This Dungeon Grew Mushrooms

After Pollock and Gaddin, Puji Fort gradually welcomed more dwarves.

They were all young blacksmith apprentices, carrying the same mixture of hesitation and longing.

They were the results of the quiet promotion done earlier by Knight puji while traveling with the diplomatic delegation through the various mountain cities.

Even so, in the end only a little over twenty dwarven apprentices came.

Lin Jun wasn’t in a hurry.

After all, those willing to be the first to eat the crab are always few.

For these young apprentices, he offered extremely generous treatment.

They could almost freely draw from the mountains of common ore stacked in the warehouses, forging as much as they liked. Even if their early products were crooked, cracked, or complete failures that wasted materials, it didn’t matter.

Lin Jun had never expected these twenty-odd apprentices to produce meaningful output.

What he needed was for them to improve their forging skills.

Once they had trained for a period of time and their craftsmanship showed visible improvement, Puji Fort would issue tasks encouraging them to return to their hometowns and recruit more dwarves with their refined skills.

When the news fully spread, Lin Jun would no longer lack basic blacksmith manpower.

Meanwhile, the delegation’s return journey went smoothly.

The route had already been cleared once by the Sword Saint puji on the way there, so no bandits or cultists dared show themselves again.

At the designated meeting point, they rendezvoused with the team sent by the elves.

The elves conveyed Galadriel’s invitation to Fourteen, but Sword Saint puji refused without even thinking.

Additionally, among the elven group was an elf who had been unilaterally designated by both nations as a “member of the Hero’s Party.”

A sanctum-level male elf.

Lin Jun remembered him. He had seen him a few times when riding Eko to attend the elven council.

Among the long-lived elders and high-tier spellcasters, this elf hadn’t stood out much. No one would have guessed he’d be chosen.

As for the Hero, there was something Lin Jun had never fully understood.

When he first saw Tanaka on the islands, he had assumed Tanaka was the Hero summoned by the United Kingdom.

But as Lin Jun’s information network within the United Kingdom grew stronger, he discovered that their Hero was a woman.

And she seemed to be accompanied by knights and priests from the Church of Light. That reminded Lin Jun of the group of Holy Knights he had encountered earlier on the western coast, though he couldn’t confirm if they were the same people.

Which raised the question: if the Kingdom’s Hero was female, then who had summoned Tanaka?

Considering Tanaka’s previous attempt to release the Demon King, Lin Jun couldn’t help but suspect that factions within the demon race still loyal to the traditional Demon King might also have secretly mastered Hero-summoning techniques.

And then there was his own unknown summoner.

Sigh…

When did summoning Heroes turn into an arms race?

Wouldn’t it be better to follow the old, classic script—let the Hero properly challenge the Demon King?

Preferably after everyone reached peak power, they could all go to the Tidal Sanctuary together and beat up that arrogant slime.

Oh, wait. The Tidal Sanctuary still wasn’t truly his territory.

After discovering the sanctuary core, Lin Jun had attempted to take over its authority in order to control its affiliated subspace.

He failed.

His soul had been blocked outside the core.

As the administrator of the puji dungeon, he knew what that meant: the dungeon was already owned. A living administrator existed.

The most likely candidate was the so-called God of Death—or perhaps one of her followers.

To Lin Jun, it made little difference.

It meant that the Tidal Sanctuary and its linked subspace were off-limits for now.

In the end, he would have to focus on the coordinates given by the Divine Tree.

Fortunately, progress elsewhere was going well.

During this expedition deep into the Scarecrow Abyss, Sword Saint puji had successfully brought back the skill Lin Jun had long desired:

Negative Energy Harvesting.

According to his report, for unknown reasons, not only had the slimes vanished from the lower levels of the abyss, even the number of scarecrows had drastically decreased.

Ironically, the greatest difficulty had been scouring nearly half of the Haunted Manor to find the butler scarecrow that carried the skill.

Lin Jun absorbed the skill without hesitation.

It allowed the user to absorb corrosive and cursed energies from the environment and convert them into pure magic power.

