This dungeon has mushrooms growing on it.

Chapter 93, Question 92: Where did all these slimes come from?

The two glass beads were handed to the overjoyed Little Black.

Little Black picked them up and ran back to the Mushroom House in a flash.

Using its tail, Xiao Hei swept the glass shards aside and shoved all the glass beads under itself, counting them one by one.

Then Lin Jun watched her tap, tap a few times, then go back to the first one and tap again...

Maybe I should take some time to teach her to count?

It would probably be difficult to teach them.

Xiao Hei is quite resistant to any learning activity that requires mental effort.

Lin Jun herself had a headache just thinking about how to teach her.

As for hiring a "math tutor" for her?
This profession is simply too dangerous; it's very difficult to find someone who can hold it long-term...

After creating a new folder for Xiao Hei's education plan and setting it aside, Lin Jun now needed to test the new breed, Puji, first, otherwise she wouldn't be able to push through the sixth floor.

On the mushroom carpet of the mushroom forest, two experimental subjects of different shapes wriggled and detached themselves.

One had eight special tentacles on its body, and the other constantly secreted mucus from its surface.

Let's start with suction cups.

Upon receiving the command, the suction cups quickly ran to the rock wall, expanded the ends of their tentacles into bowl-shaped suction cups, and stuck to the rock wall with a series of thuds.

At first it was fine, the suction cups supported it as it climbed up without any pressure.

However, problems soon arose: as it moved continuously, several of its mycelial tentacles somehow got tangled.

Puji tried to separate the tentacles, but the knots only got bigger and bigger, until it turned into a ball hanging on the rock wall. When the last two suction cups finally couldn't hold on any longer, it fell down and crashed into a puddle.

Lin Jun didn't react much to this; it's normal for the test subjects to have problems.

The problem with this one still lies in Puji's intelligence. There are too many tentacle strands (8 fungal strands) and it can't coordinate them. The suction of the suckers is stronger than expected, so the number of tentacles can be reduced.

Soon, a second Puji was born under the catalysis of magic, this time with six tentacles.

Although this little creature still needs to pause occasionally to tidy its tentacles when moving, at least it no longer gets tangled.

But when it lay on the rock wall and fired its mushroom cannon at the designated target, the recoil flipped its entire body over.

Lin Jun looked at Puji, which was hanging in mid-air and swaying, and found that its mushroom cannon had missed its target and hit the fungal carpet more than ten meters away.

If there are fewer hyphal tentacles, can the fungus maintain stability...?

Lin Jun decisively let the failed product fall down on its own, returning it to the mushroom garden's cycle.

Option 1 was abandoned, and then came the slime poop.

Puji, covered in green slime, successfully climbed up the rock wall, but encountered a small problem when firing the cannon.

The cannon barrel can't be raised.

Puji needs to lie mostly on the rock wall to maintain enough stickiness, while Mushroom Cannon can only tilt its head back slightly.

The target originally set simply didn't have a high enough angle of elevation to fire...

I tried firing a shot randomly, and the stickiness I was worried about turned out to be no problem at all.

It seems usable, but the flaws are real, and the constant secretion of mucus for crawling unexpectedly consumes a lot of magic.

So in the end, we still have to use a fixed turret against the wall...

Just do it.

On the sixth layer of the fungal carpet, near the outermost layer, a Puji begins to develop every forty meters.

The first batch of Puji was quickly produced by Lin Jun's extravagant use of magic.

These poops are a little different from regular poops—they are round.

After they are produced, they begin to devour the rocks beneath them and then cover their bodies with rocks.

This process lasted about two days.

Two days later, the round stone forts began to take shape.

Learning from the experience of addressing the issue of limited shooting angles for Slime Puddle, the circular stone surface features numerous appropriately sized round holes. These holes allow the Mushroom Gun to extend and attack without being too large, preventing the central Slime Puddle from falling out.

The appearance of these fixed turrets immediately helped Lin Jun eliminate the constantly emerging and harassing slimes from afar, allowing the fungal carpet to continue spreading outwards until it grew to over a hundred meters, exceeding the effective firing range...

