Chapter 9

"Don't these need to be buried underground?"

"I'm not a plant..."

Can't people in this world distinguish between fungi and plants?

The Ox-Horse Puji have already transported all the Fire Mosquitoes and their larvae fragments back to the mushroom garden.

Fire Mosquitoes, as monsters that focus on agility and evasion, don't have high body strength. After being hit by a Mushroom Cannon or smashed to death by a Puji with a shell, it's hard to leave a complete corpse.

Now they are evenly spread in the planting area, and mycelium has started to grow on the first batch transported back.

After these monster corpses are decomposed, they will simultaneously provide Lin Jun with skill proficiency and mana. The mana contained in a single Fire Mosquito is not much, but the quantity is large.

Lin Jun will invest all this mana into the production of new Puji.

The mushroom garden can now accommodate roughly 300 Puji by naturally absorbing mana. 100 of them are in the logistics group to maintain the daily operation of the mushroom garden, and the rest are combat Puji.

This time, Lin Jun intends to exceed the limit and explode to 400 combat Puji at once, and then invest them all in the upcoming action to hunt Earth Worms.

Anyway, if there are many survivors after the action, he can just cut them back. Ensuring the success rate is the most critical thing.

There is no second Fire Mosquito lair nearby that can so easily provide him with so many nutrients. If this time fails, he doesn't know when he will be able to organize a second round.

"Lin Jun, look, I seem to have gained a new talent!"

Inanna doesn't know when she started playing with the Water Snake spell on the side. Lin Jun saw her use this skill in battle. It can't be said to be invincible, but at least it can be said to be useless.

Not only is the range short, but the power is also poor. A direct hit couldn't even kill a Fire Mosquito in one blow. The only advantage is that it can control the direction to a certain extent after being shot, but under Inanna's terrible technique, it became a negative effect.

Compared to Ice Blade, it was completely crushed.

It is estimated that Inanna herself realized it, so she stopped using it after using it twice.

But now, the water snake cast by Inanna is actually flexibly swimming around her, like a small cyan dragon protecting her body.

This is definitely not Inanna's normal level. Lin Jun decisively pulled up her panel again.

Sure enough, the level rose to LV30. The experience of hundreds of Fire Mosquitoes, even if only a small part was shared, allowed her to level up twice.

Among the fixed effects, there is an extra [Favor of the Elemental Spirit: Elemental spirits will assist the caster in controlling spells].

"Try attacking that stone with Ice Blade."

The target Lin Jun gave is 100 meters away from Inanna, a distance that a Puji would almost never miss.

"Eh? I'll try."

The moment the Ice Blade shot out, Lin Jun knew she had missed again, but the Ice Blade miraculously adjusted during the flight, and finally actually cut a corner of the stone.

"It... it actually hit!"

Inanna herself has a look of disbelief.

In fact, if her firing angle hadn't been so ridiculously off, the Ice Blade should have hit the bullseye. To be able to graze the target even when it was so off, the Elemental Spirit is really amazing.

Lin Jun also noticed that when Inanna used Ice Blade, the Water Snake spell circling around her was not canceled.

So is it an AI-assisted control ability?

It's just that the Elemental Spirit here replaces the function of AI.

Speaking of which, it turns out there is a setting of Elemental Spirits in this world. He thought magic was just pure magic.

In addition, Lin Jun also knows that humans, like him, will naturally gain a fixed effect or skill that matches them every ten levels, just like his Mushroom Cannon and Fungal Network.

Inanna calls it a talent.

It seems this is not unique to him. Humans are like this, and it is estimated that other races or monsters are the same.

However, there are still some differences. He doesn't know if it's because he can't see the panel, but Inanna's talent is obtained automatically, while he has an extra step of choosing one out of three.

Lin Jun glances at his LV44 level; it's still early before he can choose his next talent.

————

In the following time, Lin Jun plunged into a large-scale project called "Exploding Soldiers."

The good news is that the long-dormant Mental Integration skill finally reached LV6. Otherwise, Lin Jun really wouldn't be able to control so many Puji at once.

But even so, he had no time to chat with Inanna.

However, Inanna didn't mind this. She has recently been obsessed with exploring her new talent.

Besides helping her adjust the trajectory to play with self-aiming, the Elemental Spirit can also do things like active following for Illumination, and 360° all-around automatic defense for Water Mirror Refraction. Anyway, it's much smoother than when she uses it herself.

But spells like Purification and Mud Swamp don't have much change—the Elemental Spirit doesn't enhance the power of the spell itself.

Days passed by, and just as everything was ready, a strong mana fluctuation came from outside the mushroom garden.

"Lin Jun, what happened? Why does it suddenly feel so oppressive?"

Just like the aftershocks of an 8.0 magnitude earthquake coming from afar, even Inanna, who doesn't have the Mana Perception skill, noticed something wrong. Lin Jun directly observed the mana vibrations coming in waves, one after another, making him uncomfortable.

Lin Jun checked the monitoring he set up outside. These sporadic small mushroom clusters couldn't provide Lin Jun with vision, but they could perceive the surrounding mana fluctuations.

Soon Lin Jun figured out the source of the fluctuations—the direction of the Flame Demon's lair.

Since he knew it was the direction of the Flame Demon, Lin Jun felt relieved. He casually appeased the frightened Inanna and continued to bury his head in the finishing work of exploding soldiers.

It's not that Lin Jun isn't afraid of the Flame Demon. On the contrary, as the strongest monster discovered so far, Lin Jun has always been vigilant about the Flame Demon's movements.

If one day he finds the Flame Demon moving toward the mushroom garden, he will definitely run away with his bucket at the first opportunity.

Fortunately, this kind of thing has never happened.

In fact, after Lin Jun's observation, the Flame Demon is almost a homebody.

Unlike him, who is grown in the ground and inconvenient to move, the Flame Demon is just purely lazy to move. It seems that just soaking in lava can satisfy most of its needs.

But being a homebody doesn't mean it really won't go out. According to monitoring, the Flame Demon has had three records of going out so far.

Every time it goes out, it causes mana fluctuations nearby, just like today. Lin Jun suspects it went to fight.

But he doesn't know who it fought or where it fought. He also doesn't know what kind of opponent could fight the Flame Demon. The part Lin Jun explored is still too little compared to the entire deep level.

Lin Jun's original sneaking plan was to seize the opportunity when the Flame Demon went out to sneak through its lair and run to the upper levels.

But this plan is still quite risky. The most important thing is that he can't grasp when the Flame Demon will return.

Among the three records, the shortest was only a few hours, and the longest was estimated to be three or four days.

The sneaking plan was truly gambling with his life, so it was replaced by the hole-digging plan.

He doesn't know how long it will take for the Flame Demon to go home this time. He hopes it won't cause any accidents to interfere with his hunting of Earth Worms.

(End of chapter)