Two glass beads were handed over to Xiao Hai, who was overjoyed.

Xiao Hai clutched them and dashed back to the Mushroom House.

Using his tail to sweep aside the glass shards, Xiao Hai slid the glass beads under himself, counting them one by one.

Lin Jun watched her as she counted, reached the end, and then started over from the first one...

Maybe I should take some time to teach her to count?

It might be very hard to teach.

Xiao Hai is quite resistant to anything that requires mental effort.

Thinking about how to teach her gives Lin Jun a headache.

As for hiring a "math teacher" for her?

I can only say the profession is too dangerous, hard to find someone for a long-term position...

After creating a new folder for Xiao Hai's education plan and setting it aside, Lin Jun now needs to test the new Puki breed, otherwise, the sixth floor can't be cleared.

Upon the fungal mat of the Mushroom Forest, two distinctly shaped experimental Pukis wriggled off.

One had eight special tendrils, the other secreted slime continuously from its surface.

Let's start with the sucker.

The sucker Puki, upon command, quickly ran to the rock wall, enlarging the tips of its tendrils into bowl-shaped suckers, attaching to the wall with a sticky "thud".

At first, everything was fine, the sucker's strength easily lifted Puki up the wall with hardly any pressure.

But soon, a problem arose, as it moved, somehow a few tendrils knotted together.

Puki tried to separate the tendrils, but the knot only grew larger, eventually turning into a ball hanging on the wall, and when the last two suckers couldn't hold, it fell and splattered down below.

Lin Jun wasn't too surprised by this, since having issues with the test subject was normal.

The problem with this one was still Puki's intelligence, eight fungal tendrils were too many to coordinate, the suckers' grip was stronger than expected, tendril number ought to be reduced.

Soon, the second Puki was born under the catalysis of magic power, this time reducing tendrils to six.

Even though this Puki still sometimes paused to sort its tendrils while moving, at least it didn't get tangled this time.

But as it lay on the rock wall and fired its Mushroom Cannon at the target, the recoil flipped the whole body over.

Seeing the Puki dangling in mid-air, Lin Jun noticed that its Mushroom Cannon missed the target and struck the fungal mat over a dozen meters away.

With fewer fungal tendrils, it could not maintain stability?

Lin Jun swiftly let this failed attempt drop down voluntarily, returning to the Mushroom Garden cycle.

Plan one scrapped, next up was the slime Puki.

The slime-covered Puki ascended the rock wall smoothly but encountered a minor issue when firing the cannon.

The cannon couldn't be lifted up.

Puki needed to keep most of its body clung to the wall to maintain enough stickiness, the Mushroom Cannon could only be slightly elevated.

The intended target simply couldn't be hit given the lack of elevation angle...

Trying to fire a shot randomly, the anticipated stickiness wasn't an issue after all.

It felt usable, but the defects were indeed real, and the magic power consumption for constantly secreting slime to crawl was notably high.

Ultimately, fixed Puki gun emplacements alongside the walls seemed necessary...

Time to act.

On the fungal mat near the outermost layer of the sixth floor, a Puki began being cultivated every forty meters.

The first batch of Pukis quickly materialized in Lin Jun's lavish pouring of magic power.

These Pukis were slightly different from average – they were very round.

Upon emerging, they started devouring the rock beneath them, covering their bodies with it.

This process lasted about two days.

After two days, each round stone gun emplacement was preliminarily formed.

Drawing from the lesson of the slime Puki's shooting angle limitation.

The round stone surface featured numerous aptly sized circular holes, allowing the Mushroom Cannon to protrude for attacks, without being oversized enough for the round Puki to fall out.

The emergence of these fixed gun emplacements swiftly helped Lin Jun eliminate the constantly emerging nuisance Slimes, allowing the fungal mat to further stretch outwards, growing another hundred meters, exceeding effective shooting range...

Thus, a new round of cultivating began again.

Throughout this, roughly 2.5 days were required to advance 130 meters, and covering the entire sixth floor just remains a future goal.

Puki generation can be forcibly accelerated with magic power, but converting rock into cannon emplacements through Rock Eating can't be sped up.

The progress feels slow, but lacking better alternatives, this method will have to do for now, at least it counts as progress.

Honestly, the battles so far left Lin Jun with the impression that there are too many Slimes!

And they keep coming.

Other levels haven't been without Slime encounters, the first few days of battles usually remain intense.

After several days of meat grinding, the Slime replenishment can't keep up with Puki replenishment, and naturally, they start to get suppressed gradually.

Initially, Lin Jun thought the sixth floor would be the same.

But it's been so many days now, and the Slime count isn't decreasing, but instead seems to be increasing.

Something doesn't add up.

If there were always so many Slimes, this floor wouldn't be a botanical garden but a Slime paradise instead.

Given the current situation, Lin Jun could only speculate that a large number of Slimes are stored somewhere and are now being deployed one wave after another.

Alternatively, there might be an existence capable of quickly producing Slimes, which upon noticing their arrival, took actions to thwart the occupation of the sixth floor.

There's also one last possibility.

That Lin Jun's ongoing invasion and annexation of Underground City territories activated a kind of emergency response in the Underground City, starting to automatically devise measures to impede them.

This possibility is the least likely, as Lin Jun has witnessed the emergency mechanisms of the Underground City; an Ancient Dragon scale struck off by an electric arc is still in Lin Jun's little treasury collecting dust.

In comparison to this, generating a bunch of Slimes seems a bit too weak, too weak to truly align with the Underground City's capabilities.

But if!

If!

This truly is a method of the Underground City, then Lin Jun must consider whether to continue expanding to lower levels.

After all, if the Underground City's self-defense mechanism is progressive?

Now spawning a bit of Slime is only stalling progress to disgust, but later when deemed a greater threat, they might face electric strikes.

Should the Underground City indeed target them, Lin Jun doesn't think it would fail to pinpoint their true form.

At that point, if an electric strike too mighty for an Ancient Dragon hits their fragile true form, a fragrant, tender, crispy on the outside and soft on the inside roasted poisonous mushroom will be made underground in the Swamp.

If it truly is confirmed to be the Underground City mechanism, Lin Jun can only then shift full focus to surface expansion.

On the surface, although fungal growth has reached the doorstep and tentatively began to spread outwards, it remains at a slow and restrained pace.

On one hand, wanting to slowly proceed, testing human attention levels to these events; on the other hand, the focus of Lin Jun's development is still prioritized downwards.

Although photosynthesis is feasible on the surface, compared to the Underground City, the magic power concentration is relatively sparse, and demon numbers are much fewer.

Anyway, the cause for the sixth floor Slime outbreak must be clarified, as without doing so, Lin Jun can't develop with peace of mind.

This war on the rock walls cannot, naturally, be concealed from human adventurers, nor did Lin Jun intend to conceal it.

Recently, taverns are filled with discussions of adventurers who passed through the sixth floor, bringing back news of the Puki versus Slime battle.

Since the Demon Tide to now, everyone has realized that mushrooms and Pukis have become an indispensable presence in the Underground City.

On a lesser scale, after mushroom overgrowth to a level, all the Firefly Grass would be consumed and replaced by Glowing Mushrooms, reducing lighting ability by two levels, making long-lasting lighting tools or magic must-haves.

On a larger scale, if Pukis, as they did on the fifth floor, conduct another extinction campaign, securing mutual protection at the sixth floor, adventurers' income sources would diminish further.

Currently, to say that every Puki move impacts adventurers would not be an exaggeration.

Even Norris, a Copper-Level adventurer relying purely on mining for income, feels the same.

Although his hope is for Pukis to completely clear the sixth floor...

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