"Come on, Little Black, eat a bit more."
Puffshrooms filled with potent acid cores gathered around Little Black, eagerly pressing forward toward her, practically ready to leap directly into her mouth.
Little Black opened her mouth, and a half-chewed puffshroom fell from her lips, dropping to the ground.
After quite a while, Little Black suddenly discarded the puffshroom in her hand and quickly scrambled up a mushroom tree using both hands and feet, hiding atop the mushroom cap.
The puffshrooms couldn't reach Little Black and could only mill about aimlessly beneath the mushroom tree.
Seeing this, Lin Jun had no choice but to disperse the puffshrooms.
It seemed Little Black's stomach wasn't infinitely large after all. Though she normally ate without pause, when actually forced to consume them, she managed to eat... well, sixteen of them.
Of course, for a humanoid creature standing only one and a half meters tall, being able to continuously consume sixteen half-human-sized puffshrooms demonstrated quite impressive digestive capabilities.
After most of the day had passed, Little Black finally jumped down from the mushroom tree, but she refused to eat any more acid puffshrooms, only consuming the mild-flavored ordinary magical puffshrooms.
The forced feeding plan had failed—they could only maintain the normal collection schedule of once every two days.
Unfortunately, most of the output was gaseous breath; only a small half-bottle of concentrated acid could be collected.
After a week, they had gathered just over one bottle, which Lin Jun divided into ten portions.
At the edge of the ravine, bat puffshrooms flew down one by one.
On the bare rock face, several mycelial threads woven into nutrient supply tubes had pushed the fungal carpet to the edge of the mayfly habitat.
At this position, they had woven a multi-leveled platform resembling a bird perch, with bat puffshrooms hanging upside down from it one by one.
Seeing that the first batch of puffshrooms had more or less taken their positions, three faster puffshrooms flew out.
Though all were bat puffshrooms, this expedition actually consisted of multiple varieties—a composite force.
These three were speed-specialized puffshrooms serving as decoys.
The three decoys flew downward for some distance and soon reached the edge of the mayflies' territory.
Below in the ravine were mayflies everywhere—either in swarms or as high-level individuals.
After examining each area, Lin Jun selected this location where mayfly density was relatively low and levels didn't exceed LV50—an overall "simple" region to tackle.
The moment the three decoy puffshrooms appeared in the Thousand-Joint Mayfly territory, seven mayflies immediately beat their wings and flew over from a distance, dragging their segmented bodies.
The mayflies possessed [Vibration Sensing], with quite a large enemy detection range.
This perfectly allowed the decoy puffshrooms to lure the mayflies from a sufficient distance before retreating.
Puffshroom bodies were truly unsuited for flight. Even with [Acceleration LV6] added, they still couldn't match the Thousand-Joint Mayflies—natural flying magical creatures.
Since they hadn't gone too far to begin with, the three puffshrooms quickly flapped their way back to the mycelial platform.
When the seven mayflies caught up, they were greeted by densely packed mushroom cannons hanging upside down from the mycelial framework.
The seven ordinary mayflies, all under LV30, were almost instantly killed in the barrage of mushroom cannon fire, their broken bodies falling straight into the bottomless abyss below.
The sight made Lin Jun feel terrible.
This was exactly why he hadn't wanted to take the ravine route from the beginning!
Setting aside the difficulty of conquest and supply challenges, after killing enemies here, the magical creature corpses all fell away and couldn't be retrieved—absolutely no profit, pure thankless effort.
After finishing, the three decoy puffshrooms set out again.
A few minutes later, they returned with six more mayflies into the trap.
However, this time there was a LV41 big fellow among them.
It was larger than others of its kind, with more body segments.
After one round of mushroom cannon fire, the other mayflies all fell down, but this one remained airborne, charging toward their position.
[Saliva Arrow LV5]
A mass of black liquid shot onto its head. The solid carapace dissolved like fragile paper under the instant corrosion, with the venom falling directly into its brain.
Less than two seconds later, this large mayfly also fell down like its companions.
