No!
Otaku Unit Number One!
That's something I spent a whole month carefully crafting!
And there were seven or eight pieces of equipment inside it!
Although I had pumped Otaku Unit Number One's constitution to 40 points and equipped it with a LV4 self-destruct ability specifically to deal with rule-breakers.
But I didn't expect this to happen so soon!
If I had known earlier, I would have put fewer pieces of equipment inside. Now this is maximized losses!
You humans can kill each other all you want—I'm a monster, I shouldn't meddle in such affairs.
But how dare you cut down my mushrooms?
The dwarf culprit has already been blown to smithereens, so his teammates should pay this debt!
————
Nasa reached up and wiped the chunks of flesh from his face. The spores and dust suspended in the air rushed into his nasal cavity, causing him to cough intermittently.
He shook his dizzy head until the black spots dancing on his retinas gradually faded, then staggered to prop himself up.
The rock wall at the cave entrance now looked like dough kneaded by an invisible giant hand. The originally two-meter-high entrance had been violently torn open to three meters.
The Fat Walking Mushroom and Grongba had both disappeared.
No wait.
Nasa saw half a set of steel teeth embedded in a nearby tree trunk.
They hadn't disappeared—they were scattered everywhere...
Having death come so close made Nasa shiver involuntarily.
Good thing he had that little quirk of his. Good thing he hadn't gone to examine that fat puffball together with them.
Having consciously escaped disaster, Nasa lost his mood to torture Vera and the others.
He picked up his small knife from the ground, planning to quickly finish up and leave.
But when he took his first step, he fell down—a long fungal tentacle had somehow coiled around his ankle!
"What is this thing!?"
Nasa raised his small knife and slashed at the tentacle, but the blade only cut a third of the way through.
After repeatedly dragging and pulling, he barely managed to sever it.
He tried to stand up, but another fungal tentacle climbed up his back and wrapped around his waist.
Before he could swing his knife this time, more tendrils surged forth, entangling his limbs and joints.
Before he knew it, puffballs with mushroom caps connected to tentacles had appeared all around, surrounding Nasa.
"Walking mushrooms? Tentacles?"
The half-elf panicked and tried to reach into his clothes for medicinal powder, but was bound tighter and tighter.
"No, no! Go catch them! Go eat them! Help! Hel... mmph... help... hel..."
Countless tentacles finally wrapped Nasa into a humanoid cocoon. He struggled as he was dragged into the depths of the forest, leaving only muffled cries for help that gradually faded among the trees.
Feiyin, the only witness to everything, trembled as she bit down hard on her lip to keep from making any sound.
Only after all the puffballs had disappeared did she begin to sob quietly.
"Cutting Technique..."
"Cutting Technique..."
"Cutting Technique..."
...
After countless uses of the Cutting Technique, the ropes binding Feiyin finally snapped.
She hurriedly untied both her sister and Vera.
Her sister Feiling was fine—just unconscious.
But Vera was barely breathing and might die at any moment.
All their backpacks had been taken somewhere, and their potions were inside them.
She didn't know any healing spells. Without potions, Vera would die!
Feiyin was so anxious that tears began welling up in her eyes again.
Through her tear-blurred vision, something red caught her eye.
A health potion!
It was the bottle that half-elf had taken out earlier!
Feiyin crawled over on hands and knees to retrieve the potion, then with trembling hands poured it all into Vera's mouth.
"Cough cough—"
Vera suddenly choked on the water. Though she didn't wake up, her face finally showed some color.
"Thank goodness, thank... thank... wuu wuu..."
The relieved Feiyin finally broke down crying again.
————
Deep in the forest, in the now-empty gnoll camp.
The puffballs were rolling the half-elf around, smashing him against rocks again and again.
Nasa's appearance was now utterly wretched—his nasal bone was fractured, all his teeth had been knocked out, and his tongue seemed half-severed.
His consciousness was unclear, and he could only make muffled "wuu wuu" sounds.
But the puffballs continued their work mechanically.
