The Place Where Everything Begins

In front of Jeremy was a place akin to an underground cave the size of at least one kilometer. As the canopy was somewhat high, some rocky pillars were situated at various locations within the cave, acting as a support for the ceiling.

The cave had countless illuminating stones embedded in the rocky walls. Each stone shone with dimmed white glows illuminating the surrounding areas within the cave, causing the cave's interior to be seen pretty clearly by Jeremy.

'It's cozy down here...' thought Jeremy as he looked around the underground cave.

In contrast to the damp air within the long tunnel, the cave's environment appeared to be a bit cozy as the temperature was roughly 28 degrees Celsius.

It might be due to such a contrasting environment that had made the cave somewhat ideal for living organisms and some cave fungi.

Currently, Jeremy saw many small and big brown mushrooms growing in groups sparsely situated at every nook and cranny within the cave.

The small ones were only the size of a fingernail, whereas the large ones were as big as Jeremy's thigh.

At some distance away to Jeremy's left, situated a pond of clear water, which was unexpectedly refilled all of the time by dew droplets dripping down from several protruding rocks above it.

'Hmmm?'

At this time, Jeremy suddenly turned to the right side as he felt some vibration coming from that direction.

Sure enough, Jeremy saw a giant hole similar in look and size to the one he had just come out from; it appeared that whatever it was, something was definitely in there and would come out any time soon.

Having seen that his supposed enemy was still not here yet, Jeremy put his attention back to the mushrooms as he felt curious about them.

Thus, Jeremy walked towards a high pillar not far from him as there were dozens of brown mushrooms growing around it.

'These mushrooms look a bit familiar. Hmm... They seem to be poisonous...' Jeremy thought fleetingly as he walked there.

Upon arriving, Jeremy crouched down beside the off-shooting mushrooms before reaching his hand out to touch them.

'[Analyze]'

Having activated the skill, a small transparent window promptly showed up before Jeremy...

...

Name: Chalciporus Amorphs (Artificial Fungus)

Alignment: Poison and Earth Element (Lowest Hierarchy)

Description: An artificial type of mushroom born from the natural secretion of Amorphis, the earthen worm.

...

Upon seeing the 'artificial' mushrooms, Jeremy's mouth went 'Oh' as he finally remembered what these things were.

On Ortus, there were countless types of animals, beasts, and bizarre creatures for a person to know most of them.

Albeit there were many kinds and species of organisms on Ortus, Jeremy still knew quite a lot of them. However, not many had managed to truly get Jeremy's attention.

Unexpectedly, one of the bizarre creatures that had managed to receive Jeremy's interest was an earthen worm called Amorphis.

An Amorphis was born from two variant elemental caterpillars mating with one another, creating a variant classified offspring in the form of a pupa.

The size of an Amorphis' pupa varied from type to type. However, the strange thing was that after an Amorphis was born from its pupa, it would 'not' inherit any traits from its parents at all. In fact, it would not even inherit the elemental alignments of its parents...

After an Amorphis was born, it would be accompanied by the Poison element and considered as another species from its parents entirely. It would also have the capability to mate with another type of Amorphises, subsequently creating a more bizarre lineage and ancestry of its own.

From Jeremy's research, he discovered that the more down below an Amorphis was in its own lineage, the stronger it would be, and the more element could wield.

Even though there were power and abilities limitations in wielding various elements, unlike those half and pure elemental races, an Amorphis was still an interesting race as it could utilize as many elements inherited from all the ancestors before it.

Jeremy wasn't quite sure how many elements an Amorphis could utilize specifically. Still, he knew there ought to be some limitations imposed on them as that was one of the universe's laws not to let a single creature become too strong and eventually omnipotent.

While looking at the interface before him, Jeremy reminisced a bit about a particular creature.

In Jeremy's past life, he had encountered a gargantuan ten-elemental Amorphis the size of greater than a castle with the fighting capability of a class 5 pathway.

At the time, Jeremy was still a class 4 Wizard, so he decided not to engage in battle as he cast a spell to teleport away...

Unbeknownst to Jeremy, the gargantuan Amorphis could actually use space elemental energy.

Although it couldn't use a spell like a human mage because it couldn't wield mana but only elements, it was still a pain in the ass when the space around Jeremy fluctuated wildly and became too unstable, making him unable to teleport away.

At times, Jeremy's spells would be interrupted by spatial instability...

At times, he would be bombarded by countless elemental skills...

Back then, Jermey had to utilize and use everything in his arsenal to survive the creature's onslaught.

It was such bad luck that Jeremy's eighth expedition outside the human kingdom's barrier, he was met with his first real life-and-death fight.

