In the deep sector of the Puchi Underground City, an empty cavern shimmered with faint ghostly light.
After the meeting, Norris had been kept behind alone. He stood with both claws raised in front of him, sweat sliding between him
These elite Puchi had blade-like weapons formed by skill-simulated mycelial tendrils. Every slash and thrust was sharp and cunning, and their teamwork was flawless. It was as if they shared a single invisible battle intent.
Cold flashes of light forced Norris into a rather sorry state. In just a short time, several new scratches had appeared on his scales.
[Swordsmanship LV10], [Block LV9], [Dodge LV9], [Charge LV8], [Archery LV8]…
Almost all of these skills had been ripped straight off the battlefield. The collapsed valley had not stopped the mycelium from spreading inside. Not to mention, they still had all the corpses from the battle at Golden Valley City on the western front.
These Puchi loaded with skills were slightly inferior to Norris in base attributes, but under Lin Jun's direct will, several elites moved as one. Their coordination allowed them to successfully suppress Norris.
Lin Jun, however, was not particularly pleased. This was already the third round of combat trials. These human and demon general-purpose technique-type skills had a serious compatibility problem when applied to Puchi.
When Lin Jun withdrew his focus from the battlefield, the situation changed.
The elite Puchi equipped with [Swordsmanship] and the like still moved with precise technique and speed, but they were like puppets running preset routines. They lacked the split-second adaptability and instinct a real fighter should have.
Norris, who had long since mastered small-unit combat, noticed the change quickly. After a bit of probing, he found the rhythm of their attacks and launched a counteroffensive.
In barely five or six minutes, all the sparing Puchi had been chopped in half. Norris had won.
The fight over, Norris exhaled and walked to a corner to gulp down water from a skin.
Several standby Puchi hurried forward and began gathering the “slain” elites, piecing their bodies back together. Once repaired, they could be used again.
The outcome did not surprise Lin Jun. The stiffness came from a fundamental problem in the Puchi.
Ignoring [Retainer Control] for the moment, the intelligence of Puchi on a fungal mat could be roughly divided into three levels.
The first was what he called manual control mode.
Under this, controlled Puchi were pure extensions of Lin Jun's will. Every flick of a tentacle and every shot of a cap cannon followed the pattern in his head precisely.
Combat power in this mode scaled directly with Lin Jun's own tactical sense and micro-control ability. The ceiling was extremely high.
The only problem was the brutal drain on his focus.
The second was command mode.
Lin Jun spread his will over a region and issued detailed orders such as telling a few Puchi to strike from the left, or another group to circle from the right.
The Puchi that received the order would then act on their own, using their loaded skills in ways that matched his intent as closely as possible.
Just like when they surrounded Norris earlier. Lin Jun only had to think “this Puchi defends” and “that Puchi flanks,” without specifying how to block or how to swing. The Puchi themselves would perform at a level worthy of [Block LV9] or [Swordsmanship LV10].
This mode balanced efficiency and control and was the one Lin Jun used most often in battle.
Its flaw was that he still needed to keep his attention on one region and continue issuing updates.
He could split his focus and command multiple regions, but that was tiring. After a while, mental fatigue set in and mistakes became more likely.
The lowest level was full autopilot. Puchi moved only under Lin Jun's subconscious guidance.
He merely set one or more final objectives. After that, the Puchi essentially became NPCs.
Like in the last phase of this spar, all he did was load the elites with skills and set a single command: defeat Norris.
The result was a sharp drop in combat power and a comeback victory for Norris.
This issue did not matter much when the Puchi legions mainly used simple, brute-force skills like [Self-Destruct], [Cap Cannon], or [Sword Blade Storm] type area attacks. In those cases, Puchi simply had to lock onto a target and charge until something died.
Once skills like [Swordsmanship] entered the picture, everything changed.
Given the same mana cost for elite units, under command mode, those Puchi could pull off complex coordinated tactics and vastly outperform ones with only simple skills.
Once they switched to autopilot, however, those same Puchi became less useful than low-tech ones that simply stacked damage and defense.
That meant most finely tuned technique skills were only suitable for higher tier Puchi.
Of course, with his strong ability to split his focus, Lin Jun could still manage for now.
But as his territory expanded from one underground city to two or three and maybe more, and as he built new fungal fortresses to anchor cities elsewhere, the problem would worsen.
More mana meant more high-tier Puchi, and once they were deployed across multiple locations, this intelligence bottleneck would become very obvious.
So far, aside from working himself harder, he had yet to find a good solution.
On the other side, Norris had recovered his strength. Seeing that the boss did not seem ready to start a fourth round immediately, he bent down and began searching for the scales that had been knocked off him.
He found several that were still mostly intact.
A low, continuous sound drifted toward him as he neared one of the tunnel mouths.
Wind?
No. No air was moving through that tunnel.
He froze and tilted his head to listen. No airflow. The sound was more like… groaning.
Norris frowned.
The deep sector's cavern network was a maze. The area the boss had marked as safe contained maybe forty or fifty interconnected chambers at most.
Many more caverns, though carpeted with fungus, remained closed for various reasons.
Some were in regions where earthworms were still active.
Some had environments unsuitable for regular movement.
Some, according to rumor, held the boss's secrets.
That last part was just gossip among the fungus folk. No one had proof.
Norris glanced back. The boss was still busy with his own experiments.
Curiosity won. Norris followed the sound.
He advanced along the rock wall, moving carefully until he reached the end of the passage. Around the bend, faint ghostly light spilled into the tunnel.
The groans grew clearer, interspersed with heavy thuds.
Just as he stepped up to turn the corner, a huge claw slammed down in front of him from around the bend.
The claw was enormous, covered in ugly, unnatural tears. A few ragged scales were embedded in the rotting flesh. In the cavern's pale light it looked especially grotesque.
Norris's heart pounded. He sprang back and prepared to fight.
Lin Jun's voice drifted into his mind.
"Little Norris, wandering around like this is very dangerous."
(End of Chapter)
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