But Dole could not be certain. After all, an entire autumn had passed, yet the Elf Race had not called in outside aid on a large scale, which indicated that its transmissibility and pathogenicity were not all that high.
Dole pondered for a long while. Then, holding the small bottle, he flashed with white light and vanished from where he stood.
When he appeared again, he was already inside the Duling Bone Tower. He isolated a laboratory, placed the bottle on a sealed workbench, and with a stir of mental force, lifted the stopper.
Inside the transparent bottle, the fuzz-like fungus seemed to sense the movement of air. The uppermost filaments stood erect one by one, drawing oxygen from the air into themselves.
The filaments began to change. Their root systems embedded in the flesh slowly absorbed the blood and meat, undergoing subtle transformations.
This was a transformation of life. Having sensed the change in their environment, these fungi began to grow.
Dole blinked. This fungus looked dangerous, but it was also a form of life in nature, a natural lifeform. Its vitality was extraordinarily tenacious—it could survive in an oxygen-rich environment and in one without oxygen. It existed purely for the sake of survival.
But ordinary fungi generally preferred damp environments and found it difficult to exist in normal nature. What was this thing? Had it mutated?
After thinking it over, Dole immediately got to work, dividing the piece of flesh into several portions. He would first cultivate them under different environmental conditions, then find a way to identify and eliminate it.
To deal with this thing, he first had to discover how it grew and what changes occurred during its growth, then go against the grain and devise a treatment.
It would be easy enough to deal with