Puchi, puchi...
Rank upon rank of Puchis marched in step down the Mushroom Capital's main street.
Inside Puchi House, the Mushroom Convert Evan was hugging his daughter Bianca goodbye.
He had come to the Mushroom Capital with the Third Fungal Legion, and after a single day's stay, he was to move out with the army.
"Papa, be careful out there!"
Faced with his daughter's worry, Evan flourished his tentacle-blade. "Relax! Your old man is a force to be reckoned with!"
Evan shared one more long, reluctant hug with his wife, then melted into the column of Puchis flowing down the street.
A few days later, a freshly regrown Evan, reborn out of the underground city, could only rub his cap sheepishly under the stares of mother and daughter both.
Unlike the First and Second Legions, the Third Fungal Legion was built mostly of Mushroom Converts. It did not fear casualties, and could be spent in the field as freely as one liked.
After topping up the Mushroom Capital's local garrison of Puchis, Lin Jun had dispatched the entire Third Legion outward.
Not to relieve Oath City; the waters there ran far too deep.
The Third Legion's targets were the squads the Demon King had scattered across the land to burn and slaughter.
Not every enemy force had a prince like Darean at its head.
Riding the information advantage of the fungal mat, the Third Legion would pull out those massacre squads one by one, like pulling nails, and in doing so help Oath City indirectly.
Lin Jun had no fear of attrition. Puchis and Mushroom Converts alike could be replenished endlessly from within the underground city.
When it came to the battlefield at Oath City itself, though, there was far less Lin Jun could do.
After the Empire's two armies closed the ring, they had driven herds of slimes to devour every scrap of fungal mat around Oath City, and most of the underground network with it.
These days, Lin Jun kept his view of Oath City alive through only a few mycelial channels buried extremely deep.
Pumping enough mana through those few strands to mass-produce Puchis inside the city was simply not realistic.
Fortunately, Oath City's defenses were solid, and under Alama and the others its defenders still had their fighting spirit. It looked able to hold for a long time yet.
The Mist had washed away nearly half the new defense line, but the remaining half still ran. Mana flowed steadily into Oath City from the node cities behind it, and if the Empire wanted to cut that lifeline, it would first have to gnaw through several very hard bones.
Lin Jun's plan was to take Duskfall Keep before that happened, then deliver the footage to the walls of Oath City. Once the Empire's soldiers saw their own royal capital fall with their own eyes, there wouldn't be much fight left in them.
At that point, the Demon King could either admit the game was lost and slink into the shadows with a handful of dukes and no armies, or line up his remnants and try to fight the entire United Kingdom with them.
And stepping back a pace: even if Oath City truly fell, it would be a tragedy for humanity, but for Lin Jun, not so much.
Word that the Empire was at the walls had gone out long ago.
The dwarves were still busy putting their own house in order over the lingering psychic-field problem and had no hands free. But the elves had moved this time.
Eko was leading the forest guards, mounted on their elk, past the Scarecrow Abyss, now a fully-converted Puchi farmstead getaway, on their way to reinforce Oath City.
Somewhat behind them, the treants had set out as well. Their heading, though, was the Empire.
Even if the Demon King took Oath City, all he would gain was a stretch of human territory he could never digest.
While his own home base, the Empire, would be eaten hollow by Lin Jun's fungal mat!
If any road back into the game still existed for him, it was probably hidden in those monoliths the Empire called "coffins."
Lin Jun had captured several of the small coffins from the extermination squads his forces swept up.
Study showed no souls stored inside. The souls they devoured had apparently been relayed elsewhere along the runes.
Barring surprises, all of it fed into the giant coffin the Empire's army guarded so closely.
And of course, it would surprise no one if some ultimate coffin lay hidden deeper still.
Whatever the truth, the Demon King was collecting souls for a reason, and that meant that if Oath City could be saved, it was worth saving.
For that, Lin Jun prodded the First Legion to pick up its marching pace a little.
"All units, positions. Ahead of us is the last city before Duskfall Keep."
