Chapter 168: Spirit Mushrooms

Some of the more luxurious tea houses even served pastries.

There were also several small supermarkets nearby.

Even if the people who escaped from their vehicles were struggling, they probably would not starve to death.

Compared to those who had stayed at home and quietly welcomed the apocalypse indoors, the people trapped in crowded areas, inside vehicles, or working overtime had simply been far more unfortunate.

After walking for a while longer, Joo Joowon’s expression sharpened.

He felt the spider silk beginning to stretch downward.

The ants were clearly returning to their nest.

He immediately quickened his pace and followed after them, taking advantage of the still decent daylight to observe his surroundings carefully.

The distance covered by the spider silk remained manageable for him.

He would not need to take great risks or venture too deeply into dangerous areas.

However, once he got close enough to clearly see what lay ahead, Joo Joowon immediately changed his mind.

The scene before him was simply too shocking.

The grass that had once covered the park had somehow been completely torn away, exposing the bare earth beneath.

Standing upon the exposed soil was a gigantic mound resembling a small hill or burial mound.

Ants from every direction gathered together into countless streams of black "water."

Eventually, like rivers flowing into the sea, they all disappeared into the mountain-like ant nest.

Joo Joowon could not even begin to imagine how many ants were hidden inside such an enormous mound.

The phrase "enough ants can kill an elephant" might once have been little more than a figure of speech, but now it felt like something that could genuinely become reality.

Looking farther into the distance, he could even make out patches of thorny vegetation growing near the mound.

Calling them thorns was perhaps not entirely accurate.

They looked more like a type of sawgrass.

The ants and these plants appeared to have formed some sort of unusual symbiotic relationship.

The worker ants that returned with food brought part of it back into the nest, while another portion was buried beneath the roots of the thorny plants.

Some of the worker ants climbed up onto the thorny stalks and deliberately bit wounds into them.

A strange liquid seeped out from the damaged areas, and the ants carefully carried the liquid back down.

After bringing it down, those ants did not return to the anthill.

Instead, they gathered together beneath the thorny plants.

Once enough ants had assembled, they began piling themselves on top of one another like children stacking together in a game.

Eventually, through some mysterious chemical process that Joo Joowon could not understand, they left behind clusters of mushrooms of various sizes and brilliant colors.

These spiritual mushrooms did not share a single color.

Some were purple.

Some were black.

Others were blue, yellow, or red.

Every single one of them looked like the kind of thing that would poison anyone foolish enough to eat them. Yet after standing there and watching for a long time, Joo Joowon found himself thinking only one thing.

I want them.

After all, if these creatures had already developed such a stable symbiotic relationship, then there was no need to think too deeply to realize that these mushrooms were almost certainly valuable treasures.

If they could somehow be transplanted into the territory that he had not even established yet, perhaps they could eventually become one of his future sources of income.

Even though the territory itself did not yet exist, Joo Joowon had already begun planning for the future.

When faced with something so obviously unusual, he genuinely wanted to take it with him.

Unfortunately, he knew that accomplishing such a thing would be extremely difficult.

After all, who knew how many ants were hiding beneath that enormous mound?

Some species of ants could bite quite painfully.

Some could even fly.

If all he wanted to do was pick a few mushrooms, then it would not actually be very difficult.

After picking them, he could simply throw them directly into the Spatial Waist Pendant.

Joo Joowon lowered his head and thought carefully about it, eventually concluding that none of those explanations fit.

Being arrogant was impossible.

Although he had leveled up today, the journey itself had been anything but smooth.

There was nothing about his current situation that justified arrogance.

The side effects of increased Mental Power were not clouding his mind or making his thoughts irrational.

The discomfort came from the mismatch between his physical body and his Mental Power.

It manifested as physical strain rather than changes in personality or judgment.

As for the possibility that something near the ant colony was stimulating greed within living creatures, that seemed even less likely.

He had not smelled any unusual fragrance at all.

There were no flowers nearby that could release pollen and as for spores.

Although mushrooms do reproduce through spores, those spores generally fall directly onto the ground rather than floating through the air like the seeds of many plants.

So what exactly was causing these thoughts?

The answer came to him almost immediately.

It was not greed.

It was value judgment.

Joo Joowon simply understood instinctively that these things were incredibly valuable.

That realization itself was not dangerous.

The dangerous part was allowing that realization to make him forget the risks involved.

After reaching that conclusion, Joo Joowon slowly calmed himself down.

Even if he truly wanted those spirit mushrooms, this was clearly not the right time to obtain them.

Not when he knew absolutely nothing about the strength of the ant colony hidden beneath the mound.

Not when he did not even know whether the queen ant had already evolved into some terrifying existence far stronger than himself.

Not when one careless move might bury him beneath an endless tide of mutated ants.

There would be opportunities in the future.

As long as he remembered this place and survived long enough, opportunities would come eventually.

For now, simply confirming the existence of this ant colony was already an enormous gain.