With the formal alliance signed, Lin Jun opened up passage rights through the underground rift corridor. Exchange between the two sides picked up immediately.
There was a toll, of course: contribution points for crossing. The corridor genuinely ran on Lin Jun's upkeep, after all.
He had also shown admirable foresight by having the dwarves pre-make a large supply of temperature pendants, set up at the rift entrance for rental. Ordinary people might not be able to afford to buy such a magical item outright, but renting one for a stretch was manageable.
And so the traffic flowed.
Plenty of people wanted to cross into the Mushroom Fortress to look for kin. From the other direction, former slaves living in the Fortress wanted to go back and visit their hometowns.
Lin Jun threw his full support behind family-reunion trips, especially for the reborn-mushroom cases. Their requests got bumped to higher priority. The logic was simple: if your family member had become a Puchi and you wanted to live together again, you would need to communicate, and connecting to the mycelial network was only a matter of time.
More people would choose mycelial symbiosis. Eventually "symbiosis" would become the United Kingdom's new normal.
In short, the moment the alliance was signed, the United Kingdom was already Lin Jun's.
Beyond the United Kingdom, the elves were another territory Lin Jun felt reasonably confident about.
The proportion of symbiosis-bonded elves wasn't high (they hadn't been drawn directly into the war), but relations between the two sides were friendly enough. The Spore Society of fanatics alone smoothed the way considerably. Resistance to an alliance seemed unlikely to be steep.
And Lin Jun still had the Sword Saint as his trump card.
Strip that man of his disguise, drag him out in front of the elven princess, and what could possibly go wrong?
A little social death for the Sword Saint, and a treaty gets signed. Truly a win for everyone.
The real headache was the Mountain Dwarves, who had been the first to cooperate with the Mushroom Fortress.
The northern campaign had shown them firsthand what the mycelium could do, and the Empire had seized on that, seeding fear about "mycelial mind control" and staging a handful of incidents where "parasitized individuals attacked ordinary dwarves." However thin the logic, most dwarves only believed the truth they wanted to believe.
Among a people where symbiosis rates were already low, anti-mycelium sentiment surged.
The dwarves still openly supporting closer ties with the Mushroom Fortress were, by now, either those with business dealings in the Fortress, or those who had mycelium on them personally. Even the Clan Council had split into two camps locked in endless argument.
Lin Jun wasn't short of ideas for a response, but the mountain situation was nothing like the United Kingdom's; he just couldn't find a clean opening right now.
Besides, there were more pressing matters waiting for him back at the Mushroom Fortress.
---
The Mushroom Garden.
The Marshal Puchi sat enthroned on its mobile throne, looking down at the assembled fungal folk.
"I'll say it once more. Once this skill goes in, you won't be a little mushroom anymore. Not even a sliver of a small Puchi's pleasures will be yours. Do you understand?"
"Not even a sliver?" #4 tilted its cap.
Lin Jun explained, slowly: "[Leviathan] is too costly to cultivate. Once it's in, I can't let you die casually and swap bodies anymore. And at that size, setting everything else aside, you definitely won't fit in the pink Puchi's arms."
"This..." #4 turned to look back at the pink Puchi behind it.
Inanna was looking at it, eyes full of reluctance and worry. "#4..."
#4 thought about the warmth of the pink Puchi's arms, the comfort of being rubbed and pet. Then it thought about the glory of being a mushroom-folk warrior, and the shame of being knocked flat by Qisi with a single blow. Its tentacles curled tight.
It should be a glorious mushroom warrior, not a useless mushroom that couldn't beat anyone.
"Have you made up your mind? If you want to back out, that's fine too. We can pass this body to No. 7..."
Lin Jun hadn't finished speaking when #4 gave its cap a fierce twist and steeled itself. Inanna's soft voice called from behind it. It didn't turn its cap back.
"I... want [Leviathan]!"
The mycelium on the fungal mat beneath #4 stretched out and bonded to its mushroom body.
[[Leviathan]]
The skill installed with barely a draw on its magic, but that was only the beginning.
