From the [Inspiration] viewpoint.
Lin Jun's soul carefully wrapped around a faint, pale blue wisp of soul.
It was what remained when he had blown up that Puchi just now with his own hands.
To be honest, that bizarre scene earlier had horrified him as much as if his own right hand suddenly started talking to him.
His reflex had been to smack it into paste. What burst out after that Puchi died was this small, pale blue soul.
The same color as his.
Which made sense. After a bit of probing, Lin Jun realized that this wisp had actually been “peeled off” from his own soul.
It was his soul, but it carried a will different from his. That was obviously the complete Sunstone's doing.
So… the artifact's effect was to give people split personalities?
That was quite a lot.
Still, it was not quite the same. Rather than a split personality, this soul felt more like a “sub-consciousness” derived from his main awareness.
Lin Jun could clearly feel that he could pull it back and merge it at any time, or…
He shifted viewpoints, remembering he had made several cocoons earlier.
The one in the marsh zone had long since rotted away.
The one in the fifth-floor cavern had been destroyed by some adventurer who wandered in…
In the end, he found two intact mycelium cocoons left in the deep sector and brought them back.
He tried swapping the pale blue wisp in his hand with the soul strand belonging to him inside one of the cocoons.
Sure enough, before long the mycelium cocoon started to writhe again.
A Puchi crawled out again.
“Mo…”
Crack.
Mop your head.
This time Lin Jun hesitated even less. He immediately tried absorbing it.
The small soul wisp merged into his main consciousness without resistance. No extra independent thought appeared. All it added was a memory fragment from that Puchi's viewpoint, stripped of emotion, like watching a recording.
So it was a controllable form of mental split.
Damn it. Why did his split-off child consciousness open its mouth and yell “Mom” first thing? Could it be normal for once?
There were still many functions left to test. Lin Jun turned his gaze to the last cocoon.
Stonefort Underground City, Mushroom Garden.
A very ordinary-looking Puchi stood quietly at the edge of the garden, watching the passing fungus folk and Puchi with curiosity, taking in this strange, new world.
Its name was Puchi One. It was the name personally bestowed by the Mushroom Lord at its birth.
As the first Puchi created by the Mushroom Lord to possess complete intelligence, it bore a grand mission.
Go out and look around.
After being placed in the Mushroom Garden by the Mushroom Lord, everything here was fresh and fascinating.
Innate knowledge allowed it to easily distinguish which of the fungus folk were Mushborn, and which were half-demons.
But having knowledge in its head and seeing things with its own eyes were very different experiences.
So this was the paradise the Mushroom Lord had created, and these were his mushroom servants. How beautiful…
Suddenly, a boot was slammed into Puchi One's rear and sent it tumbling across the ground several times.
Norris, hurrying along with a crate of liquor in his arms, jerked his leg back in a panic. He leaned over to check the ordinary Puchi he had kicked away. When he saw it was unharmed, he sighed in relief and was about to hurry on.
His boss's grim words from the deep sector still echoed in his mind. He desperately needed some alcohol to steady his nerves.
But just as he turned to leave, the Puchi lashed out with a kick of its own and sent him flying.
"Boss?"
Norris almost cried. Did even accidentally bumping into a Puchi warrant personal retaliation from the boss now?
Yet the voice in the mycelial network was not the boss's.
"Kicked me and you think you can just walk away?"
Norris glanced around and saw no one else. At last he looked down at the Puchi in front of him.
"Was... that you talking?"
The Puchi stretched out a tendril and poked the scale on Norris's cheek.
"Who else did you just kick?"
Norris fell silent for a moment.
"Boss… can you not play around like this…"
"What boss? My name is Puchi One."
After a round of complete talking-at-cross-purposes, Norris finally understood a shocking fact.
This Puchi had its own independent will.
"You are saying the Mushroom Lord created you?"
Puchi One nodded proudly, its cap bobbing.
Norris understood. The so-called Mushroom Lord had to be the boss, and Puchi One was clearly his latest invention.
The boss was always coming up with new things. This time was just a bit more special.
After spending so much time with Lin Jun, Norris's ability to accept new things was quite robust.
"So what is inside you, some kind of magic core? That is impressive."
Curious, he picked the Puchi up and turned it over to look.
"Imp... udent."
Puchi One slapped his claws away in anger, dropped to the ground, and bounced back into a fighting stance.
This lizardman's insolence enraged him.
He was the Mushroom Lord's firstborn.
To be manhandled by some lowly non-mushroom creature was unforgivable.
He could feel his mycelial tendrils trembling with righteous fury.
"Wait, calm down, Puchi One."
Realizing his curiosity had offended the creature, Norris hastily backed up a few steps, waving both hands as he tried to soothe this unusual Puchi.
He did not dare rough up the boss's new creation. If he damaged it, who knew what kind of horrible payback awaited him.
But Puchi One, who saw himself as the Mushroom Lord's first child and held himself very high, could not forgive two consecutive insults.
Cold light flashed at the tips of his tendrils as blades snapped out. He stomped his stubby legs and rushed toward Norris at top speed.
Just then, a huge black claw reached from behind and clamped onto Puchi One's cap, plucking him clean off the ground like a toy.
For a second, Puchi One failed to process what had happened. His short legs kept kicking uselessly in midair.
When he finally realized he had been ambushed from behind and was now being held in such a humiliating way, his anger burned even hotter.
Another insolent wretch.
Without hesitation he slashed backward with his tendril-blades. A series of crisp clinks rang out as every strike bounced harmlessly away.
The next moment, an irresistible force shoved him toward a huge, black maw lined with sharp teeth.
"Sis Little Black, no."
Norris yelled in horror.
But Little Black's motion of scooping up a Puchi and tossing it into her mouth was far too smooth. By the time he shouted, the Puchi was already struggling in her jaws.
Chomp.
Little Black chewed as she tilted her head, her big dark eyes wide and innocent as she looked at Norris. She seemed to be seriously thinking about why he had tried to stop her.
Norris stared, mouth hanging open, as Puchi One's kicking legs went limp and dangled from the side of Little Black's mouth.
His heart was filled with dread.
Lin Jun watched as a pale blue soul orb spun back toward him, the soul belonging to Puchi One.
Inside the Sunstone chamber, countless mycelium cocoons swelled under its light. These special Puchi, born from fragments of his soul, could not increase the overall Puchi number cap the way parasitized humanoids could.
Their value lay in granting high-tier combat Puchi far greater autonomy.
Lin Jun had planned to mass-produce a batch and throw them into battle for testing.
But as he stared at Puchi One's soul, defeated before it even got started, and remembered the earlier Puchi that broke out yelling "Mom" on its first breath, he felt a sudden doubt about the entire batch's intelligence.
What if they were all idiots?
(End of Chapter)
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