What woke Ren was hunger.
A hunger so terrible that his hand shook as he pulled the stew-smeared bread from his pack.
Ren ate it desperately.
He savored every mouthful as though it were the first food he had ever tasted in his life.
The mushrooms in his hair shone with a stronger light than before, throwing dancing shadows over the crystals of the cave.
Ren noticed the change, but he had been through too many terrors in a single night to have any attention to spare for so small a thing.
When he swallowed the last piece of bread, the reality of what he had done slowly came down on him.
He had crossed the threshold of death again and again.
If the Moon Toads had caught him, if the Digger had found him, if the mantis had, if the ancient spores had......
His parents.
If he had died, what would have become of them?
"I have to go back." he murmured.
Guilt weighed on his shoulders more heavily than exhaustion.
"It was madness. I......."
Go back.
At first it was so quiet, like a whisper, that he took it for his own thought.
But it was no simple talking to himself.
It was an echo carrying primordial wisdom, ringing out from the deepest place in his being.
And in that very moment, everything began.
As though a closed floodgate of consciousness had burst, the knowledge of the world began to pour in.
First of all, the essential nature of the Spore rose up in his mind.
It was no longer the weak creature everyone had despised.
It was a being that held infinite potential, and its true possibility was laid bare as clearly as crystal.
How to feed it various fungi, the precise course of training that would strengthen the bond, the correct order of evolution, and the countless branching roads toward greater power.......
All of it was carved into his mind as a single complete body of knowledge.
But the revelation did not stop there.
The ecology and physiology of every Beast he had encountered unfolded in his mind as one vast map.
The Mirror Mantis.
How its carapace formed, how it handled light and mana, where the weak point in the exoskeleton was at which the cracks always began, its entire life cycle, all of it was visible.
The Night Digger.
The way they built their tunnels, the patterns they followed, how they conserved energy in seasons when prey was scarce.......
The Moon Toad.
The principle behind the hypnosis it used, the exact composition of its acid, the mating rites that determined its hunting patterns, and more.......
He could see the invisible threads that connected everything in the world.
Their deepest natures, their strengths and weaknesses, their hidden secrets, he could see straight through all of it without exception.
"Wh...... what on earth...... is this?"
Ren murmured low, overwhelmed by the sensation of primordial knowledge eating into his soul.
The mushrooms blooming in his hair pulsed gently and gave off light.
It was no longer simple light.
That light was a key that flung open a new world.
***
For the first time since he had gained the Spore, Ren looked at the trajectory laid out before him.
It was no dead end, no ash-gray despair.
It was a vivid trajectory blazing with infinite possibility.
And that trajectory...... was not his alone.
Every life in the whole world, and all their fates, were unfolding before his eyes like one enormous tapestry.
The knowledge that had seeped into his mind was clear as crystal, but at the same time it was extremely fragmentary.
Like an old map on which only the beginning of a vast journey had been drawn.
Ren could see and understand the first stage of training his Spore.
The particular kinds of fungi he needed, the exact conditions for its growth, even the rite that would strengthen their bond.
Something required for the final stage of training could be obtained inside this tunnel, but the rest of it was not here.
'The first fungus I need...... seems to grow in the marshes north of the rival city. It isn't in this forest.'
Ren murmured as he sorted through the flood of information.
The revelation brought him frustration and relief at once.
But at the edge of this new knowledge there was one promise shining like starlight.
The moment his Spore reached the Bronze grade, a new possibility would open that set his heart pounding madly.
A second contract.
A second Beast.
Beyond that it was hazy, like looking into murky water.
But one thing was certain.
Every time the Spore evolved, it would do more than simply grow stronger; it would widen his understanding of Beasts and their trajectories still further.
"I have to go back. I'll gather what I need and start the training over from the beginning."
This time it was neither a voice of fear nor of regret, but one filled with resolve.
The mushrooms blooming in his hair pulsed gently.
As though they were nodding.
It was time to go home.
If he was too late, his parents would worry.
And now Ren had a clearly drawn trajectory, not a desperate flight.
But first, he had to find a way out of this cave.
The mana density in the cave was murderous.
If he did not hurry, he would be poisoned.
How so much mana had come to be condensed in a place that belonged to the Bronze Ring was a riddle his new knowledge could not solve either.
Ren wanted to take even a little of the enormous mana crystal with him, but it was no easy matter.
The crystals were not split into separate pieces; they formed a single colossal crystal, like a work shaped by someone of ancient times.
It was unbelievably hard, and breaking it was impossible.
The larger a mana crystal grew, the more exponentially hard it became.
To mine this would take not something like a pickaxe but something powerful enough that even a Bronze-grade Mirror Mantis could not break it.
Ren decided to retreat, and looked over the tunnel he had come in through.
The ancient spores, the Primal Spores, were still there.
They gave off a sickly golden light as they danced in the darkness.
But now they looked different to him.
