Riel’s little shop was saved, mostly thanks to the elves’ friendly vibe.
If this were a human city, things would’ve been… way simpler.
A few gold coins slipped to the right hands, and done. No need to work Lin Jun like a dog!
Good deeds pay off, though. After that intense overtime, [Mind Guidance] jumped to LV6!
Honestly, with all the nightly beatings lately, it was about time!
Lin Jun was itching for action, eager for tonight’s dream clash.
At first, facing the enemy’s sudden spike in invasion strength, he’d felt a bit uneasy.
He even worried that if their attacks kept ramping up like that, he’d be carving a tombstone for Pink Puffshroom.
But things didn’t go that way.
After one clear surge, the enemy’s invasion strength leveled off, no longer growing.
Sure, they could still hammer his “little pinky” every night, but that was it.
He just hoped this “Strange Dream” wasn’t some cheap trick where the enemy could cancel it at will, leaving him to take hits without fighting back.
Of course, before the thrilling night arrived, Lin Jun had other matters to handle.
Godwood Dungeon, sixth floor.
Mycelial patches dotted the forest, where glowgrass didn’t grow.
Lin Jun hadn’t blanketed the area with mycelium—that’d be too obvious. The underground Mycelial Network was the real foundation.
But as the mycelium reached the sixth floor, those burrowing rats showed up again.
This time, a different breed, and way more of them.
They didn’t just chew the mycelium to bits; they ambushed Puffshrooms traveling through the Network’s tunnels.
Lin Jun had to wage another long “tunnel war” against them.
On the bright side, these rats carried [Haste] skills—low-level, but still a nice gain.
Dealing with rats was routine, but what really caught Lin Jun’s eye was an uninvited guest—a tree demon, reduced to just its upper half.
Tree demons were a nightmare for regular adventurers.
With high [Physical Resistance] and no clear weak points, they could fight on even when bisected. Even a headshot wouldn’t fully stop them.
They also wielded [Trunk Slam], a clumsy but deadly skill that could kill in one hit.
Without a fire mage, fighting them was brutal. With one, you’d likely destroy any usable loot.
That’s why Lin Jun’s tree demons had once thrived undisturbed on this floor. If they were valuable, adventurers would’ve hunted them down long ago, no matter how well hidden.
This tree demon, missing its lower half, had clearly endured one or more savage battles. Its remaining upper body was shattered, covered in scars.
Yet, despite its broken state, it was oddly lively—too lively.
[Status: Madness]
Between its tangled, broken branches, a faint dark red glow flickered.
Even near death, it stubbornly crawled toward the nearest Puffshroom, swinging its remaining limbs in a relentless, do-or-die attack.
This jogged Lin Jun’s memory of those elves who’d once engineered a [Madness]-stricken tree demon. He couldn’t track it down back then.
This one wasn’t the same—its panel showed it was two levels lower.
Were those elves turning more tree demons? Or… was this “Madness” state contagious?
Time to find out.
Soon, a leopard beast, dazed by hallucination spores, was tossed near the tree demon. It instantly switched targets, dragging its broken body to attack the closer prey.
Too weak to hit hard, its desperate strike only left a shallow cut on the leopard before Lin Jun’s Puffshrooms separated them.
The leopard showed no immediate signs of infection.
Just as Lin Jun thought it might not be contagious, the leopard, snapped awake by pain, locked onto its attacker.
Still wobbly from the spores, it pounced on the crippled tree demon.
One too weak, the other half-gone, the two “sick and broken” foes began a clumsy, ugly brawl.
Shockingly, during the fight, a dark red glow started seeping from under the leopard’s fur, its eyes turning crimson.
[Status: Madness]
Same state! It spread!
Lin Jun wasn’t about to catch some “rabies.” He ordered Puffshrooms to fire Mushroom Cannons from afar, quickly finishing both beasts.
Still, how did it spread?
Like zombies, through wounds with a latent period?
Or…
One thing was certain: it was contagious.
Looking at the barely explored seventh floor and the untouched depths below, Lin Jun had a bad feeling.
Before night fell, that feeling came true—a second [Madness]-stricken beast stepped onto the sixth floor.
Though Lin Jun took it down fast, there were clearly more below…
Deep in the Scarlet Spire, in that ever-dark, sealed hall, Duke Sigmund slowly pushed open the black coffin at the magic array’s center, sitting up.
The array beneath him was no longer a simple six-pointed star.
Now massive and intricate, its twisted runes snaked like living things, pulsing with eerie light.
The array’s nodes had grown to eighteen!
Each held a lifeless “consumable”—humans, dwarves, beastmen, even a lizardman, all reduced to broken husks.
At the coffin’s creak, Margas entered.
His face was paler than before, almost bloodless, with faint black wisps occasionally leaking from his eyes, ears, mouth, and nose.
A brave soul checking his status would see he’d dropped a level.
No wonder he was so fixated on “Strange Dream”’s progress.
But the results disappointed him again.
Sigmund’s face darkened with deep displeasure. “Still no breakthrough. Not only that, their mental defenses suddenly got stronger—can’t even keep them pinned now.”
Margas frowned, puzzled. No progress was one thing, but worse than before?
After a moment, he speculated, “My lord, perhaps they’ve hit their limit, using some desperate boost to push you back once and for all. It looks even now, but such a burst can’t last. I’d say two or three days, and they’ll collapse from mental exhaustion, ripe for you to handle.”
Sigmund nodded, though a nagging doubt lingered. With no better explanation, he accepted Margas’s guess for now.
His gaze swept over the “consumables,” his tone turning icy. “Margas, find Eleanor! Tell her to send as many captives as she can! If she can’t help on the front lines, she’d better pull her weight in logistics!”
(End of Chapter)
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