"Wh... what is this?!"
At the edge of the mushroom garden, 120 Pujis stood neatly arranged in 6 rows.
40 Artillery Pujis: [Mana Storage LV4] + [Mushroom Cannon LV6] + [Precision LV4]
40 Slime Pujis: [Mana Storage LV4] + [Mushroom Cannon LV6] + [Digestive Slime LV3]
20 Hallucinogenic Pujis: [Hallucinogenic Spores LV4] + [Chitinous Shell LV4]
20 Pack Mule Pujis: [Storage Sac LV4] + [Entangle LV3]
This was Lin Jun's 14th expedition force configuration.
It wasn't that Lin Jun didn't want to cram all the skills into a single Puji, but the more skills a Puji had, the more mana and time it required to produce.
The consumption increased exponentially, so keeping skills within four was a choice that balanced cost-effectiveness with practicality.
"So there are actually this many types of Pujis!"
Inanna deeply felt how little she knew—she hadn't even heard that Pujis had so many subspecies.
Some had mushroom caps shaped like pots.
Some were covered in full-body shells, but unlike the miner Pujis in the excavation area, these shells had many breathing holes.
There were even ones with tentacles!
How nice—if she had tentacles too, she wouldn't need to tie the magic crystal to her head...
"Lin Jun, you said they're an expedition force. What are they going to do?"
"This is a dungeon, so naturally they're going to subjugate magical beasts."
"Ea... earth worms?"
Inanna looked like she was thinking "if it's earth worms, I'm not going."
She really didn't think earth worms were something that could be overwhelmed by sheer Puji numbers.
"I told you it's not earth worms. This time's target is fire mosquitoes—those parasites that keep flying into the mushroom garden, producing nothing themselves and only knowing how to plunder for a living! This time we're going to wipe out their entire nest!"
Lin Jun was fed up with being harassed from the sky every few days. He had found this swarm of fire mosquitoes' nest long ago, but the reason he hadn't eliminated them before was actually to sustainably farm the Heat Resistance skill.
Now Heat Resistance was already LV6, and eliminating all the fire mosquitoes at once would probably raise it to LV7, which was sufficient.
Moreover, his current priority escape plan had changed to using Inanna to hunt earth worms rather than smuggling under the Flame Demon's nose, so there was even less reason to keep these annoying bugs around.
Let them serve their final purpose and become whetstones for the team.
"Inanna, stay in the middle of the formation and follow my commands."
"Got it, got it."
Hearing they were going to fight mosquitoes, Inanna felt relieved too.
She knew about fire mosquitoes—average level LV20, with straightforward attacks that weren't hard to deal with.
The trouble was they could not only fly but also had evasion skills, making them difficult to hit, and they liked to appear in swarms.
However, against them, even if she couldn't win with her magic, she could at least protect herself.
Come to think of it, this could be considered war, though it was war between magical beasts.
The old man had never let her get involved with military adventures before, so facing this for the first time, she felt a little excited inside!
But these Puji troops were so orderly with uniform steps—even armies couldn't compare.
Was it because they were all controlled by Lin Jun?
————
That was indeed the reason.
Using Familiar Control, Mycelial Network, and Mental Unity skills, Lin Jun controlled these Pujis like an RTS game, though it was more mentally taxing.
It was also thanks to this unified command advantage that he could establish a foothold in the dungeon with Pujis whose stats were all just 1.
After all, using tactics like luring enemies deep and creating diversions against a group of magical beasts with virtually no intelligence was essentially dimensional reduction warfare.
But this time, no tactics were needed. Tactics were only necessary when the weak needed to overcome the strong.
And now, compared to the fire mosquitoes...
He was the stronger one!
Wouldn't it be satisfying to just F1F3 and charge right through?
He could also show off his strength and boost the confidence of his newly joined little fan.
————
The so-called deep layers of the dungeon referred to everything below the 10th floor, because from there on, there were no more clearly defined passages connecting different levels.
The entire deep layer area had countless intersecting three-dimensional passages that connected cavern after cavern, just like how the fire mosquitoes' nest and Lin Jun's mushroom garden were connected by a passage over fifty meters in diameter.
Along the way, sparse mushrooms grew hidden in the rock crevices. These served both as Lin Jun's extended eyes and as relay stations helping him expand the mycelial network beyond the mushroom garden.
The Mycelial Network allowed Lin Jun to command the Puji army in a semi-automated manner.
Otherwise, if he had to manually control everything with [Familiar Control], that would be far too mentally exhausting.
The sound of the Pujis' short legs stepping on the ground—"puji puji"—echoed through the passage. Three hundred meters ahead, several crimson spots of light suddenly appeared as several fire mosquitoes discovered this expedition force.
"Ice Blade!"
A two-meter-long ice blade shot forth, but it was completely off-target. The fire mosquitoes didn't even need to use their signature evasion—the ice blade embedded itself in the rock wall above.
"Rookie, don't waste mana."
"S-sorry."
Only then did Inanna realize that the surrounding Pujis all maintained their pace, steadily advancing without stopping in the slightest due to the appearing fire mosquitoes.
And the few fire mosquitoes didn't approach either. Instead, seeing the increasingly close expedition force, they chose to flee and quickly flew away.
Watching the fire mosquitoes disappear from sight, Inanna asked with some concern: "Won't they go back to report?"
"Of course they'll report."
"Even if they're just low-intelligence magical beasts, they still have the instinct to defend their nest. We'll probably face a swarm of fire mosquitoes soon."
Inanna really wanted to say "but you're also a magical beast..."
"Then why did you let them escape?"
Of course, it was because the distance wasn't right and we couldn't hit them.
"Naturally, it's to catch them all in one net."
————
Under the steam-filled dome, hundreds of fire mosquitoes circled up and down around the central large pool, creating a deafening buzzing sound.
These fire mosquitoes needed hot spring-like high-temperature pools for reproduction, with their entire larval stage spent in the pools waiting for adults to feed them. So as long as this pool was destroyed, the fire mosquitoes in this area would naturally perish.
The fire mosquitoes would naturally do everything in their power to defend their nest.
So when Inanna followed the Pujis to the end of the passage, all the fire mosquitoes' abdominal luminous glands lit up with the orange color representing danger.
Several nearby fire mosquitoes took the lead, flapping their wings to fly over.
"Water Snake Technique!"
It was Inanna again. Facing the approaching magical beasts, she couldn't help but use magic first.
Better than last time—at least she knew to use Water Snake Technique, which could be controlled to some degree, rather than the straight-flying Ice Blade. Unfortunately, not by much.
Too bad the target was fire mosquitoes with evasion skills. The water snake grazed one fire mosquito, but it only dropped a few meters before regaining balance.
Lin Jun could only shake his head watching this.
"Sigh, rookie."
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