This Dungeon Grew Mushrooms

Come to think of it, it was thanks to Little Pig’s set of magic-crystal equipment that Lin Jun was reminded of Ivan and realized he was still unconscious.

Otherwise, with so many things happening across the mycelial carpet every day, Lin Jun really wouldn’t have noticed something this minor.

Status: Overcasting · Cognitive Overload

At first, Lin Jun thought it was something like mana exhaustion, a kind of overdraw that would recover after sleeping for a few days.

But the Silver Thorn squad had spent months trying all kinds of methods without success, which clearly meant this wasn’t ordinary.

After all, the Silver Thorn squad weren’t just random adventurers. They had money and connections. If even they had no solution, then there truly was none.

That made Lin Jun rather curious. Since he happened to have some free time, he came to take a look.

There was a reason he came quietly.

Sending a numbered puji over openly in the name of treatment wasn’t impossible, but if it turned out he couldn’t deal with it, that would be embarrassing.

Sneaking in was different. He could research freely and boldly. If he accidentally researched Ivan to death, that would just be helping him find release early—and no one would know it was the puji’s fault.

The key point was not having to take responsibility.

A small amount of hallucinogenic spores to establish a connection, then…

Mental Guidance

…

Ivan’s dream was a massive circular library whose ceiling could not be seen. Countless dark wooden bookshelves formed rings that spiraled upward layer by layer, vanishing into a hazy glow at the limits of vision.

Its scale far exceeded Inanna’s tea-party manor and Little Xi’s throne hall.

The air was filled with dust-like golden specks of light, like frozen remnants of magic.

There were no windows and no lamps, yet every book spine emitted its own soft, varied glow.

What surprised Lin Jun even more was how real this dreamscape felt.

puji puji—

The wooden floor had a solid, tangible feel underfoot.

When his tentacle brushed along the bookshelf, he could even feel the uneven grain of the wood.

Normally, the more detailed a dream is, the blurrier those details become. Even someone like Inanna couldn’t clearly remember what her own mother’s face looked like.

Let alone a library like this, where even the smallest details were so real—and on such an enormous scale.

Ivan was sitting on a tall rolling ladder.

Wearing a mage’s robe, he faced the shelves, flipping through the book in his hands, completely unresponsive to the puji’s arrival.

The puji scampered along the vertical bookshelf, ran over to Ivan, and asked, “What are you doing?”

Ivan kept turning pages, his eyes rapidly scanning the softly glowing runes on them, answering without pause. “I need to read all the books here.”

Lin Jun tilted his mushroom cap upward, his perception climbing along the spiraling wall of shelves that seemed endless. Even he couldn’t sense an end.

Alright, now it was clear why this guy couldn’t wake up.

If he could wake up from this, that would be the real miracle.

Ivan finished the book in his hands, one emitting an orange-red glow, closed it, returned it to its place, then without any break pulled down another volume beside it, this one wreathed in bluish-purple light.

Lin Jun wrapped a tentacle around the book Ivan had just returned and opened it.

Everything in this dream library was an outward manifestation. At its core, it was a mental space, so it only took the green puji a moment to “read” the entire book.

It explained how to condense and transform formless, attribute-less raw mana into a stable flame form.

The principle was similar to the most basic fireball spell, but the perspective was completely different.

Most magic tomes Lin Jun had read in the past taught “how to cast,” like step-by-step operating manuals.

This book, however, explained “why it works.”

As a result, even something as simple as “creating a flame” was written in a profound and convoluted way that made Lin Jun’s mushroom cap ache.

Lin Jun closed the book and put it back.

He returned to the lowest level and casually pulled out another volume. As expected, its contents were much simpler.

It seemed the knowledge levels of this library increased from bottom to top.

The books were clearly structured, logically sound, and obviously not nonsense fabricated by a dream.

Yet the sheer quantity didn’t look like knowledge belonging to the mage himself.

So what exactly was this overcasting?

More puji slipped in, and Lin Jun invested more mental power.

There was no sabotage. Each puji extended a tentacle, took a book from the nearest shelf, sat down on the spot, and began reading.

One book after another, dozens of times faster than Ivan reading above.

Within the vast, softly glowing library, only the sound of pages turning remained—those of Ivan and the puji.

…

Early the next morning, Nova pushed open Ivan’s door while carrying a basin of warm water.

He was there to change the old mage’s bedding and clean his body. After that, Gar would take over and feed Ivan, who could no longer swallow, some liquid nutritional potions.

Night Owl had gone out to ask around for rumors, hoping to find some kind of folk remedy.

There was no choice. All the recognized, reliable methods had been tried. Ivan had truly reached the point of “treating a dead horse as if it were alive.”

Looking at the old mage’s unresponsive face, Nova could only sigh helplessly.

He moved as gently as possible, hoping his old friend’s final days wouldn’t be too uncomfortable.

…

Meanwhile, in the deep levels of the puji dungeon.

An entire night of nonstop reading hadn’t exhausted Lin Jun’s mind much at all.

Mental Guidance was now level 9, but the amount of mental power it could transmit in a short time was still very small compared to Lin Jun’s total reserves.

For Lin Jun, the upper limit of this skill felt a bit low.

Now he wanted to run an experiment and see what exactly he had gained overnight.

A puji raised a tentacle. Invisible mana began gathering at its tip. After a few seconds, a stable, gentle orange glow lit up there, dispelling the darkness of the surrounding rock walls.

Light spell.

A spell so simple it couldn’t be simpler. Lin Jun had learned it long ago.

But this successful casting surprised him.

Because this time, he hadn’t used a magic crystal. The puji had cast it on its own.

puji and humans were different.

Even without magic crystals, humans could cast spells. For them, magic crystals were simply power amplifiers.

But puji couldn’t. Without the operating environment provided by magic crystals, puji were incapable of spellcasting on their own.

This was due to structural differences.

Humans, elves, demons, and the like all had seven mana nodes within their bodies.

Mana flowing through different paths and cycling through those seven nodes constituted spellcasting.

In essence, their bodies were highly versatile “living magic arrays” capable of supporting many different spells.

Extremely complex spells like teleportation exceeded the carrying limits of internal nodes and ordinary magic crystals, which was why they had to rely on externally drawn magic arrays.

puji, on the other hand, had only a single mana node.

Thus, even a simple spell like light, which required at least two mana nodes to form a circuit, had to rely on magic crystals for puji.

And yet now, Lin Jun had achieved what should have been theoretically impossible.

He seemed to be starting to understand what overcasting really was.

The essence of magic?