Sent Off to Work Off His Debt

No!

Fatty No. 1!

I spent an entire month molding that one!

There were seven or eight pieces of equipment inside it!

I'd raised Fatty No. 1's Constitution to 40 and installed LV4 Self-Destruct specifically to deal with rule-breakers.

But I hadn't expected this to happen so soon!

If I'd known, I would've put fewer pieces of equipment inside. This was a maximum loss!

You humans could play at killing each other. I was a Monster, so I shouldn't have meddled.

But how could you chop up my mushrooms?

The Dwarf responsible had already been blown to bits, so his teammates would have to repay the debt!

Nasa reached up and wiped the chunks of flesh from his face. Spores and dust floating in the air rushed into his nostrils, making him cough in fits.

He shook his dizzy head. Only after the black spots dancing across his vision gradually faded did he stagger to his feet.

The rock wall at the Cave entrance now looked like dough kneaded apart by an invisible giant hand. The original two-meter-high entrance had been violently torn open to three meters.

The fat Walking Mushroom and Grongba had both vanished.

No.

Nasa spotted half a set of steel teeth embedded in a nearby tree trunk.

They hadn't vanished. They were everywhere...

The sheer closeness of death made Nasa shudder.

Fortunately, he had a few peculiar habits. Fortunately, he hadn't gone over to inspect that Fat Puji.

Feeling that he had narrowly escaped disaster, Nasa no longer had any interest in tormenting Vera and the others.

He picked up his knife from the ground, intending to finish things quickly and leave.

The moment he took his first step, he fell over—a long Mycelium Tentacle had somehow wrapped around his ankle!

"What is this!?"

Nasa raised his knife and slashed at the tentacle, but the blade only sank a third of the way in.

After tugging it back and forth several times, he barely managed to cut through it.

He tried to get up, only for another Mycelium Tentacle to climb up his back and cinch around his waist and abdomen.

Before he could swing his knife this time, even more tentacles surged out and wrapped around the joints of his limbs.

At some point, Pujis with tentacles extending from beneath their Mushroom Caps had appeared all around him, surrounding Nasa.

"Walking Mushrooms? Tentacles?"

The half-Elf frantically tried to reach inside his clothes for his medicinal powder, but the tentacles only tightened further around him.

"No, no!

Go catch them! Go eat them!

Help! Help... ngh... help... help..."

In the end, countless tentacles wrapped Nasa into a human-shaped cocoon and dragged him, struggling, deep into the forest. Only his muffled cries for help gradually faded among the trees.

Feiyin, the only one who had witnessed it all, trembled as she clenched her teeth, refusing to make even the slightest sound.

Only after all the Pujis had disappeared did she begin to sob quietly.

"Cutting Art..."

"Cutting Art..."

"Cutting Art..."

After using Cutting Art an unknown number of times, the ropes around Feiyin finally snapped.

She hurriedly lowered her sister and Vera.

Her sister, Feiling, was fine. She had merely fainted.

But Vera was barely breathing, as though she might die at any second.

They had no idea where their backpacks had been taken, and all the potions were inside them.

She didn't know any healing spells. Without a potion, Vera would die!

Tears welled in Feiyin's eyes again in her panic.

Through her tear-blurred vision, something red flashed past.

A Life Potion!

It was the bottle the half-Elf had taken out earlier!

Feiyin crawled over on all fours and picked up the potion, then poured the entire bottle into Vera's mouth with trembling hands.

"Cough, cough—"

Vera suddenly choked on the liquid. Though she still didn't wake up, some color finally returned to her face.

"That's great... th-that's... sob..."

Having finally relaxed, Feiyin broke down crying again.

Deep in the forest, within the now-empty Gnoll camp.

The Pujis were wrapping around the half-Elf and smashing him against a rock again and again.

Nasa was in an utterly miserable state by then. His nose was broken, every tooth in his mouth had been knocked out, and it seemed that half his tongue had been severed as well.

Barely conscious, he could only make muffled whimpering sounds.

But the Pujis continued their work mechanically.

It wasn't that Linden wanted to torture him. This half-Elf simply had to repay his debt with his own flesh.

