"Cheers!" ×4
Horn, Old Hammer, Amy, and Noah—the four of them had gathered around a table at the crack of dawn. The tavern's murky light had yet to chase away the shadows of the previous night, yet there they sat amidst the mess of cups and plates, inaugurating another day of debauchery.
As the team that first thought of the wonderful scheme called "puffshroom lottery," they had lingered on the fourth and fifth floors of the dungeon for a solid two days, only reluctantly returning to the surface when their packs couldn't fit even one more prize.
Without question, they were the biggest winners in this lottery craze.
Apart from them, there were second-wave teams like Vera's crew who also got their share of the spoils, but none could compare to their haul.
A full two hundred-plus gold coins split four ways—it was actually more lucrative than what those adventurers who participated in the operation and risked their lives nine times out of ten in the dungeon had earned.
What do adventurers do when they have money?
Except for Noah, who saved most of her gold coins, the other three immediately plunged headfirst into revelry.
No more cheap swill at the Rotten Willow Tavern—instead, the rich aroma of malt beer filled the air.
After three rounds of drinks, cups clinking together, Old Hammer picked his teeth and suddenly squinted, jerking his chin toward Horn: "Hey, Horn, do you remember when you were drawing lots—didn't you pull out a silver pendant?"
"What... what pendant?" The genuine malt beer packed quite a punch. Horn was already drunk enough that his tongue was tying itself in knots, his eyes glazed as he fumbled through the fog of memory.
"The one that crafty Bak took away later," Old Hammer added, taking another sip of his drink.
Horn had drawn so many miscellaneous trinkets and accessories on that trip—how could he remember specific items? But he still had an impression of the name "Bak"—that was the vendor who had bought up a whole pile of their odds and ends.
"Oh... yeah, that happened. So what about it?" Horn asked, shaking his head in confusion.
"That pendant," Amy suddenly interjected from the side, her tone somewhat heartbroken, "belonged to Solarin, the squad leader of the Judgment Wing! That bastard Bak had some serious guts—he turned around and sold it back to the original owner. Heard he got a full 10 gold coins for it!"
Bak's loud voice at the time had attracted quite a few gazes that protected him, but it also spread the news.
"10 gold coins?!" Horn was so shocked he nearly spat his mouthful of malt beer across the table. His eyes went wide, and it took him a while to recover. Then he waved his hand dismissively: "Let him be gutsy and impressive—I wouldn't dare quote that kind of price to the church."
"But what I'm getting at is," Old Hammer set down his cup, his fingers lightly tapping the table surface, his voice dropping to a somewhat mysterious whisper, "that bastard Bak... hasn't been seen for several days now."
"What do you mean?" Horn's drunkenness seemed to clear up a bit at this news.
Old Hammer shrugged, his gaze sweeping across the table: "Exactly what I said. I specifically went to ask around at places where he usually hangs out. Other people said the same thing—nobody's seen hide nor hair of him these past few days."
"You're saying... the church...?" Amy's brow furrowed slightly, her voice carrying a trace of uncertain doubt.
Noah, who had been quietly listening from the side, suddenly looked up, her brow deeply furrowed, interrupting with unusually serious tone: "The church would never do such a thing!"
Her voice wasn't loud, but it carried unquestionable firmness. Even though she was just a novice priest, Noah still didn't want others slandering the church.
Old Hammer glanced at her, his face expressionless: "I never said it was the church. It's possible he got guilty conscience and left Mute Wind Town on his own."
A brief silence settled over the table, with only the sound of clinking glasses and distant, muffled revelry.
Amy cleared her throat, breaking the subtle quiet first, trying to steer the conversation away: "Speaking of which, have you guys heard? Recently in the dungeon, puffshroom sightings seem to have decreased a lot. Is something about to happen..."
---
Of course something was happening, but it was occurring in the deep layers.
Cavern No. 4—a not-particularly-large snail-wood grew in the center of the fungal carpet, housing ten cave dweller guards inside.
