Chapter 93: 92 Where Did So Many Slimes Come From?

Two glass beads were placed into the hands of the ecstatic Seeing Xiao Hei.

Seeing Xiao Hei clutched them and dashed back to the mushroom house in a blur.

Sweeping the glass shards aside with her tail, Seeing Xiao Hei pulled all the beads beneath herself and began counting them one by one.

Then Lin Jun watched her—point, point, point—count a few, then return to the first bead and start over again.

Maybe he should set aside some time to teach her how to count?

It would probably be very hard to teach her.

Seeing Xiao Hei strongly resisted any learning activity that required thinking.

Just imagining how to teach her gave Lin Jun a headache.

What about hiring a "math teacher" for her?

Let's just say that profession was far too dangerous—hard to find any being willing to serve long-term…

After creating a new folder for Seeing Xiao Hei's education plan and setting it aside, Lin Jun now had to test the new variety of Pukji, or else he couldn't even push past the sixth layer.

On the fungal carpet of the mushroom forest, two experimental Pukji writhed and detached themselves.

One bore eight specialized tentacles; the other constantly secreted mucus from its surface.

Start with the suction cups.

Upon receiving the command, the suction-cup Pukji quickly scurried to the rock wall, expanding the tips of its tentacles into bowl-shaped suction cups that slapped against the stone with a pat-pat-pat.

At first, it was fine—the suction force lifted the Pukji upward without any difficulty.

But soon, problems arose: as it moved continuously, several fungal tentacles somehow became tangled.

The Pukji tried to untangle them, but the knots only grew larger until it became a single ball hanging from the rock wall; when the last two suction cups finally gave out, it fell and splattered into a puddle.

Lin Jun felt little emotional reaction—problems with experimental specimens were normal.

The issue here still stemmed from the Pukji's intelligence: eight fungal tentacles were too many to coordinate; the suction force was stronger than anticipated, so the number of tentacles could be reduced.

Quickly, a second Pukji was born under magical catalysis, this time with only six tentacles.

Although this Pukji still occasionally paused to rearrange its tentacles while moving, at least no more tangling occurred.

But when it pressed itself against the rock wall and fired a mushroom cannon, the recoil flipped its entire body over.

Lin Jun watched the Pukji dangling midair, noticing its mushroom projectile missed the target and struck the fungal carpet over ten meters away.

Fewer fungal tentacles meant less stability…

Lin Jun promptly ordered this failed prototype to detach and return to the mushroom garden's cycle.

Plan one discarded; next, the mucus Pukji.

The mucus-covered Pukji climbed the rock wall smoothly but encountered a minor problem when firing.

The cannon's muzzle couldn't be raised.

The Pukji needed most of its body pressed against the wall to maintain sufficient adhesion, leaving the mushroom cannon only slightly angled upward.

The originally intended targets simply weren't at a high enough elevation to be hit…

It fired a random shot—what he'd feared about the adhesion turned out not to be an issue.

It was usable, yes, but the flaws were real—and the constant secretion of mucus for climbing consumed unexpectedly high magical energy.

So in the end, fixed artillery platforms mounted on walls were still necessary…

Let's get to work.

On the outermost edge of the sixth layer's fungal carpet, a Pukji began to gestate every forty meters.

The first batch of Pukji were rapidly produced under Lin Jun's lavish expenditure of magical energy.

These Pukji differed slightly from ordinary ones—they were round.

After being born, they immediately began consuming the rock beneath them, coating their bodies with the crushed stone.

This process lasted about two days.

Two days later, round stone artillery platforms had taken preliminary shape.

Drawing from the mucus Pukji's lesson on firing angle limitations, the spherical stone surfaces bore numerous appropriately sized circular holes—holes that allowed mushroom cannons to extend and fire without being so large that the central round Pukji could fall out.

The appearance of these fixed artillery platforms immediately allowed Lin Jun to eliminate the constant swarms of Slimes harassing him, enabling the fungal carpet to continue spreading outward—until it grew another hundred meters, beyond effective range…

And so, a new round of gestation began.

