Only a small number of truly suitable items of excellent quality for puffshrooms were treasured and carefully stored away by Lin Jun in his increasingly abundant vault.
As for those mountains of armor and longswords that weren’t particularly useful?
He stuffed them all into the bellies of five plump, rotund “otaku puffshrooms”!
When one finished absorbing, he’d switch to another—the drop rates had been pretty good lately.
The Knight Puffshroom was currently in the swamp area, repairing its rear end at Lin Jun’s old hideout.
Unlike ordinary puffshrooms that could bounce around good as new with just some fresh mycelium slapped on and a few twists, high-attribute puffshrooms took much more time and mana to repair.
It was one thing for puffshrooms to get injured and need repairs, but what really made Lin Jun’s heart ache was the dragon scale shield.
Two sword marks were carved into it—one deep, one shallow. The deep one came from that earth-shrinking sword strike, while the shallow one was from when his robe got caught and he blocked that ranged attack.
He’d originally thought this sturdy dragon scale shield could serve as a long-term reliable defense, but now it seemed that after enduring just a few more impacts of similar magnitude, it would be completely destroyed.
As for the guild, based on the information Aiding had sent back, they still hadn’t given up on their plans to deal with him. But this was within expectations.
Lin Jun was now waiting for Pink Puffshroom to arrive so he could appeal to reason and emotion, convincing her to team up and put on a show for the humans.
Of course, he hadn’t failed to consider the possibility that Pink Puffshroom might betray the mycelial network.
If that truly happened…
Then Aiding, who was in direct contact with her, would have to be reluctantly abandoned.
Actually, it wouldn’t be too bad—he’d only just recruited her, so their bond wasn’t deep yet.
However, his plans for surface development would have to be shelved.
His strategy would shift to: engaging humans in guerrilla warfare on the upper floors while simultaneously accelerating exploration in the deep layers at all costs, seizing the dungeon core with maximum speed!
As for an even worse scenario—human encirclement plus Purple Crystal Dungeon collapse.
Lin Jun still had contingency plans for this worst-case situation: either find a way to escape the dungeon and burrow into hiding in some sparsely populated area on the surface, or transfer through rifts to other dungeons and start developing anew.
In any case, he had plenty of backup plans. As a mushroom, as long as he wanted to live, he could always find a way to survive.
But if it really came to being driven out of Purple Crystal Dungeon, the grudge between humans and himself would become irreconcilable…
After handling these post-battle trivial matters, Lin Jun had originally planned to test out his new skills, but given that an incident had occurred at the cave dweller training base—Norris had nearly been killed—
Lin Jun still had most of his puffshrooms return to the deep layers via the web passages of the sixth floor’s rift valley, ready to respond to any emergency situations.
…
While Lin Jun was engaged in a battle of wits with Fifteen, at the cave dweller training base, a completely different primitive farce was unfolding.
Two cave dwellers stood several paces apart, each gripping crude bone short spears, facing off against each other.
Though no sounds came from their mouths, they were frantically hurling threats at each other through the mycelial network.
Communication through the mycelial network, with thoughts directly reaching the other’s mind, was far more efficient and direct than their primitive, clumsy cave dweller language that sounded like grinding stones.
Ever since being incorporated into the mycelial network and growing accustomed to this convenient “mind speech,” most cave dwellers had almost entirely abandoned the bad habit of speaking aloud.
Just as battle was about to erupt, silver light flashed, and both cave dwellers’ spears snapped in half simultaneously.
“Sigh—”
Norris appeared between them with an annoyed expression, glaring at these two idiots.
“How many times has this been recently? Fighting over mating rights!?”
[The 7th time]
Yellow Book helpfully reminded him.
“Tsk!”
Primitive! Ignorant!
Previously, when they used [Pheromones] to establish hierarchy, naturally only a small portion of the upper class had mating rights.
Now it was different—everyone was equal, so they’d switched to using force to compete.
If these cave dwellers were just getting black eyes and bruised faces over this sort of thing, that would be one matter, but when they fought, they really went for the kill!
All things considered, if Lin Jun hadn’t intervened, using [Pheromones] to establish some hierarchy might actually have been a decent choice for the cave dwellers—at least it would have been more orderly.
Norris had been keeping track of all the various cave dweller problems during this period, planning to report them all once the boss finished his “entertaining guests” business.
And right now, he had no choice but to personally beat up these two cave dwellers, or they’d dare to come back once they’d repaired their spears.
Norris had just raised his hand, preparing to discipline those two cave dwellers, when his peripheral vision suddenly caught something unusual—a dark red point of light flickering eerily in the distant darkness of the dim cave.
Red light?
The cave’s illumination came almost entirely from fluorescent mushrooms, and mushroom fluorescence obviously didn’t include red.
So that red dot in the distance seemed particularly glaring to Norris.
