“Maybe… when I die, you will eat all my body… and gain many things.” An Ze looked at the top of the cave and his lips flattened. “I seem to have done something meaningful, although I don’t know if it is good or bad for you.”

An Zhe didn’t speak. His entire body moved in An Ze’s direction. He held An Ze’s shoulder with his newly grown human arm and a large number of mycelium came and piled up beside An Ze, supporting An Ze’s crumbling body.

In the silent cave, there was only the sound of the dying human gasping.

After a long time, An Ze finally spoke again. “I am a person whose life has no meaning.”

“…I have nothing outstanding so it is normal for them to leave me behind. In fact, I’m very happy not to go back to the human base. It is the same as the wild where only valuable people live… I’ve wanted to die for a long time but I didn’t expect to meet you, a gentle creature, a little mushroom, before I died.”

An Zhe didn’t have a clear sense of some of these terms, such as value, such as death. He focused on one noun again, ‘human base.’

He leaned on An Ze’s shoulder and said, “I want to go to the human base.”

An Ze wondered, “Why?”

An Zhe raised his left arm and his fingers dangled in the air. It was as if he was trying to grab air but he had nothing to grab. Just like his body. His body was empty. A huge hole was born from the deepest part of his body and there was no way to fill it, no way to heal. There was only the endless emptiness and panic that haunted him day by day.

He organized the human language and slowly spoke, “I lost… my spore.”

“Spore?”

“My… seed.” He didn’t know how to explain it.

Every mushroom will have spores in their lifetime. Some were numerous while some only had one. Spores were the seeds of mushroom. They were born in the gill and scattered on the wind, putting down roots and become a new mushroom. Then this mushroom would gradually grow up, having their own spores. A mushroom’s only mission in life was to nurture and mature the spore. However, he lost his own spore when it was far from mature.

An Ze slowly turned his head. An Zhe could hear the click of his bones as he turned, like an old human machine.

“Don’t go there.” The human’s voice was hoarse and slow. “You will die.”

An Zhe repeated the word. “…Die?”

“Only humans can enter the human base and you can’t escape the judge’s eye.” An Ze coughed a few times before taking a hard breath. “Don’t go… little mushroom.”

An Zhe was at a loss. “I…”