[Seven Sins of Greed Triggered]
[Delicious: LV1]
In the end, Dylan only brought back three fruits, one of which was accidentally damaged during combat with others.
However, this wasn't a major problem—Lin Jun successfully obtained the skill from the three fruits.
At this moment, in a warm and safe cavern covered with mycelium in the deep zone, Lin Jun's core employees sat in a circle, their gazes focused on a newly grown mushroom.
Its cap displayed a vivid, lustrous deep red color never seen before!
A new mushroom color had appeared!
Was it because that fruit was red?
But none of that mattered now. What Lin Jun wanted to know was: what kind of experience could this [Delicious LV1] enhancement bring?
As a mushroom without taste buds, he could only rely on these "taste testers" for feedback.
Louisa elegantly raised her hand in refusal first—vampires don't eat anything other than blood.
Indeed, that was true. But what if the delicious effect was applied to people?
Lin Jun couldn't help but glance toward Norris... No, that wouldn't be necessary. He could just catch some minotaur later to experiment on.
Little Black hugged her tail and rolled around on the mycelium carpet, showing no interest whatsoever in that small mushroom.
Dylan was the first to pluck it. He tore off a small piece and placed it in his mouth to chew carefully. For comparison, he casually picked an ordinary gray mushroom nearby and took a bite.
"Hmm..." His brow furrowed slightly as he seemed to struggle to distinguish the difference. "There is indeed... a slight sweetness? And some umami flavor? But... it doesn't seem much tastier than ordinary mushrooms?"
Seeing this, Norris also tasted it and gave a similar evaluation: "Mm, there is some difference, but... it's not very noticeable."
"Just this?" Lin Jun felt somewhat disappointed.
Could it be that the mushroom's base quality was too poor for [Delicious] to enhance?
"Perhaps it shouldn't be eaten raw?" Dylan suggested a possibility, recalling the taste of that red fruit—it had been far more than this.
Then, a drilling puffshroom Dylan had never seen before was generated right before his eyes.
The nearby puffshrooms tossed the red mushroom inside, along with some clean water into the "pot" at the center of the drilling puffshroom.
Its mushroom cap began rotating back and forth, and its entire body started vibrating rapidly and minutely with a "buzzing" sound!
Accompanied by this peculiar vibration, the water and mushroom in the depression quickly heated up and began boiling. In just two minutes, a steaming hot, aromatic mushroom soup appeared before everyone's eyes.
Dylan scooped up a spoonful, blew on it, and tasted it. Then he sprinkled some salt he carried with him and tasted again—his eyes lit up slightly.
When Norris tasted it again, his eyes instantly widened: "De-delicious!"
Forgetting all about appearances, he practically devoured the soup in his bowl, not caring about the scalding heat.
As he ate, tears uncontrollably slid down from the corners of his eyes. In the past, a honey-glazed meat steak from the tavern had been the ultimate delicacy in his understanding.
He had only heard about things like [Delicious] from other adventurers' mouths, never imagining he would have the chance to taste it himself!
Still unsatisfied, Norris reached out to ladle another bowl. His movement was too large, and his elbow struck the spikes on the edge of the still-vibrating drilling puffshroom with a "crack"!
The high temperature brittleness combined with continuous vibration caused a scale on his elbow to instantly fly off!
"Hiss—it hurts!" Norris pulled back his hand. Fortunately, it was only momentary pain with no serious injury.
A breeze blew by, and Norris instinctively looked down to search for the fallen scale, but couldn't find it anywhere.
He looked up in confusion, only to see that Little Black had somehow moved to the farthest corner of the cavern. She was facing away from everyone, curled up in a ball, leaving only a deliberately composed back view.
"Boss!" Norris suddenly thought of something and pointed at that magical drilling puffshroom, his voice raised with excitement. "This! Can you... install it on my Jida?"
"Where? Under your butt?"
"Of-of course on my hand," Norris hurriedly gestured. "Replace that blade whip!"
The blade whip was long, but its power was still lacking. Seeing how effective the drilling puffshroom was at armor penetration, he was immediately tempted.
"It's possible... but it probably won't be as good as you think." Lin Jun was too lazy to explain further—once it was installed, Norris would naturally understand.
Lin Jun hadn't forgotten about Little Black, who had retreated to the corner.
The mycelium carpet in front of Little Black gently bulged, and a plump, round [Delicious Puffshroom] with a deep red cap color and emanating tempting magical power was freshly produced.
Little Black was immediately attracted, and after wedging Norris's scale into the gaps between her own scales—
She sniffed, touched, and ate.
Watching Little Black bury her entire head deep into the round, plump body of the puffshroom, munching away with "smack smack" sounds as if afraid that eating slowly would mean there'd be none left, it seemed she also quite liked it.
[Skill Upgrade: Delicious LV1→LV2]
Hm?
More production... so this was how Delicious was upgraded!
However, unlike low-consumption skills like [Photosynthesis] and [Fluorescence], the [Delicious] skill was unexpectedly quite magic-consuming.
Of course, this consumption was nothing to Lin Jun.
The demons soon discovered that next to the original mushrooms in the exchange list, there was now an additional item: delicious mushrooms. Qiong tentatively exchanged for a pack...
---
On the surface, near Yawind Town.
An adventurer weighed the half-bag of mushrooms remaining in his hand and clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction.
He was one of the first batch to catch the scent of "mushroom wealth" and swarm over, and he had made good money for two rounds.
However, good times don't last long.
Standing up to look around, there were people coming and going everywhere—adventurers, refugees, guild personnel...
Mushrooms weren't unlimited. When he first arrived, he could easily fill several large bags in a day. Now, after spending an entire day, he could only gather this half bag.
This amount might be attractive to civilians, but for a professional adventurer like him, it seemed insufficient. So he decided to leave this place where there were too many monks and too little porridge first thing tomorrow morning.
Thinking this, his peripheral vision caught a flash of bright red!
A red mushroom!
A variety he'd never seen before. The mushrooms in the Amethyst region only came in three colors: green, gray, and blue.
Gray and green were edible, but green needed to be carefully distinguished from the poisonous blue. Recently, there had been no shortage of unlucky souls who fell into deep sleep from mistakenly eating blue mushrooms, some even dying from fainting in unsafe places.
But... red was truly a first!
With such a bright color... it must be poisonous...
He cautiously put on thick leather gloves and carefully pinched the base of the mushroom stem, pulling it up by the roots. He planned to take it back to show his companions...
---
Two days later, at the temporary camp, inside the Adventurers' Guild tent.
"Fal! Look who I brought!" Aiding's voice carried a trace of barely perceptible credit-seeking as he forcefully pulled open the tent flap.
Inside the tent, Fal was holding a wooden bowl with several red mushroom fragments floating in it. He had obviously just taken a large gulp—soup with glowing specks stained the corners of his mouth and chin, and his face bore the satisfaction of sweet rain after a long drought.
Seeing the two people enter, he instantly suppressed all expression, wiped his mouth vigorously several times, stood up, and blocked the glowing mushroom soup on the table, bowing to Inanna.
His demeanor was still impeccable as always—if only he could wipe the glow from the corners of his mouth more thoroughly...
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