This dungeon has mushrooms growing on it.

Chapter 186, Section 185: The Unknown War

"Cheers!" X4
Horn, Old Hammer, Amy, and Noah were already gathered around the table at the crack of dawn, the dim light in the tavern still carrying the shadows of the previous night. Amidst the mess of cups and plates, they began the prelude to this decadent new day.

As the first team to think of the wonderful idea of ​​"Puji lottery", they lingered in the maze for two whole days, on the fourth and fifth floors, until their backpacks could no longer hold any more prizes, before reluctantly returning to the ground.

Without a doubt, they are the biggest winners in this lottery frenzy.

Besides them, there were other teams like Vera who came down in the second batch and also got some soup, but none of them could compare to them.

The four of them divided over two hundred gold coins, earning them more than the adventurers who had risked their lives in the dungeon.

What do adventurers do when they have money?
Apart from Noah saving most of the gold coins, the other three members of the team immediately plunged into the revelry.

No one drinks inferior liquor at the Rotten Willow Tavern anymore; instead, they savor the rich aroma of ale.

After a few rounds of drinks, amidst the clinking of glasses, Old Hammer, picking his teeth, suddenly narrowed his eyes and gestured towards Horn: "Hey, Horn, do you remember when you were drawing lots, didn't you pull out a silver pendant?"

"Wh...what pendant?" The genuine ale was quite strong; Horn was already slurring his words, his eyes were glazed, and he was trying to grope through the fog of memory.

“It was the one that was taken away by that cunning Buck later,” Old Hammer added, taking another sip of his drink.

He had won a whole bunch of miscellaneous trinkets in the draw, so he couldn't possibly remember the specific items. But he still remembered the name "Buck," the vendor who had packed up and taken away all their odds and ends.

“Oh…yes, that’s right. And then what?” Horn asked, shaking his head.

“That pendant,” Amy suddenly interjected, her tone tinged with heartache, “belonged to Solaline, the squad leader of the Wings of Judgment! That guy Buck was incredibly audacious, reselling it to the original owner for a whopping 10 gold coins!”

Buck's raising of his voice drew a lot of attention to protect him, but it also spread the news.

"Ten gold coins?!" Horn was so shocked he almost spat out his mouthful of ale onto the table. His eyes widened, and it took him a while to recover. Then he waved his hand and said, "He's bold and capable. I certainly wouldn't dare quote the church such a price."

“But what I have to say is,” Old Hammer put down his glass, tapping his fingers lightly on the table, his voice lowered and tinged with mystery, “that guy Buck… hasn’t been seen for days.”

"What does that mean?" The news seemed to have somewhat diluted the drunkenness in the bugle.

Old Hammer shrugged, his eyes sweeping across the table: "The literal meaning. I specifically went to the places he usually hangs out to ask, and other people said they haven't seen him at all these past few days."

"You mean...the Church...?" Amy frowned slightly, her voice carrying a hint of uncertainty.

Noah, who had been listening quietly, suddenly looked up, his brow furrowed, and interrupted in an unusually serious tone: "The Church would never do such a thing!"

Her voice wasn't loud, but it carried an undeniable firmness. Even though she was just a trainee pastor, Noah still didn't want anyone to slander the church.

Old Hammer glanced at her, his face expressionless: "I never said it was the church that did it. It's possible he left Silent Wind Town because he felt guilty."

A brief silence enveloped the table, broken only by the clinking of glasses and the faint sounds of distant commotion.

Amy cleared her throat, breaking the awkward silence and trying to steer the conversation away: "Speaking of which, have you heard? Lately, there seem to be fewer traces of the Puji in the dungeon. Is something about to happen...?"
-
Of course, there were changes, but they occurred in the deeper areas.

In Cave No. 4, a small snail-shaped tree grows in the center of the fungal carpet, and ten cave dwellers live and guard it.

However, there are only eight left now.

When Qisi's six claws crept over, even though Lin Jun spotted them immediately, two cavemen who were unaware of the situation were still ambushed and killed.

The surviving cave dwellers, along with their puki, hastily retreated into the snail-wood, using this natural fortress to fend off the swarming kiss beetles. However, the snail-wood was not yet fully grown and lacked sufficient hardness. The six-clawed creatures frantically tore at the wooden walls, sending debris flying—they were about to dig through!

In mid-air, a bat swooped down, but instead of heading for the battlefield, it chased after an eye worm that was lurking at the edge of the passage!
Sensing the threat, several long-tailed crickets around immediately picked up stones and hurled them at the bat.

The bats nimbly darted among the flying rocks, emerging unharmed.

The eye worm tried to escape, but it was too late.

The bat suddenly plummeted, and Louisa's figure appeared in mid-air. With the momentum of her fall, blood instantly wrapped around her right arm. With a sharp whooshing sound, she crushed the fragile eye worm, and purple fluid splattered everywhere.

The Qisi group besieging the Snail Tree was thrown into chaos, and the Puji reinforcements who arrived from the nearby caves seized the opportunity to launch a surprise attack, quickly annihilating the remaining enemy.

After the battle, the cave dwellers, together with the Puji, threw the corpses onto the fungal carpet to decompose.

Lin Jun planned to enhance the best-performing and fastest-reacting caveman among them. She didn't need to enhance too much; she would just enhance one skill as a reward, so that it could stand out among the other cavemen.

Meanwhile, a group of Puji raided a Qis transport convoy, swiftly eliminating eight Zhuo Beasts and their guards. However, when they cut open the Zhuo Beasts' bloated bellies, what rolled out wasn't the expected supplies, but rather heavy stones!

trap!

By the time they realized it, it was too late. A tidal wave of Qis troops surged out from the three surrounding passages, quickly engulfing the three hundred Puffy raiding squads.

The more than twenty interconnected caves between Lin Jun and Qi Si have now become a brutal meat grinder, with the two sides switching between offense and defense, going back and forth.

The fierce tug-of-war turned the battlefield into a wasteland; apart from a few scattered mycelia, all the other monsters naturally disappeared.

After the game escalated to total war, Lin Jun finally got to know Keith's intelligence.

Not only are they adept at ambushes and sneak attacks, but they also possess astonishing learning abilities.

The same traps almost never work a second time; they might even learn from them and use them to bite Lin Jun in return.

The annihilation battle we are in now, which uses the transport team to ambush and lure the enemy deep into our territory, is exactly what we learned from Lin Jun's tactics last time.

The current situation is that Qi Si is constantly learning Lin Jun's tactics, and Lin Jun is constantly absorbing Qi Si's skills, mainly [Cold Resistance] and [Refractive Invisibility].

The scouting skills on the eyebug are also useful, but the number of them is too small, so the improvement in proficiency is very limited.

The Evil Eye's skills are even more tempting than mushrooms, but Lin Jun has yet to find an opportunity to kill it.

It's not that the heavy armored Puji isn't powerful enough, but rather that Lin Jun deliberately kept them out of the protracted battle.

The heavy armored creature's movements, while not exactly slow, were certainly not fast, and couldn't keep up with the speed at which the Evil Eye floated.

Once the enemy realizes that the heavily armored Puji is difficult to deal with, given Qi Si's intelligence, he will definitely withdraw the Evil Eye decisively. Afterwards, it is very likely to turn into more troublesome guerrilla harassment. Lin Jun doesn't have that much time to waste on this.

Lin Jun was waiting for a decisive moment, a decisive situation that could completely trap the Evil Eye and a large number of Qis troops, leaving them nowhere to escape.

Lin Jun is almost ready for this decisive battle!

(End of this chapter)