Chương 11: Chapter 11 Nightmare

Ybur fought while eating, feeling utterly elated.

After a while, three of the surrounding fungus creatures had died. Thanks to the protection of the "Survival Guide," the damage Ybur sustained was all within a bearable range; it was just that suddenly his stamina couldn't keep up—his digestion wasn't fast enough to replenish his energy during the fight, and after a while he could no longer secrete acid.

Ybur also tried using the God Secret Source to attempt mind control on the fungus creatures, but the effect was not very good—fungus creatures are fungal beings with a very peculiar mental structure, which Ybur couldn't understand at all at the moment, feeling as if his mental efforts crashed against a silent, towering wall.

However, after Advancement, his mental power had strengthened, and using the God Secret Source once more, at least it wasn't as strenuous as before.

The fungus creatures around him had also begun to realize the difficulty and retreat. They scattered, snatched up the remains of their companions and ran. Ybur became furious, rushed over, wrapped his body around the largest and most intact fungus corpse, and when the other fungus creatures surrounded him trying to snatch it, Ybur immediately formed spikes, shook violently, and with a daunting momentum drove them back.

If Ybur could make a sound, he would definitely be huffing like a cat or dog guarding its food right now.

Thus, the fungus creatures retreated, leaving a ground littered with limbs, large and small.

Ybur began to eat desperately.

The fungus creatures had the habit of cleaning up the battlefield, and these remnants would soon return and take away any leftover limbs.

So now it was a matter of eating as much as possible and then finding a quiet place to digest after being sated.

Before long, Ybur's body had ballooned by nearly half due to the food, having expanded from the size of a head at the beginning to the size of a corgi.

Some of the limbs from the fungus creatures were still twitching faintly inside of him, occasionally jerking.

In this state, Ybur felt his body was heavy and his already slow speed became even slower. He began to elongate his body and moved segment by segment along the ground, and for some reason thoughts of the lizard's body structure he had encountered earlier started to surface in his mind.

Muscles, skeleton...

His body was still too weak and too primitive—a squishy mass that couldn't tell where to apply effort when exerting force. If he could form a skeleton for himself... and then attach muscles to the skeleton, maybe he could control his body better...

But how could he transform and create a skeleton?

Ybur turned his perception inward and saw the segmented limbs of the fungus creatures.

These things were encased in a hard shell.

...He would use them as raw materials then!

Ybur selected some of the insect limbs and aligned them in a row, then generated a gel-like substance inside of his body as a connector for the "bones," the same substance that could transform into weapons.

But after doing this, Ybur immediately felt his body tense up and he could hardly move.

...Something was wrong. Each segment of the insect limbs was too long and stiff. Moreover, the weapon gel was relatively immobile -- it fixed these things in place, and now he felt as though he had been skewered on a stick.

Upon reflection, a lizard's spine is made up of many tiny "segments" put together, and there's also a connecting "strap" in the middle of the skeleton... That's right, the insides of these insect limbs are hollow after eating the flesh inside... Next time he ate, he needed to be careful to consume the flesh inside, leave the exoskeleton, and then break down the long insect limbs into small segments, and string them together with weapons gel as tendons, might that work better?

Additionally, even after making such a "bone," he didn't seem to have the proper muscles for exertion... The gels inside his body were all mixed up. To simulate muscles? That was a higher difficulty... but he was a Divine Blood Slime!

In an instant, Ybur's doubts were dispelled, and a surge of strong self-confidence welled up within him.

I will definitely make it happen!

He rolled around, swallowing all the food into his body, and then finally remembered Sherry. Ybur spat Sherry out from inside his body, about to release the silence, when he saw the pages of Sherry's book suddenly flare open and the text on them rapidly moving and changing. In the end, a line of red, bold, and glittering text floated out:

"Oh, dear Lord, strike me down, I'm done for."

...

In the following days, aside from entering the Dream Realm for meditation, Ybur focused on the concept of muscles and skeleton, so much so that he even neglected hunting.

Ybur didn't tend to feel hunger easily.

When maintaining a static state, the consumption of a Slime is actually quite minimal. Under normal circumstances, the energy and nutrients provided by a single fungus creature could keep him well-fed for several days. However, Ybur had been engaging in high-intensity activity previously, relentlessly hunting every moment, so his consumption was also high.

