Forgot what? As long as there's sufficient computational power, the dungeon can self-repair—this is an incredibly mystical ability.
This repair doesn't merely refer to mending rifts!
Take the third floor, which serves as a trap-filled stratum. The dungeon not only automatically resets traps, but even when traps are destroyed by rifts, it repairs the trap mechanisms themselves, fills wall cavities, and even restores the mycelial network tunnels within the walls...
Damn it!
I hastily cut off the computational power supply to that section... So it turns out that my ability to dig mycelial tunnels in the upper seven floors was purely because the dungeon lacked sufficient computational power and wasn't supplying repairs to that area...
Though the first few floors are scarred and battered, repairing them is at most a massive engineering project—not particularly troublesome. Even the fifth floor, which experienced the battle royale, isn't much of a problem. The real trouble lies with the sixth and seventh floors!
When the dungeon previously accelerated its collapse, rifts appeared even in places that originally had none, let alone areas that already had them.
The rift within the mountain cavity has expanded from fist-sized to a six-meter gaping maw that the bi-colored slimes simply cannot plug.
Though no magical beasts have come through, the corrosive curse seeping through the rift has turned half the stratum into a dead zone, and the bi-colored slimes have leaked directly into the opposite dungeon.
The disaster exceeded expectations. Had I known it would turn out this way, I should have devoured the slimes before taking action—Lin Jun was quite envious of that [Core Division] skill!
Mushroom Garden No. 2 was completely destroyed, though fortunately the tree spirits had transplanted the seedlings back to the Secret Forest beforehand.
If the sixth floor could be said to have half its ecosystem ruined, then the seventh floor could truly be called completely annihilated.
As a stratum populated almost entirely by aquatic magical beasts, with nearly all the water leaked out, it was indeed total annihilation!
The originally hundred-meter-deep waters now remained as merely two or three meters of shallow pools.
The giant underwater magical beasts died clean through, their corpses half-devoured by small fish and shrimp, with the remainder carried away by arriving puffshrooms.
With the current scale of this "small puddle," it's unlikely to ever again nurture any decent underwater overlords...
As for the water-leaking rift, Lin Jun wasn't in a rush to repair it.
With all the water already leaked, hurrying to fix it wouldn't bring the water back. Since that rift had neither curses nor magical beasts coming through, its priority was relegated to later.
As for the fishmen, Lin Jun tried searching through the ruins—they were gone.
Not only had all the fishmen vanished without a trace, but even the bizarre divine statue they worshipped had disappeared along with them.
The only explanation seemed to be that the fishmen had taken their deity with them and migrated as an entire tribe to the other side of the rift.
Sigh—
Another cold neighbor who moved without saying goodbye.
However, at the original location of the divine statue, Lin Jun discovered three puffshroom corpses that were still relatively well-preserved!
They seemed to be... his own three puffshrooms that had finally exhausted their magical power.
What were those fishmen keeping these puffshroom corpses for? They seemed to have performed some kind of preservation treatment?
When the puffshrooms made contact with these three puffshroom corpses, a stream of information flowed into Lin Jun's consciousness:
"Three hundred years! We can finally return to the sanctuary! Lord Puffshroom, circumstances were sudden—please don't blame us for leaving without farewell! The fishman tribe will forever be your friends. May Nefrila guide your soul!"
Well... it wasn't exactly leaving without farewell... but...
Lord Puffshroom? What the hell?
As a mushroom, Lin Jun had long grown accustomed to starting with negative favorability. Existences like the fishmen, who despite having no deep interactions, showed him an almost reverent attitude...
Honestly, it was somewhat bone-chilling.
They weren't trying to convert him to their religion, were they?
His soul needed no divine guidance!
So speaking of which, the other side of the rift must be that so-called sanctuary!
He'd keep it in mind for now and deal with it later...
As for the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors below the seventh, since there was no mycelial carpet, Lin Jun could only sense that quite a few rifts had opened within them, but wasn't clear on the specific situation.
The mycelial carpet in the deep zones had already begun spreading toward the tenth floor's stairway. He'd know the specifics when the time came.
Lin Jun still remembered the werewolves on the tenth floor—they had devoured forty of his puffshrooms back then!
If possible, Lin Jun would still like to subdue them as hounds!
He hoped they hadn't been killed by magical beasts from the other side of some rift, or simply killed their way through to the opposite side...
...
Apart from the dungeon's own repair issues, another noteworthy matter was the humans!
After several collaborations, Farr had extended an olive branch to Aidin. Under Lin Jun's instruction, Aidin readily accepted and was now officially registered personnel of the guild.
Lin Jun was fairly confident about Aidin. Aidin was a mature pragmatist who, unable to find a method to remove the parasitic mycelium from his body and with Lin Jun not excessively exploiting him, posed extremely low risk of betrayal.
The facts bore this out—currently, intelligence from that side was all transmitted to him through Aidin's efforts.
Farr had led all the townspeople in a mass exodus ten li* away. They were waiting for the dungeon to completely collapse, then would decide based on the ruins' condition whether to return and rebuild their homeland or simply scatter and integrate into other towns.
In their expectations, there would be results within two weeks, and half that time had already passed.
This was destined to disappoint them. Not only would the dungeon not collapse now, but after Lin Jun finished repairs, it would be even more stable than before!
However, once they discovered the dungeon was fine again, they would certainly send people to investigate the core's condition.
What kind of speculations seeing two battle golems would provoke was anyone's guess...
Though theoretically, with battle golems standing guard, unless another Sword Saint-level figure appeared, there was no way to enter the core.
Even if they did get in, they absolutely couldn't interfere with Lin Jun's control over the dungeon—if they had such ability, they would have done so long ago!
But Lin Jun had no desire to gamble on such possibilities.
So Lin Jun deliberately avoided repairing the first floor much, creating the illusion that the dungeon was still on the brink of collapse, making them delay their return as long as possible.
This would give him more time to familiarize himself with the dungeon's authority!
Only... he seemed to have forgotten something...
Lin Jun organized his thoughts—
Stone Fort was fine. The mycelial network had initially reached beneath the tribe, and as a stable food source for the demonic tribe, both sides were in their honeymoon period.
They seemed to be deliberately saving contribution points recently rather than immediately exchanging them for mushrooms—he just didn't know what they were planning to exchange for.
Little Pig, Little Black, and Norris were also doing well at Stone Fort.
Aside from Little Black's daily routine of freeloading and counting shiny objects, Norris was becoming increasingly skilled at piloting Jida, occasionally showing off his maneuvers. Little Pig trained his skills daily with a diligence that made Lin Jun himself feel ashamed.
Everything was going well. What had he forgotten?
Pink Puffshroom?
He shifted attention to the knight Pink Puffshroom had taken away.
Pink Puffshroom kept the puffshrooms she'd taken as treasures in her boudoir, feeding them magic potions daily in what could be called luxury, even transforming and squeezing into the puffshroom pile to sleep at night.
This was the so-called psychological problems that tend to develop in only children lacking parental companionship...
However, the number seemed to have decreased by half?
Danger?
What danger could there be in a duke's mansion? Given how she cherished them, even accidents shouldn't result in losing half...
That being the case, they probably died when the core was drawing souls earlier!
This had also happened at Stone Fort, causing quite a commotion among the demons. After all, his puffshrooms had suddenly died for unknown reasons, inevitably causing worry about danger and deducted contribution points. However, after Lin Jun explicitly absolved them of responsibility, no demons investigated further...
Ah!
Lin Jun remembered what he had forgotten!
Damn it, the connection to the scout puffshrooms was also gone!
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