After Pollock and Jadin, the Puchi Fortress gradually welcomed new dwarf faces one after another.
They were all young blacksmith apprentices, carrying similar hesitation and longing.
These were the results of the Knight Puchi quietly advertising while traveling between various towns in the mountains with the delegation previously.
However, even so, only about twenty dwarf blacksmith apprentices came in the end.
Lin Jun wasn't in a hurry either.
After all, those who dared to be the first batch to eat crabs were always the minority.
For these young apprentices, Lin Jun gave extremely preferential treatment.
They could almost limitlessly access the mountains of ordinary ores piled in the warehouse and attempt forging to their heart's content. Even if the initial finished products were crooked melons and cracked dates, or even completely failed consumption, it didn't matter.
Lin Jun hadn't expected these twenty-something apprentices to provide any output originally; rather, he needed them to improve their forging skills.
Once these apprentices had grown for a period and their skills showed visible, solid progress, the Puchi Fortress would issue missions encouraging them to return to their respective hometowns with their craftsmanship to advertise and recruit more dwarves.
Once this news spread thoroughly, presumably Lin Jun wouldn't lack basic blacksmiths anymore.
On the other side, the delegation's return journey was quite smooth.
On the road already cleared once by the Sword Saint Puchi on the way there, naturally, they wouldn't encounter things like bandits or cults again.
The delegation met up with the team sent by the Elves at the scheduled location.
The Elves conveyed Galadriel's invitation to No. 14, but unfortunately, the Sword Saint Puchi rejected it without even thinking.
Additionally, in the Elven team, there was an Elf unilaterally designated by the two countries as a "Hero Squad Member."
A Palace-tier male Elf. Lin Jun had an impression of him; he had seen him riding Echo while attending the Elf Council a few times.
Among a group of Elders and high-ranking spellcasters with profound auras, this Elf didn't count as very eye-catching. Unexpectedly, the candidate turned out to be him.
Regarding the Hero, Lin Jun actually always had one point he couldn't figure out.
Initially seeing Tanaka in the archipelago, Lin Jun always thought he was the Hero summoned by the United Kingdom.
But as his intelligence within the United Kingdom became increasingly well-informed, he discovered that the Hero they spoke of was a female!
And she seemed to be accompanied by knights and priests of the Church of Light. This reminded Lin Jun of that squad of Paladins encountered on the West Coast earlier, only he couldn't determine if they were the same batch of people.
So the question came: If the Hero summoned by the Kingdom was female, then who exactly summoned Tanaka?
Associating with Tanaka's previous move attempting to release the Demon King, Lin Jun had to suspect whether those factions loyal to the traditional Demon King within the demons also secretly mastered the technology to summon Heroes?
Plus his own unknown summoner.
Sigh...
In this world, why did summoning Heroes look like engaging in an arms race?
Couldn't they just follow those old-fashioned legendary scripts and have a proper drama of the Hero crusading against the Demon King? How good would that be!
Ideally, after everyone achieved great success in divine skills, they could go to his Tidal Sanctuary together and beat that arrogant slime up.
Oh, wait, the Tidal Sanctuary couldn't count as his territory yet.
After finding the Sanctuary Core, to control its affiliated alternate space, Lin Jun had attempted to take over the authority of this dungeon, but hit a wall—his soul was blocked outside the core.
As the administrator of the Puchi Dungeon, he naturally had some understanding of this situation. This indicated that the dungeon currently had an owner, and a living administrator existed.
Thinking back and forth, the most likely administrator was probably that Death God, or some believer under her command.
It was the same for Lin Jun. Anyway, this meant he couldn't think of laying a finger on the Tidal Sanctuary and its associated alternate space in the short term.
Going around in circles, ultimately he still had to scheme on that coordinate given by the Divine Tree.
Fortunately, progress in other aspects was relatively smooth.
The Sword Saint Puchi successfully brought back the [Negative Energy Collection] skill Lin Jun longed for from this trip deep into the Scarecrow Abyss.
According to him, for some reason, not only were slimes extinct in the lower abyss, but even the number of scarecrows had sharply decreased by more than half.
The biggest difficulty he encountered was actually running through most of that eerie mansion to find that Scarecrow Butler serving as the skill carrier.
Lin Jun naturally absorbed this skill unceremoniously.
This skill could absorb corrosive and cursed aura in the environment and convert it into pure mana.
For the Scarecrow Butler, this was a practical skill that could provide itself with a steady stream of mana in the abyss.
And for Lin Jun, who didn't lack mana, it was a means of transforming the environment.
Lin Jun had already started cultivating corresponding "Negative Energy Mushrooms" in the edge areas of the topmost layer of the Scarecrow Abyss.
