In the Far North, a pale, weak sun hung low, casting an ice-cold glow.
Norris stood on cleared snow, showing a group of human-form werewolves in stretchy mycelium gear how to better control their Puffshrooms.
Over forty werewolves had been… drawn from floor ten, but only about half faced Norris now.
Not all liked standing in sunlight. The weakened feeling gnawed at them instinctively.
Karen didn’t like it either.
But she stood firm in the lineup, eyes blazing.
She’d noticed Norris, who usually dodged her, had nowhere to run when teaching under “Boss’s” orders! She also caught how he’d look away fast from her werewolf form but linger just a tad longer on her human form.
Karen figured her towering werewolf shape spooked the half-lizardman!
So cute! She wanted…
Feeling her scorching gaze, Norris tensed, stiffly looking elsewhere, droning Puffshroom control tips: “Focus your mind… no, not yelling, thinking…”
Meanwhile, in his head, Boss chatted on and off.
“Ugh… why’s this sun still up…”
“Got big plans tonight, Boss?” Norris asked.
“Midnight rendezvous with a shy, mysterious someone. It’s been… oh… a whole dozen hours since our last heart-melting meetup!”
Daily dates, huh!
Norris’s mind flashed to Marshal Puffshroom, sporting a flirty Charm Puffshroom with purple veil, sitting on a mushroom under moonlight. He shuddered, shaking off the weird image.
He knew Boss claimed Marshal Puffshroom was just a regular Puffshroom, but since no one knew Boss’s true look, Norris’s brain defaulted to that scarlet cape dragging on the ground. It fit Boss’s vibe.
“By the way, Norris,” Boss jumped topics, “wanna be whole?”
The sudden question sent Norris’s brain spinning.
Whole?
What was he missing?
Could… could it mean turning human again?!
Heart pounding, he probed cautiously, hope barely contained: “Boss… by ‘whole’… you mean…”
“Exactly what you’re thinking!” Boss sounded sure.
Gulp—
Norris swallowed hard.
“So it’s about…”
“Growing a majestic tail to be a full lizardman!”
“That’s not what I thought at all!!!” Norris collapsed face-first into the snow, yelling in despair, drawing startled werewolf stares.
“Huh? What’d you think then?”
Norris, clinging to faint hope, mumbled, “Turning… back to human…”
“Oh, that? Just rip off your nails and scales regularly. Little Black’d love to help.” Boss’s tone was casual, like trimming nails, but to Norris, it was a devil’s whisper.
After no reply, Lin Jun pressed on: “Really, no tail? Look at Little Black’s—strong, sweeping armies! You know, some lizardman captives mock you as a tailless freak. Nasty stuff. I tossed wolf fur in their mushroom soup! Want me to repeat what they said?”
“Who cares what they think!” Norris buried his face deeper, voice muffled. “I’m… not even a lizardman…”
Ugh, this kid!
Fantasizing he’s human, delusional now.
Lin Jun kindly called Karen over to look after poor, confused Norris.
Night fell. Inanna, nudged by Lin Jun, went to bed early.
Into the dream.
Since shifting the main battlefield out of Inanna’s core dream, her stress eased, and the dreamscape turned cozy and calm again.
But tonight was odd—no Puffshrooms in sight.
Lin Jun quickly spotted the dream’s owner: a young Inanna, carefree, playing in a grand ducal garden.
A memory dream, no wonder no Puffshrooms.
A younger Eric stood loyally nearby, but a woman beside young Inanna stole the show.
She sat on a stone bench, pink hair cascading to the ground, face blurred in a soft glow.
No doubt Inanna’s legendary mother, fuzzy because Inanna couldn’t recall her clearly.
But… Little Pink, why’s your mom got a tail?
That slender, peach-heart-tipped tail looked way too familiar!
If she was a succubus, where were the horns?
Memories weren’t reliable, often jumbled, and Lin Jun had no time to dig into details—his midnight “mystery guest” date awaited.
At the dream garden’s far end, he tapped tonight’s soul power, swiftly crafting his Puffshroom army, then charged the border full force.
Since switching to offense, “Strange Dream” was Lin Jun’s favorite daily grind.
He could feel the enemy’s defenses weakening, even their occasional desperate surges fading fast.
It felt like a stunning beauty stood behind a thin veil, resisting but close to breaking—maybe today, maybe tomorrow, he’d rip it away and see the truth!
How could he not be hyped?
Of course, it was just a figure of speech. Lin Jun wasn’t into beauties.
But as his Puffshroom army breezed past Inanna’s dream edge into the usual buffer zone battlefield, no fierce resistance hit.
He’d mapped out Strange Dream’s setup: Inanna’s dream, this middle zone, and the enemy’s dream.
The enemy, with initiator’s home-field edge, usually hit hard in the middle, but today—no defenses?
They finally get the gap and give up?
Lin Jun crossed the eerily quiet buffer, stepping unopposed into the enemy’s core dream for the first time.
The sight stunned him.
A massive, grim, Gothic vampire city, spires stabbing a blood-red sky, thick fog swirling through streets.
And it stretched outward, no end in sight!
This dream map… wasn’t it a bit too huge?
(End of Chapter)
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