome and the rest of the Big MT, leaving a small gap I would be able to funnel any intruders through.

And, to my luck, I found that it only takes a week for a Spore Plant to grow into maturity, and with them hitting maturity, to my pleasant surprise, I found I gained 200 to my energy capacity with each new Spore Plant that I grew to maturity.

It would take some time, probably months or even years, I hoped to be able to bring life back to the wasteland, or to be more specific, I wanted to heal and get the planet back to what it once was, prior to the war.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Sure, I had no doubt that eventually, the planet should be able to heal by itself, but to be frank, I didn't want to place any bets on it. The world of Fallout had too many ways for things to go wrong or make the situation even worse.

For example, if Fallout 76 was actually canon, though it was not, in my opinion, then I would have to deal with the Scorch Plague, which very well could mutate and bypass the 'cure' eventually with time.

Another example would be the Zetans, a highly advanced alien race that has a couple of motherships up in orbit watching over us right now, though I didn't know that for sure.

Then there was simply human nature, who knows what could happen in a couple of hundred years, the planet could very well be nuked again, or be put in an even worse situation with the planet becoming permanently damaged.

I won't deny that I felt...strange.

I don't think I would be so...Altruistic if I was still human, was it because I was no longer human? Or...was it the system?

Perturbed by that thought, I couldn't help but frown. The possibility of my mind or personality being changed did not sit well with me.

Pushing that thought to the back of my mind, I focused on something else.

In Zion Valley, I have kept my relatively small colony busy, while also keeping an eye on the Yao Gui I infected.

It was already showing signs of being changed, as its fur fell off, and its skin took a sickly green hue and hardened. I also felt my spores begin growing and attaching themselves to its brain, they would have actually begun destroying the brain, but I wanted to see what would happen if I instead took a more...symbiotic relationship, with the possibility of taking over its mind completely in the future, if something goes awry.

Something I have noticed was that the other Yao Gui has isolated the infected, getting aggressive whenever the infected approached. It was clear that the healthy Yao Gui knew something was wrong, and were starting to consider the infected Yao Gui as something else, and no longer kin.

Which meant that I was having an easier time visually observing the process with a hidden Spore Carrier.

What I noticed only recently, was that my changes to the Yao Gui, have actually been strengthening the Yao Gui in both strength, durability, endurance, and healing capabilities. However, it still remained a carnivore in nature, eating Geckos, radroaches, and Giant Ants that strayed too close to its territory.

I do wonder why the other Yao Gui hasn't been passively infected by being near the transforming Yao Gui like what was shown in the Vault.

Was it because what happened in the Vault was an enclosed space? Or is it because I am not wanting to infect the other Yao Gui? How much control do I actually have? With that thought, I had another thing on my plate that I would have to test and experiment with.

As for the Tribes of Zion, I continued gifting them what trinkets and food I didn't need while I began scavenging the Park's Pre-War structures at night, getting my hands on some weapons, camping, and survival supplies, a lot of Pre-War food, and some odds and ends.

I was still raiding the caves that Randall Clark called home, bringing what I scavenged back to the camp my Colony called home.

Luckily for me, I found some things I could write with and some paper from the Pre-War buildings, meaning I could now start leaving messages and notes for the Tribes, hopefully, so that I could teach them some things and have an easier time gaining their friendships.

I know they were not exactly aggressive in nature, but I wasn't willing to bet anything with how my Spore creatures could have treated them in the past. With how long they had been living in this valley, I knew with certainty that they probably already thought of me as something 'Evil' or 'Bad,' which is why the change in perception was necessary.

Plus, I needed them to be on my side before Joshua Graham and Daniel arrived, plus I could always use help.

As for Big MT, other than the progress I mentioned, I was also setting up some traps to capture Lobotomies. I would need the manpower if I wanted to take over the place, especially since I'd have to send them across the entire place to gather certain technologies just so I could reach the Think Tank and Dr. Mobius.

Sigh...who could have guessed that my second life would be so exhausting and stressful?