Chapter 35: 36 The Old Thing Dropped Loot

On the damp rock ceiling, the water droplets about to fall were trembling violently.

Infrasound attacks echoed within the cave, with a layer of Puji corpses piled underneath.

That ancient crystallized bat, however, was exceptionally irritable, its rugged claws constantly scratching white marks onto the surface of the rock it was hanging from.

From time to time, it had to drop down and use its wings to sweep the Puji that got too close to the side.

A wing bone spur accidentally scratched the cap of a certain fungus, and pale purple hallucinogenic spores immediately gushed out.

The old bat flapped its wings and retreated continuously, scrambling back to the rock ceiling, its chest heaving violently.

By the time it finally recovered, some of the Puji below had already repaired their bodies and started moving again.

A new round of infrasound waves immediately exploded in the cave, knocking down the newly revived Puji again—this stalemate had continued for countless cycles.

The Puji killed by sound waves would revive, and the Puji crushed would explode with hallucinogenic poisonous mist at close range.

The old bat could only drag out time like this over and over again, but the Puji were still getting closer and closer...

When the last foothold was also shrouded in hallucinogenic spores, the old bat was finally poisoned into unconsciousness and fell from the rock ceiling, motionless.

Lin Jun had thought the old bat would go out with a bang at the end.

But perhaps it was because the older one gets, the more one cherishes life; it just kept shrinking up there, not daring to come down and tear apart a few Puji even when death was imminent.

The final combat loss ratio was much smaller than Lin Jun had expected.

Outside the cave, two figures had been waiting here for a long time.

Mushrooms had grown on the incomplete auricle of the half-elf, and the emerald wooden staff in the human woman's hand had fused with the fungal film growing between her fingers.

Both of these were parasitic puppets Lin Jun had made earlier.

This time, the work of dissecting the old bat was completed by these two puppets.

But before that, the two puppets had to each drink a bottle of antidote.

Otherwise, they would also be paralyzed by the hallucinogenic poisonous mist.

He always felt that after being made into puppets, they inherited both the weaknesses of mushrooms and the weaknesses of humans.

After drilling into the cave, Lin Jun first controlled the two puppets to cut the throat of the unconscious old bat.

Hmm?

Why was there still a panel that could be pulled open?

It wasn't dead yet?

This time, Lin Jun simply cut the bat's head off entirely.

The panel still hadn't disappeared.

Lin Jun pulled open the panel with a puzzled look, only to find it wasn't the old bat's panel.

[Artifact: Sun Stone (Fragment)]

???

Lin Jun didn't even have time to care about the S-rank magic crystals and hurriedly controlled the puppets to rummage through the old bat's corpse.

After cutting open its chest, he finally found a Sun Stone fragment emitting heat inside.

Good fellow, no wonder the cave environment was so cold, yet the old bat had LV5 high-temperature resistance.

It turned out it was roasted out by the Sun Stone fragment!

So the old bat's title of "Transcending Death" was also related to this Sun Stone fragment?

This artifact extended its life?

Unfortunately, there was still no information on the panel.

According to existing information, besides emitting light and heat, the Sun Stone might also be used to prolong life?

Then the question arises, what use is this to Lin Jun?

The lifespan of mushrooms on Earth ranges from a few months to thousands of years.

But this isn't Earth either; having been here for so long, Lin Jun hadn't felt any aging problems.

Rather than worrying about dying of old age, it was more realistic to worry about whether his main body would be killed by a powerful monster or adventurer one day.

This couldn't help but make Lin Jun think of another incomplete artifact he had seen.

That kind of artifact that could unleash high-power killing moves was what he wanted.

The three arm-sized S-rank magic crystals and that Sun Stone were finally sent to a secret space Lin Jun had hidden at the bottom of the swamp.

As for the rest of the old bat's corpse, it wouldn't be wasted; the puppets were still working on cutting it up there, and it would be brought out after being turned into small pieces.

After all, the old bat had so many max-level skills that a large amount of proficiency could be plundered.

Taking out his own Sun Stone fragment and studying the cross-section for a long time, he finally found the corresponding part and connected the two pieces of the Sun Stone together.

