I Reincarnated into a Single-celled Organism! - Chapter 241

It wasn’t so much that the Blanche paragons believed Tiffany’s lie. After all, what were the chances that two masked paragons were chased by the Blanche family into this hidden realm, and then they encountered a completely different set of paragons of similar build and evolutionary progress? It was definitely something no one with even a moderate level of intelligence would accept.

However, they couldn’t do anything about it. There was enough plausible deniability in the story that they had to treat it as if it were legitimate. After all, Tiffany was Lady Stride and the fiancée to a young lord of one of the Great Arcford families. The Blanche household wasn’t even a great house within Stormberg, and their only claim to fame was their son and daughter, who were associated with the university. This still allowed them some connection to the other houses, but they are still at a fragile stage where their potential alliance with the Frankford house could shatter at any moment, and upsetting the Stride household could accomplish exactly that.

Even if true, the Stride house would protect their young lady. It was a matter of honor and pride. This kind of stuff didn’t exist within the gangs back home. Well, gang members had their own type of pride, but the paragon’s pride was a bit more direct. It wasn’t reality that mattered to them, but how things were perceived.

I could see Blanche’s head working this through his mind as he considered Tiffany’s words. To her benefit, her performance was perfect. She left nothing for them to pick apart. However, even if she had, it wouldn’t have made a difference without other witnesses. Of course, this was also the major problem with her plan. Perhaps Tiffany was a bit too naïve, but I knew better. I could see it in his eyes. If he just killed both of us, the Stride family would never find out how she died. I could feel a bit of killing intent radiating from him.

He still held back, though. This was likely because of two things. First, he didn’t know if the Stride family knew about her invasion of their property. If the Stride family knew she was there, they could easily discover information about our flight from the city and perhaps even discover what happened to her. This point could have been a rendezvous point where more Stride members might appear at any time.

In the end, the Blanche leader was deciding if killing us was worth the risk of it being found out. Well, there was little to no risk in killing me, who was a stranger in their eyes. It was Tiffany Stride who was keeping both of us safe in this instance. That’s when his eyes came to notice something else. We had both come out of a rather small hut, and both of our clothes were a bit astray. A dark smile formed on his lips.

“I wonder how the Boran family will feel when they learn that their young lord’s fiancée is spending time in another realm with a man?”

Tiffany’s cheeks turned red, but her eyes flashed with anger. “You dare make untoward accusations?”

“I’m not familiar with him at all. He doesn’t appear to be part of your family either. I’m just saying. This could be quite scandalous!”

I could guess where he was going with this. Perhaps he was trying to push a wedge between us, or maybe he was even trying to justify killing me. I wasn’t afraid of these men. However, I also didn’t want to kill them. In the end, this was still Erika Blanche’s father, and if I killed him trying to help her, I wasn’t confident she wouldn’t turn on me. Women were like that. If you tried to help one, they wouldn’t hesitate to stab you in the back. My previous death was proof of that.

I decided to speak up before this went any further. “My identity isn’t important. What is important is that if you want to leave this realm, you’ll need our help. Only the Stride family is familiar with the exit. Oh, and if you feel like looking yourselves, you should know that people who remain in this realm for too long a time go insane. If you wish to maintain your mental faculties, we should get a move on it quickly.”

Although I had vaccinated Tiffany and myself against the brain-eating amoeba, all three of these men had it. The amoeba wasn’t so fast that they’d go insane in an hour or two, but if we wasted too much time, their brains might be affected. Of course, I didn’t plan to get close enough to any of these men to inoculate them. However, as paragons, they should have some means of protecting themselves once they start to notice signs. Just because I wouldn’t kill Lord Blanche didn’t mean I didn’t still have some resentment toward him. This was a product of his own actions, and he should face the consequences.

Tiffany was quick-witted enough that she didn’t look surprised when I spoke of exiting. She didn’t know the exit, but it was best if we didn’t tell them that. As I expected, Lord Blanche’s expression changed slightly. This realm wasn’t the kind of place one would want to be stuck in. He shot a glance at one of the men with him. They both had slightly anxious expressions on their faces. Perhaps I wasn’t the only one who could notice something was wrong. At least, he seemed to believe my words.

