Four times in a row, and Iros—no wonder he was such a veteran elf—managed to hold back from vomiting.
The Resonance Cannons were composed of elite pujis; they were not, after all, an endless tide of cannon fodder—at least not yet.
When Iros began preparing his fifth spell, the cannon-fodder pujis, though limited in use, still charged forward in waves.
Most of Iros’s attention, aside from preparing spells, was focused on sensing nearby mana—watching for Lin Jun to bring out another Resonance Cannon.
So when one of the rushing fodder pujis had an odd fluctuation about it, he didn’t notice until it was almost upon him!
Vines that had been shredded by countless detonations were suddenly cut clean, and a Knight puji catapulted forward.
Without hesitation, the super self-destruct—augmented by an S-grade magic crystal—blew Iros aside.
Lin Jun had gone all in to raise his odds!
This Knight puji was transferred from Lin Jun’s home base—a bona fide Diamond-tier combatant.
But after seeing Iros’s power, Lin Jun could only choose to use it as a suicide bomber.
The blast was so powerful that even the pujis nearby were affected and killed.
At the explosion’s center Iros’s shield shattered and he spat a mouthful of blood, but he did not fall.
Instead, before the pujis surged in, he wrapped himself in a thicket of brambles.
By this point, both sides were exhausted.
For Iros, these petlike creatures were numerous and maddening, constantly throwing new tricks so the fight still hadn’t fallen into his rhythm.
For Lin Jun, the four Resonance Cannons and two Diamond-tier self-destructs had created openings—yet those gaps were fleeting, and Lin Jun couldn’t seize them!
How could anyone, after being blasted away, set up defenses again within a second?
Iros finally used that spell—the Magma Surface.
True to its name, the effect was plain but terrifying in scale: the whole battlefield became a searing inferno. Even pujis with [High-Temperature Resistance] could not survive in the lava.
Non-flying pujis burned into torches across the space.
Even the Divine Tree’s tangled roots were singed.
Many pujis still flapped in the air, but neither their numbers nor quality were enough to threaten Iros any longer.
Even though Lin Jun could see on his panel that Iros had entered a weakened state.
The peak power from the potion never lasted long; the repeated tug-of-war with the pujis had hastened its depletion.
Still—the outcome was decided.
A vine whipped toward a nearby information cube and hauled out a bloated puji, its belly torn open. It staggered onto the magma, quickly burning away, leaving only the intact Heartwood Core lying quietly amid the char.
Though the process had been tortuous and the plan riddled with variables, as long as he seized the artifact Lin Jun was confident he could steer everything back on course.
Confident of victory, Iros finally had the leisure to speak. “You can control so many magical beasts and ignore the information cubes’ interference. I’m really curious who—or what—you are. But it won’t matter—once I control the Divine Tree and the elves, I will find you.”
“I may have lost, but you haven’t won yet!” a voice-puji from one of the cubes spoke—the first words Lin Jun had said aloud since the battle began.
The terrifying voice filled Iros’s ears. What troubled him even more was the content of the remark.
Iros hastily grabbed the artifact and tried to teleport away.
What he received in return was utter chaos.
After realizing he couldn’t beat Iros outright, Lin Jun had been doing one thing—he’d been “taking the door handle apart” for the teleport controls!
This level of sabotage meant nothing to the Dungeon’s administrators; like the stars on his home crystal stele, no matter how messed up things got, once computation power was reallocated everything would reset.
But Iros was not an administrator—he, like Lin Jun, was an illegal intruder exploiting loopholes. He had no ability to call on the Dungeon’s computing resources!
“How—are you serious?” Iros could hardly believe it.
In his perception, the control nodes were unbreakable; to affect them would require holding a large abyssal sacrificial ritual outside.
He had only been inside a short while—no preparation could have completed such a complicated rite!
Yet no matter how he tried, the teleport remained unresponsive—confirming Lin Jun’s taunt.
A vine ripped a voice-puji from an information cube; the ragdoll-like figure made even well-traveled Iros blink.
“Heh heh… I’ll let you starve in here while I slowly look for ways to get in! Old man, how long can you starve?” the voice-puji taunted.
The many pujis still circling above suddenly dove—toward something unexpected.
Their target was not Iros, but the still-cooling magma.
One after another they turned to charcoal, leaving Iros with no food.
At last, only the voice-puji trapped in his vines and a single cannon-fodder puji running interference remained.
Iros’s hand, clutching staff and artifact, trembled. The emotional rollercoaster of recent days plus his current weakness made him cough up blood, splattering the voice-puji red.
The voice-puji laughed even louder.
Still, killing an opponent from anger was wishful thinking.
Iros finally calmed himself.
He had not been backed into an absolute corner—the Heartwood Core was still in his hand.
If he could connect the artifact to the Divine Tree’s consciousness, there might still be a chance to repair the teleport function.
That should have been done with a reverse-source analysis as part of an abyssal ritual to stabilize the link, but with no ritual laid out he had to try needle-in-a-haystack methods.
The situation had some resemblance to Lin Jun studying his home crystal stele—but with a time limit: do it before he starved.
As if fate had decided for them both.
While Iros delved into the Divine Tree’s consciousness and Lin Jun plotted how to add more chaos from the outside, a tender shoot suddenly sprouted from the still-warm lava and bloomed into a small white flower.
Immediately, a tide of blossoms and grasses surged from the ground, and in an instant the Abyssal Chamber was transformed into a sea of flowers, the scars of battle gently covered by living growth.
Several roots lifted Iros and the pujis up.
Iros tried to struggle—but found he could not move at all.
Lin Jun noticed that the [Dormant] status on the Divine Tree’s panel had, at some point, disappeared.