Something Keeps Appearing in My Subspace - Chapter 210

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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210. Garden of Mist (1)
“The ring is functioning properly, at least. It appears to be converting the poison as intended.”
In the garden saturated with emerald mist, I confirmed the ring was working. The poison had transformed into mana.
However, even with the heart of the Ten-Thousand Poison Fox in hand, our problems were far from solved.
There was only one ring, yet five of us were exposed to the mist—the poisonous fog.
Still, being able to rotate its use among us was infinitely better than having nothing at all.
“We’ll keep the gas masks on at all times, and rotate the ring as the poisoning intensifies.”
“Understood.”
“Since the Gate didn’t impose a time limit, it seems this won’t be resolved quickly.”
The Gate’s objective was straightforward.
Dispel the mist that had consumed the garden. In other words, eliminate the source of this poisonous fog.
“The one creating the mist… is it a boss-class monster?”
“It’s possible. Given this is a garden, something plant-related seems likely.”
“The Gate becoming self-sustaining must be because that creature grew stronger, right?”
I nodded at Min-jae’s observation.
“Probably. The odds of the poisonous fog expanding naturally are slim.”
“Yes. There could be other reasons as the Guild Master suggests, but a monster does seem most probable.”
Han Chul reinforced my assessment.
“Let’s keep both possibilities open—a growing plant-type monster, or some other source generating the mist.”
As we advanced, I conducted an experiment: burning the mist with blazing heat. It had minimal effect.
The emerald fog simply returned moments after burning. I lacked the mana to incinerate it all.
It was like the Alchemist’s Garden before. Burning poisonous fog consumed far too much mana through blazing heat.
I had flame talismans, but using them on the mist seemed wasteful. We didn’t know what lay ahead.
“We should conserve the blazing heat. We might need it to burn the mist’s source.”
Lee Shin-hee shared my thinking. Of course, I could enter the Subspace to replenish mana, but…
It consumed considerable time. We had another reason to be cautious, though.
“This is also an opportunity to gain poison resistance.”
“Right. Acquiring it regardless of rank makes it a practical skill.”
Auxiliary skills like flame resistance, cold resistance, and poison resistance could be obtained simply through exposure within a Gate.
Since our Guild lacked these auxiliary skills, acquiring them through sustained exposure wasn’t a bad strategy.
“This is troublesome. There’s so much pollen.”
“That poisonous fog really does look like pollen.”
Despite wearing gas masks, pollen-like particles kept accumulating on the lenses. I managed fine with my spatial sense, but the Guild members found it incredibly inconvenient.
“Thank goodness water is infinite.”
Mister wiped the lens clean as he spoke. With abundant water in the Subspace and the Heart of the Sea, we could keep cleaning indefinitely.
Then Lee Shin-hee, surveying the garden, suddenly brightened.
“Han Hye.”
“Yes?”
“Those white mushrooms over there. Aren’t there an awful lot of them?”
* * *
Lee Shin-hee pointed to the base of a tree in the garden. A cluster of white mushrooms was growing there.
“I think I saw those mushrooms earlier. They stood out because they were white.”
“Mushrooms in a garden instead of flowers. It’s certainly unusual, but since I’ve never been to the garden before, do they actually cultivate mushrooms here?”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t heard much about it either. But those mushrooms were definitely there before.”
At Lee Shin-hee’s words, I focused on my spatial sense, and I could indeed feel quite a few mushrooms scattered among the flowers within the mist.
“There are more than I expected. When I concentrate my senses, there are many around us.”
That’s when the white mushroom began to swell slightly.
“Huh?”
Then, with a sound like air deflating—pshhhhh—it released a greenish powder.
This was the moment I gained a better understanding of what was causing this mist.
“It seems like this mist is being created by those mushrooms.”
“So it’s spores, not pollen.”
“Then is the mission to remove all the mushrooms in this garden? We don’t even know how many there are. What kind of gardener does that?”
Mister grimaced. Now that I thought about it, I’d heard he’d done farming work before.
Removing mushrooms from the garden was essentially the same as removing weeds, so I understood his frustration.
But I had my doubts. This was a 51-55 level attribute-type Gate, so the difficulty seemed far too low for simply removing mushrooms.
Enemies might appear, or the poison could intensify the deeper we went. Even if we were fine now, our gas masks could fail.
“It’s possible that the enemies themselves might be in the form of those mushrooms.”
