some background on the world Phaeos and Gladio come from.

Meet the Shooms, an underground fungal race created by mushrooms growing over a magical site. They live in small colonies across the underground, often making cheery homes in the dark ruins of the underworld.

Their bodies are sleek and feminine as it lets them slip through crevices and tunnels, it premits acrobatics as well. "Males" are the majority and exist to hunt or farm food, increase spore production, and provide mass of numbers. "Females" exist to keep the colony core safe and provide comfort. Females are the nodes that connect the Shoom hivemind of a colony.

It's not unheard of for Shooms to mate with other races, they keep the spore depositor tucked up inside their bodies most of the time. Nor are they above being on the receiving end of DNA to grow their gene pool.
A woman who sleeps with a Shoom male will grow a phallic mushroom between her legs for two months, then it will de-root and turn into a young Shoom.
While a male will, as disgusting as it sounds, leave the spores behind when he goes to the bathroom so a decade later young shooms will appear.
Sleeping with a female results in a spore cloud using the father's DNA.