This Dungeon Grew Mushrooms

Teleportation arrays.

Lin Jun had honestly never really considered setting up teleportation arrays within his own territory before.

There were many reasons for that.

The dungeon’s convenient spatial rifts, the ability to locally generate puji at will, and the fact that his sphere of influence hadn’t been very large back then, among other things…

But looking at it now, it really was time to consider building a few teleportation arrays. After all, Lin Jun wasn’t lacking in mana.

The materials were expensive, but with his current scale of wealth and resources, he could afford it.

So Lin Jun waved a tentacle—

“Little Yellow, you wouldn’t secretly connect the other end of the teleportation array to somewhere weird, would you?”

The sudden, eerie question made the pages of the Yellow Book stiffen.

[Boss… I’m still counting on you to help me shape a soul. How could I possibly pull something like that?]

“Hahahaha, just kidding!” The puji’s tentacle patted the book cover encouragingly. “You protected Norris this time and provided information on war constructs and magic crystal equipment. You’ve earned plenty of merit. Of course I trust you.”

Turning around, Lin Jun immediately notified Aiden through the fungal network, asking him to come over and supervise the entire construction process of the teleportation array under the pretext of assisting.

Although Aiden couldn’t independently construct such a complex magic array, checking key nodes was well within his capabilities.

Originally, Aiden had been completely absorbed in using the massive S-rank magic crystal he obtained last time to create a large-scale illusion device.

Being able to pour his life’s learning into something like this was intoxicating for him. The prototype was nearly complete, but he ran into problems when it came to testing.

He couldn’t just activate it out of nowhere in Mordu, could he?

Not only would it cause chaos, but more importantly, a trump card like a large-scale illusion worked best when used unexpectedly.

Just then, the boss issued a new task. Aiden took the opportunity to request a remote testing site—somewhere isolated and convenient for experiments.

Lin Jun agreed without hesitation. The northern lands had no shortage of uninhabited areas.

So, under the banner of searching for Inanna, Aiden brought his prototype device along and headed over.

After Aiden arrived, Lin Jun filled the passage connecting to the deeper zones with massive mushroom trees. Poison fog and corrosive auras flooded the area, completely sealing off the path downward to prevent search parties from wandering into his home.

…

While his subordinates were busy with their own tasks, Lin Jun didn’t slack off either. He began his daily routine—exploring the vast, star-sea-like runic nodes inside the dungeon crystal monument.

Today was a day worth commemorating. After a full year, Lin Jun was finally about to finish exploring the seemingly endless stars within the crystal monument.

This meant that he, the dungeon administrator, was about to go from being a temporary worker to officially on the payroll.

As Lin Jun activated the final star, a puji that had been providing light for an adventurer party suddenly vanished on the spot.

“Enemy attack?!”

The sudden plunge into darkness put the party on high alert. The adventurers instantly formed a back-to-back defensive formation. A mage cast a light spell to illuminate the surroundings. After staying on guard for quite a while, they finally realized that the lighting puji had simply disappeared for no apparent reason…

In absolute darkness, a single cluster of light suddenly appeared.

The lighting puji, executing its preset command to “follow adventurers,” found itself in a completely unfamiliar space.

Having lost its target, it stood there blankly until Lin Jun’s will descended upon it, bringing it back to activity.

Lin Jun surveyed everything before him in uncertainty.

Familiar dark void… familiar floating blocks…

Was this the solidified abyssal space within the Divine Tree Dungeon?

No. It wasn’t the same place. There was no colossal divine tree connecting heaven and earth here.

So… did Dungeon No. 13 come with its own abyssal domain?

Did every dungeon have such a space?

Ignoring the information blocks scattered everywhere for now, Lin Jun’s attention was drawn to something reflective in the distance.

Treasures… mountains of treasures.

Weapons, potions, scrolls, equipment… and vast quantities of gold, silver, and jewels.

All of it was placed atop a gigantic magic array over a hundred meters in diameter. The array consisted of seven layers of nested geometric patterns, so complex that Lin Jun couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

Just as the lighting puji tried to approach, the magic array lit up with a faint glow.

Accompanied by a wave of magical fluctuations, Lin Jun sensed that a short sword vanished from the pile of treasure.

With a guess in mind, the chef puji—who was preparing mushroom soup in a hidden room—flipped over the treasure chest it was standing on to use as a footstool and sure enough pulled out that very short sword.

So this was the source of dungeon chest loot refreshes?

Looking at the pile of treasure, Lin Jun made a rough estimate based on refresh frequency. It could last for several hundred more years.

But now that Lin Jun had seen it, then…

The lighting puji rubbed its tentacles together and rushed forward.

Thump.

The puji crashed solidly into an invisible barrier, its mushroom cap squashed flat.

Access prohibited.

This one Lin Jun knew how to handle.

The lighting puji not only didn’t give up, it pressed itself firmly against the air wall.

The result didn’t disappoint Lin Jun.

Hero detected. Restrictions lifted.

With the obstacle gone, the lighting puji dove headfirst into the treasure pile, tentacles and stubby legs flailing.

Its short legs kicked away a gem-encrusted crown. Its tentacles wrapped around a staff flowing with starlight. It even casually opened a fireball scroll and shot fireworks into the sky…

All of this would belong to Lin Jun from now on.

Hmm?

What was this?

As the tentacles parted the mountain of treasure, they brushed against something strange.

A grayish-white human skull rolled out, its hollow eye sockets staring straight at the lighting puji.

It wasn’t startled at all. After all, the remains left behind after daily decompositions on the fungal carpet looked just like this. To Lin Jun, it was no different from seeing a chicken bone.

What puzzled Lin Jun was why there was a corpse in the treasure pile. Could it be a treasure itself?

He searched a bit more and soon found several more bones.

Put together, there wasn’t the slightest trace of magical fluctuation. No matter how one looked at it, it was just an ordinary corpse. It didn’t seem like a treasure…

Unable to make sense of it, Lin Jun set it aside for now, though he didn’t discard it casually. What if it was some important item? Space wasn’t an issue anyway.

There were simply too many treasures. A quick scan showed no interface panels, so it was clear there were no divine artifacts among them. That was only to be expected.

Later, he’d move the equipment out and let Aiden and the others appraise them slowly.

Only then did Lin Jun turn his attention back to the information blocks behind him.

What kind of content would be inside?

Like the Divine Tree Dungeon, would they record information about the mist and another continent?

The lighting puji extended a tentacle and casually touched one of the information blocks.

[Test Subject Name: Sunstone]

[Final Experiment Record]

[Following the Blood Calamity, the Heartwood Core, and the Void Realm, the Sunstone project has also been declared a failure]

[I still cannot create a new soul]

[Division, distortion, mutation—this is the limit of the Sunstone’s capabilities]

[I have no choice but to abandon this path and seek another]

[Aether compression technology is nothing more than drinking poison to quench thirst. The current improvement is only an illusion. The time truly left to us is not much]

[The neighboring group chose the opposite direction—first mutating the soul, then allowing the body to change accordingly, and finally copying the soul through bodily division]

[So far, there has been no good news. Clearly, their progress is just as unsatisfactory]

[Still, I intend to go take a look, hoping to draw some inspiration from it]

…

[Oh universe, show mercy to your children. Must everything truly return to nothingness?]

[Icxion]

The puji slowly withdrew its tentacle, feeling like it had just seen something far beyond the ordinary.

And that final signature felt extremely familiar…

The God of Light?