A large portion of them were low-cost cannon fodder Puchis. Their sole purpose for being thrown into the battlefield was to present kill counts and add some self-confidence to the Empire's army.
Moreover, dead Puchis could be recycled, and dead enemies could also be decomposed. Back and forth, the mana truly lost was pitifully small.
Not to mention, with the skill [Mycelium Reorganization], quite a few Puchis would just gulu gulu climb up the moment the Empire army left, drill back through the underground network, and be sent to die a second time as new Puchis.
The correct way to fight against Lin Jun was always to destroy the fungal mat and burn the corpses as the first step.
Unfortunately, the people who could realize this point right now were few and far between.
Obviously, the Empire generals on this northern expedition hadn't comprehended the crux of the matter at all.
General Renard's troops, although achieving continuous victories in every engagement with the Puchis, were inevitably having their soldiers' physical and mental strength consumed by the frequent battles.
Adding the apprehension toward the seemingly endless quantity of Puchis, the experienced Renard cautiously chose to temporarily halt the advance.
As for the Demon-kin troops, indeed as Renard expected, after initially engaging the Puchis and winning easily, they mercilessly mocked the incompetence of their allied forces.
It was just that after experiencing a few more battles, they couldn't laugh anymore.
It wasn't that these Puchis were so formidable; the Demon-kin were the elite of the elite.
On Renard's side, soldiers still needed to tangle with the Puchis for a bit; on the Demon-kin side, it was completely like slicing melons and chopping vegetables.
After several consecutive battles, they had only lost about a dozen people.
However, right now, they were even more conflicted than Renard.
These damn Northern Territory tribes, damn Puchis... actually knew how to steal Magic Cores!
Magic Cores, as the sole source of newborn population for the Demon-kin, their importance was beyond doubt.
In past battles, if victorious, they could naturally and unhurriedly collect the Magic Cores of fallen comrades. Even if unfortunately defeated, Demon-kin warriors would often spare no cost, preferring to suffer more casualties to desperately snatch back as many Magic Cores as possible.
Initially, when a Demon-kin warrior was unfortunately blown to death by that kind of Puchi that would self-destruct, and his Magic Core couldn't be found when cleaning up the battlefield afterward, they merely attributed it to bad luck, perhaps the impact of the explosion sent the Magic Core flying to a hard-to-find corner.
But up to now, sixteen people had died, and only two Magic Cores had been snatched back; all the others were robbed.
Yes, snatched back!
The moment a Demon-kin warrior fell, all the Puchis around, regardless of who they were originally attacking, regardless of what kind of damage they were enduring, would swarm toward that corpse like a school of piranhas smelling blood, acting completely crazy!
They completely disregarded losses, using their round mushroom bodies to form layer upon layer of mycelial walls, forcefully blocking other Demon-kin warriors who wanted to approach to collect their companion in an almost suicidal manner.
And in this brief gap bought with countless Puchi lives, the dead Demon-kin warrior's Magic Core would be gouged out, then stuffed into the belly of who-knows-which Puchi.
The Puchis would scatter in a hubbub. The Demon-kin could only rely on luck to intercept, and even then, they had to brave the obstruction of other Puchis. One mistake, falling into the encirclement of Puchis, would add more casualties on the spot.
Bang!
A Demon-kin squad leader's iron-clad heavy fist smashed fiercely onto a bare glacial rock beside him, the hard rock cracking from the middle.
"Damn it... it must be them! That bunch of trash from the Northern Territory before! Only they would painstakingly collect Magic Cores like this!"
"Look at these trash, the magic crests on their bodies are all cold resistance. Other tribes have people who survived; the proportion of them surviving must be even larger!"
Other squad leaders also nodded. Indeed, some warriors had seen figures with horns on their foreheads, suspected to be Demon-kin, among those Puchi Masters hiding in the distance.
Thinking of the Northern Territory tribe's fighting style, all the squad leaders present felt disgusted without exception.
Those cowards hid in the distance every time, not showing their heads on the battlefield at all, relying entirely on these Puchis to fight to the death.
Occasionally discovering their traces, they would also just turn their heads and run.
The Demon-kin squads pursuing the traces of the Puchi Masters a few times yielded no results.
Instead, penetrating deep into enemy positions, surrounded by Puchis popping up from all around, they lost a few more warriors before being rescued back by other Demon-kin.
Fighting back and forth, only one mage and one archer had battle records of killing enemies from a distance; the others were uniformly Puchi cleaners.
This fight was as uncomfortable as it could be.
At the beginning, they could still comfort themselves that when the Puchis were exhausted, these tribesmen would be fish waiting to be slaughtered.
Now looking at another batch of Puchis ahead with undiminished numbers, no one could say such optimistic words anymore.
Most critically, they couldn't afford to lose any more Magic Cores in the Northern Territory.
After thinking for a while, unlike Renard who still planned to complete the task relying on himself, the Demon-kin commander reported the matter of Puchis robbing Magic Cores to his own Duke, hoping to get reinforcements to annihilate that Northern Territory Demon-kin tribe in one fell swoop, seizing their cradle and Magic Cores.
...
After the front line fell into a stalemate as expected, Lin Jun temporarily turned his attention elsewhere.
Ultimately, the two Dukes on the opposite side didn't use their full strength because they misjudged the Mushroom Fortress's strength.
For today's Mushroom Fortress, this could only be considered a petty squabble level. Even if something went wrong, there were plenty of backup methods to cover the bottom line; no need to spend Lin Jun's precious energy constantly paying attention.
In the rear, the abyssal magic testing ground was still under construction. Taking advantage of this gap, Lin Jun planned to fulfill the Yellow Codex's reward first.
Honoring one's words had always been Lin Jun's excellent quality.
In the past, he didn't understand why he hadn't obtained the Virtue title of [Honesty]. After meeting the Demon King, he knew it was this old geezer taking up his spot.
Why didn't that Link or whatever cleave this slime to death with one sword back then?
Making him short one Virtue!
[F... Finally...]
Suffering for half a month, to the point where even the souls of D-class personnel didn't taste good anymore, the Yellow Codex finally waited for the Boss's summons!
"Don't be so excited. I never guaranteed you it would definitely succeed. If you make unreasonable scenes because there is no result, I won't show mercy." Lin Jun directly put the ugly words up front.
[Of course, of course, this lowly one knows...]
Although it wrote that it knew, looking at the way its pages couldn't help but flip from time to time, it was obviously still unbearably excited.
However, after it was wrapped by the Marshal Puchi and entered the laboratory, this excitement immediately cooled by more than half.
In the hidden testing ground, a glowing stone was placed in the center, illuminating the nearby fungal mat.
And on the left side of the testing ground, was a huge spatial rift leading to nothingness.
Beside the Yellow Codex were various Puchis waiting in full battle array.
The patterns on the walls also showed multiple anti-reconnaissance and trap magic arrays.
Making it look as if it would be executed right after the experiment...
But soon, the Yellow Codex's attention shifted from the surrounding layout back to that glowing stone again.
Faintly, it felt its core being plucked by the light radiating from this stone.
Could it be...?
"Alright, then let's try the direct irradiation effect first!" Saying this, the Puchi pulled the Yellow Codex open to the maximum, facing the Sunstone.
The light of the Sunstone dyed the pages with a layer of gold.
[Oh oh... this is... this is!]
(End of Chapter)
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