“It’s all my fault…”
In the clearing before the Mushroom House, Norris knelt in the middle of a ring of Pujis. Even Gray squatted in the corner, watching him.
His head hung low, his scales scraping against the ground with faint sounds. His faltering confession drifted into the air, carrying with it the faint smell of blood.
His right leg had been reattached, the wound in his chest had healed, and yet he still looked wretched.
Where his severed limb had fused, the flesh was still not fully knitted, leaving a clear seam. His body was missing scales here and there, and those that remained were cracked and dulled, nothing like their former luster.
Norris himself didn’t know why he had lost control. He had been bullied for so many years—he should have been used to it.
Now, having committed the crime of killing humans, he could only recount the events honestly and wait anxiously for his fate.
With both the mycelium network and parasitism binding him, any lie would be impossible to hide from Lin Jun.
From Lin Jun’s perspective, the blame didn’t rest solely on Norris—after all, the adventurers struck first.
But it was true that Norris had handled things poorly.Whether he had chosen to fight or to run, Lin Jun could have accepted it. But he should have informed him through the network immediately. Acting on his own was a dangerous sign.
As for the three humans who died—that wasn’t much of an issue in the dungeon.
So Lin Jun quickly gave his punishment:
“Norris, you acted without permission, violating Mushroom Garden rules. Your punishment is to go clean slime residue for one month.”
“Clean… slime residue?”
Norris’s mind blanked for a moment. Subconsciously, he still thought his crime was killing people. But from the boss’s words, his crime was failing to report?
“What, you have a problem with that?” Lin Jun asked, thinking Norris might resist.
But slime-cleaning was no light work.
That two-colored slime was prolific at splitting. “Cleaning” meant killing its divisions, collecting the cores to feed to the mats, and washing the remaining mucus down into the underground waterways.
During this work, he would live inside the mountain cavity—a disguised form of confinement. The job could easily run from dawn to dusk.
And sometimes, the hanging cage would be lifted, releasing curses to train Pujis. Norris would have to endure that too.
But to Norris, this punishment was far lighter than he had expected.
He quickly bowed his head. “No, no, I have no objections.”
Two Pujis took him away, one in front, one behind, pretending to escort a prisoner.
Gray didn’t understand what had just happened at all. She even waved goodbye to Norris.
Meanwhile, Lin Jun sought out Little Green to confirm the adventurers’ strength.
Three silver-ranked adventurers active on the sixth floor—and Norris had faced them head-on, managing to kill two.
The last one had been finished off by Little Green. Without him, Norris would surely have died.
In this matter, more than Norris’s mistake, Lin Jun saw the strength he had displayed.
After all, Norris was only level 24!
Before, he had challenged monsters above his level, but monsters lacked intelligence. Beating them wasn’t so surprising.
But this time, three human adventurers, each a tier above him—and he had managed a 1-for-2 trade. That showed just how effective the skills Lin Jun had given him were.
High skill levels, matched with proper combinations, had compensated for his lacking stats.
Of course, Lin Jun knew this compensation had limits. Against gold or even diamond adventurers, who had their own high-level skills and optimized builds, his advantage would vanish.
But there was no doubt—so long as he had enough suitable “raw materials,” Lin Jun could mass-produce a solid force of fighters reaching silver or even gold ranks in short order.
The problem was… where to find such raw materials?
In all this time in the dungeon, Norris was the only blank slate he had come across. Everyone else who entered had their own “skills.”
There were probably many near-blank humans among commoners and children. But abducting people would draw too much attention and bring disaster.
He set the thought aside for now.
When Norris finished his confinement, Lin Jun planned to give him a second round of modifications.
The originally planned 【Mimicry】 couldn’t be given just yet. Norris wasn’t strong or steady enough. With that ability, he might slip up again someday and expose everything.
Better to let him mature a bit more first.
Compared to him, Little Green’s performance was exemplary.
In the forest of dryads, Little Green knelt on damp earth, his roots carefully combing through the tangled roots of new trees.
With abundant magic, dryads could periodically condense a jade-green shoot within their bodies.
By leaving behind that shoot along with some roots, a new demon tree would grow, eventually awakening as another dryad.
Thanks to Lin Jun’s rewards, the dryads had received many magic crystals, greatly increasing their efficiency at absorbing mana.
Naturally, this meant more shoots had been planted lately. Some, like the one before Little Green, had already grown into healthy young trees.
The dryads would help tidy their roots now and then. Beneath the forest, space was far more crowded than it seemed above.
“Little Green.”
The sudden message made him pause his work.
“What is it, boss?”
“Not an order—just a proposal.
The land by the little hill has been empty since we cleared it. Instead of leaving it for other monsters, why don’t I plant mushrooms there?
It would also block adventurers from wandering into the mountain cavern.
So I came to ask—do you want to plant trees there as well? That way we’ll have outposts both east and west, without always having to travel so far.”
“Expanding territory…” The idea made Little Green thoughtful.
It was true. While the forest still had enough land now, at this rate expansion was inevitable.
He had originally thought to expand slowly from the forest entrance.
But the boss wanted them to establish a new home on the far side.
Maybe… that could work too?
The dryads had long stayed in seclusion. At first, it was because their numbers were small, and the forest was enough.
And it also drew less attention from human adventurers—remote and huddled together, they were less likely to be attacked.
But now, things had changed. Whenever a dryad went out, a troop of Pujis followed. Their combat power had risen, and adventurers seemed wary of Pujis, leading to far fewer conflicts.
In that case, founding a new home far from the forest wasn’t impossible.
“Boss, do you mean for the Pujis and dryads to live together?”
“Live together?”
To Lin Jun, Pujis were tools, while dryads were subordinates. Putting them together and calling it “cohabitation” sounded odd to him. But if Little Green wanted to call it that, so be it.
“Something like that. I plan to grow another mushroom forest there.
Come to think of it, you haven’t been up to the fifth floor to see the Mushroom Forest yet. I think you’d like it.”
In Lin Jun’s vision, dryads were actually quite suited to living with mushrooms.
Mushrooms mainly drew magic from the air, dryads from the soil—they wouldn’t interfere with each other.
And the Mushroom Forest would provide spores and environmental effects, while dryads could lead the Pujis in defending it without Lin Jun having to bother.
The real purpose, of course, was to conceal the cavern fissure and the two-colored slime. Everything else was secondary.
“I have no objections, boss. When do we begin?”
Little Green was reassured once he knew the Pujis would be there too. With them, adventurers wouldn’t be a problem.
“Then let’s start now. My Pujis are already on their way down!”
“Then I’ll gather the tribe right away!”