*Patter—patter—*
The familiar sound came from behind a waist-high shrub, and Norris turned to look.
He was now wearing adventurer's clothes, unlike when he first started with nothing but underwear.
The clothes were something he'd begged from the boss—though the boss said it was unnecessary shame...
After recognizing his situation, Norris quickly chose to accept it, accepting that he'd become a "powerful" monster. It wasn't any harder than accepting that 40 gold coin debt back then.
At least the happiness from supplementing nutrition and the satisfaction of growing stronger after killing monsters were far better than days where opening his eyes meant facing debt.
Norris didn't have to wait long.
*Patter—*
A human-height red slime jumped out from the shrubs.
Inside its body were the remains of half an undigested puffshroom and some weeds.
Norris crossed his claws and pounced the instant the slime landed!
[Wind Rending Claws LV4]
His claws sliced through the slime's liquid body, the wind element wrapped around his claws not only increasing their sharpness but also further widening the opening in the slime's body when it burst outward.
Norris didn't pause—he needed to get the core before the slime's body recovered...
*Bang—*
A mushroom cannon shot hit the sliced-open slime, and it immediately exploded.
Norris, being closest, was instantly splattered with red liquid containing neurotoxins. Though he wasn't afraid of neurotoxins, he still looked thoroughly miserable.
Turning around, he saw a puffshroom acting like nothing had happened, walking away casually after firing its shot.
"Sigh..."
What could he do? His seniority in the organization was still lower than that puffshroom's. He could only look for the next target...
*Patter—*
Another slime jumped out, but this time it was green.
Norris immediately turned and walked away. He didn't have [Corrosion Resistance], and fighting this type of slime with [Digestive Slime] would be a pyrrhic victory even if he won. Better to leave it to other puffshrooms.
Norris wasn't hunting alone—he'd been assigned by the boss to clear slimes in the area so they wouldn't interfere with the work inside.
Behind him, not far away, near the rock wall on a small hill, in a cleared open space, over two hundred puffshrooms were working on a massive project!
This open space wasn't naturally occurring—the sixth floor had no such thing as natural clearings.
It only became a clearing after the puffshrooms arrived.
And becoming a clearing wasn't enough—Lin Jun wanted to dig the entire thing down!
A group of puffshrooms specially equipped with [Claws LV7] used their stubby legs to plow and loosen the soil in circles.
The worker puffshrooms used specialized pipeline mycelium tentacles to suck all this loose earth into their bellies, and when full, they'd transport it far away to dump it.
There was also a group of excavation puffshrooms who, in areas where the rock layer had already been exposed, began digging work.
Lin Jun was making such a big production mainly because the tree demons had completed their waterway exploration mission. According to the markings on the map, the center of the underground waterway—the source of the slimes—should be inside this small hill.
After three days of construction.
The clearing's greenery was completely gone, leaving only a massive rock pit in its place, and it was still expanding.
The *ding-ding-clang-clang* of excavation never stopped, with worker puffshrooms moving in assembly line fashion along the designated paths, transporting rock debris.
Standing at the edge of the rock pit, Norris watched the scene below with disbelief.
Having mined for so long himself, he naturally knew how adventurers dug in mine shafts.
Chipping a bit here, hammering a bit there, tunnels dug all bumpy and uneven, debris piled on the ground, only cleared when it blocked the path.
He used to think that was normal, but after watching the puffshrooms' project for three full days, by comparison, what adventurers did couldn't even be called mining—at best it was playing with rocks.
The puffshrooms had clear division of labor, perfect order, and high efficiency.
Such a large pit would take even those lord nobles at least half a month to organize, but the puffshrooms did it in just three days...
Initially, Norris thought that as an experienced miner, he could go down and help, but he was sent to the perimeter by the boss.
The reason: getting in the way.
To say he wasn't affected would be impossible—after all, this was the only skill he'd been able to take pride in these past few years...
But after watching the puffshrooms work, he had to acknowledge this assessment. Maybe he could chisel faster than individual puffshrooms, but he definitely couldn't achieve their level of coordinated cooperation.
200 puffshrooms!
Faced with cooperation on this scale, minor differences in individual mining ability were completely irrelevant.
Puffshrooms were far more formidable than anyone imagined!
*Crack—*
In the rock pit, an ordinary crisp sound rang out, just like when other rocks had been broken before.
But through the gap chipped out by the puffshroom's shell, a mass of red stuff suddenly sprayed out.
The puffshroom in front had no time to react before being engulfed.
It was a red slime!
This wasn't the end—a green slime sprayed out from the crack too!
The fissure widened as more pushed through, like cutting a hole in the bottom of a full bag. More and more slimes burst through the rock layer, pouring out like a flood.
In just over ten seconds, they filled the bottom of the rock pit and were still overflowing upward!
Most of the puffshrooms in the pit were submerged by this ocean of slimes, and Norris at the pit's edge was so shocked he kept backing away.
If he had also been digging down there...
Lin Jun was equally horrified watching this.
What the hell?
Had they poked a slime nest?
No wait, they really had poked a slime nest, but what did this quantity mean?
And they were so fat! So big!
What had these slimes been eating to grow like this?
The slimes that had previously run out along the waterways were at most human-height, but the ones in this pit—even the smallest was bigger than any they'd encountered before!
Wait!
Lin Jun suddenly understood.
These things were probably too big—so big that even with liquid bodies, they couldn't squeeze into the waterways, so they all piled up in the nest!
The ones that could escape were the "petite" batch among them!?
This was bad, really bad!
Lin Jun hurriedly mobilized all the puffshrooms standing guard on the perimeter, trying to suppress the slimes before they could climb out of the pit.
At the same time, a new batch of puffshrooms from the fifth floor began massive mobilization.
If suppression failed, a fierce battle would follow.
Lin Jun couldn't ignore this batch of slimes—with their size and numbers, ordinary plant-type monsters couldn't handle them.
If he let them run wild, the entire sixth floor's ecosystem would suffer, and all his recent work would be fucking wasted!
"You retreat to the fifth floor first!" Lin Jun directly ordered Norris to withdraw.
These slimes could no longer be considered suitable opponents for training.
Norris had been hesitating about whether to do something, but hearing the boss's command, he immediately turned and left, brushing past the arriving puffshrooms.
*Bang—*
*Bang—*
Not only were the arriving puffshrooms attacking, but all the fixed turrets on the rock walls began bombarding downward.
Due to distance, the mushroom cannons on the rock walls had terrible accuracy when hitting ground targets.
But now the entire rock pit was filled with slimes—with targets this large, accuracy wasn't an issue. It was all about firepower coverage!
For a moment, slime fluid splattered throughout the entire pit.
However, as surface slimes died, their remaining fluid naturally formed a barrier layer, causing subsequent attacks to be greatly weakened after passing through the fluid.
Moreover, when slimes were injured, they would absorb nearby fluid to repair themselves. The mushroom cannon barrage was becoming increasingly less effective at causing sufficient damage.
And the slimes in the rock pit were still increasing... and increasing...
This wasn't working!
They were about to overflow!
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