“Can’t wait for Fifteen anymore! Everyone who can still move, charge with me! Target the upper level—tear open a breach!”
Everyone knew the hope was as faint as a candle flickering in the wind.
But when Commander Soralin gave this order in her hoarse yet unquestionable voice, it still ignited the last instinctive spark in everyone’s hearts.
The desire to survive overwhelmed their fear. Adventurers and church warriors staggered together behind her, forming a precarious wedge formation.
Amy also gripped her short sword tightly among them, her palms now slick with cold sweat. The icy metallic touch was her only anchor in this moment.
The breakout began.
Soralin charged ahead, her long sword erupting in brilliant light as she struck viciously at the puffshroom dancing its tentacles toward them at the front.
The others followed closely behind, roaring as they poured out their remaining strength and fear together.
Blade light and sword shadows intertwined with the fungal filaments flying through the air.
Initially, riding on Soralin’s momentum and everyone’s desperate ferocity, they actually managed to tear open a gap, breaking through the puffshroom forces blocking the area near the fourth floor entrance!
Amy’s heart pounded wildly, as if she could see a glimmer of life.
But this was only her brief illusion, because after breaking through, what they saw were even more puffshrooms…
Endless, surging from all directions like muddy tide water.
Purple toxic fog had begun permeating the air at some point. People kept collapsing, unable to hold on any longer, falling to the ground before being swept away by tentacles and disappearing into the puffshroom masses.
They could no longer maintain formation as chaos spread like plague.
“Hold the line! Don’t scatter!” Commander Soralin’s roar seemed so feeble amid the chaos.
Even as she swung her long sword with all her might, trying to regroup the forces, defeat was already inevitable.
This was no longer a breakout—it was puffshrooms hunting down little treats.
Amy saw the mage named Edin flicker and vanish completely.
Witnessing this scene, she regretted not buying an invisibility scroll for emergencies.
Amy was just an ordinary adventurer. That she had persisted this far was already due to luck, but this was as far as it went.
In the chaos, a fungal filament tentacle wrapped around her foot. Amy cried out in alarm as she was violently yanked to the ground.
She instinctively twisted her body trying to break free, but more soft yet incredibly tough fungal tentacles slithered up like living snakes, instantly binding her limbs tight, rendering her immobile.
Straining to turn her stiff neck—within her field of vision, countless puffshrooms had already swarmed over.
Was she going to die?
For thirty gold coins… she was going to lose her life here?
Ha, this really was… the most standard adventurer ending possible.
However, just as this resigned thought arose, a scalding, completely uncontrollable liquid suddenly surged up to her eyes.
Warm tears, without any warning, slid down her mud-stained cheeks.
How embarrassing… she had never imagined before that she would be the type to cry pitifully before death.
Under her unwilling gaze, a puffshroom moved in front of her face, its plump mushroom cap suddenly contracting—
“Puff!”
Purple spore mist with a sweet, fishy smell splattered violently across Amy’s face, into her nose and mouth!
The world gradually twisted and spun.
Chaotic thoughts, cold sensations, the terror of death… were drawn away, scattered, and cast into the distant void by some strange force.
In their place came a bizarre, colorful whirlpool of illusions.
There…
She had successfully completed the commission, the heavy coin purse falling into her palm, its wonderful sound so real.
Her teammates sat around her, Horn and Old Hammer’s usually rough faces filled with genuine, undisguised envy.
Noah’s eyes were practically glowing as he looked at her with worship.
Her teammates’ gazes made a warm feeling of pride surge in her heart.
“Let’s go! Honey-glazed catfish belly—my treat!” she heard her own generous voice echoing through the lively tavern.
After eating and drinking their fill, she returned to that familiar little adventurer’s inn.
Fatigue washed over her like a tide as her body sank into that incredibly soft bed…
This trip was really exhausting…
Just like this… fall asleep…
Fall asleep…
…
The puffshrooms quickly and skillfully stripped Amy of her equipment.
Damaged leather armor?
Garbage—too garbage even to pad a lottery draw.
The small knife and short bow looked decent enough.
She had quite a few gold coins though. For a silver-rank adventurer of her age to have 11 gold coins on her, she must have been a hardworking person.
Now they belonged to the puffshrooms!
The same scene played out repeatedly nearby, even including Soralin.
This Adjudication Wing commander was one of the last to fight, never laying down her weapon even when there was no hope left.
While others were knocked unconscious by spores, she was beaten unconscious by the puffshrooms through sheer force.
Of course, even bravery couldn’t make exceptions!
The puffshrooms stripped her equipment completely clean too.
Indeed, as a squad leader, she actually had two pieces of +3 attribute equipment on her.
The Adjudication Wing’s standard armor was also valuable—though somewhat damaged from battle, it was far more worthwhile than those broke adventurers’ leather armor.
Lin Jun even found a silver pendant on her.
He initially thought it was some kind of equipment, but opening it revealed a photo of her with a young man inside.
Uwah—
This person was the type to wear photos of important people around her neck…
If it were a copper pendant he’d let it slide, but since it was silver… confiscated for mushroom use.
Speaking of which, this world clearly had no cameras yet possessed imaging magic. Adventurer ID cards were made the same way.
The magic books in Lin Jun’s collection also recorded this—just a second-tier spell, though he hadn’t gotten around to learning it yet.
Maybe he should learn it and take a group photo of all the mushroom garden employees?
Lin Jun’s thoughts were always divergent—after all, his massive mental power meant that even when distracted, it wouldn’t affect his control over the puffshrooms.
Pack mule puffshrooms stuffed all the loot into their bellies, transporting everything to the small treasury on the sixth floor.
Other puffshrooms carried these captives back to the fifth floor, delivering them all the way to the clearing outside the caverns.
After having some puffshrooms surround them, Lin Jun turned his attention to the battlefield Fifteen had just ravaged.
The path of Fifteen’s charge was nothing short of devastation—scattered with large amounts of puffshroom fragments sliced open by sharp blades.
Thanks to the sharpness of Fifteen’s twin swords, these fallen puffshrooms had remarkably clean cuts with theoretically minimal damaged surface area. [Fungal Reconstruction] should be able to repair them.
But you couldn’t expect a pile of fragments to spontaneously squirm together and reassemble themselves—puffshrooms weren’t the flesh creatures from the ninth floor.
In the spirit of frugal household management, Lin Jun decided to try and see if he could “rescue” some of these shattered puffshrooms.
He had to wait for that sword-wielding fellow to “dig” himself out anyway, so this could serve as… killing time.
Okay, not killing them also counts as diplomacy.