The fracture automatically bonded, becoming a seamless whole; this point did conform to Lin Jun's stereotype of artifacts.

The more complete Sun Stone emitted even more light and heat, so hot that his LV7 high-temperature resistance could barely hold up, and he could only hold it a little further away.

If this thing were complete, wouldn't it really turn into a small sun that could burn mountains and boil seas?

Even the panel had changed.

[Artifact: Sun Stone (Residual)]

Clearly it had leveled up, but Lin Jun still couldn't think of how to use it.

This feeling of it being a "chicken rib" really made the mushroom anxious.

Fortunately, Lin Jun knew what the three S-rank magic crystals were for; that 500% skill power bonus of the old bat made him drool.

He prepared to tinker with it to see if it could be installed on his vehicle.

————

Two days after dealing with the old bat, a magic power tremor suddenly appeared throughout the entire fifth floor, immediately attracting Lin Jun's attention.

It was transmitted from the lower floors, and not through the floor passage, but vertically transmitted from the underground, penetrating the floor walls.

It wasn't the intense magic power tremor of a battle, but a more persistent, more regular magic fluctuation.

This was something he had never encountered before.

The magic power fluctuation lasted for more than ten minutes before stabilizing again.

Had some change occurred in the dungeon that he wasn't aware of?

He asked Dilan, who was building a wooden house; as expected of a bottom-tier adventurer, he really didn't know anything about slightly higher-level questions.

He could only let Dilan put down his work and go on a business trip to the surface to find out the news, and it just so happened that he could also find out about Inanna.

Having sent Dilan out, Lin Jun was still uneasy.

Such a large-scale magic power tremor must mean something had happened; the unknown always made the mushroom anxious.

He planned to produce more Puji recently and send a portion to the lower floors to explore and see.

The vehicle reinforcement plan, which was originally intended to be slow and meticulous, seemed to need to be sped up; he didn't want to put himself in potential danger due to lack of preparation.

————

Ya-Feng Town, inside the guild president's office.

Oberon had just finished listening to Helena's report about two Gold-rank beast-man adventurers who hadn't returned 10 days after taking the A-rank task on the fifth floor.

This young branch president rested his chin on one hand and tapped the table lightly with the other, hesitating whether to raise the task level or shelve it for now.

Recently, many Diamond-rank adventurers had been invited to the capital; he learned from some special channels that there seemed to be a big move coming from above.

There weren't many Diamond-rank adventurers wandering outside now, and even if an S-rank task were issued, it wouldn't necessarily be taken in the short term.

And after all, according to current intelligence, these Puji wouldn't actively attack if not forced into the swamp, and wouldn't have a major impact on adventurers exploring the maze.

Updating the official strategy to let adventurers stay away from the swamp area seemed to be a more cost-effective way to handle it.

A series of urgent knocks on the door interrupted Oberon's thinking.

"Come in."

The person who came in was the Intelligence Analysis Department Chief, Mirabelle; she got straight to the point as soon as she entered:

"The detection crystals set on the seventh, fourth, and first floors have all detected magic power fluctuations, and they are decreasing floor by floor."

In an instant, everything about the fifth-floor Puji was thrown to the back of Oberon's mind.

He asked with a glimmer of hope: "Are you sure it's not interference or a false alarm?"

Mirabelle didn't reply, but the meaning was self-evident.

"Sigh—"

Oberon also realized he had asked a stupid question; Mirabelle couldn't make such a low-level mistake.

But—

"The time shouldn't be up yet? Why is it so much earlier this time? And it just happened to hit when the Diamond-rank ones were all transferred away..."

Oberon grabbed his blonde hair messily, and his originally neat hair stood up in messy arcs.

He pulled open the drawer abruptly and took out a bottle of Elven ice wine.

After the fine wine entered his throat, Oberon finally calmed down and said to Mirabelle:

"Issue a magic tide warning, and at the same time, seal the dungeon entrance.

I will report this to the headquarters and write letters to the surrounding cities to request support.

May Ixion bless us; I hope there won't be any big problems this time..."

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 37 =====