Progress had been roughly 130 meters every 2.5 days; to cover the entire sixth layer? Well, the future looked promising.

Pukji generation could be forcibly accelerated by magical energy, but the 【Rock-Eating】 transformation into stone artillery platforms could not be sped up.

Progress was slow, but with no better alternatives, this was the best he could do—for now, at least, he was advancing.

Honestly, by now Lin Jun's feeling was that there were simply too many Slimes!

And they kept coming endlessly.

He'd fought Slimes on other layers before—usually, the first few days were intense.

After several days of bloody attrition, Shi Laimu reinforcements couldn't keep pace with Pukji replenishment, and they were gradually suppressed.

Lin Jun had originally expected the sixth layer to follow the same pattern.

But now, after so many days, the number of Slimes hadn't decreased—it was actually increasing.

Something didn't make sense.

If there had always been this many Slimes, this layer shouldn't have been a botanical garden—it should have been a Shi Laimu paradise.

The only explanation Lin Jun could guess was that some location held a massive stockpile of Slimes, now being released in waves.

Or perhaps a being capable of rapidly producing Slimes had noticed his arrival and was actively deploying them to prevent him from seizing the sixth layer.

There was one final possibility.

That Lin Jun's continuous encroachment on the dungeon's territory had triggered some emergency response mechanism, causing the dungeon to automatically generate countermeasures against him.

This possibility was the least likely—Lin Jun had seen the dungeon's emergency mechanisms before; the dragon scale struck off by lightning arcs still sat gathering dust in his small vault.

Compared to that, summoning a pile of Slimes seemed far too weak, too weak to be a tactic of the Dungeon itself.

But if!

If!

If this truly was the Dungeon's tactic, then Lin Jun would have to consider whether he should continue descending to the lower layers.

After all, what if the Dungeon's self-defense mechanism was progressive?

Right now, a few Slimes were just to hinder progress and disgust him, but later, if his threat level grew, would it send a few electric shocks at him too?

If the Dungeon truly wanted to deal with him, Lin Jun did not believe it would fail to find his true body.

By then, if an electric shock that even an Ancient Dragon could not withstand struck his fragile true body, a fragrant, tender, crispy-on-the-outside-and-crispy-on-the-inside roasted poisonous mushroom would be made beneath the swamp.

If it was truly confirmed to be a Dungeon mechanism, Lin Jun could only turn his full attention to developing toward the surface.

On the surface, although the mycelium had already grown to the main entrance and begun tentatively spreading outward, it still remained within a slow and restrained degree.

On one hand, he wanted to take it slow to test humanity's level of concern; on the other hand, Lin Jun's current development focus was still placed on going downward.

Although the surface allowed for photosynthesis, compared to the Dungeon, the concentration of mana was relatively thin, and the number of monsters was much smaller.

In short, the cause of the Shi Laimu outbreak on the sixth layer definitely had to be figured out; without figuring it out, Lin Jun could not develop with peace of mind.

And this war occurring on the rock wall could naturally not be hidden from human adventurers; Lin Jun did not intend to hide it anyway.

In recent days, the taverns were full of discussions about the news brought back by adventurers passing through the sixth layer regarding the Pujis' great battle with the Slimes.

From after the Demon Tide until now, everyone had realized that the Mushrooms and the Pujis had already become a pivotal force within the Dungeon.

On a small scale, once the Mushrooms spread to a layer, they would eat all the Firefly Grass and replace it with Glow Mushrooms, reducing lighting capability by two levels, making long-term lighting tools or magic essential.

On a large scale, if the Pujis carried out an extermination campaign again like they did when occupying the fifth layer, and then played mutual protection among Pujis on the sixth layer, the adventurers' income sources would be reduced by another portion.

The current situation could be said to be such that every move of the Pujis moved the hearts of the adventurers; that was not an exaggeration.

Even Norris, a Copper-rank adventurer who made a living purely by mining, was the same.

However, what he hoped for was that the Pujis would completely clear the sixth layer...

(End of this chapter)