Reincarnated As A What?

Chapter 4 - Spores

"What do you mean by extreme exposure?"

"HAVING AT LEAST 10 SPORES ACTIVE ON YOU AT ONCE"

"Will that speed up the rate at which I die?"

"YES"

"Will it be 10 times faster"

"NO THE SPORES DON't have any effect until about 3 DAYS IN. THAT WILL NOT CHANGE...BUT YOU WILL LIKELY DIE AT THIS POINT AS THE EFFECT WILL BE 10 TIMES STRONGER"

"So I have3 days?"

"IRRELEVANT I HAVE TOLD YOU ALL THE NECESSARY INFORMATION"

"Ok then"

The race was on I had to get myself shot at by cave shrooms 10 times. Then I had to get 24 hours of sleep using up all my mana, regenerate it again in order to copy the ability. Sleep another 24 hours to gain that. All in 3 days. It would be close on time. I had to spend 2 thirds of that just sleeping. It was a good job I was a good sleeper. I had always been able to have very long sleeps without problems and had never struggled to get to sleep. But maybe sleeping while learning a skill and being infected with toxic spores would make sleep harder. I wasn't sure. But I decided that before then I would try and spend a couple of days without sleeping at all. To maximise the amount of sleep I would need after infecting myself.

That day I tried to hunt down another Monada and it didn't go as well as the other. This one wasn't pregnant so instead of running away, it fought back. I had to escape as it was also bigger and stronger than me. I was escaping for a worrying length of time before it gave up. Luckily I was slightly faster than it.

I then walked around the cave staying away from anything that wasn't a Monada as they didn't fight me unless I attached them first. After a day I got too bored to not start the process. My boredom and exhaustion didn't go well for not sleeping I almost nodded off countless times. So I decided it was time.

I waddled towards a cave shroom. It was a tall dark brown mushroom that stood about 2 and a half times my height. As I approached it a face started to form in the side of the mushroom body. It looked like one of the shy shrooms from plants vs zombies and right away it shot me with spores. It then sharted to lower itself retreating underground until only the cap remained above ground.

I would have bitten it if I was certain that it wasn't poisonous but I knew that many mushrooms were so a mushroom able to actively kill seemed likely to be poisonous. The spot where the spore had struck me had a small brown pulsing globule. It had veins that were starting to dig into my flesh. It was pretty gruesome. I plodded around to find another. I continued this 10 times until I had 10 pulsing spores on me. It was lucky that the chasm was so wide. It was open-air unlike the cave and the clouded daytime sky was clearly visible despite the darkness at the bottom of the chasm caused by the vast edges leading up to the surface.

I continued to wander until I found the wall where the Monada clumps would form at night. I lay down hoping that at sunset they would clump around me creating a soft fluffy warm bed to help me sleep.

"Start work on the resistance"

"I RECOMMEND NOT DOING THAT...THE RESISTANCE WILL KILL THE SPORE AND YOU'D NEVER BE ABLE TO LEARN THE SPELL."

"Well Then, start with the spell then I guess"

I then nodded off. I woke back up not too long after the sun had risen. The clump of monadas was scattered all over me just as I had hoped.

"How long have I slept?"

"IRRELEVANT, SLEEP MORE"

I tried to get back to sleep but it was difficult I must have been rolling around on the monadas for an hour before I finally got to sleep, it was a good job they were there. I then woke back up to find myself back on the hard rocky ground. The sun hadn't moved all that much I had probably only been asleep for 2 hours.