But now only eight remained.
When the six-clawed Qis crept up, even though Lin Jun detected their traces immediately, two cave dwellers who couldn't grasp the situation were still taken out in the sneak attack.
The surviving cave dwellers retreated into the snail-wood with their puffshrooms, using this natural fortress to resist the subsequent wave of Qis beetles.
However, the snail-wood hadn't fully matured yet and lacked sufficient hardness. The six-claws frantically tore at the wooden walls, debris flying everywhere—they were about to break through!
In mid-air, a bat swooped down rapidly, but instead of diving toward the battlefield, it went straight for an eye-bug lurking at the edge of the passage!
The eye-bug sensed the threat, and several long-tailed Qis around it immediately hurled stones viciously at the bat.
The bat nimbly wove between the flying stones, emerging completely unscathed.
By then, it was too late for the eye-bug to flee.
The bat suddenly plummeted, and mid-fall, Louisa's form materialized. Riding the momentum of her descent, blood instantly coiled around her right arm. With a fierce whoosh through the air, she crushed the fragile eye-bug in her grip, purple fluid splattering everywhere.
The Qis swarm besieging the snail-wood immediately fell into disarray. Puffshroom reinforcements arriving from neighboring caverns seized the opportunity to strike, quickly annihilating the remaining enemies.
After the battle, the cave dwellers worked with the puffshrooms to dump the corpses onto the fungal carpet for decomposition.
Lin Jun prepared to enhance one of the cave dwellers—the one that had performed best and reacted fastest. Nothing too much, just randomly enhancing one skill as a reward to help it stand out among the other cave dwellers.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, a group of puffshrooms ambushed a Qis transport convoy, cleanly eliminating eight pack-beasts and their escorts. However, when they split open the pack-beasts' swollen bellies, what rolled out wasn't the expected supplies—it was all heavy stones!
A trap!
By the time they realized it, it was too late. From the three surrounding passages, waves of Qis forces surged out like a tide, quickly overwhelming the three-hundred-strong puffshroom strike team.
The twenty-plus interconnected caverns between Lin Jun and the Qis had now become a brutal meat grinder, with both sides switching between offense and defense in endless back-and-forth.
The vicious war of attrition had turned the battlefield into a wasteland. Apart from scattered fungal threads, other magical creatures had naturally disappeared.
After escalating to full-scale war, Lin Jun had finally witnessed the Qis' intelligence.
Not only could they ambush and launch sneak attacks, they also possessed frightening learning ability.
The same trap could hardly work twice—they would even learn to use it against Lin Jun, biting back hard.
This current annihilation battle using the transport convoy as bait to lure enemies deep was learned from Lin Jun's tactics last time.
The current situation was: the Qis constantly learned Lin Jun's tactics, while Lin Jun continuously absorbed Qis skills—mainly [Cold Resistance] and [Light Refraction Stealth].
The reconnaissance skills from eye-bugs were also useful, but their numbers were too few, providing very limited proficiency gains.
The skills on the evil-eyes were even more coveted, but Lin Jun still hadn't found an opportunity to take one down.
It wasn't that the heavy-armored puffshrooms weren't formidable enough—Lin Jun was deliberately keeping them in reserve, away from the war of attrition.
Heavy-armored puffshrooms might not be slow, but they certainly couldn't be called swift, and definitely couldn't keep up with an evil-eye's floating speed.
Once the enemy discovered that heavy-armored puffshrooms were difficult to deal with, given the Qis' intelligence, they would definitely retreat the evil-eye decisively. After that, they might very likely switch to more troublesome guerrilla harassment tactics, and Lin Jun didn't have that much time to waste on this.
Lin Jun was waiting for a decisive battle moment—a killing blow that could trap the evil-eye and large numbers of Qis forces completely, with nowhere to escape.
And this decisive battle—Lin Jun was almost ready!
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