No special purpose, purely wanting to see if he could transform the abyss into something a bit sunnier and brighter.
Besides providing mana, the negative emotions of intelligent creatures seemed to also count as a kind of "negative energy."
Lin Jun played a game of hide-and-seek full of interesting corpses with the D-Class personnel. As a result, the Puchi responsible for collecting was easily filled with various negative emotions.
However, unlike absorbing environmental corrosion which could be directly converted into mana, these pure emotional negative energies just accumulated inside the Puchi's body, unable to be converted and utilized.
Based on the idea of "taking from D and using on D," Lin Jun simply chopped up this Puchi filled with negative emotions and stewed it into soup, then fed it back to that group of D-Class personnel who were still in shock.
Thus, fear, despair, malice... various negative emotions completed a cycle through eating, reinjected into their source, superimposing with the negative emotions continuously generated by the D-Class personnel themselves.
Wailing and miserable screams immediately filled the cave. Some people even attempted to end themselves. Fortunately, the kind-hearted Puchi rescue team stopped this shameful wasteful behavior in time.
Was it useful?
Indeed useful.
But this usage, no matter how one looked at it, seemed more like poisoning, truly somewhat unpresentable.
Lin Jun rubbed his mycelium, deciding to ponder more. This skill should be able to develop some more decent usages.
Besides [Negative Energy Collection], the biggest harvest of this trip was undoubtedly the repair of that Imprisonment Ring.
Using the intact Imprisonment Ring on the Fire Elemental Lord as a blueprint, Lin Jun mobilized almost all intelligent resources at hand he could mobilize.
Gulgulu the old Fishman, Starfire, the Yellow Codex, and even obtained suggestions from some mages of the United Kingdom through Inanna's beating around the bush.
Expending enormous mental effort and materials, finally, that Imprisonment Ring missing a corner was barely patched up.
Hmm... counted as repaired, probably.
After all, without the true original blueprint, the whole process was more like drawing a gourd based on a dipper to fill in the blanks.
The final result could only be said to have restored seventy or eighty percent of functions, yet also left obvious defects.
With the original Imprisonment Ring binding the Fire Elemental Lord, Inanna could forcibly seal it inside when necessary, making it unable to break out temporarily.
But this currently repaired one, although it could also stuff the Ice Elemental Lord inside, that mandatory binding force had been greatly weakened.
Like a broken window Lin Jun barely sealed with tape; blocking wind and rain might be okay, but compared to the intact original, it was clearly much more fragile and couldn't withstand tossing about.
Regarding this, Lin Jun couldn't be picky; as long as it was usable.
There was no time to pursue any perfection. Lin Jun used over thirty percent of his mana on Puchi heating. If this continued, would the Puchi Fortress still develop or not?!
However, just when planning to seal the Ice Elemental Lord into this patched Imprisonment Ring, a tiny accident occurred.
The Ice Elemental Lord in the ruins immediately found its way over after sensing Inanna's aura.
However, just as it attempted to approach, a layer of flame outer robe almost substantial suddenly rose around Inanna's body. Scorching airflow rushed to the face, forcing its figure to stagnate.
Even the ice crystal right hand extended forward melted and dripped two drops of water under the high temperature.
After a brief solidification, even more biting cold air swept out from the Ice Lord, pressing back against that layer of flame outer robe.
Firelight flickered, dim and uncertain, looking like it was about to be thoroughly extinguished.
"Who?!" An angry shout exploded from the Imprisonment Ring on Inanna's left hand. "Who dares to touch the cub protected by this Lord?!"
Thinking Inanna was attacked, the Fire Elemental Lord's figure rose from the ring. Although shrunk quite a lot compared to its original form, that torso composed purely of flames was still blazingly threatening.
Then, unsurprisingly, it noticed the Ice Elemental Lord in front of it.
"So it's like this. It was you who put a layer of broken ice on the cub before. You are also worthy of snatching the cub from this Lord?"
Facing the Fire Elemental Lord continuously rising and enlarging from the Imprisonment Ring, although the Ice Elemental Lord couldn't speak and its body size was much smaller, its aura wasn't weak at all.
The surrounding temperature dropped sharply. Fine ice crystals condensed out of thin air, rotating, turning into a miniature blizzard surrounding its body.
In the next second, the ice crystal long skirt shook violently, wrapping wind and snow, and actually flew straight toward the Fire Elemental Lord.
Both sides clearly deliberately controlled their power, not letting their fire or ice touch Inanna.
However, this considerateness obviously didn't include other existences present.
No. 4, closest and watching enthusiastically, was swept into mid-air by the storm amidst exclamations. Its wailing sounded in the mycelial network:
"Scorched—! Frozen again—! Don't spin anymore! Going to faint, going to faint!"
(End of Chapter)
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