Chapter 135: 145 Cave Dwellers

The familiar environment of a large cavern.

When Lin Jun’s fungal network finally spread down, various chewing and squirming sounds intertwined in the darkness; a gluttonous feast was taking place below.

Giant spiders were tearing at mayfly carcass chunks with sharp chelicerae, slimes were squirming to dissolve insect shells, beetle swarms were making fine gnawing sounds, cave dwellers were stealthily cutting off insect legs with residual meat, lizard monsters were using long tongues to scoop up food... all sorts of monsters were crowded together.

Lin Jun even saw a giant turtle the size of a person leisurely gnawing on the remains.

Since when were there turtles in the deep zone?

These monsters were unusually peaceful, only burying their heads in swallowing the mountain of mayfly corpses, with no intention of hunting each other.

However, this scene was not so wonderful for Lin Jun.

These guys were shamelessly eating the prey he had taken down!

Even the giant insect was no exception; they couldn't open the thick insect shell on its body, but the insect brain that had been blown to pieces by Lin Jun was different.

Now, only a small half of the giant insect's head remained.

More than thirty Puji landed on the insect's back. A giant spider nearby discovered these little guys in front of it and tentatively reached out a spider leg; what responded to it was a blade whip.

These thirty-plus were all elite Puji.

Just as special forces aren't suitable for filling lines, Lin Jun hadn't brought these elite Puji out when fighting the giant insect; when the giant insect charged, elites and cannon fodder were all the same—they would be killed instantly.

The insect leg flew up, and a painful shriek came from the mouth dripping with venom.

However, not half a second later, its head was blown away by several enhanced-power mushroom cannons.

The headless body swayed twice and then fell heavily.

The moment the spider fell, the Puji launched an indiscriminate attack on the monsters around them that were stealing their prey, immediately throwing the situation into chaos.

The lizard monster was attacked and wanted to step forward to counterattack, but stepped into a slime.

The beetles felt the chaos and crawled around, hiding themselves.

Two cave dwellers wanted to take advantage of the chaos to move away a piece of fat meat before leaving, but the one trailing behind had its leg blown off on the spot by a mushroom cannon, and its companion, seeing this, abandoned both the fat meat and him.

The cleanup work didn't last long; although there were many monsters, they each had their own habits and wouldn't really work together to attack the Puji.

Coupled with the fact that this team of elite Puji was not weak in combat power, after suffering two accidental casualties from a lizard monster's long-tongue sneak attack, they had pretty much cleared the field.

The melee Puji, clad in scale armor, wandered among the remains, finishing off the monsters that had been crippled and couldn't escape, leaving only the disabled cave dwellers and the turtle.

The turtle was simply impossible to move; once attacked, it decisively retracted into its shell, and the six openings actually closed up as well, leaving not a single gap.

The effect of attacks on the shell was quite poor, and the defensive power felt no weaker than the giant insect's shell, so Lin Jun could only leave it aside for now.

As for the cave dwellers, Lin Jun was somewhat curious about these humanoid creatures without eyes; he hadn't seen this kind of cave dweller near the mushroom garden before.

These two cave dwellers were quite low-level, only in their twenties, and their skills were also very weak. Although they held weapons, it was hard to say if those primitive short spears had any combat power.

No wonder they only broke off insect legs to eat at the very edge and didn't dare to come to the central area to find the fatter, more delicious insect meat.

Just looking at their attributes and skills, even if a cave dweller were to face the fire mosquitoes from back then, it would probably be hard to win a one-on-one.

And fire mosquitoes came in swarms; he didn't know if these cave dwellers had that kind of numbers. Humanoid creatures were highly unlikely to be as prolific as fire mosquitoes.

He dragged the cave dwellers to a dead corner and pushed the turtle over, then ignored them.

The Puji began to spray spores everywhere in the cavern.

This cavern had no native monsters, only some ferns common in the deep zone.

That was to be expected; above it was the gathering place of the Thousand-Pivot Mayflies, which came down to forage from time to time, so even if there had been monsters originally, they had probably been eaten clean. Unlike his own mushroom garden, which had been tucked away in a corner, this cavern connected to more than ten passages; this number of passages was average for caverns in the deep zone.

He didn't know in which direction his original mushroom garden was; back then, his strength had been limited, and the area he had explored was still too small.

After half a day, the fungal carpet spreading down from above finally connected with the fungal carpet newly grown from the spores the Puji had scattered.

He didn't know when a big monster would come out in the deep zone, so to avoid long delays, Lin Jun spent some extra magic power to accelerate the decomposition of these carcasses; the decomposition work that would have taken several days was completed within two hours.

[Seven Sins: Greed Triggered]

[Plunder Skill: Chitinous Shell lv7 -> lv8]

[Plunder Skill: Insect Silk lv3 -> lv4]

[Plunder Skill: Cocooning lv1]

After finishing the decomposition work, the Puji brought out the cave dweller with the broken leg.

[Fusion Parasitism] had already been used, but its leg had been blown to pieces, so it was impossible to reattach it.

Lin Jun tied an insect shell to the place where its leg was broken, allowing it to barely move on its own.

Then he released it.

If the place where the cave dwellers lived was nearby, Lin Jun could determine the location by sensing him.

If it was far away, given his broken-leg state, he would likely become dinner for some monster.

Lin Jun had already tested the intelligence of the cave dwellers in the fungal network—primitive but not stupid.

He was still somewhat interested in them.

The number of Puji Lin Jun could directly control was about 3,000.

If it were just used to control the seven layers he currently mastered, it would be more than enough, but facing the deep zone, which he didn't know how big it was, it was clearly a bit short.

Before coming down, Lin Jun had planned to control some humanoid creatures, just like how all the Puji on the sixth layer were handed over to the tree demon, to save his own operational capacity.

Originally, the target was the Minotaur, as that was the only humanoid creature he had seen in the deep zone before.

But as for how much confidence he had, Lin Jun really didn't have a bottom line in his heart.

The impression Minotaurs gave Lin Jun was that they were irritable and powerful.

[Fusion Parasitism] was not mind control; if the other party really fought to the death and refused to submit, Lin Jun had no choice but to turn them into puppets.

And the number of Minotaurs didn't seem to be enough; the few times Lin Jun had encountered them, they were solitary Minotaurs.

Now encountering cave dwellers was undoubtedly another choice; these cave dwellers at least acted in pairs.

He released the cave dweller, and Lin Jun controlled a Puji to follow him from afar.

However, man proposes, God disposes; only ten minutes later, this cave dweller disappeared in the passage.

When the Puji arrived at the location where he disappeared, what it saw was the cave dweller's broken spear dropped on the ground, and a crack the size of a manhole cover on the floor of the passage.

Opposite the crack, there was no curse, no sound, just pitch black...