Chapter 59

If I wanted to encourage the fire within my territory and entrap it I had to also grow mushrooms and mycelium on the other side of the fire.

Figuring out where to grow would be tricky though. I’d have to grow a pathway of mycelium and grow a strand every so often above the surface and hope it doesn’t immediately get turned into ash. I would just be wasting nutrients if I didn’t make sure to space them out correctly so I had to really make sure I put enough distance between them.

Since nutrients were at a premium at the moment, I had little to waste.

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I’d especially needed to keep nutrient costs low with my idea to grow on the surface of trees. Seeing as that was the case instead of growing mushrooms, which were rather costly, I was inclined to grow solely mycelium on the trees. At least for right now.

The cannibalism of my various appendages was going well enough and while definitely netting me nutrients they weren’t infinite.

I got started on growing the mycelium pathway to find the outer edge of the fire while simultaneously I started on growing on top of a tree I choose. I was little wary about doing this but I didn’t have much of a choice here, saving the forest was my only option. I didn’t want to survive the fire only to find out that the rest of the ecology was doomed and THEN wither away because I couldn’t find any nutrients to subsist off of.

As I grew and extended a strand on top of the tree I picked my mycelium made contact with something.

Hmmm … that’s fucking weird.

I think … there’s a fungus already growing here.

Wait what the hell?