This Dungeon Grew Mushrooms

Entering the water for the first time, both Norris and Ming looked extremely uncomfortable.

Even though they were equipped with the ability 【Underwater Adaptation】, and puji responsible for emergency oxygen supply were standing by at all times, the moment his entire body submerged, Norris still instinctively flailed his limbs. Like a startled land animal, he thrashed about for quite a while before barely managing to stop spinning in place.

Ming, on the other hand, was completely unaccustomed to the weightlessness underwater.

He was used to planting his feet firmly and exerting force, but now his whole body felt light and unfocused. He wobbled awkwardly, trying to stand steady, yet his body refused to cooperate, swaying gently with the current.

Little Pig had no such problems. She seemed to have received professional training. Once submerged, her body naturally relaxed, swaying lightly with the rhythm of the water. Her movements were smooth and efficient, calm and unhurried.

As for Little Black—

She was insanely fast!

Her sharp claws easily dug into the hard walls, and when she climbed, she looked exactly like a giant cockroach, except she also had wings she could flap to push against the water for explosive bursts of speed.

While the others were still struggling to adapt in the chamber near the rift entrance, Little Black had already turned into a blurred black shadow, shooting down the corridor ahead with a sharp “whoosh.”

About ten seconds later, Little Black returned.

Clutched in her claws was an unlucky fishman, writhing and struggling nonstop.

The fishman was clearly terrified by the sudden attack. Its bulging fish eyes were wide open, filled with pure fear, and a string of panicked bubbles escaped its mouth.

“Shell?” came Little Black’s hopeful inquiry through the fungal network.

The boss had once told her that shells contained shiny things called pearls, but she clearly didn’t know what a shell actually looked like.

“Uh… this is a fishman. A friend.”

Hearing the word “friend,” Little Black loosened her claws in disappointment.

The fishman, freed at last, swam away in a panic. One hand clutched its back, where several pale scratch marks had been left by sharp claws, while it “glug-glugged” a stream of incomprehensible complaints.

This fishman had originally been sent by the sage Gugulu to meet the team dispatched by Lin Jun, but instead it had suffered an entirely undeserved calamity.

Still, after glug-glugging its grievances in fright for a while, it obediently swam ahead of the group and took on the role of guide.

Behind Norris, Ming, Little Pig, and Little Black, there was also a force of three hundred Puji Fort soldiers.

They had all been carefully selected, most of them half-demons with partial aquatic bloodlines, naturally possessing a certain level of underwater mobility.

As for the puji accompanying them, they were truly a bizarre sight.

Lin Jun had practically taken every skill that even remotely related to underwater environments and tried combining them in every possible way, producing a large batch of experimental puji with wildly different forms and functions.

This real combat operation would serve as a testing ground to see which combinations were genuinely useful, so they could later be filtered and mass-produced.

There was a small issue when passing through the hidden passages.

Jida was a bit too large.

Fortunately, jida was essentially a cluster of puji—taking it apart along its joints solved the problem.

A force of this size naturally couldn’t sneak along quietly like the earlier handful of puji fish.

The disturbance of water flow and movement eventually attracted unwanted guests.

Two shell-armored monsters wielding massive bone pincers followed the disturbed currents and found the rear of the formation.

Upon seeing three Puji Fort soldiers and dozens of puji, the two monsters showed no hesitation whatsoever. Muscles beneath their shells contracted violently, their jointed limbs churned, and they launched a ferocious charge!

The soldiers, of course, didn’t panic just because two enemies attacked. They immediately commanded the puji to counterattack.

Several puji covered head to toe in stone armor stepped to the front.

The stone armor greatly reduced their mobility, but it also made them as steady as bedrock underwater, each puji resembling a squat stone pillar.

One stone-armored puji moved to the very front. A skill activated, and an invisible force field spread outward.

【Gravity Field LV6】

A skill that had no business appearing underwater.

After all, the original owner of this skill, the earth bear, would never in its lifetime go anywhere near the sea.

