Chapter 684: Exploring The Old Planet's Forests
Chapter 684: Exploring The Old Planet’s Forests
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The group nodded at Aurora’s words, they had to keep going and not just sit here and admire the place, they were in no particular hurry, but would appreciate if they could find the twins they had created to take care of this place. These two twins were named Anastacia and Juliette, and were clones made out of the fusion of the split souls, they were made as the “gods” of this place to take care of it.
However, unlike they had thought, they were not greeted by them, they were sure their presences were strong enough that the twins would notice them already, but for some reason they were not coming to greet them.
If this strange and bizarre dolphin descendant was enough proof, perhaps millions of years had passed since they left this place due to the time difference between different areas of the Universe.
The months they spent on Kritias, which were almost a year, ended being millions of years here, enough for the life introduced here to derive into countless other bizarre descendants.
Because they had only introduced small animals and a few sea creatures such as a small species of dolphin, which ended deriving into this, many of the animals slowly evolved and took more niches in nature fulfilling them and filling the entire planet with a great biodiversity.
There were buildings spotted around the giant tree, whatever civilization lived in this planet, it was clearly not human nor any species of demi-humans from Kritias, Earth, or other parallel worlds they took care of.
The trio quickly made their way across the large forests, leisurely walking across the wilderness as they began to see more of the biodiversity of this wondrous planet they had terraformed and left out on its own.
The first thing that greeted their sight the moment they stepped into the forest, as their Dolphin-Bat friend alerted them to not get closer, as a massive mushroom.
“A mushroom?”
They looked at the large three-meter-tall mushroom resting below the trees, covered by the shadows of the massive trees that grew over 30 meter in height. This massive mushroom suddenly began to move the moment they got closer, as strange moldy tentacles came out of it and its entire body turned into something like a crab-like being.
“Huh?!” asked Veronica and everyone else, it was a moving mushroom.
Despite having seen Walking Mushroom and other Mushroom-type monster species before, this creature wasn’t actually a monster. Much like the flying Dolphin Bat, this creature was a highly derived Fungi!
It apparently was a mushroom clade that slowly became mobile for some reasons unknown, and they slowly developed more and more into highly mobile mushrooms that seek moister areas to release their spores. Through countless years, they ended evolving into such peculiar forms, making up a completely new clade of creatures deriving from the Fungi family.
The trio decided to call this creature a Mushroom Crab, and they decided to leave it be, as it was trying to attack them with its tentacles. It seemed to be a territorial creature and highly dangerous predator too, but the trio was unaffected by anything it tried.
“That’s amazing, I never thought I would get to see a walking mushroom that it’s not just a magic-made monster. It really just evolved from common mushrooms?! That’s shocking to be honest.” Said Veronica.
“Indeed, it really evolved from such a specimen, it is also shocking to me. I never thought such a thing was possible, Mushrooms are a peculiar family of living organism, they’re beings of their own completely, but mostly all of them are static and grow just like plants but through their spores… To think we would get to see one walking by itself…” said Ervas.
“It even had developed small eyes, which were all convergently evolved…” said Veronica.
“Indeed- Ah! What’s that!?” asked Veronica.
Suddenly as the group walked through the forest, a massive creature greeted their sight, resembling an incredibly tall… shell?
It was the shell of a snail, but it had six massive limbs resembling the feet of elephants. These animals were clearly nothing they had ever seen before. They realized it had two long eyes which it used to glance around, and it slowly walked across the massive forest like a walking disaster, eating all the grass and plants it could find, alongside the leaves of the trees.
“This is… a snail?”
The creature before their sight was what could be said to be a highly evolved water snail that Ervas had introduced. He remembered he had not introduced octopus nor squids, so only snails and other shelled creatures were the representants of the mollusk family.
“This is… a snail that evolved into a squid or octopus-like descendant long ago. Some of them took into the land, and now they evolved into giant elephant-like foragers of plants, they’re fully herbivore, gentle giants…” said Ervas.
“So snails evolved tentacles into octopus-like descendants and then they became giant elephants?! G-Got it…” said Aurora.
“This is incredible. It just shows how diverse can life become- Huh?!”
Suddenly, a smaller of these elephant-snail-squids reached the trio, looking at them curiously with its pointy eyes moving around. It was around two meter tall, but it was still an infant. It extended the two tentacles it had over its mouth, which it used to grab food and stuff it inside their mouths.
“Buuuu…”
It released a cute and little sound.
Its little tentacles touched Veronica’s head, as if “feeling” her.
“Uwah, it’s so cute…” said Veronica, lightly approaching it, as its mother noticed, and it released a loud bomb-like sound from its shell.
“BUUUUUUUMMM…!”
It began to intimidate the three, thinking they were predators.
“Ah, we better not bother her…” said Ervas.
The trio slowly walked back, as the mother grabbed its child with her massive tentacles and carried it with her.
It was a peculiar scene of nature, the new nature of this world.
As they continued walking and exploring, the trio saw all sorts of bizarre creatures, such as birds with tentacles around their beaks, which were in fact highly derived snail-squids that lost their shells and acquired feather-like hair around their bodies, and even more, there were several other descendants of the land dolphin family…
However, they also felt the presence of something else lurking behind them…
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