Thump. Thump.
The giant beast congealed from fresh blood battered the Mushroom Capital's wall again and again under Darean's control. Defensive runes surfaced from within the stone, lighting up layer upon layer, then going dark section by section under the impacts.
On the wall, Puchis poured mushroom cannon fire down at the blood beast below. As soon as one batch ran dry of mana, another batch of Puchis shuffled up to replace them. Some Puchis simply leapt off the wall, closing in on the enemy before self-destructing.
The Puchis, though, were taking attacks from the sky in turn.
Blood-scions soared overhead, condensing slender arrows of blood that rained straight down.
Passing through the defensive magic array over the city shaved away most of the arrows' force. They could no longer kill an ordinary soldier outright, but against Puchis they were still one-shot lethal.
You couldn't blame the Mushroom Capital's defense grid for the gap. When the city's defenses were designed, no one had imagined a day when Puchis would be the backbone of the garrison. Fortunately, the wall also carried the illusion devices Aedin had installed, and a large share of the Puchis skewered by blood arrows simply burst like bubbles. Phantoms, nothing more. Even so, every volley from the blood-scions left real Puchis dead, and among the shredded Puchis littering the wall, one wore a little maid outfit.
The doors of Puchi House were shut fast, holding the clamor and chaos of the city outside.
The shop was cold and empty, just Dylan and Bianca, mother and daughter... or rather, boss and shopgirl.
Every Puchi in the store had been requisitioned by Farr. In truth, almost every Puchi in the entire city had been marched off, down to the most useless cannon-fodder Puchi.
"Boss, what's going to happen to us?" The girl's face had none of its usual liveliness, only fear and worry for an unknowable future.
Dylan could only pat Bianca's head and comfort her. "Easy now. You've got me, your boss. If you can't settle your nerves, praise the Boss a few extra times in your heart."
Feeling the warmth of Dylan's palm, Bianca's expression slowly calmed.
She raised both hands above her head, fingertips pressed together in the posture of praise to the Fungus Lord, closed her eyes, and went quiet.
Dylan sat himself back down by the shop door, watching the street outside with wary eyes.
At that moment he had rings crammed onto all ten fingers, a jeweled belt at his waist, and an exquisite pendant hanging at his neck. He looked like a walking jewelry rack, gaudy and eye-stabbing.
All of it, though, was skill equipment.
For the other core members, Lin Jun simply installed skills directly; better they carry a few more stat-boosting trinkets than waste slots on skill gear.
Old Dylan alone couldn't keep up with the current meta and wasn't worth the investment, so Lin Jun had simply dumped a heap of skill equipment on him and called it done.
And now was exactly the time for that stuff to earn its keep.
On the walls, guards and Puchis were fighting for their lives. Inside the city, in the shadow of calamity, everything had dissolved into chaos.
There were brave adventurers who gathered their companions and joined the line defending the Mushroom Capital, and naturally there were also scum whose thoughts turned ugly, hoping to do evil under cover of the confusion. Earlier, some of that scum had even picked Puchi House as a target. Everyone knew, after all, that this shop's business had always boomed.
Dylan had used his skill equipment to freeze them into ice sculptures and stood them up by the door, their snarling, blade-swinging lunges still preserved inside the ice. After that, no one without eyes in their head came looking for death.
But the looters were never the main source of the chaos. What had truly thrown the city into disorder were the people trying to flee.
Because the Mushroom Capital genuinely had an escape route: the Puchi underground city's spatial rift!
Crowds of would-be escapees rushed the dungeon entrance, only to find it blanketed in hallucinogenic spores so thick no wind could disperse them. Even those who used magic or potions to push through the spore fog and reach the entrance found the passage grown solid with giant mushrooms, layer upon layer, and could not advance a single step.
"Why? Isn't the Mushroom Fortress our ally? Why won't they let us through to shelter?" Someone pounded on the wall of mushrooms blocking the road, palms striking caps with dull thump after dull thump.
A less-than-devout believer of the Mushroom-Worshipping Cult knelt some distance away, hands joined above his head, fingertips trembling, voice already cracking into sobs: "Has the Fungus Lord abandoned us?"
An adventurer booted the believer aside and stepped up, hefting his axe. "Fungus Lord my foot! Let me through!" With that he swung the battle-axe at the giant mushroom sealing the way.
Then something miraculous happened.
Before the axe-edge could land, the huge cap wilted all on its own, without the slightest warning. The stalk collapsed, the cap shriveled, and the whole thing slumped to the ground.
The giant mushrooms beside it withered too, and before long they had all melted away into the fungal mat.
The adventurer stood frozen, axe still in hand. After a moment's confusion, he looked back at his companions with the beginnings of a smug grin. "Heh. This mushroom knows how to take a hint after aaaaaaaall!"
Several thick mycelium tentacles shot out, coiled around his legs, and dragged him into the darkness of the entrance before anyone could react, leaving nothing on the ground but two rows of clawing finger-marks.
At the same moment, from deep in the underground city, rose wave upon layered wave of "puchi" sounds...
The Mushroom Capital's fortifications were extremely solid. But even the strongest city only matters if it has garrison strength to match.
Had the Mushroom Capital held even one duke-level defender, then short of the Empire's main host arriving, it could hardly have fallen at all.
As it stood, the strongest person in the city, Aedin, was merely hall-level, and a support-type illusionist at that.
Against the vampire Prince Darean hammering the west wall, he had no answer whatsoever.
The defensive runes went dark patch after patch, and the wall showed more openings by the minute.
One bold blood-scion timed the flicker between runes, cleared the high wall, and forced his way in.
Two mushroom cannon shots struck the vampire from behind. That was the last effort the wall's defenders could spare him.
The vampire crashed down onto the street outside Puchi House amid flying shards of stone.
The instant he landed, he lashed out a casual claw. On either side, two civilians who hadn't yet managed to scatter dropped where they stood, and the blood gushing from their necks coiled upward, congealing in midair into two long whips of scarlet.
A flick of his wrist sent the whips sweeping out, and half the front wall of Puchi House caved in with a roar.
Splinters flew. Dust rolled.
Dylan planted himself in front of the mother and daughter. The rings on his ten fingers, the jewels at his waist, and the pendant at his throat lit up all at once, and shields bloomed before him in layers, like soap bubbles stacked on soap bubbles.
Behind him Bianca squeezed her eyes shut, voice thick with tears, reciting "praise the Boss" over and over.
The blood whip rose high, aimed for the biggest threat present: Dylan.
"Boss!"
"You ought to add the word 'great' in front of that."
With that voice sounding in Bianca's mind, a marrow-piercing cold wind poured in from the end of the street. The vampire froze mid-lash, coated head to toe in white frost, even his lashes iced into little spears, and the blood whip already descending on Dylan hung solid in midair, dead still.
Inanna walked out of the cold wind, an elegant lady formed of pure ice drifting along behind her.
The Marshal Puchi floated in the air, the long crimson cloak at his back streaming out full length in the light wind.
And behind them, stretching back in a long, long column whose tail had still not fully emerged from the underground city, came the Third Fungal Legion.
Standing atop the frozen vampire, the Marshal Puchi swept a tentacle forward.
"Raise the war banners!"
At Lin Jun's command, several vampires who had been installed with [Sensory Enhancement LV10] were hoisted up to fly as the banners, and their heartrending screams rang out over all the Mushroom Capital!
(End of Chapter)
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