Out of Prison

Amethyst Dungeon, Fifth Floor, Swamp Zone.

Mud mixed with blood seeped into the swamp through his fingers. Dylan hunched against the slick rock wall, the piercing wound in his abdomen making every step agonizing.

He had failed. He had failed before he had even truly begun.

He had been unable to use Ghost Sleep Powder to control the lone Parasitic Tree before it discovered him.

Now, not only had he been stabbed badly enough to be severely wounded, but his weapon had also been knocked away. The other Parasitic Trees in the distance had received the signal and were closing in.

"Bella."

Muttering his daughter's name, Dylan's eyes burned with the desire to survive—he could not die yet.

Bella was the only child he had with his late wife. She was clever, sensible, and quite talented.

At such a young age, she had already reached Silver Rank. In the future, she would surely become far more capable than her useless father.

She still had a bright future ahead of her. She should not die now, much less become some hideous thing like a Blood-Eating Ghoul and suffer through life.

So he could not die yet. He still had four packets of Ghost Sleep Powder. He still had a chance, as long as he could escape the swamp...

"A dead end..."

At some point, a stone wall had blocked the path ahead.

Dylan wanted to retreat, but five Parasitic Trees had already surrounded his escape route from afar. Their pale roots writhed restlessly, waiting to capture him.

If he had been uninjured, he could have tried to rush out before the Parasitic Trees closed in. But now, with a severe abdominal wound, it was impossible.

He grabbed a climbing vine hanging from the stone wall and tried to climb up it. Instead, the entire vine was ripped down, revealing a stone door concealed behind it.

"Ha... cough, cough... hahaha... a Hidden Room..."

In all these years, this was the first time he had encountered a Hidden Room. Under any other circumstances, he would have been overjoyed, because there were usually valuable things inside.

But now...

The Parasitic Trees were already less than twenty meters behind him. Dylan could no longer worry about anything else. Feeling around, he found a protruding mechanism and pressed it.

Now, he could only pray that there would be some legendary divine artifact inside to save him from disaster.

Amid the steady fall of bluish-gray dust, the heavy stone door swung inward.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Several Magic Cannon shells shot out from the shadows, striking a Parasitic Tree that had already extended its roots toward Dylan and blasting it apart at the waist.

Mushroom Caps glowing with fluorescence lit up one after another in the darkness. Rows of round, strange Pujis appeared before Dylan.

I was imprisoned for ten thousand years,

and now you dare trespass into my domain?

What the—holy shit! What kind of Zhou Shuren is this? It's disgusting!

Life in the Treasure Room came with no worries about food or drink. It was... incredibly boring...

It was not even as fun as the Mushroom Garden, where he could fight Monsters every day.

The days here were so dull that Linden ate all the Fluorescent Grass in the room, gaining a Fluorescence skill that consumed almost no magic power.

Of course, his level rose quickly here.

There was an entire pool of highly concentrated magic power. By the time Linden had gathered nearly all of it, his level had shot straight up to LV47.

He also took out the one-tenth of a Lava Heart he had scavenged.

As expected of a Flame Demon's true body, it still radiated astonishing heat even after shattering.

If Linden's High Temperature Resistance had not already reached LV7, his Mycelium probably would not have been able to stick to it.

After breaking down the Lava Heart, Linden gained another level and Plundered a new skill: [Self-Destruct LV3].

From now on, he would not need Magic Crystals to make Self-Destruct Pujis...

Fortunately, the Flame Demon had died suddenly. If it had been left with even a sliver of health and gotten the chance to Self-Destruct, it was hard to say whether Linden's location would have been affected, but the three Adventurers standing in front of it would definitely have died.

The question now was how to get out.

He had already produced another forty Pujis.

Because space was limited, he could not rely on quantity. He could only focus on quality, equipping every Puji with five to seven skills.

He had already tried bombarding the stone door as a group, but it would not break.

The Treasure Room definitely had special reinforcement measures. Otherwise, with this much firepower, blowing up a stone wall would have been easy.

As for using Self-Destruct to blow open the door, Linden did not dare try. He was afraid the power would be too great and the space too confined, and he would blow himself up instead...

After being locked away for who knew how long, something interesting happened—the treasure chest refreshed!

After a wave of magic power rippled through it, the chest's stone lid actually returned to its original position. When he opened it, he found a ring inside.

Unfortunately, it was an offensive magic ring that did not boost any attributes and could only cast Ice Spike three times a day.

Its power was about on par with a Mushroom Cannon. To Linden, it was completely useless.

After that, Linden could only wait eagerly for the treasure chest to refresh again, hoping it would produce something that could help him get out.

It would be nice if it refreshed into something classic, like a Teleportation Scroll.

However, before Linden could wait for the treasure chest's second refresh, someone opened the stone door from outside...

Light from outside shone in, falling upon Linden's true body beside the pool.

This was the scent of freedom!

But the next second, the Pujis packed tightly together to block the doorway and the light, preventing any possible attack from harming the true body.

After the repaired Strongest Puji carefully hid the true body within its shell, Linden finally had time to observe the situation outside.

A heavily wounded Adventurer lay beside the stone door, too afraid to move.

So this was the one who let this mushroom out. Not bad.

Farther outside stood several tree... people... What disgusting Monsters.

Opening the Panel and seeing the [Fusion Parasitism] skill on it, Linden finally understood what these things were.

He immediately unleashed a barrage of firepower. Several Parasitic Trees used their skills in an attempt to counterattack, and one even cast Fireball.

But before Linden's firepower, it was all futile. The Fireball was blasted apart before it could even finish forming, and it ended up burning the tree itself.

He easily killed several Parasitic Trees, leaving only this weakened Adventurer.

Do not misunderstand. Linden was not trying to kill him to silence him.

As long as the matter of his true body was not exposed, he did not care if news leaked out that "a group of strange Pujis had appeared in the dungeon."

This man had let Linden out, and Linden had saved his life in return. That made them even.

The problem was that he looked like he was about to die. The health on his Panel was steadily and slowly declining.

Letting him die naturally like this did not fit Linden's principles as a mushroom. At the very least, he had to try to save him.

The difficult part was that Linden did not know any healing skills...

Pujis were consumables. If one broke, he could just throw it away. If it really needed repairs, he could patch it up with Mycelium. But he could not exactly patch a person up with Mycelium, could he...

Should he call for other Adventurers?

Leaving aside the fact that he did not know where he was, even if he found other Adventurers, they would probably start fighting him first.

Linden remembered the description of [Fusion Parasitism] he had seen earlier. Looking at the several Parasitic Trees still soaking in the mud, this seemed to be the only option.

The Pujis dragged the unconscious Dylan and the Parasitic Tree remains into the Treasure Room.

Linden controlled the Mycelium to speed up the decomposition of the Parasitic Trees.

This was a terribly inefficient act. The magic power consumed to accelerate the process far exceeded the magic power gained from decomposition.

But Linden got what he wanted.

[Seven Sins: Greed activated]

[Plundered skill: Fusion Parasitism LV1]

The true body personally scattered Spores over Dylan's fatal abdominal wound. Empowered by magic power, the Mycelium gradually fused with flesh and blood, sealing the wound.

It even replenished some of Dylan's vitality.

In the end, he really had used Mycelium to patch up a person...

Feeling this nonhuman, non-mushroom presence appear within the Mycelium Network, Linden found it strangely unsettling.

Had the purity of his organization somehow declined?