That’s when Han Chul raised his hand.
“Enemies?”
“Yes. When I was in the United States, I heard a story about a fungal mycelium in Malheur National Forest that covered an area the size of a thousand soccer fields.”
“A thousand soccer fields?”
“I believe it’s even larger than that, but in any case, I heard it was all a single organism.”
Honestly, I couldn’t imagine it. How could a single mushroom occupy an area the size of a thousand soccer fields?
“Considering this is inside a Gate, I suspect the main body might be somewhere within.”
“Then the poison would become more concentrated the deeper we go.”
For now, there was nothing I could discern. Visibility was poor, and Chun-bae said he didn’t know anything specific either.
I decided to keep in mind the possibility of a massive fungal enemy.
“It doesn’t seem like the mission is simply to eliminate all those mushrooms. There are too many around us.”
“Yes. We need to find the source.”
“Let’s move forward for now.”
So we advanced for a while.
“Any enemies?”
“Not yet.”
I shook my head at Mister’s question. Even after moving further, my spatial sense detected no enemies.
I only felt the garden’s flowers swaying in the wind and the presence of insects.
“The mist is definitely getting thicker.”
However, it was certain that the concentration of the poison intensified the deeper we went. Our gas masks were already being compromised.
“So far, I’m experiencing hand tremors and reduced sensation. I’m feeling slightly dizzy too.”
Lee Shin-hee and Min-jae, who had the lowest Stamina stats, showed symptoms first. Mister and I were affected somewhat as well.
“It feels like I’ve had a drink.”
“A bit dizzy, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I felt the same way, sir.”
Since Lee Shin-hee and Min-jae were affected first, I was simply following their reactions. We’d decided to equip the rings if the symptoms became unbearable.
Everyone was acutely aware of how critical poison resistance skills were.
“There are more mushrooms.”
The fungi that periodically released green spores were multiplying as we ventured deeper.
I could sense more of those buzzing insect-like creatures as well.
“Huh?”
That’s when my spatial awareness detected an anomaly. I’d assumed they were just ordinary insects, but something felt distinctly off about them.
Whoosh!
I immediately used Leap, snatching a bee slightly smaller than my fist with my gloved hand.
“What’s wrong?”
Back with the guild members, Mister—tense from my sudden movement—asked me what was happening.
I held the bee up for them to see.
“Look at its back.”
“…Huh?”
The guild members’ eyes widened.
On the back of the bee—slightly larger than those on Earth, but still smaller than my fist—a tiny mushroom was growing.
* * *
“It wasn’t like this from birth, was it?”
“No. Whether we call it infection or parasitism… the bee seems to have become a host.”
“Its eyes look strange too. They’re mixed with white and green.”
Kim Han-chul tilted his head.
“Fascinating. The mycelium network I mentioned from Malheur National Forest operates through underground fungal networks, but Guild Master, didn’t you sense something like thin threads connecting to this creature?”
“No, not particularly.”
“Since it’s a life form inside the Gate, it might operate differently.”
In other words, the mushroom consuming the Garden of Mist was affecting living creatures too.
“If bees are affected like this, humans could be in serious trouble.”
“The dizziness and confusion… it could be dangerous.”
I immediately retrieved the heart of the Venom Fox.
“Poison resistance or whatever—let’s equip everything now. This could get bad.”
Lee Shin-hee and Min-jae, who had shown symptoms fastest, put on the rings first.
“I feel better.”
“No dizziness or confusion anymore?”
“No. It’s completely gone.”
“At least the pollen-like spores respond to this, which is fortunate, but I’m worried there might be other effects.”
The Venom Fox’s heart was definitely effective, but seeing the bee used as a host made me wonder if there was something else at play.
“They said things change from level 51 onwards. This isn’t easy.”
“It’s a rather unusual case. I’ve never even heard of self-evolving types with mushrooms sprouting like this.”
I had to admit, it was unsettling. If I’d chosen anything other than the Thousand-Tailed Fox’s heart, we would’ve had no proper countermeasure.
We had antidotes, but whether they’d work here was uncertain.
If this poison affected all living creatures, we would’ve likely become prey ourselves.
We could’ve stumbled into serious danger. Of course, danger still lingered.
-Fwooosh!
That’s when the mushroom on the bee’s back swelled slightly. Green powder spread once more.
The problem was the faint magical wavelength emanating from the bee. It was different from before. When the flower simply spewed poison, there was no such wavelength.
