With the slime problem resolved, nothing else on the sixth floor stood in Lin Jun’s way.
With the tree spirit leading the way, he could go wherever he wished.
“Help me~ help me~”
A faint, weak cry for help came from behind a small slope.
But neither the leading tree spirit nor the Pujis under Lin Jun’s control bothered to check.
Honestly, after seeing enough flower spirits, you’d just think they were dumb.
Their voice system only had this one hand-me-down line.
Maybe, if one happened to appear out in the wilderness, it could fool some adventurer. But here? This was the sixth floor’s botanical garden! Every step you took was “help me, help me,” as if they were afraid you wouldn’t know they were there!
Good thing plant-type monsters could still draw nutrients from the ground. Otherwise, just judging by these flower spirits’ behavior, they all should’ve starved long ago.
Led by Little Green, they eventually reached a rarely visited corner of the sixth floor.Few came here, because there were no herbs to gather, no monsters worth killing for materials—only dozens of cracks, large and small, stretching down into the depths beyond sight.
The edges of the cracks were dark brown, weathered like dried, crusted blood.
When a Puji leaned over the edge, it could feel the damp chill rising from below.
These cracks weren’t necessarily vertical, but each one was bottomless.
【Sonic Detection LV6】
Here, this skill was far more convenient than other observation methods.
Using it, Lin Jun discovered the cracks weren’t completely separate like they appeared on the surface.
Some neighboring cracks connected as they extended downward, while others branched again after a certain depth.
With this structure, saying they led to the unknown couldn’t be more accurate.
Unfortunately, Lin Jun’s detection skill had limited range, and he couldn’t directly sense the bottom.
“Boss, why’d we come here?”
Little Green was living pretty well lately.
The A-grade magic crystal the boss had given it sped up its root system’s absorption of magic, finally nudging its level past the long-stuck point.
From level 29 up to the floor’s cap of level 30.
Lin Jun even regularly gave them batches of low-grade crystals as wages. These crystals were planted in the forest, helping new tree spirits awaken their consciousness.
Because the boss had brought such tangible benefits, more and more tree spirits chose to serve him. And once they connected to the mycelium network, they could feel the boss’s unfathomable will and understand that this was the best path for tree spirits!
At this point, Little Green was practically on its way to becoming their leader.
Only a few stubborn old ones still hid deep in the forest.
This time, when Lin Jun needed a tree spirit guide, Little Green had just finished resting and volunteered. It hadn’t expected the destination to be this wasteland.
To monsters bound to a floor, this really was a dead end.
The Pujis dragged over an unconscious stonehide boar, found a fairly vertical rift, and tossed it down.
The boar plummeted quickly, and once it passed beyond the floor’s boundary, a faint arc of lightning flickered—and its status window vanished.
Instant kill.
The dungeon’s rules still applied even inside the rift, just in a different form.
Watching this, Little Green felt a twinge of empathy. As a floor-bound monster, it would meet the same fate as that boar if it jumped.
Only then did Lin Jun answer its earlier question:
“Why come here? Because… down there is my hometown…”
Hometown?
So that was it—no wonder the boss was so strong, he came from further below!
Little Green’s imagination went wild, filling in countless possibilities.
Then it heard Lin Jun shout through the mycelium network: “Hometown, here I come!”
A Puji leapt into the air, its four mycelium tendrils spreading into a blanket—like a parachute.
Then it free-fell downward, only to slam into a cliff wall with a bang and perish…
Well, apparently his makeshift parachute didn’t work.
But no matter, there were other plans!
A plump Puji, wrapped thickly in mycelium, rolled out. The other Pujis shoved it into a crack.
The mycelium ball bounced against the walls, bursting out puff after puff of mycelium, before vanishing from sight.
Little Green wanted to ask if this was really the right way to “return to your hometown,” but it didn’t dare…
In truth, Lin Jun wasn’t even sure what lay below. He just wanted to see if it led directly to the deep layers.
The chosen rift wasn’t perfectly vertical, so the mycelium ball tumbled down, smashing against the walls. The shock-absorbing mycelium was nearly spent before it reached the bottom. At this rate, it wouldn’t survive the landing.
It was going to die—
Then a thick white strand caught the Puji!
It squirmed, but the sticky strand held fast.
A spider?
There were indeed several spider species in the deep layers.
But why would it spin its web this high up if there wasn’t even ground yet?
The vibrations of the sticky strand must’ve alarmed its owner. Soon, the monster crawled up the thread.
What appeared was a massive creature with a centipede-like segmented body, and a pair of dragonfly wings sprouting from its back.
Wait, what? Where was the spider?
Spiders were already gross enough, but this thing was worse.
The Puji aimed its mushroom cannon at the creature and fired, the shot hitting squarely on its head!
The monster seemed surprised that its prey could fight back. It shook off the impact and crawled closer, its head showing no sign of injury.
When it reached the Puji, a slender proboscis extended and stabbed into its body, sucking out magic directly.
In one gulp, a third of its magic was drained, and the Puji visibly shriveled.
Before it died, Lin Jun managed to glimpse its panel:
【Species: Thousand-Spindle Mayfly】
【Level: 62】
Well, no wonder the mushroom cannon didn’t work!
This was deep-layer territory for sure.
With another greedy pull, the Puji’s link was severed.
Though the Puji died, Lin Jun had confirmed it—this rift did indeed connect to the deep layers.
A level 62 monster, far beyond the tenth floor’s cap—that had to be the deep layers.
Still, this rift clearly wasn’t the one that had once led to his old mushroom garden. Back when Inanna fell, she hadn’t hit a wall or run into monsters on the way down.
It might not matter much, but Lin Jun still wanted to see his old home again.
No rush, though.
Now that he knew the rift connected to the deep layers, Lin Jun planned to extend his mycelium down the walls, testing if he could create a fungal carpet pathway downward.
“Let’s head back,” Lin Jun ordered.
The remaining Pujis were also meant as scouts, but since the second one had already completed the mission, there was no need to waste more of them.
Little Green had no idea what had happened below. All it knew was that two Pujis had been ordered to jump to their deaths.
It turned around to lead the Pujis back.
As they passed the slope, the same cry still rang out from behind it.
“Save me~”