After Shou made the decision to submit, although there were some dissenting voices within the tribe, they were all convinced by the demons who had already connected to the mycelial network.
And these doubts naturally disappeared after everyone completed their mushroom transformation.
Little Pig actively participated in the demons' network joining ceremony, collecting a large wave of fresh blood. She was clear that this would probably be her entire food storage for some time to come.
As for the Birth Ceremony, after communicating with Starfire and Shou, Lin Jun had them temporarily stop holding further ceremonies.
It wouldn't be too late to wait until he had verified his own hypothesis. Besides, the arrival of the two new demons had already successfully awakened the confidence in the future among the other demons in the tribe.
They were all family now, so Lin Jun naturally wouldn't be stingy. He decisively raised the demons' Contribution Points wages by 50%.
Thus, Qiong, who had just finished working, inexplicably received triple Contribution Points...
The entire demon tribe's joining increased the Puffshrooms' capacity by several thousand at once, directly solving the Puffshroom shortage problem that Lin Jun had faced ever since taking control of the dungeon.
Now, in the deep areas, there were many more demon figures.
Whether it was planting, breeding, mining magic crystals, or patrolling to clean up slimes, they all participated.
Lin Jun could also deploy more Puffshrooms to do other things, such as maintaining the operation of the first few layers, and even began placing some relatively harmless-looking Puffshrooms on the surface to let humans gradually adapt...
...
On the other side, Lin Jun hadn't stopped exploring the rifts either.
The new exploration location was the Dense Forest. The rift's position was quite special, opening within the ruins of the fishmen on the seventh layer.
When discovered, only a few bloated corpses of drowned magical creatures were scattered around the rift, obviously those that couldn't swim.
The fifth layer actually also had a rift connecting to the Dense Forest, but that rift's position was too conspicuous. It wasn't as good as this one, so Lin Jun had sealed it up.
Lin Jun had also investigated this so-called "Dense Forest." Through the types of magical creatures that had run over, he could basically confirm it was located within the elven forest, in a dungeon called "Essogar."
"Essogar" was the elven pronunciation, which translated to "Godwood," so it was also called the Godwood Dungeon by humans.
Never mind anything else, just this name made Amethyst seem inferior by comparison...
Lin Jun held quite high expectations for the Godwood Dungeon.
Unlike the Scarecrow Abyss, this place obviously had richer species resources, not to mention there were elves too!
Maybe he could even pick up an elf corpse or two and learn some nature magic and elvish.
A Scout Puffshroom performed a water splash leap, crossing over the rift and appearing directly beside a quiet little lake.
The lake water was crystal clear, yet not a single fish shadow could be seen. Obviously, it was a newly formed lake gathered from rift leakage.
Looking around, apart from this small body of water, there was forest—a forest composed of gigantic trees!
The Puffshroom silently concealed its form, flapping up to the giant tree tops. Its perception spread out, and within range, there was only forest!
Above the forest was not sky, but a massive dome a full thousand meters high above the ground.
The trees here all possessed the ability of [Photosynthesis], but the sunlight didn't come from above the dome. Instead, it slanted in from where the dome met the forest's edge.
Therefore, only an extremely small portion of the leaves at the very top of the canopy could bathe in this precious blessing.
No wonder these trees had to grow so tall—they were all competing here...
The slanted sunlight was related to the Godwood Dungeon's unique structure.
Unlike dungeons like the Amethyst Dungeon or Scarecrow Abyss that were located in special spaces, the main body of the Godwood Dungeon was situated within the main world itself.
According to intelligence Lin Jun had gathered, it was a magnificent spiral structure that contracted and extended downward layer by layer. The dome the Puffshroom was now looking up at was actually the floor of the layer above.
That slanted ray of sunlight came from a massive magic array at the center of the spiral structure. Like a giant prism, it collected and refracted sunlight entering from the entrance, scattering it to every layer.
This magic array was part of the Godwood Dungeon's own rules.
Additionally, although the Godwood Dungeon was divided into layers one through fifteen, this was actually just the elves' convenient way of describing locations. It didn't have distinct layering in itself.
