"Get your hands off me! Who are you people?! Let me go right now!"
The moment she woke up, Inanna started thrashing wildly inside the sack she'd been stuffed into.
"Pero, did you water down your Sleep spell or something? She's already awake."
"Idiot, don't use my name! With all the resources her duke father poured into her, you really think her resistances are trash? The fact she only just woke up is already pretty good."
Inanna froze. Those two voices were painfully familiar.
"Pero? And you, Oakes! You ambushed me? You betrayed my father?!"
"Great, now she's recognized us," Pero grumbled.
Oakes, however, didn't seem bothered at all. "What are you scared of? She won't get the chance to tell anyone anyway."
What did that mean? This wasn't just a kidnapping?
"What are you planning to do to me?!"
Realizing her life might actually be in danger, Inanna grew even more furious.
The sack over her head was yanked off. The first thing she saw was Oakes' ugly, twisted face.
"Do to you? Young miss, today you're going to become monster chow!"
Inanna looked around. The dim tunnel walls were studded with purple crystals of various sizes.
They had dragged her into the Amethyst Dungeon?
"You two skin-wearing rats! The old man never treated you badly! How could you betray him?!"
"Because your daddy's finished," Oakes sneered. "You really think he can stop the Empire's invasion? Killing you will be the final straw that breaks him. Once he's dead, I can finally become a noble myself."
Thinking of the title the mastermind had promised him, Oakes burst into loud laughter.
"Stop laughing, you'll attract monsters," Pero snapped impatiently. "This spot's good enough. Put her down."
Inanna was tossed to the ground, still looking like she wanted to bite someone's face off.
Oakes stared at her beautiful features with clear regret. "Such a fine beauty, but she's got the exact same rotten personality as her old man. I was actually looking forward to finding out what a duke's daughter tastes like…"
"If you don't mind a monster chewing your bare ass to shreds on the sixth floor, go ahead and try right now."
"Just joking. Once I'm a noble, I'll have all the women I want."
Pero raised his staff and pointed it at Inanna, chanting a cryptic incantation.
"Polymorph?!"
Inanna instantly recognized the spell. She kicked at him with her bound legs, trying to interrupt the casting, but Oakes grabbed her roughly.
"Go on, kill me! If you kill… me…"
As the Polymorph spell completed, Inanna gradually lost the ability to speak. Her body shrank and transformed into a Puji—a short-legged walking mushroom.
After finishing the chant, Pero took out a bottle of starry, shimmering potion and poured it over the newly formed creature with a hint of reluctance.
Oakes watched the scene and clicked his tongue in amazement.
"A Permanence Potion? You really are willing to spend big. Why go through all this trouble? Wouldn't it be simpler to just kill her and dump the corpse for the monsters?"
Pero felt his patience wearing thin at Oakes' brainless comment.
"You do it then. Let's see if you get marked with the duke's Revenge Brand after you kill her. When he abandons his entire territory just to hunt you down, don't you dare drag me into it. Positioning magic, Revenge Brand—she definitely has them. Letting the lower-level monsters eat her clean is the safest way."
As he spoke, he thoughtfully cast an extended Slow-Fall spell on the Puji-Inanna so she wouldn't just splatter on impact.
"Whatever, forget I said anything." Oakes didn't get angry at the mockery. He walked up to Inanna. "Farewell, young miss."
With that, he kicked her hard, watching as the creature was swallowed by the fissure.
It was a direct drop into the deepest parts of the dungeon. No one who fell in had ever climbed back out—especially not a completely powerless walking mushroom.
———
Those bastards!
Daring to use the old man's name to trick me!
I'm going to kill those two animals with my own hands!
...
It's… so dark around here…
The fissure really did seem bottomless. Even the extended Slow-Fall spell couldn't slow her descent completely.
Feeling her falling speed increase, the sixteen-year-old girl—who had never faced death head-on—finally felt fear after her rage cooled.
Was she really going to die like this?
Thud—
Inanna felt herself land on something soft and springy, like an enormous elastic bed. It bounced her high into the air several times before she finally flopped onto the ground.
She wasn't dead! As expected, she was blessed by fate.
But… where was this?
A Puji had no facial features and couldn't see, but it could vaguely sense its surroundings.
Whatever had caught her seemed to be a three-meter-wide… giant mushroom?
What were all those sounds around her? And those shapes moving past her felt strangely familiar…
Weren't these the exact same kind of Puji she had turned into?
Why were there so many of these bottom-tier creatures deep inside a dangerous dungeon?
And they were all gathering around her…
———
As the proud owner of the Mushroom Garden, Lin Jun felt he had probably been too distracted lately, which was causing him to make these rookie mistakes.
Case in point: there was suddenly a Puji in his garden that wasn't under his control. Maybe it had matured and fallen naturally before he could link it to the mycelial network.
It was even a pink-capped one—standing out like a sore thumb among all the teal and gray-capped Puji.
Had it mutated?
Luckily, fixing it was easy. All he had to do was connect it with mycelium and switch it over to the network channel.
But why was it resisting so fiercely?
The uncontrolled Puji was frantically dodging the ones Lin Jun had sent to link with it. It kept knocking over other Puji, stomping all over the mushroom beds, and turning the entire garden into chaos.
Finally losing patience, Lin Jun commanded a large group of Puji to surround it, squeezing it until it couldn't move. Only then did he successfully connect the mycelium.
"Aaaah! Get away! Get away from me!"
What the hell is this thing?
The moment the Puji connected to the network, Lin Jun was blasted by ear-piercing screams—so loud his mycelium nearly exploded.
"Quiet!"
The irresistible command spread through the entire mycelial network. For a brief moment, the whole mushroom garden froze.
"Damn it—never mind, everyone back to normal operations."
After the garden finally resumed working properly, Lin Jun focused his attention on this special new Puji.
He had finally realized it wasn't one of his own—it was an outsider shroom.
How strange. How did an outsider manage to wander into this remote corner of his territory?
"Speak! Where the hell did you come from?"
"Who are you? How are you talking to me? Wait—no, how am I even talking right now?"
Tsk.
This one was clearly panicking and couldn't even string a sentence together. Lin Jun simply pulled up her status panel.
[Name: Inanna Saint-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 itself; guaranteed to trigger upon death)]
[Fixed Effects: Church Blessing (Light Element Affinity LV4, Light Magic LV4) Revenge Brand (Upon death, transfers to the killer; the caster can track the killer and deal extra damage) Tracking Marker (Positioning mark) Fruit of Life (Grants +3000 HP and Life Recovery LV4) Dragon Crystal Potion (Provides comprehensive high-level resistances) Permanent Polymorph (Unless the spell is dispelled, the transformation effect is permanent) Mycelial Network Link (Short-range telepathic network formed by mana resonance between mycelium)]
[Skills: Riding LV4, Elemental Affinity (Water, Light) LV4, Mana Storage LV3, Mana Control LV4, Light Magic LV4, Water Magic LV3, Cloth Armor Mastery LV2, Dagger Mastery LV2, Magic Resistance LV6, Physical Resistance LV6, Mental Resistance LV6, Corrosion Resistance LV6, Poison Resistance LV6, Paralysis Resistance LV6, Heat Resistance LV6, Cold Resistance LV6, Dizziness Resistance LV6, Underwater Adaptation LV6, Astrology LV1, Ancient Elven Language LV2, Life Recovery LV4]
Holy crap—a super pink Puji with over 3,000 HP and full LV6 resistances across the board!