Norris had a dream.
He dreamed of returning to the surface with magic crystal ore, and among them was actually an A-grade quality magic crystal.
After selling it, Norris paid off all his debts and still had quite a bit of money left over.
He never had to mine with his face covered in grime again.
With that money, Norris studied herbalism and became a potion master. He opened a magic potion shop in Whispering Wind Town and lived the stable life he had always dreamed of.
One day, that girl came to his shop.
That girl whose name he didn't even know.
Norris was so excited he forgot how to greet customers, but fortunately the girl spoke first.
He thought she had also come to buy potions, but instead she said:
"Strange? Are you still not fully awake?"
Then came a series of crisp slapping sounds.
......
*Slap slap slap slap—*
Opening his eyes, he saw a puffshroom using its tentacles to pat back and forth across his face. The force was so light he barely felt it, but the sound was quite loud...
???
"Finally awake. How are you feeling? Is your head still clear? You weren't poisoned, were you?"
That voice!
The Grim Reaper... no wait, it was that person who had asked him earlier if he wanted to live.
Norris finally distinguished between dream and reality, remembering what had happened before.
"My body?"
He tried moving his body—there was no discomfort at all, in fact he felt exceptionally good!?
"It really did get better..."
The moment Norris propped up his upper body, sounds like metal scraping came from his body.
Looking down, he saw countless diamond-shaped silver-white scales covering his entire body, shimmering with flowing colors under the surrounding fluorescent mushrooms as he breathed.
Raising both hands, ten silver wire-like claws seemed capable of easily tearing apart everything before him.
What made him feel even stranger was the hollow in his right chest, where countless fungal threads had formed new structures inside...
What had he... become?
Norris looked completely at a loss in the mushroom house, even wanting to pinch himself to see if he was dreaming, but his claws were too long to manage it.
"Are you clearheaded now?" Lin Jun asked again.
"You... who exactly are you? Why did you turn me into this?" Norris felt like he had become a monster.
"I'm the person who saved your life. As for why you became like this, didn't I already tell you? It's just a small price to pay after treatment.
I even specifically asked you once—did you forget?"
Norris thought about it and realized that was indeed the case, but he hadn't imagined it would be this kind of price at the time.
As if guessing Norris's thoughts, Lin Jun continued: "What, if you had known you'd become like this, would you have chosen to give up on living? In that case, you can still choose now."
Norris looked at his sharp claws and swallowed hard.
Indeed, even knowing the result, he still didn't want to die...
Lin Jun continued consolingly:
"There's nothing bad about how you look now. Isn't the silver armor beautiful?
Honestly, I never expected scales and steel bones mixing together would mutate into this color.
And it's not just beautiful—you've become stronger too!"
"Become stronger...?"
"Want to try it?"
Soon, two puffshrooms brought Norris to a small clearing in the mushroom forest.
A fat otaku puffshroom walked over step by step.
*Gurgle—*
"Am I supposed to fight it?"
You couldn't blame Norris for being scared—he really didn't know how to fight. His only decent skill was [Strike] used for mining, and seeing the fat puffshroom's large size made him nervous.
"Of course not."
Just as Norris breathed a sigh of relief, he watched the fat one reach into its belly and pull out a large mountain boar.
???
Norris looked at this big guy lying on the ground still unconscious and tried hard to recall the underground dungeon's monster encyclopedia.
"Don't tell me that's a Stone-hide Boar?" Norris said uncertainly.
"Correct!"
Stone-hide Wild Boars didn't actually have stone skin—the name was just a description.
It was one of the few animal-type monsters that could rampage around the sixth floor's botanical garden, relying on thick skin, tough flesh, and great strength, unafraid of those plants' entangling attacks.
"No way, no way! How can I fight a sixth-floor monster!"
Though Norris was level 21, when it came to actual fighting, he'd struggle even against monsters from the first three floors.
"Don't worry, don't worry. I'll watch over you—you won't die."
The puffshrooms pushed Norris back, and the Stone-hide Wild Boar slowly regained consciousness. As soon as it woke up, a stone thrown by a puffshroom hit its head.
The boar shook its head, then turned and immediately noticed the gleaming Norris across from it—the silver armor was truly conspicuous.
Facing the large boar that stood as tall as a person when upright, Norris couldn't muster any courage and immediately turned to run.
He was fine when still, but once he moved, the boar moved too, charging straight at him.
[Charge LV3]
It wasn't a particularly high-level skill, but with the boar's weight behind it, the impact force was quite shocking.
Norris, running around wildly, didn't even know how to observe enemy movements. He just ran blindly without even noticing the boar had charged.
The boar caught up from behind and sent him flying with a single ram.
Norris traced a beautiful parabolic arc through the air, crashed head-first into a mushroom tree, bounced off, and fell to the ground.
His health bar only dropped 15%, but Norris himself wasn't aware of this—he thought he was going to be killed by the fall.
After writhing on the ground for a while, he discovered it only hurt a little, but by then the boar had charged at him again.
This time the Stone-hide Wild Boar pinned Norris directly against the mushroom tree, continuously applying force until Norris was pressed deep into it.
Driven to desperation, Norris tried to push against the boar's head with both hands, but unexpectedly his claws easily broke through the boar's hide and penetrated inside.
Unfortunately, he didn't hit any vital spots, and the injured boar went berserk instead.
It rammed again and again. Even though the boar's tusks weren't particularly sharp and Norris's scales showed no damage, his internal organs couldn't withstand it.
Spitting out a mouthful of fresh blood, Norris also became ruthless. His claws inserted into the boar's body and tore frantically while the magic power in his body instinctively gathered toward the opening in his right chest under primal drive.
*BANG!*
The point-blank mushroom cannon erupted with tremendous sound, the impact force blowing off most of the boar's head while Norris himself was also shaken to roll far across the ground.
Lin Jun, who had been watching, wasn't panicked at all. Though Norris looked to be in danger, he actually still had about sixty percent of his health remaining, with part of that lost to his own mushroom cannon.
After hiding the ruby, Little Black, who had somehow come over to watch the show, gave his assessment: "Svelgis, so weak."
Svelgis?
Lin Jun thought for a moment before recalling this seemed to be what dragons called those unworthy of having names—a general term.
Could Little Black be mistaking him for a dragonkin too?
He didn't even have a tail or wings, and his scales were form-fitting scales completely different from Little Black's raised thick scales. How could he get that wrong?
But the assessment was spot-on—so weak.
The skills Lin Jun had installed on him would let even a puffshroom defeat this Stone-hide Boar, not to mention Norris had much higher attribute values, yet he fought like this.
But thinking about it made sense—looking at Norris's previous skill panel, he probably had never really fought before.
While Lin Jun and Little Black thought Norris's performance was pathetically weak, Norris himself didn't think so at the moment.
Norris looked at the fallen Stone-hide Wild Boar before him, his chest heaving violently.
Some unfamiliar thrilling sensation climbed up his spine as fear, excitement, joy, and pain mixed together and filled his mind.
He looked at his still-bleeding hands.
"This is... power!"
[Level Up: LV21→LV22]
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