The Gummy Worm/Sweet Leviathan

General Description
The Gummy Worm is a brightly colored parasitic worm that has adapted with and taken on characteristics of the common gummy lichen however while the two are similar they have striking differences that imply different strains of both gummy lichen and gummy worm exists in more variation than what has been observed in the wild. The common gummy worm is transparent brightly colored with patterns of yellow, red, green, and white. These gummy worms survive by burrowing inside of plants and candy geography and laying their eggs inside to burst forward and eat their surroundings until adulthood, hatching and eating the plants from within as it grows. Typically, this process is incredibly slow and plants such as cane crops that are sturdy and strong will suffer minimally however the infection does leave a gelatinous goo inside of the plants it affects which generally ruins the crops for sale.
The gummy worm advances its life cycle by attracting animals to eat it or the crop which houses its young, from then on, the worms will begin to hijack the body and breed inside the stomach and intestines, devouring the food that the host animal digests and compelling them to seek out candy crops and other brightly colored objects. While inside the host, the worms begin to secrete a thick gelatinous substance which causes bloating of the digestive organs and which mixes with feces of host to deposit eggs nearby hospitable plants, often sending alternating signals to the host in order to cause an intense hunger response when seeking a nest and high bowel distress responses when a nest is found and needs fertilization.
Maturation and Development
Unlike the gummy lichen commonly found in the Candy Kingdom, the gummy worm does not reanimate or zombify its host, instead gradually taking over the bodily processes of the host animal by replacing segments of the intestine in its entirety, the gummy worm continues to replace parts of the stomach and intestine until the host animal is dead or it is able to devour and mimic the throat of the animal. It is believed that the reason the gummy infected hosts seek out gummy lichen is due to its reanimation abilities, allowing the gummy worm colony additional time to consume the hosts and possible cohabitation between the two specimens inside the same body. If the gummy worms succeed in total replacement of the intestines the worms will immobilize the hosts as they began to reshape into a fully grown adult predator worm, detaching the jaw and any bone and organ structures that can be utilized from the hosts form and ejecting itself from the body, killing the hosts in all cases. Certain animals will not make it to the end of this process regardless of situation, birds, small rodents, and scavenger animals generally lack the digestive system needed for the worm to fully grow and will die during the bloating or scavenging faces of its life cycle however larger animals such as boars, foxes, moose, and bears have shown in varying percentages to make it to the ejection stage.
Adulthood and Speculation
The adult gummy worm is a rare specimen to witness as after its ejection it will typically find a pocket of fudge or cake soil to burrow into to feed off of while storing its energy however luminers tell stories of large tunnels carved through the soil by these gummy leviathans and many have battled against their terrifying maws. According to eye witness reports and field dissections, the gummy worms may utilize chuubanite in their adult forms as many gummy worm tunnels have been found near or formed around chuubanite cultures and candy cane and other foreign candy formations have been located as natural growths within the gummy worm’s mouth making a gummy worm monhun very valuable both for research purposes and for loot gained from the body. The general description of these adult gummy worms describes them as being found in sizes of 15 to 20 feet and have been described as being about the size of bear, however rumors of even larger specimen and natural tunnels discovered by luminers and members of the Hickorypuff family tell tales of even larger and more terrifying worms yet to be discovered. What the next form of the gummy worm’s physiology might be is unknown however speculation that chuubanite might be involved in the next stage of its evolution has caused as much intrigue as it has worry in the Candy Kingdom’s scientific community.