The ground had sprouted far too many mushrooms. A puffshroom running at full speed was caught completely off guard, tripping over a particularly plump mushroom. Its round, rotund body lost balance and rolled like a highly elastic ball, crashing heavily into another companion.
The chain reaction caused the struck puffshroom to knock down two others nearby, bringing down four in total and creating a brief gap in the puffshroom encirclement!
Sirion sprang up from the ground, his hand instinctively drawing the elven dagger from his waist. Cold light flashed as he prepared to charge through that opening.
"Don't be rash!" Philing reacted quickly, grabbing hold of Sirion, her voice cracking with urgency.
"Stay calm! Sirion! Whatever you do, don't provoke the puffshrooms!" Vera also hurriedly tried to dissuade him.
The foreign elf might not understand, but how could the three locals not know?
Stirring up trouble with puffshrooms here would bring nothing but misfortune. Vera was already beginning to regret her earlier suggestion about ripening the mushrooms.
Indeed, the reality proved her fears correct. On the nearby fungal mat, puffshrooms continued emerging endlessly. In the blink of an eye, they had the four completely surrounded.
Around their legs, densely packed mushroom caps jostled together—there had to be nearly a hundred of them!
Having witnessed the explosive power of puffshrooms firsthand, Vera didn't dare move a single muscle. Beads of cold sweat the size of beans rolled down her forehead. Philing and Phiyin were equally terrified, their faces pale as death, huddling tightly together.
"Now... what do we do?" Though Sirion hadn't sheathed his dagger, his arm had dropped slightly. He too had seen puffshrooms in combat.
"I don't know..." Vera's voice was dry and hoarse. "We can only... see what they want from us..."
Before long, the puffshrooms began using their round, springy bodies to push and nudge them forward.
Seeing their direction leading straight toward the dungeon entrance, Philing's voice took on a tearful quality: "They... they're not planning to march us into the dungeon, are they..."
Wouldn't that mean perishing together with the dungeon?
No matter how unwilling they were, there was no choice. They had completely become prisoners of the puffshrooms, helplessly swept along by this tide of fungi into the first floor of the Amethyst Dungeon.
The moment they stepped onto the first floor, the spatial fissures visible everywhere instantly made their hearts sink to the depths.
Vera felt a pang of regret and apologized to the elf: "I'm sorry... perhaps earlier... we really should have fought our way out..."
"Are all the magical beasts here so... characterful?" Sirion's tone was filled with incredulous confusion and a touch of absurdity.
"Wuu... they're not planning to push us into the swamp, are they?" Phiyin was too frightened to move her legs, yet the puffshrooms used their caps to push her forward like cargo.
However, as the puffshrooms continued pushing them deeper, the heart-palpitating spatial fissures around them visibly decreased!
When they were brought all the way to the sixth floor, the scene before them made everyone gasp in shock—as far as the eye could see stretched desolate wasteland!
All vegetation had withered and blackened, crumbling at the slightest touch. The curse had caused ecological devastation across half the sixth floor. Though the fissures had now been sealed, what had been destroyed could not be restored.
The puffshroom horde brought them to the center of this scorched earth, then stopped advancing and ceased their pushing.
"What... what does this mean now?" Philing looked at the motionless fungal crowd around them, utterly bewildered.
Sirion's emerald eyes suddenly brightened, as if he had realized something.
He crouched down, ignoring the thick layer of ash on the ground, and gently pressed both palms against the earth. His palms once again emanated a soft, emerald glow, though this wasn't the "Abundance Symphony."
He whispered elven incantations, and an extremely faint yet incredibly tenacious tender green shoot tremblingly pushed through the ash, becoming the first sign of life in this vicinity!
After that touch of green appeared, the puffshrooms scampered away, leaving only a few still following behind them.
The sudden relief from pressure made everyone breathe easier.
"Sirion, what's really going on here?" Vera's gaze fell upon that fragile sprout, puzzled.
Sirion stood up, surveying the scorched earth, and based on his experience speculated: "In the forest... some intelligent animals, when their homes are destroyed by wildfire or deadly poison, will also guide us druids to the damaged areas, seeking help to restore life to the forest. These puffshrooms seem to have the same intention? They're... asking us for help?"
Asking for help?
Vera felt this made some sense, yet something seemed off.
Asking for help and all that... surely those animals wouldn't use what amounted to kidnapping to drag elves over, right?
"So now..." Vera scratched his head.
After entering the lower levels, he discovered the fissure problem was far less severe than imagined—it was even better than when they had left. Those rampaging magical beasts were also gone.
He wasn't too worried about safety now, but looking around at the desolate surroundings, how long would they have to work before the puffshrooms would let them leave?
Sirion sighed and bent down to continue casting spells beside that sprout: "Let's just get to work. I only hope we can find something to eat nearby..."
Half a day later, everyone wore strange expressions as they shared mushroom soup ladled from the body of an oddly-shaped, heat-generating puffshroom...
...
Regarding the fissure on the sixth floor that had leaked terrifying curses and destroyed half the floor's ecosystem, after repeated consideration, Lin Jun ultimately chose to seal it completely.
However, for the fissure on the fifth floor connecting to the scarecrow, Lin Jun retained a small opening just large enough for puffshrooms to pass through.
This fissure also had weak cursed aura seeping through, but its range of influence and effects were limited, far less severe than the sixth floor's.
Since they were in the same dungeon on different levels, keeping this weaker one would suffice.
Seeing that the elf could actually directly comprehend his intentions, Lin Jun felt quite gratified.
Honestly, if it were a lone elf before him, Lin Jun would almost certainly have moved to parasitize it—after all, this was the rare [Nature Magic] so seldom seen in his domain.
But since the elf was traveling with Vera and the others, he could only abandon the idea.
Lin Jun had spent days secretly observing the dungeon's adventurers and naturally knew these three were warm-hearted attention-seekers.
They belonged to that type of social butterflies among adventurers—exactly the kind of people Lin Jun was most reluctant to parasitize, as the risk of exposure was too great.
To integrate into surface society, he couldn't reveal his ability to parasitize humans.
Lin Jun had originally planned to keep them trapped in place until he understood things better before granting them freedom of movement!
Fortunately, the elf's comprehension was remarkably high, saving Lin Jun considerable trouble.
As for them discovering the reduction in underground fissures, that didn't matter.
By the time they finished their work and returned, humans would have discovered the dungeon's changes anyway.
As for the puffshrooms forcing them to labor?
Anyone familiar with the Amethyst Dungeon knew that puffshrooms would punish those who didn't follow the rules, from explosive death for major offenses to robbery for minor ones.
Compared to that, making these magic thieves roll up their sleeves and exert some effort to restore the ecosystem was practically divine mercy!
However, what Lin Jun hadn't expected was that his dryads seemed to sense something and actually ventured out of the secret grove on their own to help the elf.
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