In the third cave, Lin Jun was testing his newly acquired skill.
A bizarrely shaped puffshroom stood beside the rock wall.
It was somewhat taller than its kind, roughly 1.4 meters tall, standing next to normal puffshrooms like a gangly beanpole.
Its excessive height made it wobble precariously when barely managing to stand upright. Fortunately, it had four feet at the base that were desperately supporting it, preventing it from collapsing into a heap.
The puffshroom's mushroom cap had been replaced by a massive maw sporting three rows of sharp teeth.
Though it was called a "massive maw," that was only relative to the puffshroom's size—it couldn't compare to an earth worm at all.
Beside this puffshroom lay another one that was currently emanating the delicious aroma of roasted mushrooms. It proved that [High-Temperature Drilling] must be paired with [High-Temperature Resistance] to be usable, otherwise it was simply a self-heating mushroom.
Attempting to have Drilling Puffshroom No. 2 activate its skill, those three rows of teeth gradually turned red, radiating high heat.
Under Lin Jun's command, the heated and brittle rock wall was quickly pulverized by the puffshroom as it twisted its body in circles, creating an opening.
The drilling puffshroom's four feet spun around, causing its body to rotate continuously. In this manner, the puffshroom drilled into the rock wall bit by bit like a drill head.
The speed wasn't particularly fast, but that was only because the skill was still LV1.
Even so, this level-one skill was much faster than Lin Jun's previous methods of using [Rock Eating] or directly smashing stones with [Chitinous Shell].
However, when the puffshroom had drilled most of its body into the rock wall with only its rear end sticking out, its four legs suddenly gave way—it died!
How did it die again?
It hadn't even been attacked...
Several ordinary puffshrooms worked together to pull Drilling No. 2 out. The extracted drilling puffshroom was battered and covered in scrapes all over.
Inside the small hole it had drilled, the walls were covered with mycelium it had left behind...
It could actually scrape itself to death while drilling?
[High-Temperature Drilling] caused the puffshroom to expel the stones it had eaten from within its body to the surroundings to reinforce the rock walls. It now seemed that due to insufficient body strength, the puffshroom was instead crushed by the stone walls.
Thinking about it this way, earth worms probably didn't move through walls with their soft flesh either, but were wrapped in a layer of rock armor.
So [Rock Eating] was actually a necessary skill after all!
By the time Drilling Puffshroom No. 3 took the stage, half a day had passed. Lin Jun had it eat its way to a layer of rock armor first before coming over.
Sure enough, with the rocky shell protection created by [Rock Eating LV8], the puffshroom successfully drilled its entire body into the rock wall without injury.
Using its four short legs to rotate its body from behind, while not as swift and convenient as earth worms twisting their bodies to spin, it could still advance steadily.
After all, puffshrooms didn't have naturally suitable body structures for underground drilling like insects did—being usable was enough.
As for efficiency, Lin Jun could accept it being slower.
Different floors of the dungeon couldn't be drilled through anyway. This skill's main purpose was still to dig holes within floors to hide mycelium.
Even the first floor's bluestone brick maze could have holes dug in the middle of its walls.
Beyond all this, Lin Jun actually wanted to try whether he could dig holes in the sixth floor's ravine.
The sixth floor directly connected to the deep zone, with Thousand-Pivot Mayflies dwelling in between.
Although Lin Jun had now seized a piece of territory from them to connect the upper and lower areas, he was still a hundred thousand miles away from eliminating them.
Several mayflies flew over to harass them daily, all beaten back by the hundred puffshrooms blocking the opening.
But there was no guarantee that one day a level-sixty-plus giant insect wouldn't come to reclaim that position.
A severed mycelial network would be fatal to the expedition force, but that location made it impossible for Lin Jun to maintain large numbers of troops as regular defensive forces.
He couldn't possibly keep seven or eight hundred puffshrooms there at all times to guard against giant insects that might or might not appear, right?
If he could dig one, or even several mycelial network routes deep within the stone walls of the ravine, connecting the upper and lower areas, that would be truly safe.
Even the deep zone could eventually consider using mycelial network routes...
Hm?
Lin Jun suddenly sensed that Drilling Puffshroom No. 3 had stopped.
Not due to malfunction, but because there was suddenly no stone around it!
In a void of nothingness, Drilling No. 3 drifted farther and farther away, until like all other puffshrooms that had fallen into the void, it suddenly lost contact at some point.
Looking at this fissure opened in the rock wall, Lin Jun was somewhat speechless.
Digging and digging until hitting a fissure—who could have predicted that?
Finding the first one meant there were definitely second and third ones...
He felt fine about it. Lin Jun had already adapted to his dungeon's ramshackle nature.
...
After completing the drilling puffshroom tests, all floors began production, then quietly started excavation work.
Since drilling puffshrooms produced slight vibrations and "crack-crack" sounds when cutting through stone to clear paths, they only worked when confirming no adventurers were around.
After all, exposed mycelial network routes would lose their most important concealment function.
The project didn't proceed entirely smoothly either.
For example, on the third floor trap zone, many passages relied on iron chains suspending massive stones and weren't continuous, making it extremely inconvenient to excavate network routes.
The sixth floor presented different circumstances—severe groundwater seepage meant digging shallow would face harassment from plant root systems, while digging deep would likely result in flooding. Finding suitable locations was quite troublesome.
Despite this, the mycelial network route plan continued advancing steadily, its progress proving far more reliable than another skill he'd placed high hopes on previously.
[Cocooning]
In the swamp area, several puffshrooms wrapped in ball-shaped mycelial bundles now showed no movement whatsoever inside.
Through the mycelial network, Lin Jun could sense that the puffshrooms inside had neither changed form nor gained new skills.
Initially, they had absorbed considerable magic power, but afterward there was no further development—they only consumed the magic power needed for daily puffshroom maintenance.
This made Lin Jun wonder if this skill might just be a bed-weaving technique that giant insects used for sleeping?
Perhaps it lacked some condition needed to enter the next phase, or maybe he should observe other mayflies' cocooning situations?
Of course, it was also possible that insufficient time had passed, though Lin Jun felt this possibility was small since there were no changes whatsoever inside.
In the end, he could only hope that after the mycelial network routes were completed, he could secretly monitor other giant insects to see if he could gain some insights.
...
While Lin Jun was diligently working on building his beautiful dungeon, a small incident caught his attention.
A guard-like fellow had rented an illumination puffshroom, then suddenly attacked and stabbed to death the defenseless poor puffshroom before fleeing the dungeon with the puffshroom's corpse.
Through his vision in Mute Wind Town, Lin Jun watched him carry the puffshroom all the way into the Adventurer's Guild.
What was the meaning of this?
Could someone have posted a quest to obtain an illumination puffshroom?
Regardless, backstabbing a service-type puffshroom was unacceptable. Lin Jun added this fellow to the dungeon's blacklist.
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