Chapter 176

From Kraft's perspective, the body that had been hunched over the desk, seemingly identical to other fungal-parasitized shells, suddenly moved as the three approached to examine the decoy jewelry box.

It lifted its head and raised its upper body; a thin, blood-smeared red light rapidly spread across the tabletop. The source was something he recognized—a rough mineral stone fixed to a metal base, swinging against its chest, illuminating a face that should not have been capable of expression.

Its nostrils, nasal septum, and lips had been completely broken down, yet the facial muscle bundles twitched unnaturally without atrophy, their voids filled by fungal tissue.

It propped itself up with one hand—a simple motion revealing swollen muscles beneath scaly fungal layers, yet executed in a posture utterly unlike the other shells, one that conformed to human norms.

Something never imagined occurred: while its kind retained only skeletons and minimal muscle for one-time movement, it possessed a fully functional respiratory system, drawing air into its chest cavity and expelling it in a high-speed jet of hallucinogenic, colorful spore dust.

Kraft yanked Martin and Kup backward, but the armor plus their combined weight severely hampered their speed; they could not match the spreading speed of the spore mist, and no matter how hard they tried, they failed to escape its enveloping range.

In the final second before losing consciousness, his mind echoed with the receding, burning pain along his airways, and that string of sounds resembling human speech.

【It is conscious】

……

……

Martin again felt his arms, after roughly ten breaths.

He had been awake for some time, yet made no movement, kept his eyes shut, striving to recall how he had ended up here.

There was no answer. Amid a slurry of thoughts, only suffocation and falling remained—like hunting alone deep into the forest, the path behind swallowed by thick mist and fallen leaves, his mind drifting until he forgot what he had been chasing.

Judging by experience, he likely had fallen into a very deep trap—such a fall lasted long, yet the sensation in his arm beneath him remained.

He continued feigning sleep for a while, convinced he had not been captured by the trap's setter. As fine sensations returned, the rigid, uncomfortable pressure of his armor against his body reassured him he was still protected, and his limbs felt no restraints.

He quietly gathered strength, eyelids parting just a sliver, observing his surroundings.

A near-absent, thin light outlined several swollen contours—hard to determine if they were overlapping light patches or real entities. They filled his entire field of view, so numerous they made the space feel cramped, neither brick-and-mortar beams of a building nor tree trunks of a forest.

Martin rolled over, discovering the ground was unusually soft and slick, impossible to grip, covered in a thick layer of moss. Through his glove, he brushed it—his fingers could faintly feel a dense, velvety texture.

Like a blanket magnified many times over, yet far thicker, so dense he could not feel the surface beneath it.

A completely alien sensation—he found nothing in his past experience to compare it to, especially since his instinct told him it was a living, plant-like organism.

This feeling had no precedent, deepening his sense of disorientation.

His eyes involuntarily opened wider, adjusting to the light; the ambiguous contours sharpened, revealing in the dimness rich colors mostly hidden but impossible to ignore.

Not light patches or illusions—real objects filling every corner. His hand, trying to sweep them away, actually touched contours that grew more distinct as his color vision returned, closer than he imagined. The cramped, unyielding pressure and the resilient texture beneath his fingers felt like falling into a giant cow's stomach, the ground beneath him brushed by cilia stirring digesta.

He scrambled to his feet, putting distance between himself and the "giant moss," which brushed against his armor's seams, swaying slightly with a rhythmic motion.

At that moment, his eyes, fully adjusted to the dim light, finally saw those things clearly.

【Fungal Solitaries】

Fungal Solitaries as large as mill wheels grew from every crevice, obscuring the space's original form. The "moss" beneath his feet was a carpet of fungal caps, motionless despite no wind. The light came from arched windows half-obscured by protruding caps and hanging filaments—the only familiar structure in this bizarre place.

A stained-glass prayer window. The fog in his mind cleared slightly; memories poured down along this opening, and Martin realized where he was. The church. The striking box. The warning shouts beside him. Then… then came the pulling, the surging mist.

Matching the arch's position, he roughly identified the exit and planned to leave the fungal-occupied prayer chamber as soon as possible. Every moment here felt warped and unnatural, eerily similar to the interior of that heretic's chest—except now, it was the building's organs that had been infused.

