This Dungeon Grew Mushrooms

“Like this—gently wrap your arm around the lower edge of the cap. You don’t need to use much strength. It’ll stay very steady.”

“L-like… this?”

“That’s right! Next, lightly pinch right here with your fingers…”

The Sword Saint puji still wanted to struggle, but the one facing him was the highly experienced Inanna.

All resistance proved futile. Four nimble hands explored and kneaded his round, mushroomy body.

Not far away, Number One silently watched the scene, then quietly asked through the mycelial network, “I heard Little Fourteen lost quite a bit of property before?”

Number Four nodded his cap and counted on his tentacles. “One S-rank magic crystal, a knight’s body, and two especially handsome swords… all dropped in the Scarecrow Abyss.”

“No wonder the Mycelial Lord is acting like this,” Number One said, patting Number Four’s cap with a tentacle, his tone heavy with meaning. “Number Four, we have to work hard. If we don’t, we’ll end up like Little Fourteen—reduced to pitiful playthings.”

With that, he turned and prepared to leave.

Number Four didn’t respond right away. He tilted his cap slightly, confused.

Pitiful?

But when he was being held and kneaded by the pink puji, it clearly felt very comfortable… It was his favorite thing aside from the Glory Battles.

Still, if Big Brother said so, then it was probably true.

He lifted his short little legs, about to follow, when Inanna’s voice called from behind, “Number Four, could you come help me for a moment?”

Looking at Inanna’s open arms, Number Four hesitated for just a second. Then, with a series of “puji puji” sounds, he trotted over, becoming yet another “pitiful plaything.”

He was scooped into Inanna’s arms as a demonstration prop, used to teach Galadriel how to properly rua a puji.

Galadriel didn’t think she had any particular fondness for puji. Like Number Four in Inanna’s arms right now—soft and obedient—he stirred no special feelings in her.

But the one called Fourteen was different.

Watching his restrained yet helpless expression, that faint resistance he couldn’t quite hide, Galadriel felt an inexplicable sense of satisfaction rise in her heart…

“Can I keep him with me for a day?” she suddenly asked.

“Well… that depends on whether he’s willing,” Inanna said. Since Galadriel wasn’t connected to the mycelial network, she relayed the question on her behalf.

“How could that possibly—”

“Of course you can!”

Before the Sword Saint could finish, Lin Jun answered for him.

“Is this ever going to end?!” The Sword Saint was furious. He was a Sword Saint, not someone’s plaything!

He was just about to force himself free—after all, Galadriel wouldn’t get hurt over something like this—

When Lin Jun’s voice immediately followed in the mycelial network with a long, heartbroken sigh. “Sigh… how can you be so selfish?”

“Selfish? Me?”

“Exactly. Right now is the perfect opportunity to leave a benevolent impression of puji and the mushroom folk in the heart of the acting Elven King. And yet you only care about your own feelings, unwilling to make even this tiny ‘sacrifice.’”

“I…”

“The last time you lost a full set of precious equipment, did I blame you even once? This time, I even prepared something better for you. Those were savings the puji scrimped and saved for! We puji treated you with sincerity, yet you… don’t seem to care about the puji’s future at all.”

“……”

“Forget it. Forget it. In the end, I was the one who misjudged you. Sword Saint, please do as you wish…”

Under Lin Jun’s well-practiced moral coercion, the Sword Saint suffered a very ethical defeat.

As Lin Jun’s voice faded from the mycelial network, the Sword Saint puji said nothing more. When Galadriel tentatively lifted him again, that round mushroom body finally stopped struggling.

Even though he knew full well the Mycelial Lord was deliberately cornering him with words, he really was in the wrong!

Galadriel, unaware of that private exchange, only felt that she had finally smoothed out this puji’s mycelium.

Inanna’s methods really worked. She truly deserved her title as a master of puji habits.

……

That night.

Mental Guidance

In a hazy state, Galadriel saw the Sword Saint’s back as he walked away.

Anger flared instantly. “Elvian Slyne! Are you running away again?!”

