Chapter 39: 39 Isn't This a Bit Different from What Was Agreed Upon?

"Here they come! The monsters are here!"

The voice, trembling with fear yet laced with excitement, caused the mercenaries leaning in the shadows of the stone wall to straighten their spines simultaneously, the metal armor plates clattering sharply as they turned in haste.

Everyone's attention focused on what lay beyond the great gate.

Vera also gripped the weapon in his hand—a very ordinary scimitar.

His fine steel scimitar had been lost during that raider incident; now he could only make do with this common iron one.

Because the Adventurer's Guild offered a generous reward and was recruiting assistants in full force, even before the fighting began, they could earn a considerable daily wage.

So he and Fei Yin Fei Ling had both come.

Although some adventurers described the monster tide as terrifying, with so many adventurers present, failure was impossible, right?

All they needed to watch out for was avoiding injury during the battle.

They just hadn't expected the monster tide to arrive after only one day of guarding!

Vera and the adventurers around him held their breath, adjusting their states to peak condition.

Several adventurers holding bows and crossbows crowded to the cracks in the gate, aiming inside, ready to fire the first volley at any moment.

This wait lasted ten minutes.

The adventurers looked at each other, then finally turned their gaze to the fellow who had first shouted "The monsters are here."

"No... that's not right, the monsters did appear..."

That person wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and leaned in to take a look through the crack.

There was still only the corpse of Pu Ji; as for the other monsters, not even a shadow was seen.

In the end, Marshall stepped forward to confirm the situation and reassured the crowd:

"Indeed, a Walking Mushroom ran up to the gate, which means the dungeon's 'rules' have weakened.

But the main force of the monsters shouldn't have arrived yet; it was just that a Walking Mushroom from the first floor happened to wander over.

Stand down from alert status; I'll keep watch here."

Marshall also breathed a sigh of relief; the Guild had previously predicted the monster tide would erupt in about three to four days.

Support from surrounding cities would also take a few days to arrive.

Gathering adventurers to guard the gate now was merely a precaution.

He had just thought that "precaution" had come to pass.

Hearing Marshall's words, everyone put away their weapons, and complaints rose up on all sides.

Beside Vera, Fei Ling and Fei Yin also breathed a sigh of relief.

After all, it was the legendary monster tide; to say they weren't nervous would be a lie.

However, since just now, Vera had been staring at an unfamiliar adventurer.

That scimitar at the person's waist... why did it look so familiar...

—

A magical oscillation reached the Mushroom Garden from below once again.

It had been happening more and more frequently lately, as if announcing the approach of the monster tide.

Lin Jun, now aware of the situation, had already begun actively setting up defenses.

Although the monster tide looked extremely dangerous, he had prepared multiple contingencies.

The best scenario would naturally be for himself to count as part of the monster tide, then mix in with the monster ranks and charge upward.

While other monsters and humans fought, he would be responsible for providing free corpse collection services to both sides.

However, that scenario was too idealistic; he couldn't truly pin his hopes on it.

The other possibility was that the monster tide would attack even him; in that case, he would have to fight back to protect his Mushroom Garden.

Fortunately, there were only two staircases connecting the fifth and sixth floors, so the defensive pressure wasn't too great.

Put simply, it was a tower defense game, and Pu Ji's specialty, the Mushroom Cannon, was perfect for this scenario.

At that time, he would coordinate with some Pu Ji capable of spraying slime, poison mist, or self-destructing.

Even if a pack of werewolves from the tenth floor charged upward together, he was confident he could wipe them all out in the stairwell.

As for the connection point between the fourth and fifth floors, he would just station a small number of Pu Ji to block it.

First, the monsters shouldn't charge downward in reverse; second, even if those low-level monsters did come, a dozen or so Pu Ji would be enough to handle them.

What Lin Jun truly feared were the overpowered individuals from the deep zones.

If a Balrog-level monster came, or even stronger!

Then Lin Jun had no confidence he could hold them back.

Fortunately, Lin Jun had a backup plan!

The main body would pilot the Knight, hide deep inside the cave beforehand, and if the situation turned dire, blow up the entrance.

He didn't believe those monsters would dig into the cave just to take a bite of his mushroom!

It would just be a bit troublesome to dig back out later.

For this reason, Lin Jun had specially prepared several Pu Ji equipped with 【Rock-Eater LV3】.

The old bat's cave, used as an escape route, was piled high with most of Lin Jun's assets.

This included equipment and items left by adventurers, parasitic tree seeds, valuable materials harvested from monsters, and a small pile of gold coins.

At a glance, it looked like a miniature dragon's treasure hoard.

Additionally, he had prepared twenty Pu Ji filled with mana, serving purely as batteries.

Even if the entire cave collapsed unexpectedly, he could hold out until he dug his way out!

Sigh—

Whenever he had to prepare an escape route for himself, Lin Jun would always recall that figure who had unfurled a scroll before him and vanished without a trace.

Pity he had asked Dylan; this world had no such thing as teleportation scrolls.

The only method of teleportation was through complex ritual arrays; a single scroll could not possibly sustain teleportation magic.

And the scroll that person used was not a teleportation scroll, but an Escape Scroll produced from dungeon treasure chests.

The principle was to utilize the dungeon's own rule power to directly eject the user.

Such scrolls were produced in scant quantities, yet their price was not too high.

The reason was that this ejection only guaranteed the user would leave the dungeon's range; as for where they would be ejected, it was entirely random.

A safe ejection was a low-probability event; appearing underground or in the sky was the normal phenomenon.

Without some special survival skills, using this scroll was no different from seeking death.

Even so, if he could get hold of one, using it to gamble when at his wit's end would be acceptable.

With the abilities on that knight's body, the chance of survival was actually quite high.

——

With Lin Jun's deployment, the Pujis were almost all ready.

At the two staircases leading to the sixth floor, no fewer than four hundred Pujis of various types had been assigned.

For the staircases connecting to the upper levels, thirty were dispatched to each location.

The main body and the knight, accompanied by about fifty Pujis, remained inside the cave as the final insurance.

Now, only the recovery of the more than one hundred Pujis sent down to explore earlier remained; these Pujis had just entered the staircase leading to the fifth floor.

Another surge of magical power came; Lin Jun was almost getting used to it.

However, this tremor seemed different from before; the duration was quite long?

It wasn't over yet...

Wasn't it a bit too long?

Moreover, as time progressed, the tremor not only did not weaken, but grew stronger and stronger!

Finally, it formed a magical tide like a tsunami, sweeping Lin Jun into a daze.

What the hell is this?

Has the demon tide started already?

When the tide finally subsided, Lin Jun discovered something was wrong.

Those more than one hundred Pujis that had just been climbing the stairs were all lost?

The original staircase no longer existed; in its place was... a constantly expanding black rift!

From within, a series of beast roars could faintly be heard.

Is this the demon tide?

It seems a bit different from what I imagined?

More critically, not only this staircase had mutated; the other staircase leading to the fourth floor, guarded by only thirty Pujis, had also turned into that kind of rift!

You can't play dirty like this!

Before Lin Jun could go mad, a head resembling a giant lizard, its face covered in hexagonal scales, poked out from the rift.

That monster's vertical, narrow, blazing-gold pupils shifted slightly, scanning all the Pujis present...

(End of this chapter)