This prompted May, the ghost girl Tilly was seeing that was actually a sentient alien from the Network, to kidnap the Ensign and beg her to “kill the monster.”
The monster was a very scared and disheveled Culber, seemingly out of his mind.
Unfortunately, this had some negative side-effects on the Mycelial Network.
Culber was essentially treated as a foreign invader, and had to drench himself in the branches of a poisonous tree to prevent being harmed by the spores.