"How come there's not a single soul around?" Horn stood on his tiptoes, clinging to the wooden door frame of the Rotten Willow Tavern as he peered into the dim interior, muttering disappointedly.
A passing adventurer carrying luggage casually replied, "I heard they moved all their belongings to Norweide for refuge earlier. It'll take at least three to five days to transport everything back."
"Damn it!"
Horn had no choice but to look for another place to stay, but most of the inns in town were still frantically cleaning the fungal threads that had attached to their wooden structures. The few that had finished cleaning were already packed full.
"Tch, don't tell me I'll really have to camp out in the wild..." Horn scratched his head, feeling somewhat troubled.
Horn's team had thoroughly enjoyed the "puffshroom lottery" benefits back then, with each member earning quite a few gold coins.
Especially Aimee—adding the compensation from the subjugation force, her wealth had easily exceeded a hundred gold.
With plenty of money on hand, when the guild announced the dungeon was doomed, the group decisively retreated to surrounding cities, enjoying life while observing how things would develop.
Though they were teammates, each had their own life, so they temporarily went their separate ways.
Now that the dungeon had miraculously recovered, according to their previous letter agreement, it was time to regroup in Mute Wind Town. After wandering around the town for a while, Horn seemed to be the first to arrive.
Unable to find an inn, Horn had to wander outside town, planning to find a shady spot to rough it camping. However, the scene before him was completely unexpected.
The land around Mute Wind Town had been divided into mushroom farms, one plot after another. Between the field ridges, guild personnel were leading recruited civilians, busily dividing management areas and loudly explaining important points.
In other mushroom farms, guild personnel held notebooks, sometimes carefully sprinkling water, sometimes hurriedly setting up simple shelters to block excessive sunlight.
Out of curiosity, Horn approached one of the guild members who was buried in recording. Though the person didn't actively engage with him, they didn't stop him from looking either.
Horn glimpsed the journal densely filled with records of various methods that might increase mushroom yield—clearly conducting experiments.
"Hey, I say," Horn couldn't help but reach out his finger and point to the bottom entry in the notebook, "you could try this method first."
"Feed the fungal carpet with monster corpses?" The guild member looked up at him with a suspicious expression. "Trading meat for mushrooms? No matter how you calculate it, that's not profitable! Why would you say that?"
Horn shrugged. "Just intuition. Don't those puffshrooms love dragging away corpses the most? Besides, not all monster meat is edible..."
The guild member stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Hmm... that does make some sense..."
...
"Horn!" Before they could chat much longer, someone called his name from afar.
"Aimee! Noah!" Horn immediately broke into a grin, spreading his arms and rushing forward enthusiastically, only to be blocked by the latter's disgusted arm.
Aimee's gaze swept around, her brow furrowing slightly. "Where's Old Hammer? Still hasn't rolled back yet?"
"Ha, we can't wait for him this time!" Horn waved his hand dismissively, his tone carrying a hint of schadenfreude. "That guy got drunk in the city and got into a fight, and ended up beating up the guards who came to break it up too! That cheapskate won't pay the fine, so he's currently squatting in their jail eating prison food. He won't be out for at least half a month."
"Heh, dwarves!" Aimee rolled her eyes dramatically, then stared at Horn. "How do you know all this so clearly?"
"Nonsense! I was right there drinking with him at the time!"
"Then why didn't you stop him?" Aimee questioned with hands on her hips.
"Me?" Horn exaggeratedly gestured at his not particularly robust frame. "Do I look like I could stop that drunken mad bear?"
Noah sighed and asked, "So what do we do now?"
"The three of us can go down and explore first!" Horn patted his chest confidently. "Don't worry, I've prepared the latest strategy guide. We'll just hang around the first five floors—absolutely safe!"
After a brief discussion, the three felt that staying within the relatively familiar first five floors posed little risk, so they settled on the plan.
...
After a day of preparation, the three entered the dungeon the next morning.
Though there were fewer cracks on the first floor, they still made the group's hearts skip a beat. They walked very slowly, afraid of accidentally bumping into a crack. Fortunately, there weren't any monsters on the first floor that could force them to dodge.
Entering the second floor, Horn immediately distributed an insect-repelling incense pill to each person to ward off the newly rampant poisonous mosquitoes. Though not lethal, those things could make your face swell up like a steamed bun!
Their plan was to quickly reach the fourth floor, collect some monster corpses, then take them to the fifth floor for the lottery to see if the puffshrooms had stuffed anything good inside.
However, as they passed through a dim stone corridor on the third floor, Noah suddenly called out in a low voice, stopping Horn and Aimee ahead.
"Look over there!"
Following Noah's indicated direction, Horn and Aimee's gazes crossed the corridor to the far end on the other side, where an adventurer's corpse lay collapsed!
They could tell it was a corpse at first glance, not because of the arrows deeply embedded in the body, but because... the puffshrooms had already started packaging him up!
Generally speaking, even if you're severely injured, puffshrooms won't actively touch you. Only when you're completely dead will puffshrooms come out to clean up.
So seeing puffshrooms already calling their friends to try moving the body, it was definitely stone dead.
Encountering a freshly dead adventurer in the dungeon, while not common, wasn't particularly shocking either. However, if gold coins were scattered all around the corpse, that was another matter entirely!
The three didn't rashly approach, but alertly scanned their surroundings. The third floor was full of traps—that adventurer had obviously died from a trap too.
Soon, Horn found several floor mechanisms that could be stepped on and corresponding, barely noticeable holes in the walls—a typical pressure-triggered dart trap.
These mechanisms required considerable weight to activate, so the lightweight puffshrooms could naturally come and go freely. Adventurers judging safety by this would likely pay a painful price.
The group carefully bypassed the mechanisms and reached the other side.
Just as Aimee bent down and her fingers were about to touch a tempting "gold coin," Horn grabbed her wrist!
"Wait!" He called out sharply, his dagger precisely striking toward a gold coin!
With a crisp sound, the "gold coin" split in half, and red-green foul-smelling mucus oozed from the break!
Instantly, all the insects disguised as gold coins on the ground buzzed and exploded into the air!
The three, who had been prepared, reacted extremely quickly and killed all these flying insects in just a few moves.
"Disgusting! All that trouble for nothing!" Horn shook the mucus off his blade, looking thoroughly annoyed, and turned to leave.
"Wait!" Aimee grabbed him again, her voice carrying a strange note.
"What now? Don't tell me there are more gold..." Horn complained as he turned back, but following Aimee's shocked and uncertain gaze, he saw a thick stone door carved with intricate, mysterious patterns!
"A... a hidden room?" Horn's voice carried incredible excitement mixed with uncertainty—he had never encountered a hidden room before!
Aimee and Noah shook their heads in equal shock—this was their first time too.
The three exchanged a look full of surprise and excitement, tacitly lightening their steps as they cautiously approached the door.
Behind them, a puffshroom that had been waiting for a long time emerged and began cleaning up the unwanted gold coin bug remains on the ground.
After preparing for various possible traps, Horn pulled the nearby mechanism with excited and anxious feelings.
As the stone door made a dull grinding sound, under the three's expectant gazes, a round, plump, white, and thoroughly lazy-looking puffshroom suddenly popped out from the shadows like a spring, instantly filling their entire field of vision at the doorway...
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