"This dungeon has grown mushrooms… eating raw fungi."
"Let go of me! Who are you? Let me go!"
Upon waking, Inanna found herself trapped in a sack and struggled desperately, twisting her body.
"Pero, did you water down the unconscious spell? She's awake already," one voice said.
"Idiot! Don't call me by my name. Considering all the resources her duke father poured into her… with her resistance so low, it's already remarkable that she's awake now," another voice sneered.
Inanna froze. Both voices were familiar.
"Pero? And you, Ox! Did you set me up? Have you betrayed my father?"
"It's your own fault for talking too much—she recognized us," Pero said irritably.
Ox, however, seemed unconcerned: "What's there to fear? She won't have a chance to tell anyone anyway."
"What do you mean? Not just kidnapping?" Inanna's fear flared, replaced by a surge of anger. "What are you planning to do?"
Realizing her life might be in danger, Inanna grew even more furious.
The sack was ripped off her head, and the first thing she saw was Ox's menacing face.
"What are you going to do? Young lady, today you're going to be the dinner of the magical beast!"
Inanna glanced around. The dim tunnel walls were scattered with numerous purple crystals of varying sizes. Have I been taken to the Amethyst Dungeon?
"You two rat men in human skin! Old man never wronged you! And now you betray him?"
"Because your father is finished! Did you really think he could stop the Empire's attack? Killing you will be the final straw to crush him. And killing your father will get me a noble title anyway," Ox laughed, thinking of the promised rank behind the scenes.
"Stop laughing. If you attract magical beasts, it'll be trouble," Pero interrupted impatiently. "This place will do. Put her down."
Inanna was thrown onto the ground, still looking as if she wanted to bite someone.
Ox glanced at Inanna's beautiful face and said with some regret, "Such a fine beauty. Why does she have the same temperament as her father? What a pity—I even thought about tasting what it's like to have a duke's daughter."
"This is the sixth floor. If you don't mind magical beasts chewing your naked ass to pieces, you can go ahead right now."
"I was just joking. Once I become a noble, what kind of woman won't I have?"
Pero raised his magic staff and pointed it at Inanna, chanting obscure and difficult incantations.
"Polymorph?"
Inanna immediately recognized the spell Pero was casting. Her bound feet kicked toward him, trying to interrupt the casting, but Ox grabbed her in one swift motion.
"If you've got the guts, kill me! You kill me and—"
Before she could finish, the spell was completed. Inanna gradually lost the ability to speak, transforming into a puji—a creature with only a pair of short legs, commonly known as a walking mushroom.
After finishing the spell, Pero took out a bottle of potion that shimmered with starlight, his expression tinged with reluctance, and poured it over Inanna.
The sight made Ox click his tongue in amazement.
"Solidification potion? You're really willing to spend that. If you ask me, why go through all this trouble? Just kill her and toss the corpse down to feed the magical beasts—wouldn't that be easier?"
Listening to Ox's brainless remarks, Pero felt his irritation flaring up.
"Then you do it. See whether killing her gets you branded with the duke's Mark of Vengeance. When he abandons his territory and comes hunting you down, don't even think about dragging me into it.
"With tracking magic and a vengeance mark, there's no way she doesn't have them. Letting the lower-level magical beasts eat her clean is the safest method."
As he spoke, he thoughtfully cast an extended version of Slow Fall on the puji that Inanna had become, so she wouldn't be smashed to death when she was dropped.
"Forget I said anything." Ox didn't get angry at being scorned. He walked up to Inanna and said, "Farewell, young lady."
With that, he gave her a hard kick, watching as Inanna was swallowed by the chasm.
This was a rift leading straight to the depths of the dungeon. No one who fell in ever climbed back out—let alone a powerless puji.
Damn it! How dare they use that old man's name to trick me! I'll personally slaughter those two beasts!
The surroundings… so dark…
The rift seemed bottomless, and even the extended Slow Fall spell couldn't slow her descent all the way. Feeling the acceleration of the fall, the anger cooled, and the sixteen-year-old girl, who had never faced death directly before, finally felt fear.
