"Chuck, what does it feel like to grow a tail?" Norris, who had already grown close with several of the Self-Study Phenomenon patients, asked one of them.
The beastman-like tail behind the patient named Chuck gave a twitch. "It's like having an extra finger that's a bit too long and sits in a rather odd spot," he answered.
"Hmm. Is that so." Norris studied the tail, lost in thoughts no one could read.
Just then a child of seven or eight, crouched in a cluster of mushrooms in the corner, spoke up timidly. "Big Brother Norris, I want to go home. I miss my mom."
The child's nails were not like other people's, long and thin and sharp. When they brushed a nearby mushroom, the cap was sheared clean off without the slightest resistance.
Norris crouched down in front of the child, who instinctively curled his fingers in. Just as they were about to cut into his own palm, Norris caught his hand in time.
When the Mushroom-Worshipping Cult followers had found this little boy and brought him back, he had just sliced off a playmate's arm during a game. It had taken some of the Water of Life that Lin Jun handed out to keep the incident from blowing up.
Norris took out the small iron file he kept, the kind that slowed nail growth, and began filing the boy's nails as he spoke. "Little Kai, I know you want to go back. Everyone here wants to go back. But we have to deal with the problem on your body first, don't we? If you went home like this and hurt your mom, you wouldn't want that either."
The little boy hesitated, then said, "But Mom will worry."
"Don't worry. We'll tell your mom you've got talent and were chosen to go away and study, so there's nothing for her to fret about. Once you're cured here, you'll be able to go home like normal."
Only then did the little boy give a hard sniff and nod.
With the nails filed down, Norris ruffled the boy's hair. "There. That will hold for another three days. Go on and play."
Finally Norris turned to the girl behind him and handed her a vial. "Elara, here's your resistance potion for today."
"Th-thank you."
Elara undid the sealed mask that kept her dragon's breath from hurting anyone and drank, her eyes burning as they fixed on Norris.
In her eyes, Norris was not only the hero who had saved her life but also a dependable senior.
Most of the patients here had only a single mutation. Scales, for instance, or Little Kai's sharp claws, or her own frost breath.
But Big Brother Norris was different.
The first time she learned that Norris was human too, she had been thoroughly shocked.
Those scales covering his whole body, the sharp claws, the strange hollow in his chest...
A single mutation alone was already misery enough, disrupting their daily lives and even endangering their own and others' safety. For Big Brother Norris to have lost his human shape entirely, he must have suffered a great deal because of it.
And even so, he still helped them this gently. The girl's gaze grew only more ardent.
On the other side, Norris was rather puzzled.
The way he saw it, the Boss should have been able to solve the problems of Elara and the others fairly easily.
Yet the Boss had merely gathered them up and kept them here. What was he actually planning?
Norris only hoped their situation wouldn't take a turn for the worse.
Lin Jun did indeed have ways to solve these Self-Study patients' problems.
He could, for example, add [Cold Resistance LV10] to Elara so she wouldn't have to drink a resistance potion every day.
But as his subjects of observation, he had no intention of intervening like that. Their own changes were part of what he was studying.
Take Elara. Even without his interference, her [Cold Resistance] was climbing at a rate far beyond an ordinary person's.
And the boy, though less dramatically than Elara, was indeed seeing his [Physical Resistance] rise as well.
To Lin Jun, they were like protagonists in a story. What didn't kill them only made them stronger.
The best way to cultivate them would be abuse, to put them through endless torment. In a few years he could probably forge a powerhouse loaded with high-level skills.
Lin Jun, of course, had no such plans.
Compared with simply spending his own mana to grant a maxed-out skill outright, the value of their gradual growth wasn't much to speak of.
For Lin Jun, their worth lay more in helping him figure out exactly how this "Self-Study Phenomenon" came about.
After this stretch of comparative observation, he had gleaned a few things.
Lin Jun found that, seen through his [Inspiration] perspective, these Self-Study cases seemed bound to him a touch more deeply than ordinary fungal folk did.
The clearest sign of it was in sensing emotions. With most fungal folk, Lin Jun could perceive only vague feelings, useful at best for judging whether someone was lying.
With the Self-Study cases, though, the emotions came through far more clearly.
Right now, for instance, Lin Jun could feel the adoration that the girl called Elara held for his tailless lizardman, to the point that she was even getting a little hot and bothered.
Tsk.
He would arrange something later. Let her happen to walk in on Karen and her dependable Senior Norris playing a little game of hide-and-seek.
Much as the Self-Study Phenomenon intrigued him, Lin Jun was in truth devoting only a small share of his energy to it.
After all, there was a more pressing matter at hand.
Along the western coastline of the Mushroom Fortress's sphere of influence, stretching from the mouth of the Luo River all the way south to a captured Imperial port, Knight Puchi were being shipped in one after another to replace some of the original Puchi in the defense forces.
Apart from carrying A-grade magic crystals inside them rather than S-grade, these Knight Puchi were top-tier in every other respect, each one boasting strength at the diamond rank or above.
To stand against the coming Mist, Lin Jun had all but emptied out his reserves.
Many of these Knight Puchi were the fruit of past accumulation, transferred over from the Mushroom Fortress's army.
Out over the sea, the Mist still advanced quickly, but compared with its initial speed, it had begun to show signs of slowing.
By Lin Jun's prediction, if left unchecked, the Mist would push inland considerably farther this time than during the Human-Demon War, yet it still would not last long, much less swallow the entire continent outright.
As long as the multiple defensive lines he had set up could withstand the Mist's first wave, he could then retreat in a planned manner to ease the rebounding force of the compressed Mist, giving a strong chance of holding it out of the interior.
In that case, the losses the Mist caused would stay within an acceptable range.
At the same time, when the Mist receded once more, if the Empire had suffered heavy losses, that would be Lin Jun's best opportunity.
When that moment came, Lin Jun would unite the various races and march against the Demon King together.
To that end, he had even had the treants of the Elf Forest ready themselves for a far-flung campaign.
Everything was in place, and the Mist finally arrived right on schedule.
Yet a mishap occurred all the same.
As the Mist neared the coastline, it abruptly underwent a non-periodic acceleration, lurching up onto the shore and driving dozens of li inland.
Fortunately, the several cities near the coast had long since been cleared out by Lin Jun in advance. Apart from the garrison forces tasked with the defense, no one else was there.
However, a certain super-giant Puchi that had just gotten up to move east, along with a pink Puchi, was also swallowed up by the Mist without warning.
(End of Chapter)
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