Little Black's venom was limited, making it perfect for specifically eliminating high-level units.
Actually, the simplest method would be to bring Little Black down. Little Black could fly too, and eliminating these Thousand-Joint Mayflies shouldn't be too difficult.
But the problem was that below wasn't some limited-range fixed stratum, but rather a deep zone of unknown actual size.
Without the fungal network, if Little Black got carried away fighting and disappeared, Lin Jun had no confidence in finding her again.
For safety's sake, it was better to let the puffshrooms suffer a bit first.
As the outermost mayflies were lured away and eliminated, the work of the decoy puffshrooms gradually became more dangerous.
Due to increased distance, even with the puffshrooms desperately flapping back, the Thousand-Joint Mayflies were beginning to barely keep up with the decoy puffshrooms.
Seeing the pursuit closing in, the decoy puffshrooms could only activate their backup skill.
[Jet Stream LV4]
Gas sprayed from beneath the puffshrooms' bodies, and two puffshrooms immediately shot upward a bit, shaking off the mayflies somewhat.
But another puffshroom lost control due to the jet propulsion, spinning wildly through the air like a deflating balloon, and was finally skewered by a mayfly, directly sacrificing itself.
This was unavoidable. The puffshrooms' self-control was limited. Using this skill as an emergency measure with a sixty percent survival rate was acceptable—after all, there were plenty of decoy puffshrooms...
As the mayflies below were cleared, the mycelial threads followed, extending downward. After spreading about a hundred meters or so, new mycelial platforms began forming, advancing bit by bit.
They also had to clear away all the silk nets that the Thousand-Joint Mayflies had constructed.
For this purpose, Lin Jun specifically created a magical puffshroom to come over and specialize in casting fireball spells to burn mayfly silk.
...
On the second day, after advancing a thousand meters, Lin Jun encountered a fork.
The branching direction seemed to lead to another mayfly gathering place. Lin Jun chose not to tackle both simultaneously, instead stationing a batch of puffshrooms at this position to guard the passage.
This prevented wandering mayflies from severing the rear fungal carpet.
By the fourth day, having advanced roughly over two thousand meters from the starting position, Lin Jun finally saw something different—a nest.
Attached beneath an inverted mountain peak was a giant cocoon chamber woven from silk spun by Thousand-Joint Mayflies.
Several mayflies could be seen carrying prey in and out of various entrances at the bottom.
Setting aside the nest itself, seeing mayflies carrying prey meant they were probably not far from the surface, which greatly lifted Lin Jun's spirits.
These past few days of profitless battles had nearly made him sick, and they occasionally encountered collective mayfly charges, causing significant puffshroom losses.
Fortunately, there were plenty of backup puffshrooms, so these losses hadn't delayed the advance.
Looking at the nest below, Lin Jun controlled a winged magical puffshroom to fly up and hand-crafted a large fireball.
The previous silk had been burned strand by strand, but this nest with silk gathered together would definitely be much more satisfying to burn.
The fireball smashed into it, igniting a patch of insect silk that rapidly spread.
In less than a few minutes, the entire nest had become a burning fireball.
Many Thousand-Joint Mayflies shrieked as they emerged from within. Those flying upward were all bombarded down by the mushroom cannon arrays Lin Jun had prepared in advance.
With this, this passage could be considered more or less conquered.
Afterward, there would just be some cleanup work...
The nest's insect silk quickly burned away completely, then revealed a massive insect body coiled around the base of the inverted mountain peak.
[Race: Thousand-Joint Mayfly]
[Level: LV65]
[Fixed Status: Cocooned, Rigid]
Lin Jun had barely opened the status panel when that last fixed status disappeared right before his eyes.
The giant insect began moving its body that had remained motionless for so long, its semicircular compound eyes reflecting red light.
Though Thousand-Joint Mayflies had no pupils, Lin Jun felt its gaze had already locked onto the puffshrooms.
So... what the hell kind of ecosystem was this?
Comments