Chapter 21: The Cave that Lives_Tandem [A monster evolution litrpg]

This place is hell. That’s the only way to describe it.

A monstrous, living hell.

Every inch of the wall pulses and glows with life. It’s like being in the stomach of a giant monster.

The circle of life in this place is repulsive in how it functions.

The mushrooms rush into combat with any non-mushroom monsters they see. The first few to make it to the target are sacrifices. They’re killed, releasing the spores, disorienting the target.

Then, the rest of them surround it. I’m not sure exactly how they kill the target, but I’m sure it’s not at all a pleasant way to go.

With their target now a corpse, the begin to drag it away. You see, the mushrooms don’t have any kind of mouth to eat with. In order to gain sustenance, they first offer the corpses of both their target and their fallen brethren to the plant-like thing that makes up the walls of this place.

Like a way grosser carnivorous plant, it envelops its food completely. I can only guess what happens inside, but I’d guess it’s probably similar to how carnivorous plants worked back in my old world.

After its had its meal, it dispenses a paste- the stuff we saw earlier- from one of many ‘Gaul pods’ growing from the ceiling, which the mushrooms then swarm to, consuming it by standing on it.

And this is all just one of many types of life cycle in this place. It’s just the only one I’ve seen enough of to understand.

Now that I know more, I can say with certainty that the only reason we survived earlier is because the Gaul pod we were near was too far from the main area of the cave for most Mushles to find. If we had been in an area with more of them, we would have been killed in our spore-induced sleep, and offered up to the Gaul plant.

Right now, we’re hiding in a bush of… something, watching a group of Mushles waiting below a Gaul pod. As soon as it drops that goop down, we’re going to run over there, and have a taste. I’m not confident it will taste good, but I trust its safety more than the plants here.

The knowledge of what the goo is made of makes me shudder, but we haven’t eaten yet, and it’s been a long time.

With a shudder, the Gaul pod begins to move, and the opening stretches wider.

[Yuck…]

The Mushles excitedly get up and begin to run, bouncing on their tiny nub feet.

They’d almost be cute if I didn’t know how horrific they can be when hunting.

A drip forms in the pod, and falls. Now’s our time.

That disgusting goop is ours!

We crash into the horde of Mushles as the droplet hits the ground, knocking most of them off their feet.

{Remember, no matter what happens, don’t hurt them!}

[Gotcha.]

The Mushles run at us, trying to block us from getting to the glob of goo on the ground. We push them away delicately, avoiding accidentally hitting them with our claws.

We’ve got it! We run into the glob, pushing it away from the horde. It sticks together surprisingly well, and doesn’t stick to the floor as much as I expected.

Now, let’s have a taste before those mushrooms can get back to their feet.

It’s tougher to tear a bite out of than expected, I’d say somewhere between raw meat and jerky in tear-ability. It’s uncomfortably warm, which is even worse because I was expecting it to be cool. The taste is… huh.

Weird.

That’s the best descriptor I can come up with. It’s not delicious, which is expected, but it’s also not horribly offensive. It just… I don’t even know. It doesn’t taste like nothing, but the flavor that is there is incredibly faint and hard to pinpoint, almost like it’s running from me.

And that’s perfect!

Finally, a food that doesn’t require a broken gag reflex to eat! And it’s so easy to get too!

We just have to knock some walking mushrooms over! The only food source easier than this is the moss, but the taste, or rather lack of a distinct one, makes this goop worth the extra effort, which is hardly any at all.

This area made me uneasy when we first got here, but I’m really starting to come around to it.

Ah, the Mushles are starting to gather again, we should get out of here.

[Hahaha, so long suckers!]

Phew!

Well, that should keep us fed for a while.

We couldn’t find any natural small branching paths that fit our needs, so we ended up having to cut through the thick, fleshy vines that make up this whole cave and dig our own place. It’s not too bad, honestly.

It’s nice and spacious, hidden well, and decently close to a Gaul pod for a food source, without being too close.

Speaking of how spacious it is, I expected us to hit rock pretty quickly as we cut through the vines, but we never hit it at all, and we dug pretty far!

I thought there’d be maybe three feet of the stuff as most, but we got about ten feet deep before we decided it was deep enough.

Just how big is this thing? And what is it?

If we had woken up in this area immediately upon being reincarnated, I think we might have just died of shock. The whole place is so alien.

Welp, our little base of operations is mostly set up now, so it’s time to head out for some good old grinding. Unfortunately, we haven’t found a monster weak enough to kill that isn’t the Mushles, so for now we’re stuck at level one. At least we can level our skills.

Let’s see, today we should focus on… how about insight?

It’s level nine, and it’s been there for a while, so it’s bound to be close to evolving at this point.

Insight’s been great up until now, so I can’t even start to imagine how great it will be once it evolves to its next stage.

Let’s go!

There it is! Bye bye insight, and hello appraisal!

Let’s try it out immediately! appraisal!