"Do these not need to be buried underground?"
"I'm not a plant…"
Do the people of this world still not know the difference between fungi and plants?
The cow-horse Puchis had already carried all the broken pieces of the fire mosquitoes and their larvae back to the mushroom garden.
Fire mosquitoes were agility-and-evasion-focused monsters with rather fragile bodies. Once hit by mushroom cannons or smashed by the armored Puchis, it was hard for them to leave behind intact corpses.
Now they were evenly spread across the planting area. The first batch that had been brought back was already starting to sprout mycelium.
As these monster corpses were broken down, they provided Lin Jun with both skill proficiency and magic power. Although a single fire mosquito didn't contain much magic power, there were simply too many of them.
All of this magic power would be poured by Lin Jun into producing new Puchis.
The mushroom garden could currently support roughly 300 Puchis through natural magic power absorption. Among them, about 100 were logistics personnel responsible for maintaining the daily operations of the garden. The rest were combat Puchis.
This time, Lin Jun planned to exceed the limit and burst straight to 400 combat Puchis, then throw all of them into the upcoming operation to hunt the earthworms.
Anyway, after the operation was over, he could always disband the excess if too many survived. Ensuring the success rate was the most important thing.
There was no second fire mosquito nest nearby that could so easily provide him with such a large amount of nutrients. If he failed this time, who knew how long it would be before he could organize a second round.
"Lin Jun, look! I think I gained a new talent!"
At some point, Inanna had started showing off her Water Serpent Technique beside him. Lin Jun had seen her use this skill in battle before. It couldn't exactly be called overwhelmingly powerful — in fact, it was pretty much useless.
Not only was its range short and its power weak, even a direct hit couldn't one-shot a fire mosquito. Its only advantage was that it could be controlled to a certain degree after being fired, but under Inanna's tragically poor technique, that became a negative instead.
Compared to the Ice Blade, it was completely crushed.
She herself seemed to have realized this and stopped using it after trying it twice.
But now, the Water Serpent Inanna cast was flexibly swimming around her, like a small protective azure dragon.
This was definitely not her normal level. Lin Jun immediately pulled up her status panel.
Sure enough, her level had risen to LV30. Even though she had only received a small portion of the experience from hundreds of fire mosquitoes, she had still leveled up twice in a row.
A new fixed effect had been added: [Favor of the Elementals: Elementals will assist the caster in controlling their spells].
"Try using Ice Blade to attack that rock over there."
The target Lin Jun pointed at was 100 meters away from Inanna — a distance at which even a Puchi would almost never miss.
"Huh? Okay, I'll try."
The moment the Ice Blade was fired, Lin Jun knew she had aimed ridiculously off-target again. However, the Ice Blade miraculously adjusted itself mid-flight and finally managed to slice off a corner of the rock.
"I… I actually hit it!"
Inanna herself looked utterly incredulous.
In reality, if her launch angle hadn't been so wildly off, the Ice Blade probably would have struck dead center. Even with such a bad aim, it still managed to graze the target in the end. The elementals really were impressive.
Lin Jun also noticed that while Inanna was using Ice Blade, the Water Serpent circling around her had not been canceled.
So it was something like an AI-assisted control ability?
In this world, elementals simply took the place of what AI would do.
Speaking of which, it turned out this world had a setting for elementals after all. He had thought magic was just plain magic.
Additionally, Lin Jun now understood that humans were the same as him — every ten levels, they naturally gained a fixed effect or skill that suited them, just like his Mushroom Cannon and Mycelium Net.
Inanna called it a "talent."
It seemed this wasn't unique to him. Humans had it, and most likely other races and monsters did too.
However, there were still some differences. Perhaps because she couldn't see her status panel, Inanna's talent was automatically granted, while he had an extra step of choosing from three options.
Lin Jun glanced at his own LV44 level. It was still a long way until his next talent selection.
————
In the following days, Lin Jun threw himself entirely into the large-scale project called "mass troop production."
The good news was that his long-stagnant Mental Integration skill had finally been leveled up to LV6. Otherwise, he really wouldn't have been able to control so many Puchis at once.
Even so, he no longer had time to chat idly with Inanna.
Inanna didn't mind at all. She had recently become obsessed with exploring her new talent.
Besides helping her adjust trajectories for auto-aim, the elementals could also make her illumination spells follow her actively, and her water mirror refraction could provide 360-degree automatic defense. In any case, they were much smoother and more effective than when she used them herself.
However, spells like Purification and Swamp Technique showed no change — the elementals did not enhance the power of the spells themselves.
Day after day passed, and just as everything was almost ready, a powerful wave of magic power suddenly erupted outside the mushroom garden.
"Lin Jun, what's happening? Why do I suddenly feel so oppressed?"
It felt like the aftershocks of a magnitude 8 earthquake coming from afar. Even Inanna, who didn't have magic perception skills, could sense that something was wrong. Lin Jun directly observed the magic vibrations surging like tidal waves, one after another, making him feel extremely uncomfortable.
Lin Jun checked the monitoring mushrooms he had set up outside. These scattered small mushroom clusters couldn't provide him with vision, but they could sense magic fluctuations in the surroundings.
He quickly identified the source of the disturbance — it was coming from the direction of the Flame Demon's nest.
Since he knew it was from the Flame Demon's side, Lin Jun relaxed. He casually comforted the startled Inanna and went back to finishing the final stages of his mass troop production.
It wasn't that Lin Jun wasn't afraid of the Flame Demon. Quite the opposite — as the strongest monster he had discovered so far, he had always been extremely vigilant about its movements.
If he ever saw the Flame Demon heading toward the mushroom garden, he would immediately pack up and run.
Fortunately, that had never happened.
In fact, after observing it for some time, Lin Jun had concluded that the Flame Demon was basically a shut-in.
Unlike himself, who was rooted to the ground and couldn't move easily, the Flame Demon was simply too lazy to move. It seemed that just soaking in the lava was enough to satisfy most of its needs.
However, being a shut-in didn't mean it never went out. So far, Lin Jun had recorded three instances of the Flame Demon leaving its nest.
Each time it went out, it would cause strong magic fluctuations in the surrounding area, just like today. Lin Jun suspected it had gone out to fight.
But who it was fighting, and exactly where, he had no idea. He also didn't know what kind of opponent could have a serious battle with the Flame Demon. The area he had explored was still far too small compared to the entire deep layer.
Lin Jun's original plan to sneak through had been to wait for the Flame Demon to leave and then dash through its nest to reach the upper layer.
However, that plan was quite risky. The biggest issue was that he had no control over when the Flame Demon would return.
Among the three recorded instances, the shortest absence was only a few hours, while the longest was estimated to be three or four days.
The sneaking plan was essentially gambling with his life, which was why it had been replaced by the tunnel-digging plan.
He wondered how long the Flame Demon would be away this time. He really hoped it wouldn't cause any complications that might interfere with his earthworm hunt.