The fungal carpet silenced footsteps, yet the clanking of his armor echoed loudly in the profound silence. He instinctively paused to listen, unable to tell if his noise was absorbed by the towering mushrooms lining the walls or carried to some distant, echoless place, heard by something growing in fungal thickets.

But Martin did not want to remove his armor—the one source of safety here. He chose to move slowly, taking small steps that still produced noise, approaching the door, gripping the loose metal handle, and pushing gently.

The handle, along with a whole section of rotting wood around it, sank inward; the cup-shaped fungal clusters growing on the door's surface tumbled down. This disrupted a precariously balanced state—the peeling paint on the prayer chamber door swelled and cracked, then collapsed entirely before him, the falling debris feeling exactly like waterlogged dry bread.

The collapsing fragments and the sound dispersed together, revealing the church's main hall.

He had not returned to a normal building as he expected—the larger space offered even more room for the Fungal Solitaries to grow. They expanded without restraint, their stalks lignified, gaining strength to support their immense weight. The caps opened like umbrellas, their surfaces hardening into dense, dark nodules resembling acorns on a canopy, while the increasingly dense carpet of fine down became the meadow of this fungal forest.

Even this alone would not have shaken his spirit, hardened by days of extraordinary encounters. What truly struck him with primal fear was the ribbon-like clearing in the center of this fungal forest—thick Fungal Solitaries had been crushed and shattered, and on the torn carpet of fungal down lay traces impossible to imagine as the movement of any known creature.

They resembled the intertwined paths of enormous serpents, stretching from the open main entrance to the pulpit.

On that pulpit, amid the most luxuriant surviving fungal down, deep grooves marked the surface—as if licked by a long tongue studded with sharp teeth. Dark red, dried-blood-like residue was splattered across the entire surface, obscuring its original color.

The scene triggered a mental blank—he could not comprehend how an entire church had become this, nor what creature had carved these fungal paths. He stood frozen, then realized something worse than a room or a church being overrun had occurred—the terror, delayed as if from another lifetime, finally arrived.

No longer caring about noise, Martin turned and sprinted toward the prayer chamber's window, prying apart the fungal clusters to peer outside. Colorful, shadowy fungal contours stretched across rooftops and alleyways, towering over eaves and treetops, thriving under a light that could not possibly be moonlight. The tallest, likely "mature" and hardened portions bore black-red mineral-like granules on their caps.

And the most terrifying thought was confirmed in the most direct way—a mad and flourishing world—limited solely to Fungal Solitaries.

Another light entered his vision—coming from the vast fungal caps outside the village, replacing the forest. Their mineral-like nodules flared in patches, radiating distant, hazy red light; as some dimmed, their neighbors ignited, the entire glow moving toward the church. From within this luminous field came sounds audible even at this distance.

This light triggered a memory—he had seen these before, crudely polished and mounted on metal bases, hanging from the heretic's chest. And when they lit up, it meant only one thing.

【The Angel Approaches】

Martin felt he should draw his weapon, or at least run—but his body and mind refused to react. The fragile pillar of faith and so-called honor seemed to have sprouted its first fungal spot—or perhaps the Church's descriptions had never been real, and those who died for it would not ascend to any heavenly realm.

In contrast, what the "Orthodox" had shown was far more convincing. He had walked the path of the chosen, guided by some force toward pilgrimage, witnessed unimaginable "miracles," and finally entered another world—where their angels were approaching the beholder. But the true other world and the angels were anything but beautiful.

It was a fear beyond death—the realization that all consolations of death were lies, and death itself might not be an end to suffering. The collapse of faith, the terror without even a concrete object, nearly erupted into hysterical screams. He no longer cared about hiding—he could not conceive of escape before such unknown things.

A hand reached from behind, clamping hard over his mouth and forcing him down to the ground, away from the window.

"I remember telling you yesterday not to shout, to find a quiet place to hide," a whisper came at his ear—Martin recognized the voice. "I knew no one would remember."

"But this is too much. Wandering around in full armor, knocking down a door—wait another minute and I'd have caught you singing opera with that thing?"