“This is…”
“Something’s wrong.”
The Guild members all sensed it too, becoming alert and scanning their surroundings. The response came immediately.
“Front! Plant-type monsters approaching!”
Plant-type monsters similar to what I’d seen in the Alchemist’s Garden appeared.
“Roughly fifteen of them…! These ones have mushrooms on their bodies too!”
“Instead of a mycelial network, they seem to communicate through mana. It appears they’re connected via this poison spore.”
I wasn’t sure what this mycelial network Han Chul mentioned was, but I understood the part about mana communication.
The poison spore itself carried magical wavelengths.
“The reason things were quiet until now… was it because we didn’t touch the mushrooms?”
“Probably. Since they could be poisoned by the spores too, they may have waited like Venus flytraps.”
I incinerated the host bee in my hand with Blazing Fire. Dealing with those things first was the priority.
“It seems the monsters came in response to the bee’s signal. If we drag this out, more enemies will likely appear.”
“Quick and decisive?”
“Let’s try that. Well, if we draw more aggro, we’ll just have to deal with it.”
The plant-type monsters we faced were different from those in the Alchemist’s Garden.
First, their pupils were dilated like the bee’s, and as I sensed, mushrooms sprouted across their bodies.
Strictly speaking, they looked like half-rotted plant-type monsters.
However, our plan hit a snag before it even started.
-Fwush! Fwush!
The monsters we faced immediately burst their mushroom spores. Those spores naturally carried magical wavelengths.
Mister clicked his tongue.
“They burst the moment they see us?”
“The bee earlier was just an animal, but these ones seem to have some intelligence.”
“Right, being higher-tier monsters than simple insects, they’d have danger detection. This is going to be a headache.”
“Let’s just deal with them.”
-Boom!
-Whoosh!
With the spores already spreading, we simply handled them cleanly. Mister pierced through with his Flying Dragon Fang, and Min-jae unleashed his magic as well.
It wasn’t a difficult battle. The ones that appeared weren’t particularly strong specimens among plant-type monsters.
However, these monsters felt like scouts in terms of soldiers.
The ones drawn by their wavelength would be stronger.
“The problem is what’s coming next….”
“There will be quite a few of them, won’t there?”
“Let’s just push forward. Since we’ve come this far, maybe it’s better to break through quickly and get out of here.”
A fungal mycelium the size of about a thousand soccer fields wouldn’t burn even with incineration….
But since it’s a Gate, I figured it would be at least a massive monster.
“Huh?”
Just as we were about to advance, we had no choice but to stop in our tracks.
We’d anticipated the enemy’s appearance. The spores infused with mana had just spread out, after all.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s a person.”
But I never expected to sense the outline of a human. And there was only one.
“A person?”
“Yes. Just one.”
“Could it be the entity managing this garden? A gardener?”
“Hard to say. It could be the owner who cultivates these mushrooms.”
Mister and Min-jae exchanged words, but I shook my head.
“No.”
“Why? Could it be….”
The answer came soon enough. Mushrooms were blooming from the neck of the figure that appeared.
“This is insane….”
What shocked us wasn’t simply that a person had been infected. We’d already anticipated that much.
The real problem was the person’s ‘identity’.
“That’s….”
“Yes. A Hunter.”
The person who appeared was a Korean Hunter. Their skin was pale and their pupils were dilated, but….
It was unmistakable. The equipment they wore was familiar.
“Could this be a self-replicating type overlapping with a chain-type Gate?”
As far as I knew, there was one team that had failed to clear this Gate. Originally, the victims should have simply disappeared.
But if the Gate was a chain-type that continued sequentially, things were different. This fungus had made Hunters its hosts.
“Yes. I think I understand why it’s self-replicating now.”
The captured Hunters became hosts, and newly arriving Hunters became hosts in turn.
In other words, this mushroom was a monster that could only grow stronger with each passing day.
“One… one… one, come here….”
The infected Hunter opened its mouth. It spoke as if it hadn’t spoken in a very long time, the words coming out awkwardly. Despite maintaining a human form, something about it felt grotesque.
Yet even feeling that way, we couldn’t attack recklessly. It wasn’t an unfamiliar face—it was someone we knew. It was difficult to attack without hesitation.
“What is this?”
While everyone hesitated, the Hunter’s words gradually became more coherent.
“One, one become… come here… join us….”
The Hunter finished speaking and raised both arms, beginning to approach us.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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