It wasn't that Lin Jun wanted to torture him—it was just that this half-elf needed to pay his debt with his own flesh.
And [Fusion Parasitism] could only parasitize targets at critical health.
So he had to be worn down to a sliver of health first.
Attacking him directly with skills was too dangerous—one careless move and he'd die.
This gradual battering approach was foolproof!
It definitely wasn't because he was petty.
Finally reducing his health to the limit, the puffballs elegantly scattered some spores on his wounds.
Then they hung him from a tree.
In a few days, a mature parasitic puppet would naturally drop to the ground.
This would be Lin Jun's first human puppet. He planned to have some good fun... make him properly repay the blood debt of Otaku Unit Number One!
Speaking of which, when bringing the half-elf back, Lin Jun had also conveniently picked up those unwanted items from the ground.
Things like weapons, armor, rings, potions, and powder packets.
Calculating it this way, the equipment losses from the fat puffball's belly seemed to have been recovered?
It didn't hurt as much anymore.
But the half-elf's debt couldn't be forgiven.
As for the fat puffball...
Fortunately, Lin Jun had prepared in advance and produced five of them at once.
These high-constitution puffballs could not only grow larger and hold more items, but their higher health also greatly increased the damage of their self-destruct.
The only problem was that their other attributes couldn't keep up, making them incredibly slow to move.
Otherwise, why would they be called otaku units?
This initial setback meant he could only redeploy Otaku Unit Number Two to sit in the now-enlarged cave.
The items collected this time would be stuffed into its belly for trading purposes.
Once people got used to paying corpse tolls and trading corpses with the fat puffballs for random items, Lin Jun would have a steady stream of monster corpses from other floors.
Adventurers' impressions of puffballs should also greatly improve.
At least they wouldn't immediately resort to violence upon meeting.
Worried about not having enough trading items?
This was just the beginning—naturally everything inside was full and excellent. Every trade the adventurers made was a huge profit.
Once the habit was formed, Lin Jun could fill them with lots of low-grade magic crystals as filler, occasionally throwing in some good items to keep the adventurers' appetites whetted.
After all, most monster corpses weren't worth much to adventurers anyway—not trading would be wasteful.
Tsk tsk!
Lin Jun admired his own business acumen.
With such a brilliant Mycelial Lord like himself, how could the mushroom garden not prosper?
...
Hmm?
Just as Lin Jun was feeling pleased with himself, the signals from several Hallucinogenic Puffballs slowly advancing in the caverns suddenly disappeared.
They were at an extremely deep location—so deep that it would be nearly impossible to reach without exhaustive exploration.
It didn't seem like they'd been attacked by ordinary Crystal Bats or Rock Lizards. All three puffballs had lost contact simultaneously.
Lin Jun shifted his attention and controlled some nearby Hallucinogenic Puffballs to advance toward that position.
Just as these puffballs reached the same location, their health bars suddenly emptied.
Like their predecessors, they collapsed to the ground.
But this time Lin Jun figured out what was happening—this was a skill he also possessed.
It was the [Subsonic Wave Attack] from the Crystal Bats.
At the same time, in that brief glimpse, Lin Jun also pulled up the enemy's status panel:
[Species: Crystal Bat]
[Level: LV25]
[Health: 850/850]
[Mana: 1200/1200]
[Strength: 16/27]
[Agility: 20/34]
[Constitution: 13/22]
[Intelligence: 35/59]
[Spirit: 30/50]
[Racial Talent: Sonic and Crystal skill proficiency bonus]
[Permanent Status:
Extreme Aging (All base attributes reduced by 80%)
Crystal Symbiosis (Skill power increased by 500%)]
[Skills: Crystal Symbiosis LV10, Subsonic Wave Attack LV10, Sonic Detection LV10, Mental Resistance LV10, Physical Resistance LV8, Magic Resistance LV7, Heat Resistance LV5, Evasion LV6...]
[Titles:
Lizard Killer: 10% increased damage against lizards
Bat Killer: 10% increased damage against bats
Beyond Death: Age-related negative status effects reduced by half]
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