This dungeon has mushrooms growing on it.

Chapter 352, Section 351: Land Enclosure
Since the highest administrative official, Far, also served as the president of the Adventurers' Guild, the newly built city hall was located diagonally opposite the Adventurers' Guild, separated only by a wide street, to facilitate his handling of official duties in both positions.

Given the proximity, it's foreseeable that some minor issues will inevitably arise in matters such as future expansion.

However, at this stage, this layout undoubtedly brings great convenience to Far as an individual, and he uses it quite smoothly.

In a simply yet respectable reception room, Far had just finished a brief meeting with two officials from the fishing port and Norwegian respectively.

After exchanging some routine, friendly pleasantries, Farr handed over the subsequent detailed negotiations to his deputy, Mirabelle.

The two officials came to "learn from the experience," hoping to replicate the successful system of managing Puji Masters and efficiently cultivating mushroom fields in Mushroom Capital in their own city. However, throughout the meeting, they cleverly avoided any topic about what price or reward would be required.

Far was fully aware of the two city lords' ulterior motives of trying to "get something for free," but he didn't care at all.

With the mushroom capital now booming, he no longer cares about such petty gains.

He only made one core requirement: all the rules and regulations of the "Puji Master Professional Association" established by either Yufan Port or Norwegian must be consistent with those of the Mushroom Capital headquarters.

After both sides reached a consensus, the remaining details of the negotiations and paperwork fell to Mirabelle.

As the mushroom carpet network expands irresistibly into surrounding cities, the monopoly advantage of mushroom fields is clearly unsustainable in the long run.

Judging from the response efficiency of surrounding cities and the spread speed of the mushroom carpet, the high-speed development period brought about by the mushroom dividend in Mushroom Capital can probably be maintained for about another six months.

If we want to maintain our leading position, we cannot place all our hopes on mushroom fields.

In Fal's view, the next key opportunity lies in the "Puji Master" himself.

Leveraging Mushroom Capital's geographical advantage of being closest to Puji Dungeon, we can further improve Puji's trading, appraisal, and even selective breeding systems, making Mushroom Capital the undisputed "Puji Master Center" for the entire region and even the entire kingdom, thus maintaining our advantage in the next stage of development.

A crucial element of this is the standard-setting power and industry influence held by the "Puji Professional Association".

Clearly, the two city lords next door have not yet realized the importance of this.

Everything is progressing smoothly so far, except for two things that have caught Far's special attention...

When Mirabelle returned to her office after finishing her negotiations, Far looked up, tapped a report on the table with her finger, and asked, "Mirabelle, why is there no mention of the emerging gangs within Mushroom City in this recent summary of the overall situation?"

Gang issues are something that almost every city can't avoid. In the past, when Mushroom Capital was just a small town, it was too small to provide fertile ground for gangs to thrive.

But now, Mushroom City is a new city with tens of thousands of people and frequent population movement, so the emergence of gangs is almost inevitable.

According to traditional urban governance experience, dealing with these gangs one by one would not only require a huge amount of manpower and resources, but also often have limited results.

Even if you take down a batch, new ones will soon emerge.

In fact, even if left unchecked, most of these so-called "gangs" would naturally disappear for various reasons.

However, this does not mean that Far should turn a blind eye to it.

Having a small team monitor these gangs' movements and size, and then promptly nipping them in the bud when they show signs of growing into behemoths, is undoubtedly a necessary preventative measure. Therefore, the absence of a routine report summarizing gang information aroused Far's dissatisfaction, making him suspect that Mirabelle might have overlooked this issue and failed to give it sufficient attention.

Faced with the city lord's questioning, Mirabelle quickly explained, "Your Majesty, it's not that I intentionally neglected or was unwilling to include it in the report, it's just that... there's nothing worth writing about in the current situation!"

"What do you mean?" Far asked.

“Currently, there are no established gangs within Mushroom Capital. What exists are just small groups that call themselves ‘gangs’ but actually only have three or five members, which are not worth reporting.” Mirabelle’s tone was somewhat helpless. “We have indeed received some intelligence about the existence of gangs, but often when we go to verify it after a while, we find that the other party has long since disbanded and disappeared. There is not a single one that can continue to exist and grow.”

"So weird?"

Mirabelle nodded affirmatively.

Farr wanted to warn Mirabelle to be more vigilant and watch out for any deeply hidden gangs operating in the shadows, but then he thought that gangs were different from assassination organizations or spy networks, and it was almost impossible for them to completely hide.

Perhaps the development of gangs in Mushroom Capital is just slower than expected?
Ultimately, he shifted the conversation to something else that concerned him.

"So, what about the newly discovered stone forest in the east? I didn't see any follow-up investigation results in the report."

The stone forest that Farr mentioned is an area located deep in the deserted forest east of Mushroom Capital, which was recently discovered and reported by adventurers.

According to adventurers, the trees and even parts of the landscape there have been petrified by some kind of force.

“The detailed report on the Stone Forest just arrived and hasn’t been compiled into this summary you have yet.” Mirabelle quickly found the Stone Forest report from another stack of documents.

"The cause of the petrification has been preliminarily identified as a special type of 'puji' unique to that area. This 'puji' emits a weak but persistent petrifying ray that alters the environment."

"However, since petrification also affects creep and other Puji, causing endless internal friction, the petrification range is limited to that area and has not expanded. A Puji master in the guild has already successfully captured a sample for research."

"Petrified Puji..." Far nodded thoughtfully. Sure enough, the increasingly strange changes on this land could always be related to Puji. "It would be best to send someone to investigate in depth and find out the specific environmental causes that give rise to this special Puji. At the same time, arrange for someone to monitor the Stone Forest area regularly, and report it immediately if there are any signs of its expansion."

……

Meanwhile, a group of packaged evil sorcerers also left the empire's territory.

The purpose of this mission is to penetrate deep behind enemy lines and conduct a dark ritual in a special area deemed "relatively safe."

The risks are self-evident; once discovered by humans in enemy territory, they would have almost no chance of survival.

This is why many evil sorcerers who were initially attracted by the generous rewards withdrew after learning the specific details and location of the mission.

However, a generous reward will surely attract brave men.

Ultimately, nearly half of them could not resist the rewards promised by the Duke of Sigismund and chose to join the team.

Valen was naturally among them!

(End of this chapter)