“Senior, what is that?” The distance was a bit far and Norris couldn’t see clearly, so he directly asked Yellow Book.
However, Yellow Book, usually excellent at reconnaissance, was actually slower to react than Norris this time.
[What what thing?]
After a brief pause, Yellow Book seemed to finally “focus” on the target.
[Eh?]
[There really is something, a ball floating in mid-air?]
But just as Norris and Yellow Book were still studying what that thing was, sudden change erupted!
*Puchi! Puchi! Puchi!*
The dull sound of blades cutting through flesh suddenly rang out!
The two cave dwellers in front of Norris who had been gripping broken spears just a second ago didn’t even have time to cry out before their bodies were instantly dismembered by invisible attacks!
Blood sprayed, but didn’t fall directly to the ground.
Some blood droplets seemed to collide with invisible barriers, briefly outlining the vague silhouette of a monster in mid-air.
!!!
Enemies! Invisible enemies! And they were right at hand!
Norris quickly retreated while hastily using [Sonic Detection LV6].
Norris groaned, as countless chaotic pieces of information frantically flooded into his brain, making him dizzy. Only because he was prepared did he avoid collapsing directly to the ground.
At the same time, he “saw” the enemies—three invisible six-clawed beasts, each 3 meters tall!
And that red dot in the distance was a flying eyeball!?
No time to think more. Norris desperately dodged the attacks of the three beasts.
Meanwhile, Yellow Book was in a complete state of confusion.
[What’s happening?]
[What kind of magical creature is this?]
[Why are there no emotional fluctuations?]
“Damn it!” Norris rolled and dodged in the cramped space in complete disarray, barely avoiding fatal strikes by the narrowest of margins.
The hard stone floor was gouged with deep furrows by invisible claws, stone chips flying!
He was now completely on the defensive.
Without using [Sonic Detection], he was like a blind man. But using [Sonic Detection], the terrible burden of that massive amount of information made his brain feel like it was being hammered.
His reaction speed plummeted, his head splitting with pain, and his proud speed advantage was suppressed to less than half its effectiveness!
Each detection was like overdrawing his nerves.
After another detection, Norris finally couldn’t withstand the feedback and collapsed to the ground, his body failing him.
At this life-or-death moment, Norris’s mind went blank, his body’s instincts faster than thought!
He almost reflexively yanked Yellow Book over, gripping it like a shield and desperately holding it in front of himself!
[Norris! You fucking bastard—!!!]
However, the expected attack never came.
*Puchi—!*
A teeth-grinding, muffled sound of flesh being brutally torn apart by tremendous force exploded in the air!
Immediately after, a great gush of scalding, reeking monster blood splashed out like a fountain, instantly drenching both Norris and Yellow Book!
Through the blood mist, Little Black’s figure appeared in front of Norris, holding a thick, ferocious monster forelimb that had lost its invisibility effect in one hand!
And the limb’s owner had become a headless corpse, collapsed to one side.
Little Black looked Norris up and down, and after confirming he wasn’t missing any arms or legs, she turned and directly hurled the monster’s arm.
The severed limb tore through the air with a dull whistle!
Another dull sound of flesh being pierced!
Another invisible monster in the distance was precisely impaled through the chest by its own kind’s severed arm. The massive impact sent it flying backward, crashing heavily into the rock wall where it twitched twice before going completely still.
Almost simultaneously, the monster blood on the ground directly condensed into a spear and shot out, piercing the skull of the last monster attempting to pounce with perfect accuracy—this was Louisa, who had hurried over after Lin Jun hastily notified her.
“There’s… there’s still an eyeball!” Though Norris was still shaken, he immediately reminded them.
However, when he looked again, the position that had been glowing red before was now pitch black with nothing there.
Louisa transformed into a bat and pursued in the direction Norris had indicated for some distance, but found nothing.
[Ungrateful wretch! Using me as a shield again!]
Yellow Book cursed Norris for his ingratitude while simultaneously doubting itself, wondering what was wrong that it couldn’t sense the enemies.
During this process, it didn’t forget to quietly and unknowingly absorb the souls of those two cave dwellers into its pages.
Little Black crouched on the ground, picking up all the silver scales Norris had dropped.
Then she stood on her tiptoes and used her slightly blood-stained claws to “pat pat” Norris’s lowered head twice.
Norris felt warmth in his heart—this clumsy concern made his nose tingle… if only the comforting force wasn’t quite so strong!
Louisa, meanwhile, looked at the purple blood orb condensed from monster blood in her hand, wondering if this thing was edible.
For the rest of the time, Norris didn’t dare stray too far from Little Black or Louisa, staying cautiously close until the puffshroom army came down.
Lin Jun looked at the six-clawed monster thrown onto the mycelial carpet, already half-decomposed.
What the hell was this thing?
