This Dungeon Grew Mushrooms

The Puji Fort soldiers split into five-man squads and began their reconnaissance operations one after another.

Compared to the standard teams that dragged along hundreds of various puji through the water in a vast, black mass, the composition of Norris’s group was far more streamlined.

The team consisted of only Ming, Norris, a fishman guide responsible for leading the way, and, following at the very rear, a specially modified “Jida—Naval Combat Edition” adapted for underwater environments.

Of course, there were also the indispensable oxygen-supply puji.

Unlike those half-demon soldiers who were naturally capable of underwater survival, although Norris and Ming had been granted 【Underwater Adaptation LV7】, they still needed to replenish oxygen periodically.

This ability altered their skin structure, allowing them to directly extract oxygen from the water, but when they were active, the intake rate couldn’t keep up with consumption.

When staying still, they could remain underwater for a long time. Once they started swimming, however, they needed to rely on oxygen-supply puji roughly every hour to replenish.

If a battle broke out, this interval would shorten drastically.

Norris grabbed a soft tentacle offered by an oxygen-supply puji and took a deep breath of moist, oxygen-rich air, sucking the round-bodied puji slightly flat. That wasn’t a problem, though—the puji would automatically replenish oxygen from the environment.

Norris then passed the tentacle back to Ming behind him.

Their task was to pass through the winding, twisting corridor ahead and inspect an area at the end marked as the “Altar Chamber.”

That location was a junction of several passages, with a high probability of encountering enemies.

This route had been specially arranged by Louisa, taking into account Jida’s size and the task the boss had assigned to Norris, so that it wouldn’t require crawling through hidden passages.

The corridor stretched long and deep, its stone walls on both sides covered with bas-reliefs and murals eroded by seawater until they were blurred and indistinct.

At first, Norris found them novel, but after seeing enough, they were just that—nothing special. He didn’t discover anything particularly mysterious.

Naturally, his attention shifted to his partner on this mission—Ming.

As the first mushroom-born successfully created with the boss’s help, Ming was fairly well known within the clan.

At the very least, whenever Norris chatted privately with Qiong, the other would often mention this clansman who had been personally taken away by the boss for cultivation shortly after his birth, and whom they rarely got to see.

After Ming, the mushroom-born had held several more birth ceremonies, but no one else had attracted Lin Jun’s sustained attention like Ming had.

Regarding this, there were two prevailing theories among the mushroom-born. Some believed that “the first” held special significance, and that the boss taking Ming away symbolized the formal acceptance of the mushroom-born as a people.

Others speculated that the sacrifice used in that birth ceremony had been exceptionally powerful, granting Ming extraordinary potential worthy of individual cultivation.

However, most mushroom-born leaned toward the former explanation.

As the earliest group to join the Mushroom Garden and already having pledged loyalty, the mushroom-born occupied a different status from the later fungal citizens who joined in the form of an “alliance.”

The new fungal citizens, as well as the captives, were free to choose to leave the Northern Border once they met the requirements. The boss placed no restrictions on that.

But for the mushroom-born, there was no option of leaving.

Of course, with their current lives being stable and prosperous, none of them had ever thought of leaving anyway.

Still, this distinction meant that the boss opened more of the Mushroom Garden’s secrets to them.

For example, skill granting.

Ordinary fungal citizens only knew that after forming a symbiosis with mycelium, they would naturally gain 【Cold Resistance】, treating it as merely a property of the mycelium.

The mushroom-born, however, knew clearly that the boss had the ability to directly add specific skills to them.

As long as they accumulated enough contribution points, they could exchange them for desired abilities. This made them genuine elites within Puji Fort, with few peers of the same rank able to stand against them.

Based on this understanding, they didn’t believe the magic patterns inherited through the birth ceremony could give Ming much of an advantage.

In the face of the boss’s near–creator-god-like abilities, the magic patterns the mushroom-born had once been proud of seemed not all that important anymore.

Thus, everyone was more willing to believe that this was a special gesture of acceptance and recognition from the boss toward the mushroom-born as “his own people.”

Whenever Qiong talked about this, he would always sigh over the boss’s thoughtfulness and care, saying he had gone to such lengths just to put them at ease.

“Thoughtful boss”—every time Norris heard that description, it felt a bit subtle to him, but he couldn’t really argue against it.

However, his curiosity about Ming gradually accumulated through these fragmented conversations.

Unfortunately, although they were both core members, the two didn’t interact much.

Norris had only learned from the Mushroom Garden’s alchemy supervisor, the little elf Riel, that Ming seemed to have a dedicated training ground and sparring partners—clearly someone the boss valued highly.

This time, though, there was finally a chance.

“Ming, what do you usually do day to day?” Norris smiled as he struck up a conversation.

Ming, still holding the tentacle in his mouth, didn’t think much and answered honestly, “Arena deathmatches!”

Norris felt like he had just heard a rather terrifying phrase.

“Deathmatches?”

“Yeah. I beat all the enemies to death.”

If this weren’t underwater, Norris would already be sweating by now.

“I see… that’s a very… special training method. Then what about when you’re not training?”

“Eating, drinking potions, sleeping.”

Is your life missing something?

Looking at Ming, who seemed to see nothing wrong with that, Norris silently decided that if he ever had offspring in the future, he absolutely could not hand them over to the boss to raise.

“Then… what kind of enemies can you handle now? I’ll let suitable enemies go to you when the time comes.” Norris did his best to maintain the image of a reliable senior.

“Three or four ordinary gold-rank ones, or several dozen silver-rank ones, I guess. Before we set out, I wanted to challenge a whole gold-rank squad, but I didn’t have time, so I signed up to come here instead.”

It took Norris’s brain two full seconds to process that sentence—what was this less-than-one-year-old kid saying?

What did he mean by wanting to challenge an entire gold-rank squad?

You had to know, Norris himself was only level 43, gold rank.

Without relying on Jida, with the advantage of his skill combinations, he might manage against a few opponents of the same rank. But facing a complete gold-rank squad with good coordination and full class coverage would still be extremely dangerous.

If Ming wasn’t bragging… wouldn’t that mean his actual combat ability was already on par with Norris without Jida—or perhaps… even stronger?!

Wait—Jida!

Norris suddenly felt like he’d grasped the key.

That had to be it!

“Ming, so you can control Jida too!” Norris’s tone immediately filled with confidence. “Then why didn’t you bring your own Jida along? I can teach you some practical techniques I’ve figured out myself. I guarantee that after learning them, dealing with a gold-rank squad will be easy!”

“Norris, big brother…” Ming’s expression grew a little downcast. “I don’t have the talent to control Jida. At most, I can only control twenty-three puji at the same time, and… I can’t issue different fine commands to different puji simultaneously.”

“Then how do you fight gold-rank squads? And what level are you now?” Norris was even more confused.

“Level thirty-six. As for fighting… I just fight like this.” As Ming spoke, he casually waved his fist—one that didn’t look particularly thick or special.

Norris instinctively leaned back slightly.

So this kid was less than a year old, already close to his level, and might even surpass him in actual combat ability?

How on earth was that possible?!

For a moment, Norris didn’t know whether he should first comfort Ming over his disappointment at being unable to control Jida, or pick up the remnants of his senior’s dignity that had just been shattered to pieces.

“Gurgle!”

The fishman guide suddenly let out a warning cry.

Norris immediately collected himself, all stray thoughts suppressed.

【Vibration Sense】

The feedback from his perception came in—straight ahead was the target “Altar Chamber.” Sure enough, enemies were lurking inside, and… there were quite a lot of them!