Dylan went off to spread the "strategy guide," while Lin Jun wasn't idle either.
His research on [Fusion Parasitism] was nearly complete, and it was time to dispose of these extremely cost-ineffective gnoll-men.
Due to recent friction with adventurers, silver-rank and below adventurers rarely ventured to the fifth floor anymore.
Only a few high-level adventurers still came, and their sole purpose was to reach the deeper floors.
As long as they weren't planning to cross through the swamp area, Lin Jun had the Puffballs avoid them entirely.
Since Lin Jun had gradually grown mycelium and mushrooms everywhere, he could detect them in advance and steer clear.
With silver-rank adventurers avoiding the fifth floor, the cavern area naturally became vacant.
The crystalline bats and rock lizards living inside were delighted during this period—without those annoying adventurers, they could search for food throughout the entire cavern.
However, their joy was premature. Lin Jun arrived with his gnoll-men and Puffballs.
Setting aside the rock lizards—their rock armor was too heavy, and if Puffballs wore it, they'd probably only function as stationary turrets.
The crystalline bats' [Crystal Symbiosis] skill was truly valuable.
They could consume magic crystals, transform them within their bodies, and ultimately make them part of the crystalline bat, helping enhance their skill power.
If it were merely a skill that equipped magic crystals on the body, that wouldn't be particularly remarkable.
Lin Jun wasn't exactly lacking in firepower—after all, if one mushroom cannon couldn't solve the problem, he could fire ten. He had as many Puffballs as needed.
But the hidden effect was actually purification!
Lin Jun only realized this when he noticed that the magic crystals on many crystalline bats' wings were of significantly higher quality than those mined from the cavern.
Of course, it was only purification from D-grade to C-grade.
But this was merely because these crystalline bats had low skill levels themselves, generally only level 3 to 4, completely unable to demonstrate the skill's true potential.
If the skill level were high enough, couldn't Lin Jun use large quantities of useless low-grade magic crystals to produce a large S-grade magic crystal?
Lin Jun wasn't certain it would work, but it was worth trying!
The gnoll-men and Puffballs surged into the cavern in great numbers. The magical beasts clearly sensed the threat and became agitated.
They were just magical beasts at roughly the same level as fire mosquitoes—Lin Jun paid them no mind at all.
The Puffballs delivered a clean volley of cannon fire. After prolonged, unceasing tremors, nothing remained.
No crystalline bats, no rock lizards, and even the cavern entrance was gone...
Huh?
So fragile?
When he was in the deep layers before... wait, no...
The caverns and tunnels in the deep layers were dug by earth worms. When earth worms excavated, they would excrete the consumed stone around their bodies to reinforce the cave walls.
That's why the Puffballs could bombard freely down there without worrying about collapse.
This made Lin Jun forget that the fifth floor's caverns were normal caverns...
Fortunately, the collapse wasn't complete. After half a day of clearing by the gnoll-men, they finally managed to re-excavate the entrance.
Now what?
His prized mushroom cannons were unusable, and self-detonation presumably wouldn't work either.
Although he'd recently acquired many skills from adventurers, their levels were still quite low and couldn't be put to use.
He wouldn't really have to rely on these few dozen gnoll-men, would he?
Without mushroom cannons, these useless gnoll-men could barely scratch the rock lizards' shells—completely unreliable.
Perfect. His cavern conquest plan had reached a dead end before it even began.
With no other choice, he opened his status panel to search for inspiration among the jumbled pile of skills.
Magic?
Thanks to the adventurers' contributions, he'd now gathered Magic Power Manipulation as well, but spells required self-study—and where could he learn them?
So that wouldn't work.
Use Carapace plus Rolling Charge?
Thinking about the rock lizards' stone shells, he decided against it.
Slime's Digestive Mucus or the recently acquired Strong Acid skill?
Useful against bats, but still useless against stone shells.
After much consideration, the hardest to deal with were ironically these turtle-strategy rock lizards.
Come to think of it, were they affected by poison?
