Intermediate Magic Contract.
Now it seemed Inanna could indeed command the knight puffshroom through this contract, though the execution priority couldn't override its own commands.
This was different from nodes. When Lin Jun wanted to command puffshrooms under nodes, he had to first move them back from the nodes to the main cluster before controlling them—essentially, puffshrooms could only listen to one boss's commands at a time.
But now this knight puffshroom was simultaneously responding to two masters' instructions!
Quite interesting.
And this was just an intermediate magic contract—didn't that imply there were also advanced magic contracts?
So would an advanced magic contract's command priority be higher than his own?
These were all questions worth exploring.
After all, what if someday he painstakingly devoted his heart and soul, exhausting all resources to create an ultimate invincible "God of Puffshrooms," only to have it stolen away by an advanced magic contract the moment it was finished... Just thinking about that scenario was enough to give him a heart attack!
After the Sword Saint's group departed, Lin Jun began cleaning up the battlefield debris—piecing together the severed puffshrooms and such...
However, this time only the few elite puffshrooms that Fifteen had cut managed to survive through [Mycelium Reconstruction]. Those puffshrooms attacked by the Sword Saint were without exception completely unable to rise again.
What the hell?
Through his [Magic Perception] vision, he could see that the cut surfaces of these puffshrooms were all affected by some kind of suppressive effect, preventing mycelium regeneration.
Was this the effect of Sword's Extremity? Or the effect of that longsword in the Sword Saint's hand?
So disgusting!
Lin Jun had originally thought the puffshrooms could be reassembled and reused, losing at most a few hundred. Now it seemed over a thousand puffshrooms were completely written off!
What a massive loss!
Good thing he hadn't brought out the heavy armor puffshrooms, or the losses would have been even worse.
He had originally planned to immediately rush toward the core following the path Aedin had described in the mycelium network once they left. Now it seemed he'd need to spend several days first replenishing puffshrooms.
As for that little notebook Inanna had "accidentally dropped" at the end?
Lin Jun controlled a puffshroom to gently open it.
Handwritten title: Underground City Related Notes
The handwriting was neat and elegant, clearly Inanna's script, with a little mushroom drawn beside the title.
With his [Human Common Language] at level nine, Lin Jun could already read these texts almost without obstacles.
Opening the inner pages, the content was quite "casual"—all fragments that Inanna had written down from memory after finishing those books at the Relic Association.
She wrote down whatever she remembered, resulting in a completely unsystematic mess, scattered like an overturned puzzle.
But for Lin Jun, there was still much valuable information within.
For instance, so-called "floors" were actually independent spaces completely separated from each other, possibly thousands of miles apart, connected only by "staircases" linking these spaces together.
For another example, the underground city's endless source of magical power actually came from outside the world.
There were even speculations about the underground city creator's identity—in that era, only heroes, demon lords, or deities possessed the tremendous power to create underground cities.
Rarely, this was a chance to understand the underground city without going through the Yellow Book. Humans did have some capability after all!
Taking advantage of the gap while replenishing puffshrooms, Lin Jun began studying it carefully.
...
On the surface.
Well-informed adventurers had already caught wind and gathered, clustering along both sides of the road.
Part of their gazes were drawn like magnets to the Sword Saint—adventurers were naturally a group that worshipped strength, and being able to witness one of humanity's top powerhouses with their own eyes was enough for them to boast excitedly in taverns for quite a while.
Another part of their attention focused on Inanna... or rather, on the strangely-shaped puffshroom in her arms.
The knight puffshroom at this moment had already regenerated a small section of its feet, and about half of its six mycelium tentacles had recovered, curled up limply, looking somewhat like some kind of arthropod larva at first glance.
Only that equipment made it particularly conspicuous.
"Is that the 'King of Puffshrooms'?" an adventurer stared wide-eyed, his voice filled with disbelief.
They had coexisted with puffshrooms for so long, yet aside from those who participated in the last subjugation force, no one had seen the king!
"Why is it wearing a cloak and carrying a broken shield? Can it actually use human equipment?"
"Tsk, wait... that pendant hanging on it, I think I've seen it somewhere..."
As the one who defeated the puffshroom, the Sword Saint naturally wouldn't care about the trinkets hanging on a puffshroom.
Even when Master Guge later appraised that seemingly tattered "shield" as actually being a precious ancient dragon scale, the Sword Saint only showed a hint of interest in its origins, pulling Guge aside for quite a while of discussion and analysis.
In the end, all these items were left to Inanna for her to handle as she saw fit.
Inanna naturally wouldn't steal the puffshroom's belongings. Her mind was currently full of thoughts about finding an excuse to return to the underground city alone—after being here so long, she still hadn't found a chance to lie on the mycelium carpet!
"It actually succeeded!" Guild Master Farr looked at the knight puffshroom in Inanna's arms with some disbelief.
It wasn't that he doubted the Sword Saint could handle the "King of Puffshrooms," but he hadn't expected them to actually be able to root it out from within the underground city.
"Thanks to Master Aedin's detection spells," Guge said gravely from the side.
Throughout this journey, the one who could converse with him, a Diamond-rank mage specializing in array research, was neither the supremely powerful Sword Saint, nor the other accompanying mages, and certainly not a simple soul like Inanna.
Only Aedin of the same rank could engage in some profound magical exchanges with him. Their relationship had become quite good.
"So, can this 'king' command other puffshrooms?" Farr pressed, this being the key point.
If it couldn't, then capturing this king would be meaningless.
Guge nodded slightly: "We've already verified on the way—it can exert a certain degree of dominion over the puffshroom population within the underground city."
He paused, his tone turning heavy, "Unfortunately... regarding the core's repair, we're truly powerless."
"Sigh..." After their exchange, Farr only felt a headache coming on.
Though Guge was only Diamond-rank, if one considered purely his attainments in arrays and runes, he wasn't even inferior to those few Grand Mages of the elven race. If he declared the core irreparable, then it truly was beyond salvation.
It was just that he had only recently taken up this branch guild master position, and in half a year the underground city would be gone!?
While such a natural disaster-level change couldn't be blamed on him, his plans to achieve something noteworthy during his tenure had gone up in smoke.
Not to mention that when the underground city collapsed, it would likely cause a small-scale disaster, requiring preparation of response measures in advance...
To the point where he wasn't even that concerned about the puffshrooms anymore.
These puffshrooms would probably perish along with the underground city. Even if Inanna helped transfer some of them to the surface to continue reproducing, it wouldn't serve much purpose.
The magical power concentration difference between the surface and underground city was too great. Surface mycelium carpets relying on collected magical power could probably barely maintain survival, with hardly any surplus magical power for large-scale puffshroom birth.
The ducal house surely wouldn't water the mycelium with magical potions daily just to produce a few puffshrooms, right?
As for this "King of Puffshrooms," separated from its massive population, it was merely an individual with slightly higher intelligence whose strength was on the weaker side even among Diamond-rank magical beasts.
In the future, it would probably just be a special pet that Miss Inanna kept for entertainment.
Therefore, the moment it was confirmed that the underground city was doomed to destruction, Farr's interest in the puffshrooms had largely dissipated, replaced by worry about this branch's future: once the underground city disappeared, would this branch still have any reason to exist?
---
A certain teal mushroom controlled a puffshroom to gently close the little notebook, carefully putting it away.
Excellent, I'm gradually understanding everything!
Comments