And [Fusion Parasitism] could only Parasitize targets at low health.

So his health had to be worn down to a sliver first.

Using skills to attack him directly was too risky. One mistake, and he would die.

Smashing him little by little like this—safe and reliable!

It definitely wasn't because Linden held a grudge.

Once his health had finally been pushed to the limit, the Pujis elegantly sprinkled some Spores over his wounds.

Then they hung him from a tree.

In a few days, a mature Parasitic Puppet would naturally drop to the ground.

This was Linden's first human Puppet. He planned to have some fun with him... no, make him properly repay Fatty No. 1's blood debt!

Speaking of which, when Linden brought the half-Elf back, he also picked up all those unwanted things from the ground.

Weapons, armor, rings, potions, packets of powder, and such.

By that calculation, it seemed the loss of the equipment inside Fatty Puji's stomach had been made up for?

It didn't hurt quite as much anymore.

But the half-Elf's debt could not be reduced.

As for Fatty Puji...

Thankfully, Linden had prepared in advance and produced five at once.

These high-Constitution Pujis could not only grow larger and carry more things.

Their greater health also greatly increased the damage from Self-Destruct.

The only problem was that their other attributes couldn't keep up, making them ridiculously slow.

Otherwise, why would they be called Fatties?

This first attempt had gone badly, so he could only send Fatty No. 2 to sit in the Cave, which had now expanded by another circle.

The things he had picked up this time could conveniently be stuffed into its stomach for trading.

Once people got used to paying corpse tolls and exchanging corpses with Fatty Puji for random items.

Linden would have an endless supply of Monster corpses from other tiers.

Adventurers' impression of Pujis would probably change drastically too.

At the very least, they wouldn't start fighting the moment they met.

Worried there wouldn't be enough items for the exchanges?

This was only the beginning, so naturally its insides were packed full of good things. Every exchange the Adventurers made would be a huge bargain.

Once the habit formed, Linden could fill it with large quantities of low-tier Magic Crystals to pad the numbers, then occasionally toss in a few good items to keep the Adventurers wanting more.

After all, most Monster corpses weren't worth much to Adventurers. There was no reason not to trade them.

Heh heh!

Even Linden admired his own business sense.

With such a wise Fungal Lord as himself, how could the Mushroom Garden fail to prosper?

Hm?

Just as Linden was basking in his pride, the signals from several Hallucination Pujis slowly advancing through the Cave suddenly vanished.

They had been in an extremely, extremely deep location, so deep that it would have been nearly impossible to reach without an exhaustive search.

It didn't seem like they had been attacked by ordinary Crystallized Bats or Rock Lizards. All three Pujis had gone offline at the exact same instant.

Linden shifted his attention over and controlled several nearby Hallucination Pujis to move toward that location.

The moment those Pujis reached the same spot, their health bars suddenly emptied.

Just like their predecessors, they collapsed to the ground.

But this time, Linden understood what had happened. He had this skill too.

It was the [Infrasonic Attack] possessed by Crystallized Bats.

At the same time, in that brief glimpse, Linden pulled up the enemy's Panel:

[Race: Crystallized Bat]

[Level: LV25]

[Health: 850/850]

[Mana: 1200/1200]

[Strength: 16/27]

[Agility: 20/34]

[Constitution: 13/22]

[Intelligence: 35/59]

[Spirit: 30/50]

[Racial Talent: Bonus proficiency for sound-based skills and crystal-based skills]

[Fixed Status:]

[Extreme Aging (all base attributes reduced by 80%)]

[Crystal Symbiosis (skill power increased by 500%)]

[Skills: Crystal Symbiosis LV10, Infrasonic Attack LV10, Sonic Detection LV10, Mental Resistance LV10, Physical Resistance LV8, Magic Resistance LV7, High Temperature Resistance LV5, Evasion LV6...]

[Titles:]

[Lizard Slayer: Damage to lizards increased by 10%]

[Bat Slayer: Damage to bats increased by 10%]

[Beyond Death: The effects of age-related negative statuses such as Aging are halved]