For the scarecrow butler, this meant a steady supply of magic in the abyss.

For Lin Jun, who did not lack magic, it became a tool for environmental transformation.

He had already begun cultivating corresponding “Negative Energy Mushrooms” at the uppermost edge of the Scarecrow Abyss.

No particular grand goal.

He just wanted to see whether he could turn the abyss into something a little more sunny and pleasant.

Interestingly, beyond environmental corruption, the negative emotions of intelligent beings also counted as a form of “negative energy.”

Lin Jun played an especially creative game of hide-and-seek with the D-grade personnel. The puji assigned to collection quickly filled up with harvested negative emotions.

However, unlike environmental corruption—which could be directly converted into magic—these purely emotional negative energies simply accumulated inside the puji and could not be transformed.

Following the philosophy of “taken from D, used on D,” Lin Jun chopped up the puji stuffed with negative emotions, stewed it into soup, and fed it back to the still-terrified D-grade personnel.

Thus, fear, despair, malice, and other negative emotions completed a cycle, returning to their source through ingestion and stacking atop the already ongoing emotional output of the D-grade personnel.

The cavern erupted into wails and screams. Some even attempted self-harm, only to be rescued in time by the kind puji emergency team, who prevented such wasteful behavior.

Was it useful?

Yes.

But it felt less like a refined application of the skill and more like poisoning.

Not very elegant.

Lin Jun rubbed his mycelium thoughtfully. There had to be a more dignified way to use this skill.

Besides Negative Energy Harvesting, the greatest gain of the expedition was the restoration of the Binding Ring.

Using the intact ring that bound the Fire Elemental Lord as a template, Lin Jun mobilized nearly every intelligent resource at his disposal.

The old fishman. Xinghou. The Yellow Book. Even, through Inanna’s indirect inquiries, suggestions from mages of the United Kingdom.

After enormous effort and material expenditure, the damaged Binding Ring missing a fragment was finally repaired.

Well… repaired-ish.

Without the original schematics, the process had been more like patching gaps by imitation.

The final product restored perhaps seventy to eighty percent of its function, but the flaws were obvious.

The original ring could forcibly seal the Fire Elemental Lord within if necessary.

The repaired one could still confine the Frost Elemental Lord—but its coercive binding strength was greatly reduced.

Like a cracked window patched with tape.

It might block wind and rain, but compared to the original, it was fragile.

Lin Jun had no room to be picky. Usable was good enough.

Over thirty percent of his magic output was currently devoted to heating puji for warmth. If this continued, how was Puji Fort supposed to develop?

However, just as plans were underway to seal the Frost Elemental Lord into the repaired ring, a small accident occurred.

The Frost Elemental Lord sensed Inanna’s presence and immediately approached the ruins.

But the moment it tried to get closer, a tangible mantle of flame erupted around Inanna. The searing heat forced it to halt.

Even its extended crystalline hand partially melted, droplets falling like tears.

After a brief pause, an even colder aura surged from the Frost Lord, pushing back against the flames.

The fire flickered and dimmed, on the verge of extinguishing.

“Who?!” a furious roar exploded from the Binding Ring on Inanna’s left hand. “Who dares touch the brat under my protection?!”

Thinking Inanna had been attacked, the Fire Elemental Lord surged forth from the ring. Though smaller than before, its body of pure flame still radiated intense heat.

It immediately noticed the Frost Lord.

“So it was you who wrapped my brat in that lousy layer of ice. You think you’re worthy to fight me for her?”

The Frost Elemental Lord, though smaller and silent, showed no weakness.

The surrounding temperature plummeted. Fine ice crystals formed and spiraled into a miniature blizzard.

The next instant, the Frost Lord shot forward, trailing storm and snow.

Both clearly restrained themselves from harming Inanna.

But such courtesy did not extend to everyone else present.

Number Four, who had been enthusiastically spectating nearby, was promptly swept into the vortex.

His wail echoed through the fungal network:

“I’m scorched—! I’m frozen again—! Stop spinning—! I’m going to puke—!”