Jida?

Deep within the zone, in the old mushroom garden.

The spatial rifts continued their slow but steady proliferation and spread. Just yesterday, a fissure that opened without warning instantly severed a diligently excavating puffshroom at the waist! Its upper half, along with a B-grade magic crystal, plummeted into the deathly silent rift and vanished without a trace.

This was Lin Jun's first time observing the birth of a rift, and overall, it wasn't entirely without warning signs. Before a rift tore open, the space would undergo slight distortion accompanied by violent magical fluctuations—for Lin Jun, who possessed [Mana Perception], it was quite obvious.

This was undoubtedly crucial intelligence. At the very least, knowing this meant Lin Jun no longer had to worry about his main body being ambushed and decapitated by a rift.

At the center of the giant snail-wood, nearly a hundred puffshrooms quietly surrounded the now-awakened Norris. These were all being used by Lin Jun to test the upper limits of his mental control abilities.

However, at this moment, most of the puffshrooms remained idle, with only 36 actively moving under Norris's mental manipulation.

You couldn't say there was no improvement—his control capacity had increased from the original 20 to 36.

But what was this pathetic excuse for progress supposed to be?

[Mental Integration LV7]! Lin Jun's control capacity could expand to 3,000, so what was Norris's deal?

Still... there were other changes.

The puffshroom cluster surrounding Norris no longer moved like a rigid collective as before. Now, some puffshrooms bounced lightly in place, others circled along fixed trajectories, each executing completely different commands—this meant Norris had gained the ability to micromanage down to individual units!

And Norris seemed to have noticed even deeper changes.

"Boss!" He picked up a puffshroom, his voice carrying the wonder of discovering a new continent. "I think I can... receive their sensory input! As long as I make contact like this... though the sensation is very vague."

The sensation was vague?

"Norris, try this one instead!" Lin Jun reassigned a scout puffshroom under Norris's node.

As soon as Norris took hold of it, he felt the difference!

"This... this is sonar detection?! And... the flow of mana? I can even sense minute air disturbances!" The flood of new sensory information rushed in like a tide, and Norris excitedly experienced this unprecedented ability.

However, after barely a minute, Norris's face suddenly went pale. He violently threw down the puffshroom and clutched his buzzing head with both hands: "I can't take it anymore! Boss... too much... too much information! My head's going to explode..."

Maintaining four types of perception for just one minute had pushed him to his limit.

Subsequent tests showed that if Norris kept active perception channels to no more than two types simultaneously, he basically wouldn't experience any discomfort. Compared to when he first used [Sonar Detection] and got headaches after brief use, this was already considerable progress.

The changes brought by [Mental Integration] were quite substantial, but still far from what he had envisioned. Now it seemed he could micromanage... he could share senses...

Hmm?

A puffshroom was quickly generated by Lin Jun, carrying only one skill—[Assimilative Absorption LV6].

Lin Jun controlled it, along with several other ordinary puffshrooms, to lie down on the mycelium mat.

As [Assimilative Absorption] activated, the surrounding hyphae were drawn and attracted like living things, wrapping around them layer by layer. The hyphae not only enveloped this core puffshroom but also entangled and merged the nearby puffshrooms together!

Moments later, a massive "mycelium humanoid" nearly four meters tall took shape, using ten puffshrooms as its "skeleton"! Its "head" was that scout puffshroom.

Lin Jun transferred control of all these puffshrooms to Norris.

"Norris, try getting inside." Lin Jun's voice carried a hint of anticipation.

"Huh? Get inside..." Norris looked at this strange thing, somewhat confused. "How do I get in?"

As soon as he finished speaking, the scout puffshroom at the "head" twisted its body and slowly "extracted" itself from the top, revealing a dark opening. Inside, a space just large enough for one person was faintly visible.

Following instructions, Norris carefully climbed up and squeezed through the opening. His sharp claws accidentally tore several strands of the wrapping hyphae, prompting Lin Jun's mental reminders: "Careful! Retract your claws!"

The internal space was cramped, forcing Norris to curl up his limbs uncomfortably. He felt like he was sitting on something soft and round.

Looking down, he saw it was the mushroom cap of the puffshroom with [Assimilative Absorption].

After he entered, the scout puffshroom squirmed back into position, its mushroom cap fitting perfectly at the opening's exterior to serve as the "head," while its rear end... pressed right against the top of Norris's head.

Through the scout puffshroom's senses, Norris instantly "saw" the outside scenery.

"Norris, now try controlling Jida to stand up." Lin Jun issued the command.

"Jida? Boss, what's Jida?"

"That's what you're sitting in right now. Anyway, try controlling the puffshrooms inside to make it stand up!"

"How do I control—"

Each of Jida's limbs contained two puffshrooms. Under Norris's control, Jida writhed its four limbs uglily on the ground, scraping off quite a bit of outer hyphae but failing to stand up.

Lin Jun didn't rush him, just silently observed this biological mecha's debut performance.

After half a day, Norris finally... mastered the technique of making Jida crawl on all fours!

Watching Norris excitedly controlling Jida to crawl back and forth continuously, Lin Jun had to remind him: "Norris, hurry up and evolve to upright walking!"

"Oh, oh! Yes, Boss!"

With crawling experience as a foundation, this "evolution" proceeded much faster. It first used the snail-wood's wall for support and slowly stood up. After adapting somewhat, it shakily took its first step... second step...

*Splat—*

Two dull bursting sounds suddenly rang out!

The two puffshrooms in the "feet" couldn't withstand the suddenly increased pressure and were instantly flattened and burst open!

Having lost its support, "Jida" collapsed thunderously, crashing down like scattered building blocks with hyphae flying everywhere.

Norris coughed his way out of the chaotic pile of hyphae, his face covered in hyphal debris.

"Boss?" His tone carried a hint of bewilderment and innocence.

"Hmm..." Lin Jun's consciousness calmly swept over the mess. "Not bad for a first attempt. Go rest and recover your mental strength. Later... we'll try again with different materials."

The collapse really wasn't Norris's fault—after all, they were just blank puffshrooms.

Later, Lin Jun tried switching to elite puffshrooms, generating surface shells, and equipping the hands with mushroom cannons or rock-armor shields. It actually looked somewhat legitimate.

After his previous "training," Norris's control had indeed become much more skilled. He was no longer limited to crawling and could even control it to clumsily swing its arms, performing simple blocking or firing stances.

However, after a series of tests, Lin Jun could only give a disappointing conclusion to this "Jida Project" that had consumed nearly an entire day: It was a white elephant.

The elite puffshrooms could indeed be combined together, and through training, Norris was indeed becoming increasingly proficient at operating them.

But... was there any improvement in combat effectiveness?

Thanks to the core puffshroom's [Chitin Shell] skill, it did provide protection for other puffshrooms that originally had little defensive capability, but this essentially just saved the cost of individually adding defensive skills to each puffshroom.

These puffshrooms were merely physically stacked together—their strength, speed, and magical attributes showed no fusion or amplification!

The mushroom cannon fired by the combination had the same power as a single puffshroom's cannon. The heavy punch thrown by Jida contained kinetic energy that was actually less than having an elite puffshroom roll up to full-speed charging collision force.

This carefully assembled behemoth was ultimately just an impressive-looking empty shell.

Puffshroom Gundam... truly wasn't so easy to achieve!