[Tearing my pages?] [Sitting on me with your puffshroom butt?] [Locking me in an explosive little dark room?] [How does it feel now?] The text on the pages contained smugness. [The taste of having your soul pulled and extracted—quite special, isn't it?] [Being able to control thousands of individual units, your soul's origin must be extraordinarily vast... perfect for slowly savoring this bone-deep dissolution!]
The Sacred Tome vented its accumulated resentment through venomous words while relentlessly driving those intermittently accumulated souls from hundreds of years to continuously wash over and contaminate the core crystal monument.
Soon, the gray-black souls occupied more than half the space within the stone monument, and continued spreading.
[Ah! It's coming!] [Authority! I can feel it!]
The ring of light points surrounding it suddenly accelerated its rotation, emitting a deep hum!
At the same moment, a blinding massive lightning bolt struck the fifth floor, which was still in chaotic combat, without warning!
The lightning swept across the earth like a divine punishment whip, leaving behind a huge, molten and charred terrifying ravine!
Scarecrows, armored worms, phosphorescent moths, venomous lizards... countless demons didn't even manage to scream before turning to ash, leaving only wisps of smoke and the acrid smell of burning filling the air.
[Heh, how interesting!]
After briefly amusing itself, the Sacred Tome calmed its excited heart after achieving its long-held wish.
[Time to get down to business]
The Sacred Tome manipulated the ring of light points, carrying the aura of a controller, flying directly toward the final tightly sealed metal door in the core area.
It mobilized the core authority it had just obtained, attempting to open it...
The door remained completely motionless, showing no reaction whatsoever!
[???]
The Sacred Tome flew back to the crystal monument in a flash, and in just an instant, it locked onto the source of the problem—
On the crystal monument that had already been dyed gray-black by the souls it had accumulated over hundreds of years, a spot flickering with cyan light appeared particularly glaring!
[Even if it's a collective soul, how could it not be completely absorbed???]
...
Soul.
Invisible and intangible, only briefly visible in concrete form when tearing book pages.
Although he had deduced through various information that his [Greed] ability seized skill proficiency through souls in corpses, Lin Jun still knew nothing about what form "souls" actually took or their position in the world.
And now, Lin Jun felt for the first time this sensation originating from the soul—his soul... had been grasped!
It wasn't a spatial connection, nor signal transmission through the mycelial network, but a deeper, more essential contact.
Even though he decisively cut off all connections with external mycelial mats, this invisible force targeting the soul itself still firmly locked onto his soul!
Through this invisible link, Lin Jun clearly "perceived" his own soul for the first time!
It was like a viscous liquid without fixed form, being continuously sucked in by the vacuum cleaner called "core"... sucked in... sucked in...
His subordinate puffshrooms collapsed to the ground one by one in seemingly random order, like puppets with severed strings.
The collapse of the situation seemed to have slid toward an abyss more desperate than even the worst-case scenario in his contingency plans!
However...
In his soul-level perception, he wondered if it was an illusion, but this vacuum cleaner's aperture... seemed a bit small?
That feeling, rather than a vacuum cleaner, was more like using a straw to suck up that two-colored slime.
Moreover, after the soul was sucked in, it seemed to establish some connection with the dungeon, though it was very vague.
Using controlled souls to wash over the core and seize authority...
Since he couldn't pull his soul out anyway, Lin Jun simply squeezed himself further inside.
...
On the crystal monument, that cyan spot suddenly expanded dramatically!
[It can't be...]
The yellow book desperately wanted to stuff more souls inside to completely crush this thing, but it had no more inventory...
[No no no, what kind of creature could have such a massive soul?!]
However, regardless of whether the yellow book accepted reality, the cyan soul continued rapidly spreading through the crystal monument, squeezing the gray-black souls under the Sacred Tome's control to one side, forcing them into corners, compressing and compressing again, until finally—
A soul shrieked as it was forcibly squeezed out of the crystal monument.
Like a signal for a dam burst, countless gray-black souls followed immediately after, rushing out of the monument in competition!
They didn't return to the yellow book, but quickly dimmed and dissipated in the air, becoming invisible.
[No! Don't! My souls! The souls I've accumulated for three hundred years!]
The Sacred Tome's thin pages fluttered uselessly, completely unable to stop the souls from flowing away.
Before long, the massive crystal monument had been completely soaked in pure cyan, crystal clear throughout, without a trace of impurity!
And this wasn't over yet. Following the invisible soul connection between the yellow book and the crystal monument, tendrils of cyan soul quietly crept up the edges of its cover!
[!!!]
The yellow book tried in terror to sever its connection with the crystal monument, but it immediately experienced what Lin Jun had felt moments ago—once grasped at the soul level, physical barriers became meaningless.
[Wait! Boss! Boss! We can talk this through!] Hasty text appeared.
[Don't... don't come in anymore!]
...
...
...
*Puff puff—*
A beast-of-burden puffshroom rolled in carrying a voice puffshroom, swaggering into the core chamber. These were freshly generated nearby after Lin Jun reconnected to Purple Crystal's mycelial network.
The two puffshrooms went directly beneath the floating yellow book.
At this time, the Sacred Tome's cover was already covered with cyan patterns.
The radiance surrounding the yellow book gradually faded, and losing its support, the book slowly fell down.
The puffshroom gently caught it, its mycelial tendrils brushing over the book cover, wiping away nonexistent dust.
"Little puffshroom?" The voice puffshroom vibrated slightly, producing a dry, hoarse voice that echoed in the core.
[That is... a term of respect!]
"Deliberately not telling me?"
[My... my way of expression was indeed improper, but that was never my intention!]
"How impressive, our long-suffering Sacred Tome-sama!"
[Spare me! Spare this humble one's life! I still have important intelligence! Vital intelligence!]
A thin but exceptionally dazzling electric arc appeared out of nowhere without warning, striking precisely on the yellow book's cover!
[Owwwwww—!!!]
Accompanied by faint crackling sounds, the yellow book's remaining pages emitted black smoke.
[Spare... wrong... have...] This time, it couldn't even form complete words.
"It's fine," the voice puffshroom's tone was calm, even carrying a hint of comfort. The beast-of-burden puffshroom's mycelial tendrils gently smoothed the pages that had curled and charred from the electric shock. "You have plenty of time... speak slowly."
【Title Obtained: Dungeon 13 Administrator (Highest authority over this dungeon acquired)】
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