Shin waited until everyone had finished eating before speaking.
"You've all noticed that this place is uniquely empty. A few miles away there is a massively dense forest, and still this place doesn't have even a single plant," he began. "There is a reason for that. The ground outside isn't ordinary soil. It's alive."
Several of the girls frowned.
"Alive?" Materna asked, looking at the cold floor. She couldn't feel any life coming from it.
Shin nodded.
"The dirt covering these plains is actually the outer layer of a gigantic colony monster. It lives beneath the surface, buried hundreds of meters underground. What we walk on isn't earth anymore. It's its skin."
The girls instinctively looked toward the cave entrance.
Shin explained that the seemingly lifeless soil functioned like countless tiny mouths. They were far too small to see, but every grain constantly absorbed the nutrients from anything touching it.
