Crumbly, slightly dry texture, 3/10...

In other words, a small rock is okay, but a bigger rock might give mo-,

I look at the piece of mould in my hand. If I can eat rock…

Foolishly, I stick the mould in my face hole.

Buy Skill Fungivore? Cost: 10 (you have 589)

There is no downside to this. Yes, thank you.

568 -> 558

Alright. Let’s get to eating all this fluffy mould!

Nom nom nom… Very fluffy. Tastes like nothing, but the texture is phenomenal. 5/10.

Within an hour or so, I’ve chewed the walls bare. The previous beauty of white fluffy mould and pink crystals is gone.

558 -> 689

Phew. Wow. I could probably eat rocks, but I’ve got a better idea. See, this part is just a chamber of sort (now picked clean) that follows into an equally mouldy hallway. I have no idea where that hallway goes, but I’m all for eating the mould that grows in it. And, if my eyes don’t betray me, I can see some pink crystals, too! Oh, and there’s also a few straggling spiders, but I don’t really care about them anymore. My Immunity seems to be able to keep pace with me madly consuming mould, so it should be able to handle them, too.

Or maybe I’ve become immune to orally ingested mould infection due to becoming a fungivore?

That’d be interesting, and there’s one very good way of testing it. There are two (2) spiders. I approach them, and they, like the robotic automatons they are, approach me right back. I almost stretch out my hand to give a handshake before my newly developed octopus instincts kick back in and I grab them both. Each in one separate tentacle.

The one in my right tentacle is eaten, the other one is just held for a moment. And now, we see which one gets more infected.

689 -> 699

...The one where I’m just holding it is getting somewhat infected while the other one is barely affected at all.

-Alright, that explains it! In my joy, I eat the other, my tentacle quickly healing back to health.

699 -> 709

That concludes the test.

I start eating the walls.

709 -> 897

...Hm. The cave opens up into a larger chamber, bigger than the former one. Shaped like a half-sphere, or a dome of some sort. Mould hangs from the ceiling in clusters of white, forming large, white balls that seem to contain something alive. In the middle of the room, surrounded by innumerable thick white vines of mould, a crystal stands, the edges of it having a pink colouration while the very tip of it edges into a light cyan. It must be glowing since the mould eggs nearby it are lit up in the same faint colour as the crystal.

I’d probably think it was beautiful if one of those eggs wasn’t in the process of hatching. If you can call it that.

A crack splits the thing in two and a large, about the size of all the others, spider pops out. Except, it’s black. A splash of clear liquid follows it as it falls to the mouldy floor, where it is instantly surrounded by living mould. It climbs up the spider’s legs as it moves frantically, absorbing it, reforming it… Making it white and fluffy.

-Uhuh. Right. Okay.

I eat the spider.

897 -> 907

All things considered, this has to be some sort of wicked breeding room, right? Like, spiders are born, the mould takes them… Or something. Maybe the best thing would be to just turn around? Ignore all this?

...It’s either that or I eat that cotton-candy crystal over there.

Yeah, crystal it is.

The mould seems to quiver and pulse beneath my feet as I approach. A hum is in the air as I grab a hold of the crystal and raise my body above it. Mould seems to stretch towards me. I situate my large mouth right above the crystal. And drop. Threading myself onto it.

Taking a bite. Crunch.

I don’t hear it when it comes, but I can feel it in the air, a sudden buzz of activity, a faint movement in the air, the mould puffing up in courage and pride, and it descends.

It was invisible on the roof because, from down below, it was the roof. An endless expanse of white, but now, at seeing its, no, her crystal threatened, she took the initiative. As might be expected from a creature that perfectly melded with the roof, she is humongous. Clusters of half-mouldy eggs hang from her seven limbs in grape-like clusters and her eyes are too many to count. She is their mother, and she is angry.

Unlike her children, her first move is to try to bite me, a move I neither predict nor avoid. I only survive it because she takes hold of one of my tentacles, which I allow her to rip off because it’s better to lose one arm than the whole of me. I don’t get infected by her, but my regeneration isn’t quick enough to let me get ready for battle in an instant. My mind is cluttered, but I know to retreat.

For the moment, that is! Only into the passage between the two rooms, because I can already tell that she won’t fit.

Because she is fat. Hehe. And her children are also hanging around her legs and I don’t think she wants to crush them.

...Though, if I went on a David-and-Goliath basis, maybe… That wouldn’t be too hard to do?

She’s crouched down right now, glaring at me angrily. I approached her. I think, if we were not in space, she might growl at me. But her critical mistake is leaving her weak spot hanging around her legs, though I’m sure she never meant for that to happen. I throw myself at her legs, ignoring how she stumbles back into the chamber, and I start biting at it with no hesitation. At this angle she’s unable to even try and bite me, leaving me ample time to fully chew off her leg. One down, six to go.

The leg crashes to the mouldy ground, all of the dozen or so eggs hanging around it in clutters splattering onto the floor. Some are empty, filled only with the viscous liquid, others contain half-formed or almost fully-formed spiders.

Half-formed or fully-formed, the mould makes no difference.

The newly-born spiders rise as mouldy zombies, each staggering towards me. I waste little time with them, swallowing them down as they come.

907 -> 947

Guess they don’t give as much as the older spiders, huh? Well, it makes no difference to m-,

A large leg crashed down onto one of my tentacles, impaling it through one of the eyes. I draw back the tentacle, allowing a flesh-wound to rip through it. It’ll heal. I had almost forgotten about her, but she hasn’t forgotten about me. Presenting another leg to me was a mistake though, as I quickly wrap my tentacles around the leg and start chewing into it. One down, six to go, one down, six to go…

-She isn’t struggling much, is she?