【Seven Sins: Greed Activated】
【Plundered Skill: Elvish LV9 → LV10】
【Plundered Skill: Ancient Elvish LV2 → LV3】
【Plundered Skill: Natural Magic LV7 → LV8】
【Plundered Skill: Archery Mastery LV8 → LV9】
【Plundered Skill: Flowing Body Step LV4 → LV5】
【Plundered Skill: Life Perception LV2 → LV3】
…
Ancient Elvish?
No idea.
*burp~*
The elven race had suffered a great calamity. Lin Jun was also heartbroken.
Unfortunately, he was just a humble mushroom and couldn’t attend King Auriel’s funeral in the royal city. A true regret of his mushroom life.
During the chaos, the Puchis had saved little Riel.
Riel had followed the Puchis through the underground tunnels and naturally ended up in the Puchi Dungeon.
There were many reasons Lin Jun brought her here.
For example, Riel had already seen the Puchis’ true abilities and the underground network; it wasn’t convenient to just let her go.
Or, Lin Jun had long planned to recruit one or two elves to showcase the mushroom garden’s multicultural inclusivity and satisfy his little collecting habit.
But ultimately, the real reason was that Lin Jun was too lazy to brew potions himself.
The Puchi House potion shop was open for business and doing well. Then Lin Jun experienced the life of a wage slave working overtime every day.
He was the boss now! How could he still have quotas to meet every day? What kind of boss was that?!
The mushroomkin Spark and the lizardman tribe’s shamans could brew potions, but their methods were full of primitive-tribe randomness: ingredients measured by feel, potency wildly inconsistent, quality like opening blind boxes.
Pure wild-style. Forcing them to standardize would mean they couldn’t even produce their unreliable potions anymore.
In comparison, Riel, trained personally by old elves, was inexperienced but followed proper procedures and standards. She far outclassed those wild ones. Exactly the high-quality… talent Lin Jun desperately needed.
Such a perfect opportunity; he naturally brought her over.
There was just one small problem: the language barrier. Riel was having a bit of trouble adjusting.
…
“Little elf~ don’t be scared, don’t be scared. I really mean no harm~”
Norris hid his ten-centimeter claws behind his back, using the gentlest voice possible to soothe the trembling Riel while trying hard to smile kindly.
But looking at the lizardman staring straight at her, fangs gleaming, practically drooling, Riel buried her face in Big Mushroom’s body and babbled in Elvish through tears, “Don’t eat me… Riel has very little meat… Big Mushroom save me!”
Seeing Riel’s terror, Norris felt he was the most wounded party, but he still tried to comfort her.
In the end, under the Boss’s evaluation of “useless,” Norris had to fetch the mushroom garden’s language master, the yellow-skinned book.
The yellow-skinned book lived up to its professional brainwashing reputation. In just a few minutes of conversation, without even using its tricks, it calmed Riel down.
It even clarified for the tongue-tied Norris that he only looked scary but had a kind heart.
“But… but his claws are so long!” Riel still trembled at the sight of those ten-centimeter talons.
[Did you notice he has no tail?]
Riel nodded. She hadn’t seen Norris with any tail.
[He used to have a beautiful big tail, but…]
As the yellow-skinned book told the tale, Riel’s gaze toward Norris gradually changed.
After the story, she gathered her courage, reached out a trembling little hand, and gently patted Norris’s scaly head as he crouched on the ground.
Now she believed this lizardman who had shared his own tail with comrades during famine couldn’t be a bad person!
Leaving the child-rearing to Norris.
Interestingly, by age, Riel was actually several years older than Norris.
But due to differences in racial maturity and her sheltered life in the peaceful Elven Forest, Riel still acted like a child, while Norris was a mature lizardman who had rejected werewolf courtship over ten times.
Besides recruiting a new member for the mushroom garden, Lin Jun naturally hadn’t forgotten the SSS-tier quest he had fought tooth and nail to accept.
He immediately sent Aidin and Inanna to inquire about the current situation of that adventurer party.
The most critical thing now was to figure out the diamond-tier adventurers’ attitude toward the Heartwood fragment.
If they only saw it as a valuable item, Lin Jun could use Aidin or Inanna’s name to trade for it.
Gold, S-grade magic crystals; everything was negotiable. Worst case, rich lady Inanna could front the cost. They shouldn’t be greedy enough to demand the moon.
But if they believed the fragment had irreplaceable value and refused to let go, things would get tricky.
After all, faced with a level-less skill, Lin Jun was determined to have that fragment.
…
The fungal mat’s expansion in human lands was going splendidly. It was no longer limited Photoshopped to three cities but steadily spreading to surrounding ones.
With deliberate human promotion, one mat even extended directly to a fortress near the northwestern front.
The first batch of human-recruited Puchi masters had already been stationed there.
However, since this mat had been laid entirely by humans, it was only a surface layer; the Puchi underground network hadn’t followed.
Truth be told, Lin Jun was very curious how human Puchi masters would perform in real war.
In theory they should do well, but actual combat effectiveness was anyone’s guess.
He sincerely hoped the Puchi masters would shine; their performance directly affected whether the fungal mat could expand further.
Unfortunately, though the fortress with Puchi masters was near the front, it hadn’t yet clashed with demon forces.
In fact, even the Puchi masters themselves thought they might not see action.
Whether the northwestern front guarded by the Sword Saint or High Fort held by Duke Alama, the demon armies facing them had grown listless lately.
They rarely attacked, mostly just camping and staring. Even when they did, it felt perfunctory; completely uninterested in fighting.
Duke Alama’s side had even switched to offense, winning several victories.
Many Puchi masters privately grumbled, lamenting they had missed the good timing and the chance to earn battle merits.
Stuck in a second-line fortress by mat range limits, they could only watch enviously as other units racked up victories.
The demon-instigated invasion war looked set to end anticlimactically with humanity successfully repelling the enemy.
(End of Chapter)
