Chapter 178

At this point, one might well wonder what psychological impulse drove this wildly imaginative and self-convincing cult to send dozens of people to meet the "angels," physically demonstrating a long-standing question: what happens after a crawling creature successfully captures its prey?

The answer is now revealed—it expands without limit to an astonishing scale, until the fungal arm-tentacles collapse like pillars falling.

The fungal light columns twisted upward, as if pulled by dozens of arms stretching their necks, then swung down with their own weight and segmented contractions; the brick-and-mortar faith built by believers meant nothing before its power.

Kraft threw his torch, rolled under the pushed-aside desk, and stone fragments bleached white by the brilliant light rained down like glitter, sinking into the swollen fungal growths on the bookshelves, producing dull splashes like stones hitting water and spraying spore dust.

"What an impolite bastard!" It didn't even bother knocking—it shattered the window and half the wall at once.

The torch successfully ignited the grease, but Kraft knew it meant nothing; this small flame wasn't even a threat to the thing—just a negligible flicker.

Without hesitation, he sprang up and fled from the table that had offered false security. As expected, a second massive tentacle came crashing down, turning everything along its path—including the table—into a pile of rubble.

He shouldn't retreat backward—Martin and Kup were struggling to evacuate through the corridor choked with fungal growths, so he had to lure the thing away elsewhere.

Before the next strike, he leapt through the broken wall. Fortunately, this wasn't a cathedral; otherwise, the second-floor height alone could have caused compression fractures, ending the legs of anyone who didn't roll, and dislocating the spine of anyone who did.

With ceiling heights built to average human stature, Kraft fell less than three meters, kicked off a protrusion midair, and landed running toward the cottages.

He no longer needed the torch for light—behind him, the massive source illuminated every single filament of the floor's fungal velvet. The worst problem now was the drastic shift in illumination: the uneven ground confused and inverted perception, making everything in his vision flicker and stab his eyes.

Behind him, the light blazed brighter; he sidestepped skillfully. The tentacle's descent stirred air currents that rippled the layered fungal velvet, worsening the visual disorientation, forcing Kraft to squint and activate his spiritual senses.

Logically, a horizontal sweep would be easier, yet it struck vertically three times in a row—this wasn't coincidence.

After its expansion, its fundamental tissues hadn't fundamentally changed—the muscles were still the same, the bones still the same. That this system hadn't collapsed under its own weight was incredible.

When severing the host's limbs, the mycelia seen on the withered muscle stumps may not have merely controlled them—they might have allowed near-weightless muscle bundles to endure explosive loads.

The vertical strike of the upright tentacle looked imposing, but it was barely the largest motion it could manage—it had to raise it segment by segment. Compared to the flexible tentacles of normal crawling creatures, this motion had the rigidity of ankylosing spondylitis, with parts bent into sharp angles.

A more complex horizontal sweep would likely tear the limb apart from inertia alone. Most tentacles could only lie flat, dragging the main body forward.

Though its movements didn't appear fast, at this scale they were astonishingly swift; each forward lunge with the massive tentacle cleared a wide swath of obstacles.

That force could smash through cathedral walls and demolish simple cottages like children's blocks; rubble was swept up into the crawling swarm of tentacles, leaving everything flattened in its path. Complex alleys hindered humans—not it.

When the tentacle blocked his path for the third time, Kraft noticed something. His spiritual senses told him something was brewing within the sealed mouths—all hidden beneath fungal scales, subtle sacs swelling.

He turned sharply into another alley just in time; spores and air rushed through the fungal throat like a steam whistle's shriek, instantly obliterating his trail. Light pierced the swirling, color-shifting dust-cloud, refracting into overflowing arcs of phosphorescent rainbow.

He quickly judged direction and fled away from the cathedral—wasting precious seconds. Another tentacle descended above his sensing range, and the giant mushroom at the alley's exit was unnaturally crowded, slowly inching toward each other.

Even with Kraft's reflexes, he hesitated for a moment, then stepped onto the partially closed mushroom cap and scrambled onto the roof. The agitated fungal velvet seemed to consciously ripple backward, trying to make his palms slip.

His spiritual senses detected a strange immaterial thing—its "texture" resembled the spiritual entity Kup had observed just before being dragged into the depths, yet it didn't bind to matter, merely drifted through the fungal mass, causing caps to close and block space wherever it passed.

Red concretions on mature caps glowed brightly as it passed, tracing its path.

This was what had been faintly sensed when the host body lost control—a kind of unstable low-level spirit, an invisible spider, traversing the mycelial web, plucking at omnipresent threads.

It belonged to no single body—or rather, anything infected by fungi could become its vessel.

