Chapter 178: Colony

At this point, one might well marvel: what psychological impulse drove this wildly imaginative and self-convincing heresy 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 fungal-scaled tentacles collapse like pillars.

The fungal light column twisted upward, as if pulled by dozens of arms stretching its neck, then swung down by its own weight and segmental contraction; the brick-and-mortar of faith crumbled before its power.

Kraft threw the torch, rolled under the moved desk, and shattered stones fell like a pale white rain, 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 tiny 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 slashed down, reducing everything along its path—including the table—to 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 this thing away elsewhere.

Before the next strike came, he leapt through the broken wall. Fortunately, this wasn't a cathedral; otherwise, the second-floor height alone could have caused compression fractures, bidding farewell to anyone who didn't roll—and dislocating spines even for those 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 cottage.

He no longer needed the torch for light; the massive source behind him 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, intensifying 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 size expanded, its fundamental tissues changed little—the muscles remained the same, the bones unchanged. It was incredible that this system didn't collapse under its own weight.

When severing the host's limbs, those fungal hyphae seen on the withered muscle stumps may have done more than just control—they likely enabled near-weightless muscle bundles to withstand explosive loads.

The motion of raising and slamming down the vertical tentacle looked imposing, but it was barely the maximum movement possible—it had to lift it segment by segment. Compared to the flexible tentacles of normal crawling creatures, this movement had the rigidity of ankylosing spondylitis, with parts bent into sharp angles.

A more complex 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, scaled to this size, they were astonishingly swift; each forward lunge with the massive tentacle cleared a vast stretch of obstacles.

That force could smash through church walls and demolish simple cottages like toppled children's blocks; rubble was swept 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 realized this. His spiritual senses told him something was brewing in the sealed mouths—all aligned, their hidden sacs swelling beneath the fungal scales.

He turned sharply into another alley; spores and air rushed through the fungal throat like a shrill whistle, instantly obliterating his trail. Light pierced the swirling, color-shifting dust-cloud, refracting into flooded arcs of phosphorescent rainbow.

He quickly oriented himself, fleeing away from the church—it cost him seconds. Another tentacle descended above his sensing range, and the giant mushroom at the alley's exit was unnaturally crowded, slowly drawing closer together.

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

His spiritual senses detected a strange immaterial entity—its "texture" nearly identical to the spiritual form observed when Kup was dragged into the depths. Yet it didn't bind to matter; it drifted freely through the fungal mass, causing mushroom caps to close and block space wherever it passed.

The red concretions on mature caps lit up as it passed, tracing its path.

This was the thing faintly sensed when the host body lost control—a kind of unstable low-level soul, an invisible spider, traversing the fungal web, plucking at omnipresent threads.

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

【It is the angel】

Kraft deliberately slowed his pace, letting the strike land nearby, and seized the moment before the tentacle moved again to scan inside. The same "small spiritual entities" inhabited dense hyphal clusters—two were already within his sensing range.

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

Through fungal infection, they seized the largest body ever encountered, reshaping it to their needs. Yet this cooperation could never match the seamless control of an original will—it appeared unnaturally discordant.

What is this? Fungal possession? Kraft swiftly 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 fungus.

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

"Damn Edward, damn heretics!" Kraft leapt between rooftops, dodging tentacles. The intervals between strikes lengthened, yet the entire world seemed to conspire against him—multiple fungal spirits detached from the crawling bodies, drifting everywhere, staining every glowing mushroom cap with crimson trails.

Fungal matter was everywhere, and their control grew ever 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 whole section collapsing—just as a tentacle struck.

The synergy between these threats made his situation perilous; if this continued, being caught wasn't impossible.

His body grew heavy and achy from high-speed movement, yet his mind remained hyper-alert. Roughly, his spiritual senses had already surpassed half his previous endurance 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, radiating an ambiguous affinity—neither purely physical nor cognitive, a counterintuitive sense of kinship.

Light, he subconsciously felt, his movements here were comfortable—as if freed from gravity, forgetting bodily fatigue, bathed in that undefined affinity. Yet his surface consciousness grew increasingly wary; the instinctive alienation he'd felt upon entering the depths was fading, the faint grayness of the deep world in his spiritual senses drawing closer.

But using spiritual senses felt truly good—even though he knew each use was an acknowledgment of his inclination 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 as naturally 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 needed—just as you don't think when reflexively catching a flying object.

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

This inspired Kraft: immaterial things could be touched by immaterial spirit. His spirit contacted again, this time the fungal spirit lurking at his next landing point, driving it away—the fungal surface calmed.

As the tentacle struck, he repeated the tactic, pulling on the spirit within one segment. It contracted violently, resisting; that segment temporarily lost control. But the imminent spore-cloud burst from other segments made Kraft abandon further struggle.

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

Yet using this spiritual organ felt profoundly strange. Compared to the prior void-like spirit, this spirit now felt stronger, increasingly like a tangible limb—almost as if he himself were a nonhuman creature, wielding countless invisible tentacles to catch smaller spiritual entities.

Through deliberate maneuvering, the chase moved from the village center to its edge. Kraft silently calculated—time had passed sufficiently for Kup and Martin to reach the church's upper levels; they were likely already 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 directly.

As estimated, the attendants should all be concentrated in the church; 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 the original's." His left arm tensed; Kraft felt the embedded components, now indistinguishable from his own—time to deploy his own deep-world application.