Chapter 36: Family

Duya sat at the doorway, gasping for breath.

The basement door behind him had fallen silent.

He looked down to examine the scratches on his wrist.

Five grayish-white fingerprints remained on the surface, as if residue from the mushroom spores.

Duya patted them, but couldn’t wipe them all away.

‘Tch… I hope nothing happens.’

He gritted his teeth and rubbed hard, but even after rubbing his skin red, the grayish-white marks still lingered on his skin.

Dong~ dong~ The distant church bell began to ring, striking twelve times in succession.

Hearing this bell, Duya felt the temperature in the room drop several more degrees, and an inexplicable creeping sensation came over him.

Instinct told him he couldn’t stay here any longer.

He had to leave this place first, and at the same time figure out whether the Bulanni who had been following him was human or ghost.

According to the system’s information, she should be a friendly NPC.

But the problem was, after so many mistakes, Duya no longer trusted the intelligence the system provided.

And come to think of it, he had seen Bulanni’s grandfather’s corpse in the basement.

So what was the thing lying in the bedroom now?

Then, Duya thought of that incomplete “self.”

Could it be that what was lying in the bedroom right now was a mushroom person?

Duya felt his hand go slightly numb.

He looked down and saw that the fingerprints had begun to spread.

This gave him a sense of foreboding.

He had likely been parasitized by those fungal spores.

Even if he escaped, he probably wouldn’t survive.

In that case, he might as well seek life through death—or defeat the monster here and gain a glimmer of hope.

He didn’t want to reload a save.

Every time he reloaded, he had to experience death firsthand.

That terrifying feeling of nothingness and intense pain was not something ordinary people could endure.

‘Forget it, screw this…’

Duya gripped his hammer tightly and crept around to the side of the house.

The window of Bulanni’s grandfather’s room had been boarded up, but compared to the front door, this spot was very close to the grandfather’s bed.

As long as he smashed the window with his hammer, he could immediately attack the old man lying in bed.

After preparing himself, Duya took a deep breath and then smashed his hammer against the wooden boards on the window.

With a bang, the nailed window was broken open instantly.

Duya charged into the room and immediately attacked the bed.

His speed was beyond normal—even he was a little surprised by it.

As a result, within less than three seconds of breaking the window, his hammer struck the bed.

But instead of the feeling of hitting bone, it felt very light and soft—to be precise, like hitting a pile of cotton.

However, judging by the bulging quilt on the bed, someone was definitely lying there.

“Bulanni… did you bring back today’s mushrooms?”

A hoarse voice came from inside the quilt.

Duya held his breath and reached out to slowly open the quilt.

Then he saw that inside the quilt, the old man’s head had burst open.

But what flowed out was not bright red blood, but a grayish-white powdery substance, like a smashed mushroom.

Aside from this abnormality, the old man’s body looked completely normal.

He could even continue speaking.

“Who are you?”

“Where is Bulanni?”

The old man’s voice turned sharp and filled with hostility.

At the same time, inside the old man’s burst head, the grayish-white powder slowly writhed like a living thing, and began to reform into a blurry outline of facial features.

Duya thought of that “self” in the basement, and he quickly understood one thing.

This old man in front of him was nothing but a mushroom mimicry of the monster in the basement.

He had never been human from the start!

Thinking this, Duya naturally wouldn’t hold back.

While the other party was still not reacting, he grabbed his hammer and struck again with a heavy blow.

With full force, the hammer whistled through the air and landed heavily on the old man’s chest.

With a squelch, a large hole was smashed into the old man’s chest.

And the already fragile bed board collapsed with a crash, filling the room with white dust.

Whether it was dust or spore mist, Duya knew his bird-beak mask was no longer effective.

He could only cover his mouth and nose and retreat a few steps.

On the collapsed bed board, only an empty pajama remained.

Duya clearly saw that it was filled with still-wriggling mycelium, as if trying to reform into a human shape.

At that moment, the entire floor began to shake violently.

From beneath the bed board came a creak creak sound.

The next second, dozens of thick mycelium vines burst through the floor.

The tips of the vines all bore Bulanni’s face.

But those faces carried endless madness and fury.

They wailed and howled.

“Big brother… why did you… hurt Grandpa…”

Looking at these vines as thick as a human waist, Duya glanced at the small, broken hammer in his hand.

Well, it really was a newbie weapon.

It’d be a miracle if this thing could actually fight.

So he grabbed the kerosene lamp from the table and threw it directly at the mycelium vines.

At the same time, he immediately ran toward the door.

The kerosene lamp didn’t hit the vines; it fell to the ground and ignited flames.

In this dust-filled room, once it met an open flame…

BOOM!!

A deafening explosion rang out.

Scorching flames instantly swept through the entire room.

Even though Duya had already run outside, the blast still threw him to the ground and slammed him heavily against the wall.

But strangely, he got up from the ground as if nothing had happened.

This tough physical resilience even surprised Duya a little.

But now was not the time to wonder.

By now, the windows, floor, and walls were crawling with mycelium.

The entire room was visibly “coming alive.”

Countless mycelium tendrils extended from behind the basement door, and the door was slowly opening.

Worse still, he clearly saw that the mycelium on his arm was also spreading upward, and his entire body was beginning to stiffen.

Then he saw this final scene.

A slender, pale hand reached out from within.

Accompanied by an eerie nursery rhyme, Bulanni’s face appeared behind the crack in the door.

She looked at him with greedy, excited eyes.

“Big brother… become my family.”