Mated to the Beast of the Wasteland novel Chapter 172

Chapter 172 The Last Spore

Chapter 172 The Last Spore

“You love this. Why give it up?”

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Puzzled, Gillian watched as Clara managed a tight smile. “I can’t spend my whole life cooped up in a lab.”

Clara led Gillian into the building that housed the seed cultivation labs, and the hallways inside were dead quiet.

“Gillian, this is the one.”

Clara pulled her into a small metal-walled room.

The moment Gillian stepped inside, her eyes landed on a rose-shaped glass petri dish, ringed on every side by withered, rotting plants.

It was exactly what she had suspected.

She should have pieced it together sooner. In her last life, whatever Vivienne had pulled out of nowhere had to have come from Clara’s research.

If the dish was here, then the viable shaggy mane spores had to be sitting right here too.

Gillian’s eyes lit up. Back in her last life, when starvation had everyone collapsing to the ground, Vivienne had staggered off saying she had somewhere to go.

While everyone else was waiting to die, Vivienne had returned with armfuls of mushrooms.

Sobbing and laughing all at once, Vivienne had used the mushrooms growing in that rose-shaped dish to save them all.

Looking back, Vivienne must have gone to the spot where Clara died fully expecting to never come home. and by sheer accident walked away with the one batch of spores that survived.

“This one’s yours?”

Gillian kept her voice low, terrified she would burst out laughing and spook Clara.

“Yeah, Gillian. I’ve grown this little mushroom more times than I can count and tweaked every variable.

But the second I drop it into a taint-laced culture, the thing just refuses to sprout. Shaggy manes are

saprophytes, tough as nails normally, and still no match for the taint.”

Where Clara’s heart sank, Gillian’s was on a roller coaster of its own.

Oh man, they really were mushroom spores.

Gillian asked again, careful to keep it casual. “What kind of mushroom?”

“Shaggy mane. I’ve eaten them. They’re delicious. Honestly, Gillian, what’s the point of asking now?”

Clara watched Gillian with shining eyes, silently begging her to work some cleric magic.

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11:27 Wed, Jun 3

Chapter 172 The Last Spore

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Gillian’s eyes shone right back, her mind racing as she confirmed it was actually shaggy mane, the genuine article.

“Clara, don’t beat yourself up. What did you want me to do?”

Gillian leaned in, curious to see what shaggy mane spores actually looked like.

“Gillian, I want you to open up my modified spore and check its internal structure. Without damaging it.”

Clara stared at the rose-shaped dish, her gaze locked and unblinking.

“Think you can pull that off?”

That was a tall order. One slip and the spore would be dead in her hands.

Gillian set her jaw. “All I can promise is that I’ll give it my best shot.”

The answer didn’t seem to surprise her. Clara’s face worked through a quick calculus before she walked over and planted herself in front of the rose-shaped dish.

“I planted this batch a month ago. No sprouts, no rot, nothing. I just want to know what’s actually happening inside.”

Clara muttered to herself, then seemed to make up her mind. “Help me try, Gillian. Just do your best.”

Gillian gave her a solemn nod. “Okay.”

If this was the same batch Vivienne had brought back in her last life, she would treat it like spun glass.

Gillian stepped forward and threaded her psionic power down to the thickness of a single hair, easing it inside. As she studied the taint-laced dish, a flicker of something off snagged in her mind.

“You don’t happen to have a black rose-shaped dish too, do you? One with a thick layer of mold inside. I could try that one.”

“Gillian, where did you even hear I had something like that? I only own this one clear rose-shaped dish, and I scavenged it out of somebody’s reject pile.”

Gillian’s brow knit. Had her memory played tricks on her?

Clara let out a soft sigh. “And how would a culture dish even end up with mold? That makes no sense. A single bacterium can blow up an entire experiment.”

“Then tell me, Clara, what would even cause black mold spots in the first place?”

“Nothing normal would. Nobody messes up that badly.

Gillian’s hand stilled. Right. Nobody messed up that badly.

Could it be that the spore actually needed the bacteria to survive?

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