[Leviathan] was like a bottomless pit. Feed it magic, and #4 would grow. How large it could ultimately become depended entirely on the magic invested. Whether there was a ceiling at all remained to be seen.
What was certain: as its volume expanded, the magic it needed to sustain itself would climb with it, until input and consumption reached a balance. Qisi had heaped himself to that size by eating ocean creatures and boulders via [Gluttony]. How large could #4 get with the fungal mat feeding it magic?
To grow as large as possible, once #4 reached a certain size, it would be sent to a magic-rich uninhabited zone with minimal drain, to fill out its mass undisturbed.
"You give something up, you gain something. No. 4, pursuer of glory, enjoy your last pleasant days." The Marshal Puchi turned and left, its crimson cape billowing through the corridor.
When the procession had gone, #4 couldn't hold itself together any longer. It threw itself headlong into Inanna's arms.
"Pink Puchi!"
"Wuwu... #4! Even when you're enormous, I'll still rub and pet you!"
---
The [Leviathan] pried with such effort from Qisi's soul had found its home. In the coming war against the Demon King, it would shine.
On top of that, there were two other matters at the Mushroom Fortress.
One was Little Black's [Ancient Dragon Path]. After the battle with Qisi, between hunting dragons herself and acquiring more through the dwarves, the dragon war had been grinding on, but giant dragons were becoming rarer and rarer. Lin Jun was starting to worry there wouldn't be enough left. The problem was that Little Black had started the dragon war too late. At this point, it felt like a matter of luck.
The other matter: Little Pig had finally hit LV70.
To level fast, Little Pig had taken the front lines often in recent battles. Add Lin Jun's Life Water and a steady daily diet of dragon blood, and she had finally reached the ceiling for a vampire marquis.
Honestly, Lin Jun had spent a real amount of high-grade magic crystals lately buying dragons from the Mountain dwarves. Even with the cheap low-tier crystals he brought back in bulk as raw material, he was a bit in the red. But he still carved out what the Blood-Seizure Ritual needed.
Little Pig was the most useful asset under his command. She was worth it.
And if it was time for a Blood-Seizure Ritual, then the vampire duke who had been running loose in the Mushroom Fortress for quite a while now was overdue to join the table.
---
In the heart of the Mushroom Fortress, inside a grand manor draped in deep crimson curtains.
A lizardwoman maid carried a tray and presented a crystal-clear wine glass to the former Imperial duke with a practiced bow. "Lady Elinore, your dragon blood."
Elinore took the glass and sipped. Her brow knotted instantly.
She raised two fingers to her lips and slowly pulled out a thread of white mycelium.
"Useless! You can't even get this one little thing right!" The wine glass hit the floor beside the maid's feet and shattered. Dragon blood splashed across the black-and-white skirt, blooming red.
Elinore's eyes narrowed to two dangerous slits, a crimson light flickering in her pupils.
If this maid hadn't been sent by the Mushroom Fortress city hall, one of her own servants would have been drained to a husk by now.
Elinore was broadly satisfied with life in the Mushroom Fortress. The Fungus Lord had recognized her value and gone out of his way to accommodate her in many respects.
The one thing she couldn't adjust to was losing her old power over life and death.
That was temporary, though.
Louisa, that traitor, had finally decided she wanted to advance. With that as leverage, Elinore would take back everything that was hers.
She was mid-calculation, working out how best to squeeze every drop out of Louisa, when her peripheral vision caught the lizardwoman maid still standing there, gaping, not clearing up the mess on the floor. The maid was staring fixedly at something just above Elinore's head.
Fury surged. Elinore flicked her wrist. The blood on the floor lashed across the maid's face. "What are you staring at? Is there writing on my head? Into the dungeon with idiots like you!"
The maid pressed a hand to her face and climbed back to her feet, privately reflecting on the hardships of a high-paying job.
She turned her attention back to the floor and got to work, careful not to look up again at the line of floating text above Elinore's head, which had just been updated.
Public execution in 3 days. Location: Puchi Plaza. Attendance strongly recommended.
(End of Chapter)
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