“This realm… There must be opportunities within it, right?” he asked after a moment of hesitation.

“Those opportunities are reserved for the Stride family!” Tiffany flashed with even more agitation than when she was accused of cheating.

Lord Blanche let out a laugh. “Enough with the deception. You aren’t confident you can leave this place any more than us. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be hiding on the shore like turtles. There must be something dangerous deeper into the realm. We’re higher evolution, so we can handle these threats.”

“It appears we need each other then,” I spoke up quickly, prompting Tiffany to give me an ugly look before glaring at them.

He nodded. “We’ll help you explore this realm, and when we’re done, you show us the exit.”

“Once we take you to the exit, you’ll let us leave safely?” I asked innocently.

“Of course.” He gave a toothy smile. “You have my guarantee.”

I glanced over at Tiffany, who was still frowning. However, after looking at my eyes, she merely huffed, looking away.

“Fine, it’s an agreement. Lead the way.”

She was upset that the Blanche family could potentially steal opportunities reserved for her Stride family, but it wasn’t like she could prevent it either. This place only belonged to the Stride family, since they were the first to find it and hadn’t told anyone else about its presence. The truth was that she didn’t know how to exit this place, and I would need a bit more to figure it out on my own as well. The best thing either of us could do was let these three men be our bodyguards until we could locate the exit and maybe steal some opportunities away from them in the process. At least, that’s what I was hoping for.

The Blanche patriarch took the lead, but the other two men flanked us from behind. This both put us in the safest position but also prevented us from escaping. Lord Blanche must have been wary of me. After managing to outrun him, he was perhaps fearful I’d be able to lose him in this danger-filled realm. However, I was quite comfortable moving at their pace. While they focused their attention on outer threats, I was doing something far more interesting.

The first thing I had noticed upon entering this realm was that most of the flora had been replaced with fungi. This made sense, as this was an underground world without light. Fungi didn’t need to photosynthesize as plants did. Instead, it got it’s nutrients through its surroundings. They were decomposers, otherwise known as saprobes, or saprotrophs. I’m not sure where all the dead material would have come from, but it seemed enough to support mushrooms far larger than any I had seen in my own world. The mushrooms here were as tall as trees.

And yet, that wasn’t the most important part. When most people thought of fungi, they thought of the part they could see, the mushroom that they usually ate. The problem was that this wasn’t the major part of a fungus. The mushrooms only existed as a means of reproduction. They were like the flowers of a tree. The mushroom buds when a fungus needs more nutrients, spreading out their spores to create more fungus.

When we think of plants, we typically consider most of the tree as above ground, with only the root-system being used to absorb nutrients and water and anchor the plant to the ground. Fungi were the opposite. Their primary body was all underground, and part of a larger main body known as a mycelium. The mycelium was like roots in many ways, but it spread out in complex thread-like structures called hyphae, and was responsible for the majority of the fungi’s functions and existence. The fungi themselves lived underground or embedded within dead things.

For the budding fruit of the fungus, the mushroom, to be so large, one had to imagine just how large the mycelium body had to be. Even on Earth, these bodies could be extensive. A single mycelial network could spread over meters, if not kilometers. Hundreds of mushrooms could belong to the same mycelium, but it was even more interesting than that. This network, while it did decompose and transport nutrients, was also involved in communication.

Fungi could send both chemical signals and electrical signals through the hyphae. This allowed them to coordinate their bodies, responding to damage, environmental stress, and so on. When multiple mycelia connected, they’d for a mutualistic relationship called a mycorrhizae. This allowed fungi to not just communicate with each other, but also interact with other living things, like the roots of plants.

It stood to reason that with mushrooms this large, the mycelium network was spread all across this realm. If I could tap into it, I’d be tapped into an information network that funneled information all across the realm. If I could crack it, I’d have a complete map of the entire hidden realm, and with it, I wouldn’t know just where the exit was located, but also where everything else was, too.