The rapid shift left Martin stunned; he mechanically repeated the words that terrified him, unconsciously shifting the heretic's term: "Orthodox… Angel…"

"Forget the angel. Good thing too—otherwise I wouldn't have found you. Now hurry up and take off this damn armor." Kraft glanced out the window; Martin couldn't see his face, but the voice carried no panic—this calm seemed to spread through sound.

Seeing Martin's sluggish response, he personally began unfastening the armor's straps. Fortunately, he had once worn his grandfather's armor; the design hadn't fundamentally changed in decades, or else he'd now be staring helplessly at a metal canister on the floor.

"And then?" asked the knight, like a crab stripped of its shell, utterly unable to comprehend what could possibly be done against another world and "angels."

"Then we figure out what this 'angel' really is, find my squire, and get back." As he spoke, the knee guards were already removed; Kraft turned to the arm guards. "Don't ask how—I just need you moving. If you want to drink honey beer again, get to work."

A hope—or a command—spurred his numb body into motion, joining the disassembly. It didn't solve the core problem, but it gave a temporary goal—and that was exactly what was needed.

"Good. Next, we go upstairs."

"Why?"

"Because I've already searched below." Before leaving, Kraft pressed against the window ledge, observing the hazy red glow one final time—it had reached the village's edge, its source hidden beneath layers of growth.

Must admit: these Fungal Solitaries grow terrifyingly vigorously—but they also offer great advantages.

No need to worry about footsteps—the omnipresent velvety fungal carpet allows bolder movement, as long as you avoid touching those swollen wooden objects—they've likely collapsed under their own weight, or, like Martin's attempted door, crumble at the slightest touch.

Their route was basically the same as during the search; Kraft even casually picked up a net full of oil cans from beside a hall pillar. Martin could not understand at all why that would appear in this world in such a matching manner, nor how Kraft knew. Until they found Kup in the upstairs room, silent behind the door, apparently having been hiding there with a hammer for a long time. He finally confirmed that this master and servant pair absolutely had relevant experience.

"What next?"

"Next, we go to the study." With a clear target, Kraft headed straight for the study's location. If there was anywhere that could be the center of this disaster, the corresponding deep location of that shell—which could lift its upper body and was suspected of possessing intelligence—was undoubtedly the most suspicious.

Facts proved his intuition might be correct; as they approached that location, the fungal clusters in the corridors grew increasingly lush, almost filling and blocking all paths, requiring them to squeeze through the gaps between the giant fungi.

Upon arrival, the flickering red light could already be seen from the village houses shining onto the windowsill of that large window, rippling across the ceiling where fungal threads hung down.

Unlike the empty tabletop in the present world, this tabletop was covered with fresh and old scratches left from repeatedly cleaning the fungal clusters, along with several scattered manuscripts; the paper quality and handwriting were both quite familiar.

This time, Kraft carefully observed the surroundings, found nothing crouching nearby, and cautiously lifted those few manuscripts, which were in poor condition but much better than those outside.

Their paper quality was consistent with the one tucked inside the Holy Scripture; they also had a tear on one side, looking as if they had been roughly torn from some book. The handwriting was fluid with connected strokes, likely from a private notebook, and paragraph divisions were rather casual. The width and height of the letters varied slightly, suggesting they were not written at once but recorded in multiple sessions.

【A Research Draft】

It detailed how the author, after dreaming multiple times of the room where he fell asleep, felt a strange "attention." The author, full of inquisitive spirit, believed this recurring phenomenon belonged to an investigable pattern and began his own records.

Afterwards, most of it was descriptions of daily dreams, gradually becoming more detailed and lengthy, expanding from single sentences to full paragraphs, even establishing evaluation standards such as time, self-awareness within the dream, and awakening time.

At the same time, he tried to find people with similar situations to prove it was not an isolated case caused by his own mental instability, but the results were very unsatisfactory. Those people either did not match the situation or pretended to deceive him for his reward; he barely found a suspected case in another city, only for the correspondence to mysteriously cease.

He also invited friends to stay overnight, but they all stated they had never experienced similar symptoms.

The records continued; in the paragraphs starting from the second page, a glaring new evaluation standard was added at the end.

【Brightness】

Bai Guang, the Bai Guang that illuminated the dim dreams.