Fortunately, after the exchanging of skills and spells between a tiny human and an enormous earthen worm, the two sides decided to call a truce as there was no point in fighting when their strength and power level were roughly the same.

However, Jeremy had already run dry of mana at the time. If they hadn't called a truce and continued fighting instead, the outcome would not be appreciated or in Jeremy's favor in the least.

After the truce was called upon by the two sides, Jeremy decided to ask why it had decided to attack him.

As the Amorphis was wise and sentient enough to know the universal language, it answered Jeremy truthfully.

To Jeremy's shock, the Amorphis had told him that he looked delicious, exuding out a pretty strong heavenly scent for its 'nose' to bear. The creature knew if it ate him up, it might have a chance of breaking through its shackle and becoming a real caterpillar.

From then on, Jeremy had become pretty interested in a species, or rather, a race called Amorphis, as he captured many young Amorphises to conduct experiments about their uniqueness in the hope that such experimentations would help him in the discovery of breaking the universe's shackle.

Obviously, Jeremy's researches bore no desirable fruit as he had to rely on the Evolution Pill bought from the great merchant, Mercury.

Shaking his head slightly to discard those thoughts from his head, Jeremy dismissed the window before him as he thought to himself,

'As all Amorphises' base element is Poison, then this Amorphis that secretes two-elements mushrooms should be a dual elemental Amorphis with Poison and Earth elements.'

Regarding the mushrooms, they were initially just some light-weight spores flown out from an Amorphis' body pores.

As those spores fell on a rocky surface, they would grow up into normal-looking mushrooms by sucking the nutrients stored within the rocks. Yet, the grown mushrooms would be filled with poisonous properties derived from the Amorphis's elemental properties.

If a person was not careful and unknowingly ate the mushrooms, they might be utterly paralyzed by the latters, subsequently eaten alive by the mushrooms' owner in the end.

It could be said that the brown, normal-looking mushrooms before Jeremy was an Amorphis' secretion, food, and deadly baits altogether.

'Two elements... Even if the two camps combined forces together, they still might not win against this Amorphis. I wonder what those two stupid angels were thinking when they decided to put such a creatu...'

*Schoochhh....*

*Schoochhh....*

As Jeremy was about to complain about the cupids' unlogical brains, the slight quake, accompanied by the loud schrooching noises, suddenly came from his right side.

Those disturbances undoubtedly came from the direction of another hole, of which Jeremy had noticed the sound coming out from it earlier.

At this time, it appeared that the owner of the mushrooms had finally come back to its nest.

'Considering from the hole, its size should be pretty big, so my two short knives will be somewhat ineffective against it...'

Having thought so, Jeremy's right glove promptly glowed up with white light.

Almost ten seconds later, a plain-looking grey spear appeared within Jeremy's hand.

At this time, a giant rounded head finally appeared from within the hole. The said head was around three meters in diameter in size, having only a big mouth with approximately twenty sharp teeth inside.

The creature had no eye or ear as its forehead was covered with something like a hardened rock, looking pretty solid that even a steel weapon shouldn't be able to penetrate at all.

With each passing second, the enormous creature, Amorphis, squirmed outside the hole at a fast speed, creating loud noises, echoing on every part of the wave's wall, like there was a construction site within the underground hall.

As the Amorphis' head hit the ground, creating the thumping noise, the rest of its body followed along.

Not long after, its entire body was finally inside the underground cave.

Right now, Jeremy finally saw the creature's entire body as the latter looked like an upgraded version of an earthen worm.

The Amorphis' body was brown in color, covered with hardened rocky scales all over its body that should be extremely hard for an ordinary weapon to penetrate. The only soft part of its body appeared to be its belly.

Meanwhile, from the count, Jeremy saw at least more than fifty small sharp legs alongside its long body.

The creature stood still unmoving as if to feel its surroundings for a brief moment before proceeding to the nearest clump of mushrooms.

With the Amorphis' wide mouth, it ate an entire cluster of mushrooms in one go; even a part of the rocky pillar was eaten alongside those mushrooms, almost making the whole pillar crumb down from the lack of supporting surface.

After some seconds of chewing both mushrooms and rocks, the Amorphis' body became still again as its stomach was digesting the 'food' at a breakneck speed.

Shortly after, its body's pores gradually opened up as some white spores were expelled outside, flying in the air before falling down on the rocky floor.

That was the process of how the mushrooms inside this underground cave were born...

After seeing the creature was moving towards another group of mushrooms, Jeremy finally had it enough as he didn't want to wait anymore.

Simultaneously, Jeremy started walking in the Amorphis' direction with his unwavering footsteps.

...

[A/N: This is how an Amorphis looks like —>]