Their essential nature was understood with astonishing clarity.
'They aren't aggressive by nature.'
he murmured, repeating the knowledge flowing through his mind.
'They only attack because centuries of hibernation left them starving. Their true way is.......'
He stopped speaking.
A thought was taking shape in his mind.
Those enormous spores followed basic behavioral patterns like all fungi.
They sought nutrients, but more importantly, they responded to particular chemical signals.
Ren scooped up a little of the mud from the floor.
'If I combine this like so......?'
The yellow mycelium that had formed where the Primal Spores had fallen squirmed, as though analyzing its composition.
Ren closed his eyes and concentrated.
The mushrooms in his hair pulsed and released gray spores, which mixed with his sweat.
It was revolting, but he understood now what the information in his mind was for.
The spores that came from his own Spore carried a chemical marker that would make them recognize him as 'part of the colony.'
He spread the mixture carefully over his bare skin.
"Now the Primal Spores should recognize me as another mycelial colony and keep a decent distance......?" he murmured.
Ren knelt beside the remains of the Mirror Mantis.
Beneath the broken carapace and the yellow mycelium, he could see what he was looking for.
A Beast Core.
The source of the power a Beast held, and the crystal in which that power gathered.
It was the size of his fist.
'A Beast Core is like a concentrated egg...... it holds all of a creature's genetic information, its mana pattern, its essence...... and even the method for bringing it back.'
he murmured quietly, following the knowledge unfolding in his mind.
Ren took as much of the mantis's carapace as would fit in his pack, along with the golden mycelium that had formed as the mantis was broken down.
When he stepped toward the tunnel, the golden spores circled around him but did not attack.
To them he was no longer prey, but another mycelium of the same kind.
"It's working. It's actually working!" he whispered, astonished at his own knowledge.
As he passed carefully through the tunnel, Ren could not help smiling.
Only a few hours ago, he had been certain that his Spore was useless.
Now, 'the weakest Beast in the world' had left him the wisdom to survive in the very spot where a Bronze-grade beast had fallen.
"Father was right! Even if things don't turn out the way I expected, that doesn't mean I can't make something else out of them!"
And the core held in his hand.......
To anyone else's eyes it was nothing but a trophy, but Ren had found its true value.
The chance to obtain a Mirror Mantis.
A possibility he might one day have real need of.
Ironically, the spore tunnel became the safest stretch of the journey home.
He was a wreck, covered head to foot in mud and gray and golden spores, but Ren had survived.
And in his pack there was a precious treasure.
First he carefully brushed the mud and golden spores off his body.
Facing the road home, the world looked different to him now.
Where blind terror and uncertainty had swept through, clear understanding had settled in.
The Night Digger's tunnels were not just a maze dug at random.
'They always dig their burrows in a spiral.
And they mark the range they are working in by leaving deeper claw scars on the eastern wall.'
The knowledge rose naturally, like a memory long forgotten.
Reading the patterns in the ceiling, he was able to find a sinkhole that let him get out while avoiding the danger zones where other Diggers were active.
When he came out into the Moon Toad area, he stopped and listened.
The eerie cries came from far off, but now he understood their meaning.
"Three rising cries means they're hunting. Four falling ones means mating season. And one of them always watches the escape route while the other toads drive the prey in." he murmured quietly.
Ren waited patiently for the pattern of the cries to change.
At last came the signal that the toads had moved off along the trail of some nocturnal prey.
Only then did he move.
Along the stretches where the ground was harder.
'Moon Toads hate hard, dry ground.
Their feet are built for soft terrain where they can hide their bodies quickly.
Hard ground robs their bodies of moisture.'
The knowledge flowed out as naturally as spring water now.
The natural trap zones were obvious to him too.
The Diggers always left small traces.
Pebbles arranged in a particular way, patterns in the erosion of the soil.
To an untrained eye they would have looked like mere coincidence, but to Ren now they were like warning signs glowing in the night.
The mushrooms in his hair still shone in a yellow tone more intense than before, lighting his way as he walked on with new confidence.
Since the mushroom light now mimicked the pattern of toad eyes and served as camouflage as well, there was no longer any worry of being discovered because of it.
Every step was calculated, and every decision was made on knowledge he had not even known existed a few hours before.
'It's as if I've been blind my whole life.'
he thought, skillfully avoiding a zone that showed clear signs of toad activity.
'And now, at last, I can see.'
The night that had begun as a desperate struggle to survive had become a piercing hands-on lesson in the true nature of Beasts.
And the weakest Spore, the one they had called a curse, had turned out to be the key that unlocked all these secrets.
***
At last the far edge of the forest appeared before him.
A tree, shining bright with the mana held in the toads' secretions, glowed against the night sky.
Ren stopped for a moment and touched the mantis core in his pack without thinking.
He had set out in search of a second Beast, a miracle that would change his fate.
But what he had found was worth far more than that.
Today, he had found the wisdom to understand the world.