Chapter 20: 20 The First Fungus Speaker

In the pitch-black forest, Dylan held a torch and shouted anxiously:

"Bella! Bella, where are you? Answer your father!"

"Fa... ther..."

A weak voice came, and Dylan hurriedly pushed aside the grass following the voice, seeing his daughter covered in blood leaning against a tree.

"Bella! Why are you so seriously injured?

Bella, don't be afraid, father is here, father is here."

Dylan shed tears and hugged his weak daughter.

"Father, I... I..."

"Here, I'm here, take your time."

"Father," Bella wrapped her hands around Dylan's neck and opened her scarlet eyes, "I'm so hungry..."

Sharp teeth pierced into his neck, Dylan's blood gushed out, and in his blurred vision, he saw Bella tearfully swallowing his flesh and blood.

————

"Ah!"

Dylan woke up suddenly, gasping for air.

It was a dream, fortunately it was a dream...

Where... am I?

Dylan looked up and saw a Puji that was disgustedly moving away from him.

Monster... mutated Puji...

He remembered the scene before he fainted; what about those Parasitic Trees?

Then Dylan noticed the remains of the Parasitic Trees growing mushrooms scattered on the ground around him.

At a rough glance, there were far more than the five that were chasing him.

These... were all done by these Puji?

Dylan couldn't believe it; even if the Puji mutated, could they kill so many Parasitic Trees?

But the blurred memory before fainting and the scene in front of him seemed to be telling him that this was a fact.

This was that hidden room; he saw the opened stone treasure chest.

It turned out to be a treasure chest room.

The Puji might be the monsters guarding the treasure chest.

However, the Puji around him didn't seem to have any hostility toward him; what was strange was that he didn't feel awkward either, as if it should have been like this... so strange...

Right, what about his wounds?

Dylan touched his abdomen; the wound was gone, but looking closely, it set off a stormy sea in his heart.

The wound was filled with mycelia, and even a small mushroom grew on it...

He had seen this kind of scene before, on those people who were captured and parasitized by Parasitic Trees.

No wonder the mutated Puji didn't attack him, no wonder he felt the Puji were close; it turned out he was parasitized.

But his consciousness was still clear now, and he wasn't bound like those captured by Parasitic Trees.

Before being completely controlled, he seemed to still have a little time.

He looked at the remains of those Parasitic Trees, which were still hanging with many tree seeds, and a bold idea emerged in his heart.

Dylan didn't care about his own life or death or whether he would be controlled by parasitism; he just wanted to get money to save his daughter. If his time wasn't enough, he would entrust Fatty to help him save his daughter.

What he needed now was to bring the Parasitic Tree seeds back to the ground.

He crawled to a Parasitic Tree, carefully picked a tree seed, and stuffed it into his bosom.

Looking around, the Puji didn't seem to care about his actions.

This made him feel relieved, and he collected all the seeds in the room one by one.

Enough, so many must be enough.

He held the tree seeds and came to the stone door, looking back one last time; the Puji were still as usual.

Truly... strange.

————

Watching Dylan disappear outside the stone door, Lin Jun didn't exchange a word with him from beginning to end, even though he was connected to the mycelial network at this time.

Saving him was his principle, which didn't mean he trusted him.

Dylan was indeed parasitized and was in a state of being on the verge of it.

As long as Lin Jun was willing, the mycelia in Dylan's body would completely destroy his sanity and turn him into a puppet-like existence.

But that would be inconsistent with the original intention of saving him.

Let him go; saving his life and sending tree seeds, Lin Jun had already repaid the favor of opening the door enough. What would happen later had nothing to do with him.

Speaking of which, this person took such a big risk just for tree seeds; it looked like a good thing, should he also hoard some?

Maybe it would be useful in the future; anyway, decomposing it directly would only yield a little magic.

During Dylan's coma, he took the Puji out for a walk and hunted some fertilizer back.

By the way, he also observed the surroundings with the panel and basically determined that this was the fifth floor based on the level.

That teleportation maze was really unreasonable, throwing him directly from the eighth floor to the fifth floor; would there be teleportation arrays that throw people to the tenth floor or even the deep zone?

Fortunately, he didn't encounter one, and he silently marked the eighth floor as extremely dangerous in his heart.

Now Lin Jun was most concerned about the location of the new mushroom garden.

Although this treasure chest room had magic water, firstly, the supply was actually not much; after the pool he had saved before was used up, the value here wouldn't be great.

Secondly, he also understood the operation mode of this dungeon a bit; it shouldn't let him keep the door open, and who knows when some mechanism would be triggered; if he was still inside then, it would be bad.

As for rushing out of the dungeon to bask in the sun in one go?

He wanted to, but didn't dare.

The dungeon only had one entrance and exit, and he would inevitably run into a large number of humans, and there might be experts.

He didn't want to fall before dawn.

It was better to be steady; even if it was a little late, now that he could see hope, he could endure it.

Regarding the new mushroom garden, he wanted to choose a location that was both safe and convenient for hunting and grabbing skills.

And in fact, he found that this swamp area was really suitable.

Adventurers wouldn't choose to pass through the dangerous swamp terrain, and even if they came in, their movements would be slow.

And the ubiquitous swamp was no different from solid ground for light-equipped Puji without shells.

And if the mushroom garden was in the swamp, his main body could hide under the swamp, which was also a quite safe method.

It was just that the local residents were a bit troublesome.

When he started to solve those five Parasitic Trees, Lin Jun didn't take them to heart, but he had a hard battle when he went out for a walk.

These Parasitic Trees liked to call friends and companions to play group fights, which was very shameless.

And they had a variety of skills and magic of different levels.

Lin Jun encountered a Parasitic Tree parasitizing a LV36 mage, didn't look at the panel first, and suffered a loss by being careless, losing a few more Puji.

Before this, he never thought that such a high-level mage would fall here...

This estimated that there were no telling how many parasitized powerhouses in the whole swamp; if there was one over level 50... shouldn't be...

More importantly, the return on fighting these Parasitic Trees was actually not high, which was the most important thing.

The skills possessed by Parasitic Trees were very monotonous, just [Fusion Parasitism], [Entanglement], [Resilience] plus a little bit of various resistances.

What was truly powerful were the strange moves of those parasitized people.

But Lin Jun tried, and decomposing these parasitized shells yielded no skills, and even the magic was very little, as if the inside had been squeezed dry.

Just for the few skills of the Parasitic Trees themselves, the difficulty of fighting them clearly couldn't keep up with the return.

But if he added the need to grab territory to build a new mushroom garden, it seemed barely acceptable.

After a little thought, Lin Jun still felt that he wanted the swamp area.

With the goal set, after he produced another batch of Puji adapted to the swamp terrain, he would start the strategy plan!

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 21 =====