“Sorry. I can’t come back.”

“Why? Because of the war?” Galadriel seemed to see, behind the Sword Saint, a battlefield piled high with the corpses of humans and demons.

“Because—”

The Sword Saint’s figure began to tremble violently. The shaking grew stronger and stronger until, with a whoosh, he turned into a small lump!

“Because… I’m already a puji…”

Galadriel stood there in a daze, one hand still frozen in a reaching gesture, watching the puji carrying four swords stand there as the image grew blurrier and blurrier…

In her bedroom, a place absolutely inaccessible to outsiders, Galadriel jolted awake, shivering despite herself.

Looking at the puji curled into a ball at the foot of her bed, she finally understood why she cared so much about this Fourteen.

The way he carried swords, that arrogant, unyielding air—now that she looked at it, the more he resembled that dead Elvian!

Of course, she wouldn’t take a dream seriously.

Dying and being reborn as a puji… she did miss Elvian, but not to the point of lovesick madness or losing her mind.

She gently touched the puji ball.

Still… if she could keep this puji by her side, that might not be so bad.

……

“What did you do?” the Sword Saint asked warily through the mycelial network.

“Nothing at all. I just gave her a nice dream~”

……

……

……

This Sword Saint seems to have some misunderstandings about himself.

Clearly, everything he did was for the future of puji, with absolutely no element of personal vendetta mixed in.

The delegation would likely be delayed here for several more days, so Lin Jun temporarily shifted his attention elsewhere.

In Norvid, in a small house on the outskirts where the environment was still decent, the Silver Thorn squad was currently staying.

Redstone City had been destroyed, but that was an act of force majeure, and an entire pigman army had been buried along with it.

As a result, not only were they not punished after the war, they were even affirmed and compensated.

Of course, with all resources now being mobilized to build the new defensive line, compensation for nobles or local administrators like them could only be recorded for now and fulfilled later.

Fortunately, having once been adventurers, they deeply understood the principle of having multiple bolt-holes and hadn’t piled all their assets in Redstone City.

With Redstone City gone, they suffered heavy losses, but their lives were still fairly comfortable—better, even, than many nobles who had lost their lands and fled.

What truly troubled the team now wasn’t money, but the mage Ivan.

Ever since he inserted an S-rank magic crystal into that ancient piece of equipment on his body and hand-built a teleportation array to save everyone, he had remained unconscious, never waking up.

The other three had tried all kinds of methods through various connections, but none had worked.

Not long ago, they had even invited two scholars from the Relic Association to take a look.

After examining him, the scholars diagnosed the rare condition known as overcasting, but also told them that there were no recorded cases of recovery.

According to them, Ivan was only still alive because they had taken good care of him, feeding him various mental potions every day.

But this was only delaying the inevitable. At most, in another month, Ivan would suffer brain death from prolonged overload.

The result was unbearable for the other three.

Ivan had ended up like this to save them. If he had died on the spot, they could at least accept it, mourning him from time to time—that was the resolve an adventurer should have.

But now, seeing what looked like hope yet knowing it was beyond saving, was pure torment.

The three sat in the courtyard, all looking dejected.

“I’ll go to Isildorin. Maybe there’s some special potion there that could work,” Night Owl suddenly said.

Team leader Nova poured cold water on her immediately. “As far as I know, it’s pretty troublesome for elves who’ve lived outside long-term to return, right? Add the travel time, and it’s impossible. You don’t seriously think you can sneak into the Elven Forest through shadow traversal, do you? And even if you made it, they probably don’t have that kind of potion…”

Night Owl was on the verge of breaking down. “Then what are we supposed to do? Just sit here and wait to collect his corpse? Sure, that magic-addicted idiot probably didn’t have many years left anyway, but if he dies like this, won’t I feel guilty for hundreds of years?”

“Sigh…” Nova was helpless.

The half-dragon Gar sprawled in his chair, staring at the sky from start to finish without saying a word.

They had done everything they could.

No one noticed that a puji quietly wriggled out from beneath Ivan’s bed inside the room.