Chapter 5

Great news! Its just more of me. Its kind of like finding a limb you never knew you had and reattaching it.

So no offspring for me! Yay!

I'm sure at some point I might want some companion that understands and appreciates me but now really isn’t the time. Besides pets exist. Domesticating animals might be a little difficult being a mushroom and all so the equivalent would be …mmmm A PLANT. A small plant that I can cozy up to whenever I’m feeling sad. Finding another goal/experiment to accomplish in the future, I checked back in on my experiment.

While I ran my experiment I was continuing to count time by growing my mushrooms. The whole experiment took 7 growths. And better yet once I was done with the mushrooms I let them fall to the ground just like the experiment. letting me grow even faster around my log.

I was lucky most of the stuff around my fallen log was the trees dead roots. I basically had no competition in my growth while also having the dead tree and roots to consume.

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I felt one of my mushrooms disappear.

While I was currently growing them along the log so they could fall easier I hadn’t even started cutting off my nutrients to this mushroom yet.

A PREDATOR!

Okay, okay calm down. I’m okay its just one of my mushrooms it was gunna fall off either way calm down.

Another disappeared.

Fuck me! I have to stop growing them. the second mushroom that disappeared was just about to fall off but I really don’t want others to expect a free meal from me, they may want use me as a food source. And trap me, if they're sapient!

Can I tell anything by the way they took my mushrooms. I check the pathways I used to grow them. What I sense are jagged stems. Almost like what took my mushrooms didn’t snap them off but bit them off.

This might be good news. The thing that took them might be an unthinking animal. Who just bites random mushrooms willy nilly? Without even cleaning them or checking if they’re poisonous. Heck even I don’t know if I’m poisonous.

All I can do is wait.

Hold one that's a lie I can do something about this, if I am poisonous that creature might die. And that just might be in my favor. I can use their death consume more nutrients. Even if the animal doesn’t die, information gathering doesn’t seem like such a pointless endeavor even if the creature doesn’t end up dying I can sense when an animal comes by if I grow on the surface and poke my mycelium out of the ground a bit. Then when I sense the mycelium die, I’ll know theres a creature around. Heck I bet I can even get a sense of what they are by the impression of their feet.

Thankfully I only had those two mushrooms growing on my log as I was getting used to dropping them on the ground to grow more of me.

If this animal died because it ate my mushroom I'd soon find out.