【Steel Bone LV2】
One of the many inconspicuous low-level skills in the skill library.
Although it wasn’t a recovery skill, just as expected, after equipping it and supplying mana, the shattered bones were indeed replaced by steel bones generated by the skill, effectively achieving the effect of setting broken bones.
【Claw Strike LV7】
A skill possessed by most beast-type monsters, but when equipped on Puji, the claws actually grew out of those little stubby legs…
When Norris was first given this skill, his fingernails were replaced by ten-centimeter-long bone claws. After adding 【Steel Bone】 on top of that, the bone claws transformed into steel bone claws.
Lin Jun had long known about such synergy between skills. Now it seemed this also worked on humans.
【Neurotoxin LV4】
After equipping it, Norris began to be repeatedly paralyzed and lose health from the toxins his own body produced. Lin Jun had no choice but to add 【Poison Resistance LV5】 and 【Paralysis Resistance LV5】 to prevent him from turning into a vegetable.
【Mushroom Cannon LV8】…
…
…
Norris lay unconscious on the fungal mat as one skill after another was slowly added to him.
Beside him, Puji would occasionally slice open his skin with bladed tentacles to observe the changes inside his body.
Down in the swamp zone, the knight scribbled with his quill, recording everything on a piece of parchment.
Adding skills was a slow process. Norris’s first stage of modification would take about a week.
During this time, of course, Lin Jun couldn’t just focus on this one thing.
As a very busy mushroom, he was also controlling scouts and directing the battle on the sixth floor.
The scouts were doing fine for now. With Dilan getting help from his big brother, things were temporarily smooth.
On the sixth floor, Lin Jun’s carrot bait for the treants was working. More and more treants were willing to come out and work—there were already nearly forty of them now.
The very first treant had even directly pledged loyalty to Lin Jun and started calling him “Boss.”
To make calling it easier, Lin Jun gave it a name—Little Green.
Lin Jun also found it strange to name an old tree bark “Little Green,” but since there was already a Little Black, he thought maybe he could form a five-color squad. He even remembered that in Werewolf, there was a blue-haired one…
With the treants joining, Lin Jun finally gained the upper hand on the surface.
Treants were excellent vanguards on the sixth floor, and they also served as reliable tanks with control skills.
Lin Jun assigned each of them to command at least ten Pujis, clearing slimes on the surface.
With their help, the pressure on the rock wall greatly eased. Lin Jun could spread fungal mats over a much larger area at once. The farthest ones had already reached the dome where slimes couldn’t touch, beginning to devour firefly grass.
It could be said that the battle on the sixth floor was now largely decided.
Only, the brainless slimes clearly didn’t realize this and kept bouncing out nonstop.
Lin Jun shifted his focus from pushing the fungal mats forward to investigating the source of the slimes.
“Boss, come take a look.” Little Green seemed to have discovered something.
Honestly, being called “Boss” in that old, creaky voice of a treant was quite awkward, even more so than when Dilan said it…
Lin Jun switched his vision over and saw Little Green and its twelve Pujis guarding a patch of grass.
What did this mean?
But soon Lin Jun understood.
The grass in the middle suddenly shook, and before long, a red slime crawled out.
Before it could bounce away, Little Green strode forward and smashed it with a 【Trunk Slam】.
Then it pulled up all the surrounding weeds, revealing a half-meter-long crack barely a finger wide. From within came the faint sound of flowing water.
An underground stream?
No wonder he couldn’t find where the slimes were coming from despite his vantage point on the rock wall. If they used the underground water network to move into different positions before emerging, that would explain it.
This had been a blind spot in Lin Jun’s thinking.
After all, everything was already “underground,” and the first five floors had no underground water at all. It hadn’t crossed his mind.
But this made things troublesome. With the way slimes’ bodies worked, they could squeeze through any kind of crack, moving unhindered inside.
Pujis could struggle to squeeze and deform themselves a bit, but they couldn’t compare.
So even knowing that the slime source was hidden in the underground water system, there was no way to trace it directly.
Seeming to notice Lin Jun’s frustration, Little Green took the initiative.
“I might be able to help you explore the underground water network.”
As it spoke, it stepped on the crack’s edge, sending its roots down into the soil.
Lin Jun was stunned.
Come to think of it, unlike mushrooms, treants couldn’t directly gather mana from the air—or rather, they could, but very inefficiently.
When resting in the forest, they always rooted themselves in the ground, absorbing nutrients and mana from the soil.
He hadn’t expected they could use their roots to explore underground!
And so Little Green advanced step by step, rooting itself deeper along the underground stream.
During this time, it couldn’t help clear the way for the Pujis and even needed their protection since it couldn’t move quickly.
Facing monsters that came their way, Lin Jun didn’t hesitate, ordering the Pujis to open fire.
At times like this, clearing out a few monsters wouldn’t disrupt the sixth-floor ecology much.
Using the interface, Lin Jun picked out hidden plant-type monsters one by one, blasting them from afar. The Pujis didn’t lose a single one.
But after about an hour, the mana ran dry…
Which was normal. Little Green’s squad had already been exploring for a long time, and this last hour had consumed a lot of mana.
Just as Lin Jun was about to call for a break, Little Green suddenly stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Lin Jun asked.
“Sorry, Boss. The underground stream is too deep here. My roots can’t reach any further…”
The treant seemed embarrassed. After all, it had been its idea, and in the end, it failed and only wasted time.
But Lin Jun didn’t think it was wasted.
“Then let’s head back. I’ll give you all a map of the sixth floor. Starting tomorrow, you’ll explore the shallower underground streams across the whole floor and record them on the map.”
He wasn’t just speaking to Little Green, but also transmitting through the fungal network to all the treants active on the sixth floor.
Lin Jun’s idea was that if the slime production point was in a shallow stream, the treants would directly find it.
If it was deeper, then by mapping out the network of streams, he could at least determine the regions with deeper channels. Then he could focus on those places.
If necessary, he could even dig down.
He wanted to see just what kind of thing was hiding so sneakily!
Truthfully, Lin Jun still held a little fantasy—since this thing could produce so many slimes, its energy source must be abundant!
And based on experience, maybe… it was another fragment of Sunstone?
Currently, Lin Jun’s 【Sunstone (Fragment)】 was composed of two joined shards, producing about the same mana as the entire fifth floor through 【Photosynthesis】.
If he got another fragment, wouldn’t the mana production increase by at least fifty percent?
With more mana, maybe his Elite Puji plan could be mass-produced on a small scale!
“Yes.” After receiving Lin Jun’s command, the treants each replied in the fungal network.
Hmm?
Lin Jun sharply noticed one response was missing.
Sensing carefully, he found the treant—or rather, its corpse—near a Puji that had gone idle after losing its commander.