On the withered wooden frame, one black and one white.
The crow tilted its head, its pitch-black eyes unblinking, staring fixedly at this never-before-seen "neighbor" beside it.
The slightly rough body, pure white throughout, with a round physique... neither of its own kind, nor one of those creaking straw puppets, much less one of those two-legged adventurers reeking of fear and sweat.
This unprecedented existence made the crow focus all its attention on the Puffshroom.
The scout Puffshroom paid no heed to that scrutinizing gaze. Lin Jun was currently checking the panels of everything around him one by one.
【Race: Evil Grass】
【Level: LV2】
【Racial Talent: Cursed Creature (adapts to cursed environments, fears holy attribute attacks)】
【Skills: Corrosion Curse LV1, Toughness LV1】
Can you believe it?
This was the panel for the wheat in the wheat field!
Lin Jun initially thought he had pulled up the panel for weeds, only to discover there were no weeds in the wheat field at all.
The main crop in this "wheat field," these swaying plants with full grain heads that looked like "wheat," were actually called "Evil Grass"?!
Even more bizarre was that the cursed aura permeating the entire space didn't originate from some imagined powerful core or evil monster, but precisely from this endless expanse of "grass" itself!
Individual Evil Grass's 【Corrosion Curse】 levels were generally only level one, hardly worth mentioning.
But with such vast quantities stacked together, while not achieving a qualitative transformation, they could still produce higher-level effects. If one traveled through the wheat field, constantly in intimate contact with the Evil Grass, it would surely be even more severe.
Quite interesting. The scout Puffshroom decisively rolled up two handfuls of Evil Grass to bring back for tasting later.
"Caw——!"
The crow beside it had been staring at the scout Puffshroom and calling out for quite a while now.
The rustling sound of friction approached from afar, as several scarecrows pushed through the wheat field and emerged, their hollow eye sockets locking onto the white figure on the wooden frame.
【Race: Grass-man - Withered Servant】
【Level: LV26】
【Racial Talents: Cursed Creature, Fragmented Consciousness】
【Skills: Claw Strike LV5, Withering Touch LV3, Physical Resistance LV3...】
Although quite weak, the scout Puffshroom wasn't specifically designed for combat either. Besides, there were many of these small fry, and fighting one against many wasn't Lin Jun's style at all.
Of course, he could also fly away, but having the grass-men follow wherever he flew would be quite annoying too.
So, amid the crow's wide-staring eyeballs and the scarecrows' step-by-step tightening encirclement, the air around the scout Puffshroom suddenly rippled like water waves, and the entire Puffshroom seemed to merge with the background, instantly vanishing without a trace!
"Caw——!"
The crow was startled enough to flap its wings, though it didn't take flight.
Its pitch-black eyeballs trembled wildly, blood vessels spreading and expanding, finally transforming into two crimson blood-red eyes.
【Sensory Enhancement LV4】
It saw it!
The subtle distortion of light!
Right before its eyes!!!
*Smack——*
The scout Puffshroom wrapped up the crow's corpse and stuffed it into its body, placing it together with the Evil Grass from before.
Really, if it had just pretended not to see anything, Lin Jun would have been too lazy to bother with it, but it just had to rush forward to deliver itself.
The scout Puffshroom maintained invisibility as it took flight over the wheat field.
Without witnessing the Puffshroom's invisibility process firsthand, the crows normally wouldn't maintain their 【Sensory Enhancement】 state. Therefore, the invisible scout Puffshroom moved like a phantom, traveling unobstructed through the skies above the wheat field.
Lin Jun did make a new discovery while observing other crows—some crows had 【Puppet】 marked in their status bars while others didn't. These were probably the "bribeable" targets the dwarf had mentioned.
Lin Jun just couldn't figure out what these crows wanted gems for.
They couldn't really be like Little Black, simply fascinated by shiny things, could they?
Speaking of shiny things, Lin Jun thought of those gems he'd looted from the dwarf, among which was one particularly crystal-clear green gemstone.
Little Black absolutely loved it!
Holding the gemstone and reluctant to put it down, she had even left her beloved delicious Puffshroom half-eaten and tossed aside, repeatedly comparing the green gemstone with her glass marble and Noris's silver scales, her eyes full of little stars.
Clearly, the dwarf did have some expertise when it came to mining gems.
The scout Puffshroom flew for a long time, finally landing on the dust-covered roof of a tall granary.
"Wheat Field Maze"—truly living up to its name.
No matter which direction he flew, the horizon's edge was always rolling, boundless waves of grain. The buildings scattered throughout came in only three types: granaries, windmill mills, and sporadically distributed small houses.
The layer was who knows how large—the scout Puffshroom hadn't flown to its end anyway.
The small houses contained somewhat special monsters.
【Grass-man - Farmer】
It would mechanically bundle the harvested Evil Grass into human shapes, fix them on wooden frames in the fields, and they would eventually become those commonly seen Withered Servants.
Lin Jun hadn't yet seen the windmill mill in use, but judging by the bloodstains on the millstone, it was probably reserved for adventurers' exclusive treatment.
The interiors of granaries were piled full of so-called grains. The strategy guide mentioned they would produce the rare forging material "Cursed Golden Wheat Grains." But what Lin Jun saw through the Puffshroom were mostly bloodstained adventurer equipment scattered on the grain piles and sporadic coins.
Some granaries were simply packed full of motionless scarecrows, clearly trap rooms.
Overall, quite a monotonous layer.
What held the greatest significance for Lin Jun were the ubiquitous Evil Grass.
Both 【Corrosion Curse】 and 【Toughness】 were skills he could use. Even if each plant only had LV1, by decomposing many of them, he could build them up through quantity alone.
As for the "Farmer's" creation of other scarecrows, it seemed to rely not on its own abilities, but on the rules of this dungeon.
The "Farmer" was also just a grass-man in its thirties with a bit of intelligence.
But this was normal too. Scarecrow Abyss was also divided into many layers, each layer with its own characteristics, with more diverse monsters in the deeper levels.
What Lin Jun anticipated most was the so-called "layer changing."
According to what they said, after staying on each layer for about a day without following the compass's guidance to leave, one would unknowingly sink into the next layer.
Lin Jun was quite curious to experience this.
He wondered if it was like the spatial transfer of hidden rooms on his side.
If so, then the spatial transfer at Scarecrow Abyss was much more advanced than that of the Amethyst Dungeon—after all, it was unrestricted positional transfer!
...
The scout Puffshroom just waited like this.
Scarecrow Abyss had no day-night cycle. There was no moon in the night sky here, and even the stars were fixed and motionless—clearly fake.
However, Lin Jun didn't need to rely on the internal celestial phenomena to sense time. He could just directly observe the surface sun and moon changes from Mute Wind Town.
After waiting like this for over a day, the scout Puffshroom still hadn't entered a deeper layer.
The strategy guide did mention that the timing for entering the next layer might have subtle differences, but this was already several hours over...
What was going on?
Could it be like the Amethyst dungeon, discriminating against him for being a monster and not allowing layer changes?
But he had the Hero's Pass!
What the hell was happening?!
...
After waiting another full day, Lin Jun finally felt it—that faint tugging sensation from his very soul...
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