This Dungeon Grew Mushrooms – Chapter 146

Twisted, unstable edges.

Two completely different regions separated by a single boundary.

No matter how one looked at it, this was definitely a spatial rift.

And it was actually the size of a manhole cover—much larger than the rift guarded by the six-layered dual-colored slime, which was at most fist-sized.

That poor cave dweller, completely oblivious to this rift’s existence, had fallen straight into it. The outcome was likely grim.

Lin Jun’s plan to track the cave dwellers back to their lair was naturally declared bankrupt. He could only hope to encounter them again later.

But the key issue was this rift itself!

Having found no rifts on the seventh layer, Lin Jun had thought the dual-colored slime was sitting on the dungeon’s only breach.

He never expected to encounter such a large rift so easily in the deep layer.

Lin Jun didn’t believe it was mere coincidence that he’d stumbled upon what happened to be the deep layer’s only rift.

Most likely, the deep layer already had quite a number of rifts…

Though he couldn’t figure out why the seventh layer, sandwiched between the sixth layer and the deep layer, had no rifts, investigating the rift before him was the immediate priority.

The other side had no curse—perhaps it could be explored.

Naturally, he couldn’t sacrifice the relatively precious elite puffshrooms.

Fortunately, this location was directly connected to the cavern he’d just occupied. Soon, a temporarily generated bat puffshroom came fluttering over.

Controlling the puffshroom to jump in while simultaneously using [Sonic Detection].

Then—

Nothing at all…

The sound waves fired in all directions encountered nothing and failed to bounce back.

Moreover, after the bat puffshroom jumped in, it continued moving away from the rift at constant velocity.

The puffshroom tried flapping its wings to fly back, but it was completely useless.

In the perception of [Subordinate Control], this unfortunate puffshroom grew more and more distant… farther and farther away.

Then at some moment, without any warning, contact was suddenly lost.

Lin Jun couldn’t quite understand what had happened.

Setting aside the bizarre environment on the other side, his [Subordinate Control] could seamlessly control scout puffshrooms across great distances—Lin Jun even suspected this skill had no range limit.

Now this bat puffshroom had only fallen in such a short distance, yet contact was lost?

It didn’t seem like it had been attacked by anything either. [Sonic Detection] had detected nothing—no terrain, no creatures. The other side seemed completely empty.

Could it really be a genuine spatial rift leading to the void?

Like in those stories from his previous life—the void regions beyond the world?

Soon, several more cannon fodder puffshrooms were brought over. The puffshrooms linked themselves together with mycelial tendrils, one connected to another, with one end anchored to a rock and the other jumping into the rift again.

The moment they jumped in, the pulling gravity disappeared.

To describe the sensation—it was like being in space.

Lin Jun never expected that after transmigrating to another world, he’d get to experience weightless space adventure… Actually, it was quite fun!

After playing around enough, Lin Jun threw the several puffshrooms in different directions one by one.

Sooner or later, they all lost contact at some moment, just the same.

It seemed the first one’s situation really wasn’t an accident.

The other side should be a void region unsuitable for survival.

Very peculiar, but it didn’t seem dangerous—at least there was no need to worry about monsters or curses emerging from this rift.

But that was only this particular rift being non-dangerous.

Before long, another batch of bat puffshrooms was produced purely for pathfinding.

The bat puffshrooms separately flew into the dozen or so massive passages connected to the cavern. After a thorough carpet search, they indeed discovered a second rift!

However, this rift was extremely small, like a needle’s eye.

If not for the unique edge distortion effect, Lin Jun would have had difficulty spotting it.

This rift was very unstable. When Lin Jun tried extending some mycelia to investigate, they were all torn apart by the unstable spatial distortions.

In the end, he could only mark it as one of the key observation points.

But this also proved that the deep layer was likely already riddled with holes.

It had been fine when he left, yet the damage was progressing far too quickly.

Come to think of it, had that swarm of Thousand-Pivot Mayflies really come during that wave of the magic tide?

Could there still be some massive rift connecting to the mayflies’ homeland, allowing them to migrate over in endless streams?

Anyway, at that branching position above, mayflies would occasionally fly over tentatively, only to be shot down by the puffshrooms that had built defensive lines there.

Considering Big Bug’s size, if that were truly the case, how large would that rift need to be…

The deep layer’s situation was not optimistic. Lin Jun decisively allocated most of his puffshroom capacity to the deep layer, preparing to begin a long-overdue grand cavern expedition.

Since the Yellow Book claimed it didn’t know the dungeon core’s specific location, only that it was in the deepest part, Lin Jun could only set his goal as the simple and crude approach of extending downward.

After some thought, Lin Jun brought down the vampire Louisa.

…

“Where is this?”

Suddenly extracted from the mine shaft and brought here, Louisa appeared very uneasy.

Ever since entering this amethyst dungeon, nothing good had happened to her…

“Little Pig, you have a new job!”

“…”

“What, don’t you want to eat something fresh?”

Fresh!?

Louisa’s eyes instantly widened.

She indeed hadn’t drunk fresh blood in a long time. To be precise, since being captured, she’d been drinking lifeless fresh blood, barely managing to survive.

After all, the fifth layer had no living creatures for her to drink blood from, and Lin Jun refused to let her hunt on the sixth layer—what if she encountered adventurers?

“Re… really?” Louisa carefully confirmed.

“Well then, should I send you back? You seemed to quite enjoy mining anyway.”

“No, no, no! Boss, you have the final say! I’m Little Pig, I want to eat something fresh!” Louisa expressed that she treasured this opportunity greatly!

Seeing this, Lin Jun assigned her the task—cooperating with the expedition force to expand territory.

Louisa was, after all, a diamond-tier vampire viscount. Fed properly, she was quite suitable as supplementary combat power.

He couldn’t really keep this creature just to have her dig a few ores, could he?

Of course, restrictions remained. Lin Jun stipulated that she couldn’t leave the mycelial carpet’s range—violation would naturally result in puppetization.

Louisa nodded frantically at this arrangement, afraid Lin Jun might change his mind.

Lin Jun didn’t shortchange her either, directly handing over that large turtle that was still withdrawn into its shell, competing with Lin Jun in patience.

This turtle could actually be cracked open with a chubby puffshroom, but Lin Jun found that wasteful. Better to leave it to the vampire—if she couldn’t manage it, that would be Louisa’s incompetence.

Fortunately, Louisa wasn’t incompetent.

Her pale palm pressed against the turtle shell. Before long, Louisa manipulated the fresh blood within the turtle’s body, blood mist gathering from between the shell gaps into Louisa’s hand.

When Louisa completed her action, the turtle’s tightly closed shell had loosened, revealing the shriveled turtle corpse inside that had died from blood loss.

Louisa then eagerly drank down this monster blood that she wouldn’t have even glanced at in the past, even extending her tongue to lick clean the trace remaining at the corner of her mouth, then began sobbing on the spot…