Could this be how I die?
Boing—
Inanna felt herself land on a springy, soft surface that bounced her high into the air. After a few rebounds, she finally crashed to the ground.
She wasn't dead! Of course—she was favored by fate.
But… where was this place?
As a puji, she had no facial features and couldn't see, but she could vaguely sense her surroundings.
The thing that caught her seemed to be a giant mushroom, at least three meters wide…
What were all the noises around her? And the moving shapes she glimpsed—they felt so familiar…
Wait… aren't those the other puji just like me?
Why, deep in a dangerous dungeon, would there be puji at the very bottom of the food chain?
And there were so many of them!
"Huh… why are they all surrounding me…"
As the owner of the mushroom garden, Lin Jun felt he might have been distracted lately, causing him to make some basic mistakes.
Sure enough, there was a puji here in his mushroom garden that wasn't under his control. He wasn't sure whether it had landed naturally before being integrated into the mycelial network.
And it was a pink-capped puji, standing out among a group of blue and gray-capped puji.
Has it mutated?
Fortunately, fixing it was easy—just connect it to the mycelial network and set it to the correct channel.
But why was it resisting so fiercely?
This uncontrolled puji ran wildly whenever the other puji Lin Jun sent to link with it tried to approach. It knocked over a few puji here and there, trampled through the mushroom beds, and turned the garden into chaos.
Annoyed, Lin Jun commanded the larger group of puji to surround the rogue in the middle, squeezing it so it couldn't move. Only then could he connect the mycelial thread.
"Ahhh! Get off! Get off me!"
What the hell is this thing?
As soon as the puji was connected, Lin Jun was bombarded with its piercing screams, so loud that even his mycelial threads felt like they were shaking.
"Quiet!"
An unrefusable command was transmitted through the network to every puji, and for a moment, the entire mushroom garden fell silent.
"Damn it… no, the other areas are still functioning normally."
After a while, once the mushroom garden returned to normal, Lin Jun focused his attention on this unusual puji.
He realized this definitely wasn't one of his own—this was an outsider.
How strange… could there really be an outsider puji in this corner of his garden?
"Speak! Where did you come from?"
"Who… who are you? How are you talking to me? Wait… how am I even talking right now?"
Tsk.
This one was clearly in a state of confusion, unable to form coherent words. Lin Jun decided to directly pull up her status panel.
[Name: Inanna St. Clair]
[Race: Mushroom – Puji]
[Level: LV28]
[HP: 3280]
[Strength: 1]
[Agility: 1]
[Constitution: 1]
[Intelligence: 33]
[Spirit: 24]
[Racial Talent: Spore Diffusion]
(Can actively spray spores around; triggers automatically upon death)
[Passive Effects:]
Church Blessing (Grants Light Element Affinity LV4, Light Magic LV4)
Mark of Vengeance (Transfers to the killer upon death; caster can track and deal extra damage to the killer)
Tracking Mark (Locating mark)
Fruit of Life (Grants 3000 extra HP and Life Regeneration LV4)
Dragon Crystal Potion (Provides high all-around resistance)
Permanent Polymorph (Effect lasts permanently unless dispelled)
Connected to Mycelial Network (A short-range psychic network via magical resonance through mycelial threads)
[Skills:
Riding LV4
Elemental Affinity (Water, Light) LV4
Mana Storage LV3
Mana Manipulation LV4
Light Magic LV4
Water Magic LV3
Cloth Armor Mastery LV2
Dagger Mastery LV2
Magic Resistance LV6
Physical Resistance LV6
Spirit Resistance LV6
Corrosion Resistance LV6
Poison Resistance LV6
Paralysis Resistance LV6
Heat Resistance LV6
Cold Resistance LV6
Stun Resistance LV6
Underwater Adaptation LV6
Astrology LV1
Ancient Elvish LV2
Life Regeneration LV4**
Wow… a super pink Puji with over 3,000 HP and all resistances at LV6!.