With names involving "crystalline" and "rock," they sounded like inorganic matter, making Lin Jun subconsciously overlook poison as an option.
This was also because Lin Jun hadn't used poison in combat for too long.
Thinking meant doing. Lin Jun rapidly produced several hallucination Puffballs and entered, spraying spores.
Soon the cavern was tinted with a purple filter.
In the narrow cavern where spores weren't easily dispersed, crystalline bats fell one by one from the ceiling, and rock lizards quickly collapsed motionless on the ground.
They really were affected by poison!
Using poison was even easier than his original brute force plan.
He dragged them out and made them the first batch of fertilizer.
[Pride of the Seven Sins Triggered]
[Plundered Skill: Crystal Symbiosis LV1]
[Plundered Skill: Infrasonic Attack LV1]
[Plundered Skill: Sonic Detection LV1]
[Plundered Skill: Rock Consumption LV1]
...
Unfortunately, the cavern was a maze of interconnected passages with unknown depth.
A few hallucination Puffballs couldn't handle it all.
Lin Jun could only wait for mass production of hallucination Puffballs before continuing operations.
In the end, these gnoll-men were useless!
They were so worthless that even disposing of them was difficult...
Lin Jun was eager to dispose of them for good reason.
These parasitized gnoll-men were covered in mushrooms—who wouldn't associate them with Puffballs upon seeing them?
Puffballs occupying a floor was already hate-inducing enough. If people discovered they could parasitize and control humans like parasitic trees, that would be catastrophic!
So Lin Jun was actually destroying evidence.
If worst came to worst... he'd just decompose them directly...
Unfortunately, they could only be decomposed into magic power. Like those controlled by parasitic trees, creatures completely parasitized by Lin Jun couldn't yield skills when decomposed.
Lin Jun still hadn't figured out the underlying principle.
He was used to this by now—there were countless things in this dungeon he couldn't understand.
For instance, who established the "rules" on the dungeon floor staircases?
How did the dungeon relocate entire hidden rooms?
When that stone door in the swamp disappeared, Lin Jun detected no anomalies whatsoever.
He now strongly suspected hidden rooms and treasure chest refreshes were synchronized. Last time, he might have been transferred along with the hidden room.
Yet he noticed nothing while inside.
Lin Jun felt he needed to find ways to learn more about the "dungeon."
When Dylan returned, he'd ask if there were any methods.
————
The guest room door was gently knocked, and the voice of Vera, the young adventurer who'd once encountered the masked Dylan, came from outside:
"Feilin, Feiyin, are you inside?"
The twin sisters, wearing only undergarments inside the room, exchanged glances and hurriedly dressed before letting Vera in.
"It's so late, what's the matter?"
Elder sister Feilin wore an expression that said "you'd better have a good reason."
As if completely oblivious, Vera excitedly handed a note to Feilin.
"Fifth floor latest strategy guide?" Feilin glanced through it with a strange expression. "Isn't this a bit too detailed? Where did you get this?"
"I bought it for 50 silver coins from an adventurer named Dylan. He said we had a connection and gave me special intelligence at the end as a bonus."
"50 silver coins!?" Feilin's voice shot up so high it cracked. A connection? That sounded like a con to her. "So expensive! You weren't scammed again, were you?"
Some less-than-pleasant memories about her childhood friend surfaced in Feilin's mind, and she was already considering beating up Vera...
Knowing what Feilin was referring to, Vera quickly explained:
"I asked the tavern keeper about him. He knows this Dylan—he's been an adventurer here for a long time.
His reputation is decent. He retired for a while but recently returned to the profession.
Overall, he has some credibility.
The key is the information in this strategy guide—if it's real, 50 silver is absolutely worth it."
Feilin pouted as she looked at the "strategy guide" in her hands. It was already a done deal—what could she do?
If it turned out to be false information, she'd definitely string up Vera and give him a beating.
While Vera and Feilin performed their comedy routine as bickering friends, the other twin, Feiyin, silently watched like a wallflower.
Among the three, she never opposed anything—whatever the other two decided was fine with her.
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