Skills were everywhere, yet to Lin Jun they still carried an air of mystery.
Take 【Avatar of Nightmare】, for instance.
When that half-vampire used it, it was clearly a transformation skill. But once put on a Puji, it became a fixed form.
Still, the half-vampire had obviously relied on its blood power when transforming. Lin Jun could only guess that since Pujis lacked that blood strength, the skill’s effect was only partially retained.
He had seen skills mutate before due to differences in inherent traits. The most typical case was 【Assimilation Absorption】—which changed from absorbing flesh to absorbing mycelium.
So this should be some kind of adaptive effect.
As for flight, Lin Jun did more experiments.
Two Pujis, both sporting bat wings, stood side by side.
At first glance, they looked identical. But pulling up their status panels revealed that one possessed 【Avatar of Nightmare LV1】, while the other was just a blank Puji.
Lin Jun had spent half a day sculpting the blank Puji by hand, using the bat-winged one as a model.He didn’t mean anything by it—just wanted to see if flight was possible without relying on the skill.
He first controlled the skill-enabled Puji to fly a round. Then, going off that feeling, he controlled the blank one.
After several failed attempts, he actually managed to get it airborne!
But it was clearly much more exhausting. Every flap of its wings required more effort, as if something vital was missing.
And without Lin Jun’s direct control, the blank Puji could never fly at all.
Pujis weren’t very intelligent. Most of their actions came from instinct, and since this one couldn’t fly on its own, that proved it lacked the instinct to fly.
This showed that the skill itself granted Pujis the instinct for flight. It was just like how having the 【Precision】 skill made landing hits easier.
In other words, he could tinker with tricks that didn’t rely on skills for fun. But to mass-produce abilities in Pujis, skills were still indispensable.
Of course, this “theory” only applied in relatively simple fields. Trying to make a Mushroom Cannon without a skill? That was just nonsense.
After finishing these little tests, Lin Jun checked on the progress of the trap chamber—it was nearly complete.
This “trap room” was actually the new cozy home he had designed for the Yellow Book.
Since his plan to excavate the dungeon had failed due to hitting a transparent wall, he decided to make use of it this time.
The transparent wall couldn’t collapse and couldn’t be blasted apart, so he might as well turn it into a trap chamber.
A team of construction Pujis was now making final adjustments in the area.
The once-cramped space had been expanded into a full underground chamber. The arching walls of rock and mycelium seamlessly fused together, and glowing spores embedded in the stone bathed the whole place in a pale blue light.
Eight pillars stood within the chamber.
The transparent wall as a ceiling didn’t actually need any support, so the pillars were camouflage. Each was made of stone shells covering self-destruct Pujis—four per pillar, ensuring plenty of firepower.
At the very back, on an altar-like stone pedestal, rested the Yellow Book, looking exactly like a treasure reward after defeating a dungeon boss.
Of course, the pedestal was also made of self-destruct Pujis. Cheap and effective…
Lin Jun figured the Yellow Book wouldn’t have any objections to its new home.
Naturally, the chamber couldn’t rely only on self-destruct Pujis. Lin Jun had also stationed several newly-created elite Pujis as guards.
Compared to ordinary ones, elite Pujis had not only more skills but also much higher stats.
For melee-type elites, Lin Jun had raised Strength, Agility, and Constitution all to 40.
For ranged types, Intelligence and Agility were both 40, with Constitution at 30—enough to endure.
Three or four elite Pujis in the trap room were more than sufficient.
Later, the entrance would be sealed with stone, turning the whole thing into a hidden chamber.
Adventurers wandering into this cave were unlikely to be high level. Even if they stumbled into the trap chamber, the guards would drive them back.
If stronger demonkin came looking for trouble, and the elites couldn’t hold, the self-destruct Pujis would blow everything sky-high.
Even if the intruders survived, the delay would give Lin Jun enough time to gather Pujis and block the cave entrance from outside.
The main reason for relocating the Yellow Book was that, when left in the Mushroom Forest, demonkin would constantly show up and cause chaos. If they wrecked the Mushroom Forest—the employee rest area—that would be unacceptable.
The trap chamber project and the elite Puji project were both going smoothly. But the plan to spread mycelium mats from the sixth-floor gorge down to the deep layers was far less successful.
The gorge’s cliff walls were extremely hard. Mycelium couldn’t draw nutrition from them, aside from magic power. The mats could only extend downward by transmitting nutrients from already connected mats.
This wasn’t unique to the gorge. Even on the fifth and sixth floors, mycelium mats couldn’t draw nutrients directly from the stone walls.
But those layers were close enough to the surface and ceiling that transporting nutrients a short way wasn’t a problem.
The gorge, however, was far too deep.
And the transmission distance of mycelium mats was limited.
Since the conditions didn’t exist, Lin Jun had to create them himself.
He crafted hollow tubes from mycelium, pouring soil through them onto flat spots on the cliff walls to make supply points.
With nutrients from the soil, the mats could extend further. Then, using another tube, he spread soil onto the next platform. In this way, the mats advanced step by step downward.
For this, a team of Pujis was permanently stationed in the gorge, hauling soil, with three treants assisting in the work.
During this process, Lin Jun noticed something strange.
This gorge didn’t seem to connect to the seventh, eighth, ninth, or tenth floors.
At least, his mycelium mats had found no entrances to any of them.
Could it be that those floors were all sealed off by stone walls?
He would have to investigate further after conquering the seventh floor.
For now, the mycelium mats stopped when they reached the deep layers.
Not because Lin Jun didn’t want to continue—but because he ran into a familiar sight.
【Race: Thousand-Spoked Mayfly】
【Level: 22】
【Race: Thousand-Spoked Mayfly】
【Level: 31】
…
A region filled with countless crisscrossing white strands, swarming with Thousand-Spoked Mayflies.
Unlike the level 62 giant he had encountered when Pujis fell in before, the ones here maxed out around level 40—but there were many of them.
And their territorial instincts were fierce.
Whenever the mycelium mats extended close to their strands, they would scrape the mats away—or spray acid to corrode them.
In short, unless he wiped them out, there was no going further down.