Adjacent layers often had similar magical creature types.
But as the spiral went deeper, magic density increased, naturally breeding more dangerous existences.
The Puffshroom stood on the treetop, letting that slanted light also fall on itself. The magic power within its body was slowly recovering—this was undoubtedly real sunlight, not substitute light sources like glowmoss.
Speaking of which, there was also glowmoss in this forest.
Unlike their counterparts in the Amethyst Dungeon who liked growing on the dome, Godwood's glowmoss almost all took root in the forest depths, providing a bit of illumination in the dark understory where sunlight couldn't reach.
Since it was going to explore, it naturally had to choose a direction.
Lin Jun loved the sun most, so naturally he wanted to first go look toward where there was sunlight, and incidentally figure out roughly which layer he was currently on.
But before the Scout Puffshroom could set off, a bird landed on its mushroom cap!
To be precise, it was a large blue parrot.
However, Lin Jun was currently in stealth mode!
[Species: Azure Sky Blue Radiance Parrot]
[Level: LV30]
[Skills: Acceleration LV8, Dodge LV8, Peck LV5, Magic Power Perception LV4...]
Magic Power Perception, huh...
Since it had delivered itself to the door, it would serve as the first harvest!
That blue parrot seemed extremely curious about this invisible "platform" beneath its feet. Its hard beak rudely pecked at the Puffshroom's cap with abandon.
The Scout Puffshroom's mycelial tentacles raised silently, approaching before suddenly lashing out.
Who would have thought—a blue shadow flashed, and the parrot easily avoided it with a wing beat, so fast it only left an afterimage in place.
So fast!
This thing was as weak as a Puffshroom in both strength and constitution attributes, but its agility attribute far exceeded silver-tier standards.
The Puffshroom wasn't to be outdone. Its four mycelial tentacles struck out in succession, but that blue parrot was incredibly nimble, dodging by the slimmest margins along the edges of the tentacles each time, its posture relaxed.
Even more infuriating, after dodging it wouldn't fly far away. Instead, it would lightly land back on the Puffshroom's cap, cock its head, and even call out once!
This was pure provocation.
The Scout Puffshroom's cap deflated, and immediately hallucinogenic spores sprayed out from under the parrot's feet.
The parrot sensed something was wrong and hastily tried to escape on the wing, but still inhaled some. Its movements immediately became sluggish, and its originally smooth flight trajectory became wobbly, like it was drunk.
It tried to flee, and the Scout Puffshroom followed behind.
Although the parrot's speed was still faster than the Puffshroom's even now, that swaying posture and crooked trajectory meant it couldn't shake off the Puffshroom behind it at all.
Moreover, the hallucinogenic spores' effects were still fermenting within its body.
The Puffshroom followed unhurriedly behind. Lin Jun quite enjoyed this experience of slowly chasing down prey, especially after the other party had just tried to humiliate him!!!
The chase didn't last long. The hallucinogenic spores took effect, and the blue parrot could no longer hold on. It plummeted toward the forest, managing a clumsy emergency landing in some bushes before completely passing out.
The Scout Puffshroom landed lightly, walked over to the collapsed parrot, and stepped on it a few times without mercy to vent its anger before collecting it.
Even a small magical creature dared to look down on a Puffshroom! It definitely had to be taken back to have its feathers plucked alive and made into chicken soup to feed the lizardmen!
Having dealt with the parrot, the Scout Puffshroom was just about to take off and continue exploring when it suddenly stopped again.
"Huff... huff..."
An extremely faint sound, almost completely swallowed by the rustling in the forest, was keenly captured by the Scout Puffshroom.
[Sound Wave Detection] swept through the surroundings like invisible ripples, but couldn't lock onto the source. Lin Jun decisively switched to [Magic Power Perception].
This time he finally found it—within a giant tree.
Circling around this tree that required several people to embrace, he indeed found a hidden tree hollow entrance among the tangled roots.
After the Puffshroom squeezed in, it came to the source of the sound in just a few steps—a dying elf!
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