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It found a small burrow and spent its days there, studying the muscles in bones.

Those insect limbs had been eaten by it until they became hollow tubes. The excessively long limbs were broken bit by bit, and, out of boredom and a sense of aesthetics, Ybur even polished these objects, making them look like a series of black, wide rings.

It strung these "rings" together with weapon gel, making a show of crafting an identical spine within its body.

It might have been an illusion, but even without constructing the muscular structure, having this spine made Ybur feel like its crawling became quite a bit more nimble.

Additionally, there was one thing that surprised Ybur.

The essence of Myconid was a type of fungus—no, to be precise, Myconid was the product of several fungi forming an ordered combination, which was very peculiar. Their shells were of course woven from mycelium. This stuff was very vital, able to survive buried in the ground.

And then, after a few days, those "bones" left deliberately undigested inside its body seemed... to have started growing. Among them, one had sprouted a tuft of mycelium.

I'm digesting this stuff, but is it also digesting me?

Ybur felt a sense of absurdity for a moment.

But towards this situation, it wasn't particularly panicked. After all, Slimes can digest themselves when they are starving, and it could simply eat itself from head to toe. Those mycelium growing inside it wouldn't escape. Moreover, there are types like Symbiote Monsters among the Slimes, with Mucous Monsters being a representative example—a paradigm of symbiosis with fungi.

In the future, it might transform into something like a Mucous Monster, which actually had some benefits—fungi could help it absorb nutrients from the soil.

Mature Myconids are creatures that can subsist on dirt with ample geothermal energy alone. If these fungi could really form mutualism with it, wouldn't it also be able to eat dirt? To eat whatever it found wherever it went—just thinking about it felt thrilling!

Carrying a touch of expectation, Ybur wanted to see the subsequent changes.

That day.

Ybur meditated again and entered the Dream Realm.

The first level of the Dream Realm is called the "Primogenital World," from which it's said the Awake World was birthed, and life also sprouted from this place.

This place was filled with a soft and dreamlike glow, the light filling the entire world, rippling like waves, looking akin to ocean water. Occasionally, one could catch sight of small, gleaming lives darting by. These were creatures known as "Dream Realm Spirits," the prototypes of Dream Realm creatures, containing a weak Vitality and almost no self-awareness, yet possessing some instinctual behaviors of living beings.

Whenever one entered the Dream Realm, they would arrive at their own "dreamscape"—a personal corner isolated from the broader domains of the Dream Realm. Of course, if a Vocational Practitioner had faith in their power, they could actually leave their dreamscape and explore the Dream Realm, occasionally making some discoveries, like secretive knowledge.

But at present, Ybur had a clear understanding of its own rank as a living creature—being a First Rank Vocational Practitioner, it belonged to the weaker category—so it didn't plan to go anywhere and just honestly concentrated on accumulating Mysterious Source in its small dreamscape.

As a future warrior, the future was promising, so no need for rash adventuring.

Ever since entering the first level of the Dream Realm, the speed at which Ybur accumulated Mysterious Source had drastically decreased. Since its self-awareness had not reached that level, it could only rely on perseverance and slowly endure.

That day, while amassing Mysterious Source, Ybur suddenly felt a sensation of palpitations.

Its tiny dreamscape began to undulate slightly, and then… a tall, slender shadow gradually broke through the thin membrane of the dreamscape, worming its way in from the outside!

Ybur immediately got goosebumps.

Damn it, it had encountered a Nightmare!

Nightmares are how those malevolent Dream Realm creatures are collectively referred to. Their forms are indeterminate, but they generally appear twisted and grotesque. The one that burrowed into its dreamscape was entirely black as ink, roughly looking like a humanoid, but with thin limbs that were not singular but numerous, like many spider legs. Its head raised, that pitch-black face gradually revealed a hint of white that spread out and elongated, looking as if it were smiling, while at the same time spider-like arms stretched out, reaching for Ybur!

Without hesitating, Ybur immediately interrupted the meditation.

"Ha—"

It awoke with a start.

But before Ybur had time to sigh in relief, space undulated around it, and numerous slender, spider leg-like arms popped out of it, followed by the Nightmare's body slowly emerging from the void!

Oh, damn! Ybur almost screamed in fright.

The Nightmare followed me here?! How could it encounter such a rare event?!

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