Blood Sis's all-channel voice in his head woke Norris. He wiped the corner of his mouth and sat up straight inside Jida.
With a scout Puchi's backside parked on top of Jida's head, his perception spread wide. Jida hadn't strayed at all, ambling along with the main column at an easy pace.
Nearby, soldiers who had been shaken awake the same way were climbing out of the bellies of walking fat otaku Puchis.
That was simply how a Puchi legion marched: you could sleep inside a Jida or a fat otaku Puchi, and the army lost barely a step for it.
Jida's back spat a tail of flame and it leapt out of the column, sailing over the dense Puchi phalanxes to land on a rise beside the army. Several subordinates piloting Jidas of their own followed, moving ahead to scout toward the city.
As he advanced, Norris ran back through what intelligence said about the city ahead.
Sitting this close to Duskfall Keep, it served mainly as the transport hub linking the Empire's north, not as a military fortress. That meant no serious defenses, and even if the Empire had begun reinforcing it the moment the Mist made landfall, that little time could never have turned it into a hard city to crack.
If he were the defender, he wouldn't waste troops here at all; he'd concentrate everything at Duskfall Keep.
Probably just a token force of the old and infirm inside, there to send word to Duskfall Keep before the city fell. So Norris guessed.
But when the city finally entered his scouting range, Norris discovered his guess had still been too generous.
What lay before him was already a ghost town.
Norris led his Jida squad halfway around the city's perimeter, and even with [Sonic Detection LV10], caught no hint of movement inside. When they simply went in, they found it truly empty.
"So the Empire did abandon this place." In the mycelial network, Norris's subordinates reached the same read. "The fight after this one is going to be ugly, though."
Something nagged at Norris. By his logic, there should at least have been a few sentries left behind to carry word.
And he had found fresh bloodstains in the city. But no bodies.
He was still puzzling over it when a cry of alarm burst through the mycelial network.
By the time Norris rushed back, one Jida's legs had already sunk into a pool of shadow, and it was being dragged steadily down. The two Jidas beside it were pouring mushroom cannon fire and tentacle-blades into the shadow, to no effect whatsoever.
Norris stared at the scene, and it stirred something familiar.
"Is that a shadow bug?" He had seen this kind of monster once, outside the Boss's Abyss laboratory.
Vrrrn!
He spun up his drill and simply bored the trapped Jida open at the waist, hauling everything inside it, operator included, clear of the shadow.
Thoom!
A muffled blast sounded within the darkness. Moments later the shadow dissolved, leaving behind only a single shadow bug, shaken dead by the concussion.
Norris rolled up the bug's carcass, and his guess was confirmed.
"Why is there an Abyss creature here?"
He cast one look around him and snapped alert. "No. Everyone out, now! This is a tr..."
Before the words could land, a stain of ink-black shadow raced outward from the city's center.
A shrill laugh rose out of the darkness: "And here I was, hoping to give you a surprise... These bugs have such useful abilities, but they are just so disobedient! It would have hurt so much less my way!"
A colossal beast-claw reached out of the shadow and slammed down just behind the retreating Norris and his men.
An enormous monster was climbing, slowly, out of that churning darkness!
A dragon's head hung low; a bear's body like a hill; a scorpion's tail arched high; ruined wings dragged behind it. Scale and pelt, carapace and bone-plate were jumbled together, a living jigsaw stitched up by some madman's hands.
And in its chest, a core shining with black light.
"They hid an Abyss Beast inside the city?!" Norris pulled his men back at full speed.
Then he spotted something that made his scalp crawl far worse.
Atop the beast's dragon head, a half-demon whose lower body had already fused into the monster was shrieking with laughter.
Her features ran like springheads: shadow poured endlessly from her eye sockets, her nostrils, her ears, the corners of her mouth, streaming down to feed the darkness spreading below.
"Eeheeheeheehee! All of you! All of you are going to die!"
Velariss screamed at the sky, and, laughing, drove the Abyss Beast straight at the halted First Legion!
(End of Chapter)
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