And so, a new round of conception began.

They advanced about 130 meters in about 2.5 days. As for covering the entire sixth floor, we can only say that the future is promising.

The generation of Puji can be accelerated by magic, but the transformation of [Rock Eater] into a stone turret cannot be accelerated.

The progress is impressive, but we have no better alternatives, so we have to keep using it for now. At least we're making progress.

To be honest, Lin Jun's feeling after playing this far is that there are just too many slimes!
And it's a continuous stream.

Other classes have fought slimes before, and the battles are usually quite intense in the first few days.

After a few days of intense competition, the slime's replenishment couldn't keep up with the puji's replenishment speed, and it was naturally gradually suppressed.

According to Lin Jun's initial idea, the sixth floor should be like this as well.

But now, so many days have passed, and the number of slimes has not decreased; on the contrary, it seems to be increasing.

Nothing feels right no matter how you think about it.

If there were already this many slimes, this floor shouldn't be a botanical garden, but a slime paradise.

Given the current situation, Lin Jun could only guess that a large number of slimes were stored somewhere and were being released in waves.

Or perhaps there is a being capable of rapidly producing slimes, who, upon noticing my arrival, took action to prevent me from taking over the sixth floor.

Finally, there is one more possibility.

That is, Lin Jun's continuous encroachment on the underground city's territory has activated a certain emergency response in the underground city, which has begun to automatically come up with some countermeasures to hinder itself.

This possibility is the least likely. Lin Jun has seen the emergency mechanism of the dungeon before. The scale that the ancient dragon lost to the electric arc is still gathering dust in Lin Jun's little treasure vault.

Compared to this, generating a bunch of slimes seems a bit too weak, too weak for a dungeon's usual methods.

But what if!

if!

If this is truly a method used by the underground city, then Lin Jun has to consider whether she should continue to develop to the lower levels.

After all, what if the dungeon's self-defense mechanism was gradual?

Summoning slimes now is just to hinder progress and annoy myself. But what if I become a bigger threat later? Maybe I'll get some electric shocks back at them?

If the dungeon really wants to mess with itself, Lin Jun doesn't think it will be able to find its own true form.

When the ancient dragon was struck by the electric shock that even it couldn't withstand, a fragrant, tender, crispy-on-the-outside, roasted poisonous mushroom was created in the swamp.

If it is indeed confirmed to be an underground city mechanism, Lin Jun will have no choice but to focus all her efforts on developing the surface.

On the surface, although the mycelium has now grown to the entrance and begun to tentatively spread outwards, it is still maintaining a slow and restrained pace.

On the one hand, they wanted to take it slow and test the level of human attention to this; on the other hand, Lin Jun's development focus was currently on the future.

Although the surface can photosynthesize, the concentration of magic is relatively low compared to the dungeons, and the number of monsters is also much smaller.

In short, the reason for the massive outbreak of slimes on the sixth floor definitely needs to be figured out; otherwise, Lin Jun won't be able to develop the business with peace of mind.

This battle that took place on the cliff could not possibly be kept secret from human adventurers, and Lin Jun had no intention of hiding it.

In the past few days, the tavern has been filled with discussions about the news brought back by the adventurers who passed through the sixth floor, about the battle between the Puji and the slimes.

Since the Demon Tide, everyone has realized that Mushroom and Puji have become an important force in the dungeon.

On a smaller scale, once the mushrooms spread to higher levels, they will consume all the fireflies and replace them with glow mushrooms, reducing the lighting ability by two levels. Long-lasting lighting tools or magic will then become essential.

On a larger scale, if the Puji were to launch another extermination campaign like they did on the fifth floor, and then engage in a Puji mutual protection scheme on the sixth floor, then the adventurers' sources of income would be reduced again.

In the current situation, it's no exaggeration to say that every move Puji makes affects the hearts of the adventurers.

Even Norris, a bronze-level adventurer who earns his living solely through mining, is no exception.

However, what he hoped for was that Puji could completely clear the sixth floor...

(End of this chapter)