In the sixth floor's unfinished new mushroom forest, Little Green had its feet planted deep in the earth, its root tendrils churning back and forth through the soil. Beside it, another tree demon was inserting tender shoots into a plot of already-tilled ground.
The loose, fertile soil provided excellent breathability and water permeability, beneficial for root respiration and growth. Compared to the slow-growing trees, mushrooms developed much faster. The mycelial carpet had long since been laid across the planned territory. Though the mushroom trees hadn't fully matured, they had all sprouted, and in roughly half a month they would take on a proper form.
Spores had also been scattered on these tender shoots, destined to grow alongside them in a beneficial symbiosis. The mushrooms that would grow on these shoots—when harvested, their magical power wouldn't be collected by Lin Jun, but would instead be entirely devoted to helping the shoots rapidly mature.
Once these shoots grew into demon trees and further developed consciousness to become tree demons, these newborn tree demons would naturally belong to the mushroom faction.
To help them grow better, Lin Jun had experimented with creating some puffshroom tools.
At the center of the planted shoots stood a puffshroom fixed to the ground, constantly expanding and contracting. Each time it contracted, water would spray in all directions from countless tiny holes on the puffshroom's cap, just like a sprinkler.
Beneath it ran a special mycelial tube—though calling it a tube, it was actually an improved version of mycelial tendrils. Complex modifications like adding wings were beyond what a puffshroom's simple brain could handle with its basic skills, but relatively simple changes were another matter entirely, like this tube that only needed to pump and suck.
The tube connected directly to the underground water, with another puffshroom serving as a relay point in between.
Simply put, Lin Jun had combined two puffshrooms into a shower system, and the results looked quite promising so far. Even some tree demons who had finished their work would come over for a refreshing wash—the sensation of water directly hitting their bark was something the tree demons greatly enjoyed.
Norris, whose probation had just ended and who was about to return to the slime quarters, also spotted this novel contraption. Following the tree demons' example, he approached the shower mushroom to let the water droplets strike his white scales.
But after enjoying it for just a moment, he suddenly remembered something and hastily retreated from the spray range, opening the yellow book in his hands.
"Yellow Book, you didn't get hurt by the water, did you?"
[Do you take me for some 10-copper roadside trash?]
[How could I possibly be afraid of water?]
[And watch your tone—call me Senior. I arrived at the mushroom garden before you did.]
*You were locked up the whole time though...* Norris thought to himself, but didn't voice it. Instead, he went along with the yellow book's demand and addressed it as Senior.
Originally, Norris had wanted to avoid getting too involved with the yellow book. The things revealed during the boss's conversations with it were too frightening—compared to the yellow book, he was basically a sitting duck.
But the Sacred Canon, being an evil tome whose primary job was corrupting hearts, could hardly call itself useful if it couldn't handle a 17-year-old kid, even without its charm abilities.
It told Norris a story about a hero rescuing a princess.
On a certain day of a certain month in a certain year, a small kingdom's princess was abducted by a dragon. A hero accepted the quest to rescue her.
Along the way, the hero made companions, explored ruins, defeated monsters, and finally reached the dragon's lair—only to discover the princess had been digested down to nothing, not even scraps remaining. The mortified hero could only slay the dragon to avenge the princess.
When the failed hero returned in tears, he found that the small kingdom had been destroyed during his absence. No one was left who knew about his dark history of failing to save the princess. Truly cause for celebration.
Lin Jun, relying on his LV7 mastery of Common Language, had quietly eavesdropped on the general gist. It was quite a perversely amusing story, but Norris was utterly entranced.
Having only a gambling-addict father who died young, and being trapped in a debt spiral since age fourteen, Norris had precious little opportunity to hear stories. He was immediately captivated by the Sacred Canon's twisted tale.
After the Sacred Canon promised to tell him a story every three days, Norris readily agreed to carry it with him.
---
Lin Jun's mycelial carpet was now spreading from the sixth floor toward the seventh.
According to the yellow book, if no fissures were found on the seventh floor, it would indicate that this spot on the sixth floor was the starting point, and the problem wouldn't be too serious.
But if fissures appeared on the seventh floor as well, the situation might be quite grave.
Though the likelihood was small—if the fissure problem had already become severe, the adventurers should have noticed long ago.
Lin Jun had asked Norris, and at least before Norris came down, there hadn't been any related rumors.
The seventh floor was a very peculiar level. If Lin Jun had to describe the terrain, it would be: sewers.
Massive sewers.
Water channels over ten meters wide ran between earthen walkways on either side. The waterways crisscrossed in a network, with only seven or eight meters between the water surface and the ceiling—a cramped feeling compared to the dozens of meters of height on the fifth and sixth floors. There weren't even many monsters in this space.
But this was just an illusion. The seventh floor's truly vast expanse lay underwater. The surface portion probably didn't even account for a tenth of the total space, and the monsters on this level were all aquatic creatures.
Giant shrimp, oysters, turtles, strange-headed fish—everything was there. Heaven knew why there were so many things that looked like seafood.
Lin Jun quite liked this floor, because the only creatures active on the shores of the seventh floor were some amphibious monsters and an insect species that lived on the ceiling—no slimes!
The mycelial carpet spread without any pressure. Those few species that came ashore would at most nibble some mushrooms; they wouldn't deliberately destroy the carpet.
Lin Jun's mycelial carpet fed on glowgrass and spread smoothly all the way—a world of difference compared to the sixth floor.
Though there was still a small problem.
Since most of the seventh floor's space was underwater, if there were spatial fissures, they would very likely appear underwater as well.
His dungeon might even be leaking water into other dungeons.
Since he needed to explore underwater, a batch of specialized puffshrooms was naturally essential.
But in Lin Jun's skill library, all the underwater-related skills were quite low level. These low-level skills had limited effects and couldn't fully support puffshrooms in completing underwater exploration missions.
The highest was [Underwater Adaptation LV4], which only let puffshrooms stay underwater a bit longer—no help for combat or escape.
Lin Jun had already tried deploying several puffshrooms down there. The result was that he'd basically fed the fish for free—shortly after they went down, mangled mushroom caps came floating back up.
This couldn't be helped. Lin Jun had never had the chance to encounter these aquatic monsters before. Those level one or two underwater skills had all been casually brought back when Little Black went out to play.
To complete the exploration now, he'd first need to raise these skill levels.
Not too high—getting them to around LV4 would do. That was a level that could be achieved quickly while still being useful.
But the problem was that aquatic monsters weren't like the land monsters that Lin Jun could charge at with a group of puffshrooms and take down.
Aquatic monsters had to be lured onto land first, or at least brought to the surface, before there'd be a chance to kill them.
Fortunately, Lin Jun was familiar with this too—it was just fishing!
Comments