【It is the angel】

Kraft deliberately slowed his pace, letting the attack land nearby, and seized the moment before the tentacle moved again to scan inside. The same "small spiritual entities" resided in dense mycelial zones—two were already within his perception range.

Then the tentacle moved segment by segment, as before—revealing its true nature: each segment housed a drifting individual, controlling its assigned section through mycelia, collectively coordinating the massive tentacle's motion.

Through fungal infection, they had seized the largest body ever encountered and reshaped it to their needs. Yet this cooperation was never as seamless as a single will, resulting in unnatural dissonance.

What the hell is this? Fungal possession? Kraft quickly retreated from the writhing, controlled tentacle and leapt to another rooftop. He couldn't fathom what they were, where they came from—possessing spiritual traits yet fundamentally carried by fungi.

Perhaps they were spirits or souls born within the deep fungal forest. Edward's immature spell, used by this cult to perform the "big vanishing act," brought forth crawling creatures capable of communicating with the surface world, providing them with unique host bodies—and showing them another world, a far richer one.

"Damn Edward, damn the cultists!" Kraft leapt between rooftops, dodging tentacles. The intervals between attacks were lengthening, yet the whole world seemed to conspire against him—multiple fungal spirits had detached from the crawling bodies, drifting everywhere, staining every glowing mushroom cap with red trails.

Fungi capable of control were everywhere, and their control grew more frequent. First, the fungal carpet beneath his feet slipped; then, walls eroded and collapsed; next, the rooftop he landed on softened and snapped, the entire section giving way—just as a tentacle struck.

The two worked in tandem, creating life-threatening conditions; if this continued, being caught wasn't impossible.

His body felt a dull ache from high-speed movement, yet his mind remained hyper-alert. Roughly, the duration of his spiritual senses had already surpassed half his previous limit—yet the familiar headache and dizziness from energy drain hadn't come. His left arm had been silent since entering the depths, as nimble and responsive as ever, emitting an ambiguous sense of affinity—neither purely physical nor cognitive, yet intuitively present.

Lightness—he subconsciously felt movement here was comfortable, as if freed from gravity, forgetting bodily fatigue, bathed in that vague, directionless affinity. Yet his surface consciousness grew increasingly wary; the instinctive unfamiliarity he'd felt upon entering the depths was fading, the shallow grayness of this world in his spiritual senses drawing closer to the deep.

But using spiritual senses felt truly good—even though he knew each use was an acknowledgment of his leaning toward the deep, he used it cautiously, yet anticipated the next legitimate opportunity.

It was part of him—a new organ, a spiritual limb—moving it felt as natural as moving his hands or feet.

When a fungal spirit passed nearby, his attention involuntarily drew him to "touch" it with his spirit. No thought was needed—just as you don't think when reflexively catching a flying object.

Kraft truly felt he "touched" it—his spirit made contact with the drifting, indistinct spiritual entity. The feedback resembled grasping a shapeless, fuzzy ball; its motion was impeded, it jerked away in fright, escaping his sensing range.

This inspired Kraft: immaterial things could be touched by immaterial spirit. His spirit successfully contacted another fungal spirit lurking at his next landing point, dispersing it—the fungal surface there calmed.

When the tentacle struck, he repeated the tactic, tugging at the spirit within one segment. It contracted violently in resistance, and that segment temporarily lost control. But the other segments' imminent spore-cloud bursts made Kraft abandon further struggle.

Yet it wasn't useless—after several trials, environmental interference significantly decreased, while the number of fungal spirits within the tentacles increased and their movements accelerated—far better than unpredictable terrain traps.

But using his spiritual organ felt profoundly strange. Compared to the previous void-like spirit, his spirit now felt stronger, increasingly like a tangible limb—as if he himself had become a non-human creature, wielding countless invisible tentacles to catch smaller spiritual entities.

Through deliberate baiting, the chase moved from the village center to its edge. Kraft silently calculated—Martin and Kup should have reached the cathedral's upper levels by now; they'd likely be standing atop the spire, gazing at the moon.

"I hope your return experience isn't too unpleasant—leaving you with psychological scars or anything." He stopped, turned, and faced the possessed body head-on.

As estimated, the attendants should all be concentrated at the cathedral; the surface-world counterpart at the village's edge was unlikely to have anyone—perfect for his plan.

And the plan wasn't to flee until exhaustion—he merely needed time, to find a place where collateral damage wouldn't be a problem.

"And you… your control is nowhere near as skilled as the original." His left arm tensed; Kraft felt the embedded components, now indistinguishable from his own—time to activate his own deep-level minor application.