Round and spherical, yet not an eye worm—its size comparable to a hot air balloon.
Lin Jun easily guessed what it was: the Evil Eye they'd encountered before!
Lin Jun looked over his own forces—the so-called six hundred puffshroom army, though nearly a hundred of them were actually pack mule puffshrooms.
After all, killing enemies wasn't the goal; hauling corpses back for dismantling was the real objective.
Now with less than five hundred puffshrooms, fighting a single LV50 monster... could they win?
Lin Jun actually felt they had a chance.
Eye worms were so fragile, and this Evil Eye with its similar eyeball appearance probably wasn't known for high HP either, right?
And this time his puffshrooms came in complete varieties.
There were boom rollers, blast fliers, cannon mushrooms, and even cannon mushroom variants that sprayed digestive slime.
Even if the Evil Eye's ray attacks could instantly kill a whole row of puffshrooms, there should be enough time for the puffshrooms to deal damage.
The puffshrooms didn't have to wait long. Though the Evil Eye moved by floating, its speed was anything but slow, and it quickly entered the cavern.
The moment it entered his [Mana Perception] range, Lin Jun pulled up its status panel.
[Level: LV50]
Indeed, it was the same one from before.
[HP: 1480]
Despite being so massive, it only had this little health—truly a glass cannon monster.
After the Evil Eye entered the cavern, the puffshrooms scattered and charged forward.
Based on previous experience, the Evil Eye's range far exceeded that of the puffshrooms, so this time it was the puffshrooms' turn to charge.
Leading the assault were still the bat puffshrooms and rolling puffshrooms.
The Evil Eye stopped at a distance, and facing the surging puffshroom army, its massive pupil suddenly dilated to its limit.
[Petrification Ray LV8]
The nearest bat puffshrooms and rolling puffshrooms were all affected by petrification simultaneously, their body surfaces immediately showing grayish-white stone patches.
Though the petrification speed couldn't match the swift effect from the scout puffshroom incident, during high-speed charging, even partial body rigidity was enough to completely throw off the puffshrooms' balance.
In an instant, the out-of-control puffshrooms either crashed violently into jagged rock walls, shattering to pieces, or tore their bodies apart through tumbling friction, collapsing on the ground—the suicide squad was completely wiped out by the Evil Eye's single strike!
Conversely, the cannon mushroom troops that hadn't yet gotten close were completely unaffected by the petrification.
It seemed this wide-area attack method simultaneously weakened both the petrification's power and range.
However, Lin Jun didn't dare let the puffshrooms get any closer.
Since it had mid-range area attacks, the puffshrooms' numerical advantage was meaningless—better to sacrifice accuracy and try ultra-long-range attacks.
Lin Jun ordered the puffshrooms to begin attacking from their current positions.
At nearly five hundred meters distance, even with [Precision] enhancement and the Evil Eye as a massive target, the puffshrooms' hit rate was still pitiful.
Lin Jun couldn't determine the precise range of the Evil Eye's area attacks, so he could only order continuous fire, wearing it down bit by bit—every point of damage counted.
However...
A few lucky shells finally crossed the distance and were about to strike the Evil Eye's massive body, but at the moment of contact, they were easily deflected by an invisible mana barrier, creating only a few weak ripples before dissipating.
The Evil Eye took no damage at all.
Lin Jun had to carefully examine its skill list again.
[Skills: Petrification Ray LV8, Mana Shield LV8, Cold Resistance LV8, Mana Perception LV7...]
Mana Shield?
The Evil Eye's massive form had drifted within three hundred meters, and more mushroom cannons were hitting it!
However, aside from creating futile mana ripples in front of it, there was truly no damage whatsoever!
Since mushroom cannons weren't working, Lin Jun wanted to try whether digestive slime could cause damage, but this attack required even closer range, and the Evil Eye had already unleashed [Petrification Ray] again...
Under the pale light, puffshrooms were turned to stone in droves, and among the casualties were Qis's dozen or so clumsy bugs—apparently this area attack couldn't distinguish friend from foe, just like Lin Jun's [Infrasonic Attack].
Before long, the cavern had gained hundreds of stone statues in various poses, deathly silent.
Lin Jun's ambush force...
Hadn't been completely wiped out!
Three bat puffshrooms had escaped disaster.
Some hid behind rocks, others behind fellow puffshrooms.
[Petrification Ray] obviously couldn't cause penetrating damage.
And when the Evil Eye thought it had achieved complete victory and stopped attacking, three black shadows shot out from their hiding spots like arrows from a bow!
[Jet Stream Propulsion]
One lost control and crashed into the ground, self-destructing.
But the other two flew past.
In desperation, the Evil Eye only had time to glare once, using a single-target attack to turn one puffshroom to stone mid-air, but the last bat puffshroom successfully rushed forward.
The Evil Eye tried to use the tentacles floating around its eyeball to attack this puffshroom, but the puffshroom self-destructed preemptively.
The mana shield's ripples surged wildly, no longer as effortless as when blocking [Mushroom Cannons].
Like a firecracker exploding right next to an eye, the Evil Eye was nearly knocked from the air, the light in its pupil dimming considerably.
Though it had lost less than one-sixth of its life, the Evil Eye didn't dare continue advancing. Its massive body hastily turned around and fled back through the deep passage it came from at even greater speed than its arrival, quickly disappearing beyond Lin Jun's detection range.
...
...
...
Mutual destruction indeed!
Qis's "transport team" was completely annihilated, and Lin Jun's ambush force was also wiped out.
However, they'd gained quite a bit of information.
Lin Jun had roughly figured out the Evil Eye's attack patterns. As for its [Mana Shield], it seemed highly effective against mana-related attacks, but when defending against physical attacks, while not completely ineffective, its performance was significantly reduced.
In that case, next time he could formulate targeted strategies...
But none of this was the main point.
This was actually Lin Jun's first encounter with an enemy capable of eliminating cannon fodder puffshrooms on such a massive scale.
Even Fifteen could only shred existences within a ten-meter radius, but this Evil Eye's area attack had roughly a three-hundred-meter radius, demonstrating that Lin Jun's puffshroom swarm tactics... had failed!
After some thought, Lin Jun decided to improve the puffshrooms' basic qualities and implement some specializations...
First, targeting the Evil Eye specifically, Lin Jun needed some puffshrooms that could stand in front and block line of sight.
Lin Jun thought of the chubby puffshrooms—their large size made them suitable as cover for other puffshrooms.
But having only high constitution and large size wasn't enough; strength attributes also needed appropriate increases, or the chubby puffshrooms would move too slowly.
To resist petrification, Lin Jun planned to give them [Rock Eating] or [Chitin Shell].
The former could form a thick rocky armor on their bodies—surely the petrification ray couldn't petrify rock armor!
As for whether [Chitin Shell] could block petrification, Lin Jun wasn't certain, but shell armor was obviously much lighter than rock armor, saving considerable attributes.
Additionally, Lin Jun equipped them with [Magic Resistance LV6], which he'd rarely used before. By his understanding, this type of petrification should classify as magical attacks.
Finally, there was the human-contributed [Heavy Armor Mastery LV5]. This skill could both enhance defensive effects and reduce heavy armor's impact on movement—essential for tanks.
Based on this foundation, Lin Jun also planned several variants, such as adding mushroom cannons, hallucinogenic spores, self-destruction, and so forth.
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