Chapter 23: 23 Changes on the Fifth Floor

Recently, the adventurers of Silent Wind Town discovered that the traces of monsters on the fifth floor of the Amethyst Dungeon had sharply decreased.

The jackalweres had retreated deep into the forest and no longer ventured out to hunt; the Green-Eyed Frogs could not be found in the Poison Mist Lake; even the roaming Acid Slimes had dwindled significantly.

Only the crystallized bat swarms and rock lizard packs in the western cave maintained their normal state.

Speculation regarding the root of the anomaly was divided among everyone.

Some claimed that during a certain mission, they sensed a violent fluctuation of mana in the swamp area from afar, and it must have been the runaway Parasitic Trees scaring away the surrounding monsters.

Others guessed it was a sign of an approaching Demon Tide, but the Adventurers' Guild was professional in this regard; since the Guild had not issued any Demon Tide warning, such speculation gained little traction.

The most ridiculous was that drunkard Nick, who swore on his life that he had personally witnessed a group of Pujis slaughtering entire ponds of Green-Eyed Frogs.

This claim made everyone who heard it burst into laughter, convinced that Nick must have been too drunk to distinguish reality from his own drunken dreams, even while in the dungeon.

Who didn't know that Pujis were at the bottom of the food chain even on the first floor, let alone slaughtering Green-Eyed Frogs on the fifth floor?

Compared to what Nick said, the signs of a Demon Tide seemed far more credible.

————

Meanwhile, Lin Jun, the lone jackalwere killer, the instigator behind the near-extinction of Green-Eyed Frogs, and the chief culprit of the changes on the fifth floor, launched another territorial war against the Parasitic Trees.

The active defensive contraction during this period had returned most of the swamp area to the hands of the Parasitic Trees.

However, the number of Parasitic Trees would not increase in the short term; instead, they would become scattered due to the vast territory.

Meanwhile, Lin Jun hunted everywhere, accumulating a large amount of mana and cultivating over a hundred Pujis.

Now, the time for counterattack had arrived!

With over two hundred Pujis in total, the few Parasitic Trees on the periphery were instantly obliterated upon contact, easily pushing the front line back to the previous battlefield.

Just like last time, the dual magic and martial arts assassins of the Parasitic Trees struck.

It was two more dirty Water Elementals.

Lin Jun quickly deployed forty Pujis to launch successive attacks, suppressing the Water Elementals in a short time.

On the other side, the Blade Storm spun and rushed toward the Pujis; if it got close, Lin Jun would surely suffer heavy losses.

However, Lin Jun would not fall into the same trap twice.

The Pujis turned and pressed down, squeezing their bodies into a lump in an extremely short time, and then—

They bounced up!

【Assault Launch LV4】

Thanks to the movement skill contributed by the frogs, the Pujis instantly scattered in all directions; only one, which was closest, was caught mid-air by the Blade Storm and sliced into several pieces.

It wasn't over yet; the self-exploding Pujis, prepared long ago, rolled out of the formation and detonated one by one in front of the Parasitic Trees.

Although each Pujis was blocked by the rotating roots on the outer ring and failed to reach the tree trunk to explode, even so, after twenty self-detonations, the health points of this Parasitic Tree had hit rock bottom.

In fact, this damage was completely insufficient to kill a Level 45 Warrior adventurer, but the main body of this Parasitic Tree was only a measly Level 24 and could not withstand such a chain of explosions.

Now, only the summoning Parasitic Tree remained.

A large number of Pujis bypassed the suppressed Water Elementals and rushed to slaughter the other Parasitic Trees behind.

When another ordinary Parasitic Tree was blasted in half, the two Water Elementals instantly dispersed, merging into the swamp and vanishing without a trace.

The two most troublesome Parasitic Trees had fallen; what followed was just a boring push-through.

The Pujis still suffered sporadic casualties from strange skills that occasionally emerged, but this had no impact on the overall situation.

The Parasitic Trees, which struck fear into the hearts of low-level adventurers, posed no significant threat to Lin Jun.

The reason human adventurers had to detour upon seeing Parasitic Trees was that they faced a continuous stream of them in squad formations, making their chances of victory naturally very low.

Lin Jun was different; he was waging war, leading a unified army of self-sacrificing Pujis against scattered monsters fighting individually.

Even if these Parasitic Trees had a few more tricks up their sleeves, as long as they didn't display power that was too overpowered, everything else could only be classified as flashy nonsense.

Now, Lin Jun only paid a small amount of attention to commanding the battle; most of his mind was already thinking about the planning for the new Mushroom Garden.

Unlike the enclosed terrain of the deep-area Mushroom Garden, the swamp area was located in the very center of the entire fifth floor.

It was only because the terrain here was difficult to traverse and there were terrifying monsters like the Parasitic Trees that adventurers chose to detour.

Once the Parasitic Trees were cleaned up and the danger reduced, someone might choose to pass through here; Lin Jun did not want his own lair to become a highway for adventurers.

Whether through force or some form of communication, he had to find a way to make them understand that they would have to continue detouring in the future.

Furthermore, the scope of Lin Jun's new Mushroom Garden was not limited to the swamp area; in fact, the swamp area was merely the core of his plan, and the entire fifth floor would eventually be included in the Mushroom Garden's range.

The Poison Mist Lake could be used for breeding; what to breed had not yet been determined, and there were quite a few options.

The cave area was originally a mine, but now it was being mined by adventurers; it was also the area with the most humans on this floor, which was why Lin Jun had not hunted in that direction during this period.

What was produced inside was still the specialty of this dungeon—purple mana crystals.

However, the average quality was obviously far inferior to that of the deep area; Lin Jun had secretly checked, and even Grade C was considered rare.

But it was still a mine in his own backyard, so he had to find an opportunity to bring it under mushroom ownership.

Deploying force to occupy it was simple, but he did not want to show strong hostility toward humans.

It was not some sense of human identity, but something more realistic: if one's strength was insufficient, one should appear more amiable.

Do not look at how he seemed invincible on this floor now, capable of crushing ordinary adventurers with a snap of his fingers; compared to the human race as a whole, he was still too weak.

Since future interaction was inevitable, he should try to make a good start; if an agreement could be reached, even if it was just some tacit rules, that would be good.

The problem was that his Common Tongue was only Level 1, and the inability to communicate directly was a major issue.

He couldn't just go on a rampage slaughtering adventurers, raise his Common Tongue to Level 10, and then go tell them: "Now let us live in harmony."

This problem was the most important, and Lin Jun needed to plan it carefully.

As for the jackalweres in the forest.

Well, he happened to have a Fusion Parasite on hand that he hadn't had time to study in detail, so he might as well use them as a test case.

Everything was to make the Mushroom Garden great again!

————

Dark clouds churned, and the downpour turned the road into a sea of mud; every hoofbeat splashed up sludge.

In such foul weather, horses were prone to slipping.

Even so, the rider showed no sign of stopping; one hand gripped the reins while the other clutched the bundle at his chest as he pressed forward at full speed.

The gale, driving the rain, howled past, tearing off the hood to reveal Dylans hideous half-face, crawling with fungal filaments.

(End of this chapter)