The two charging shell monsters suddenly felt their bodies sink.

They were never agile creatures to begin with, and under the suddenly multiplied gravitational pull, their swimming completely lost coordination. Their limbs paddled uselessly as they were dragged uncontrollably downward toward the bottom of the corridor.

Aura skills made no distinction between friend and foe. Even the three Puji Fort soldiers behind them felt their bodies suddenly grow heavy, forcing them to brace themselves against the walls to keep from sinking.

Only the stone-armored puji were barely affected.

Puji themselves were very light, and the heavy stone armor instead provided solid support. While stationary, the effect of 【Gravity Field】 on them was almost negligible.

As the gravity puji maintained the aura, the other stone-armored puji were already prepared.

The ends of their extended mycelial tendrils were not the usual whip-blade structures, but sharp, conical spikes.

Facing enemies still struggling under the pull of gravity, these spikes slowly compressed inward. Once they reached their limit, they shot outward violently!

More than twenty spikes fired at once!

With 【Sharpness LV10】, the spikes effortlessly pierced through the shell monsters’ prideful, hardened armor.

Aside from a few misses, each monster was pierced by seven or eight tendrils. Pale blue blood seeped from the puncture wounds, clouding the surrounding water.

After piercing the enemies’ bodies, the spikes continued onward, embedding themselves deep into the stone wall behind.

The two shell monsters were literally hung in mid-water.

One had its head pierced through a vital point and died on the spot.

The other was impaled through its chest, abdomen, and joints. It wasn’t dead yet and thrashed wildly, trying to break free.

Its massive pincers flailed chaotically, attempting to sever the mycelial tendrils piercing its body.

Unfortunately for it, these tendrils possessed 【Toughness LV9】. Even with its strength, it would take multiple full-force attempts to grind through even a single one.

And it didn’t have that kind of time.

A seemingly unremarkable puji fish had already swum up beside it.

At the top of its mushroom cap, two specialized mycelial tendrils quietly lifted, their tips beginning to glow faintly.

【Arc Lightning LV7】

A dazzling blue-white arc flashed through the water and struck the shell monster’s torso.

Its body instantly stiffened. Bubbles poured from the gaps in its shell, and all movement ceased.

Though its exterior shell showed little change, its internal tissues had already been carbonized by the high-voltage shock.

However, the matter wasn’t over.

The lightning arc didn’t stop after hitting the shell monster. It automatically chained to the nearest stone-armored puji, then jumped rapidly toward the back line!

The mycelial tendrils protruding from those stone pillars turned black and lifeless, snapping or drooping limply.

“Ugh!”

The three soldiers all convulsed at once, their hair standing on end. Though they were far enough away that the current wasn’t lethal, the numbing pain and burns hit them full force.

“Which… idiot… used… electricity…” one soldier shakily cursed through the fungal network.

Thus, in their very first underwater skirmish, the expedition force achieved the impressive result of trading three for two.

…

As expected, underwater environments were unsuitable for electric-type skills—at least without proper insulation or resistance measures.

The strength of Lin Jun’s team lay in their rapid information transmission.

Even outside the coverage of the fungal carpet, members within a certain distance would automatically form a temporary “local fungal network.”

As a result, Little Pig at the very front quickly learned of the accident at the rear.

Under her swift arrangements, the three injured soldiers were escorted back along the original route, returning to Puji Fort.

However, when this escort team arrived back at the rift chamber where they had departed, they were surprised to discover something new.

There was a ribbon-like structure woven from milky-white mycelium, shaped like a massive strand of kelp, gently swaying with the pulse of the current.

Along both sides of this mycelial kelp grew clusters of mushrooms emitting a soft greenish-blue glow, standing out like stars in the dark underwater world.

This made them overlook the layer of algae-like mycelium floating near the water’s surface above.

Lin Jun was currently testing which form would be most suitable for spreading fungal carpet underwater.