Two glass beads were handed into Gray’s overjoyed hands.

She hugged them and scurried straight back to the Mushroom House.

Using her tail to sweep aside the glass shards, Gray pulled the beads under her body and started counting them one by one.

Lin Jun then watched her point, point, point—point a few times, then go back to the first bead and start all over again…

Maybe he ought to take some time to teach her how to count?

Probably very difficult.

Gray resisted anything that required brainwork.

Just thinking about how to teach her already gave Lin Jun a headache.

As for hiring her a “math teacher”?

Let’s just say that profession was far too dangerous—it was hard to find anyone who could hold that post for long…

After creating a new folder for Gray’s “education plan” and setting it aside, Lin Jun had to test his new strain of Pujis first, otherwise the sixth floor wouldn’t budge.

On the fungal carpet of the Mushroom Forest, two experimental Pujis of different forms squirmed and detached.

One had eight special tentacles, while the other constantly secreted slime from its body.

Let’s start with the suction cups.

The suction-cup Puji, receiving instructions, quickly crawled to a rock wall. Its tentacle tips swelled into bowl-shaped cups and began slapping against the stone with sticky pops.

At first, it went well. The suction power easily supported its climb.

But soon a problem appeared—when it moved continuously, several mycelial tentacles somehow got tangled together.

The Puji tried to pull them apart, but the knot only grew bigger until the whole thing became a lump stuck to the wall. When the last two suction cups could no longer hold on, it fell and splattered.

Lin Jun wasn’t particularly shaken. Malfunctions in test subjects were normal.

The real issue was Puji intelligence—eight tentacles were simply too many to coordinate. Still, the suction force had exceeded expectations, so reducing tentacle count was an option.

Before long, a second Puji was born under his magic, this time with only six tentacles.

Though it occasionally had to pause to sort them out, at least it didn’t knot itself up.

However, when it tried firing its Mushroom Cannon while clinging to the wall, the recoil flipped its whole body over.

Lin Jun watched the Puji dangle in midair, its cannon shot missing the target and blasting into the fungal carpet more than ten meters away.

With fewer tentacles, it couldn’t maintain stability…

He decisively let this failure drop and return to the Mushroom Garden’s cycle.

Plan One abandoned. Next came the slime Puji.

The slime-coated Puji climbed the wall smoothly, but ran into a problem when firing.

It couldn’t lift the cannon muzzle.

It needed most of its body pressed flat against the wall for enough adhesion, leaving only a shallow angle for the cannon.

The target was completely out of reach.

He tested a shot anyway—turns out the slime’s sticking power wasn’t the real issue.

Usable, but the flaw was obvious. Worse, constantly secreting slime for climbing consumed a surprising amount of magic.

So in the end, maybe fixed turrets on the walls were the way to go…

And so he got to work.

Along the fungal carpet near the outer edge of the sixth floor, every forty meters a Puji was nurtured.

The first batch quickly emerged under Lin Jun’s extravagant flood of mana.

These Pujis were slightly different from the normal kind—they were round.

Upon birth, they began devouring the rock beneath them, then covering themselves with it.

This process took about two days.

Afterward, one by one, round stone turrets took shape.

Learning from the slime Puji’s angle issue, the stone shells had many round holes—large enough for Mushroom Cannons to poke through, but small enough to keep the Puji from falling out.

With these fixed turrets, Lin Jun was able to wipe out the endless slime harassment from afar, letting his carpet spread outward again. After advancing another hundred meters beyond effective range…

A new round of nurturing began.

All told, it took about 2.5 days to gain 130 meters. To cover the entire sixth floor? Let’s just say, maybe someday.

He could accelerate Puji birth with magic, but [Rock-Eater]’s conversion into turret-stone couldn’t be rushed.

Progress was agonizingly slow, but for now it was all he had. At least it was progress.

Honestly, the biggest feeling he had was: there are way too many slimes!

And they never stopped coming.

Other floors had slimes too, but usually the first few days of battle were the hardest.

After both sides chewed through troops for a while, slime reinforcements fell behind Puji replacements, and the pressure eased.

By Lin Jun’s expectations, the sixth floor should’ve been the same.

But after so many days, the slime numbers hadn’t dropped—they were increasing.

That didn’t make sense.

If there were always this many slimes, this wouldn’t be a Botanical Garden—it would be a Slime Park.

Given the situation, Lin Jun could only guess: either there was a hidden stockpile being released in waves…

Or some entity capable of mass-producing slimes was reacting to his invasion, trying to block him.

Or perhaps his dungeon invasion had triggered some kind of emergency response system, auto-generating slimes as countermeasures.

That last one was least likely—he’d seen real dungeon defenses before. The ancient dragon’s scale scorched by lightning was still gathering dust in his treasure hoard.

Compared to that, spawning slimes was weak. Too weak for the dungeon itself.

But if…

If this really was the dungeon’s doing, then Lin Jun would have to rethink going deeper.

What if its defenses escalated?

Slimes now, but what if later it zapped him like it zapped the dragon?

If the dungeon really targeted his true body, those lightning strikes would roast him into a crispy, fragrant mushroom kebab in no time.

If that were the case, he’d have no choice but to shift all focus to expanding toward the surface.

Up above, his mycelium had already reached the gate and was cautiously creeping outward.

Partly to test humanity’s response, partly because his current focus was still downward.

After all, while the surface offered sunlight for photosynthesis, its mana density was lower and monsters fewer than underground.

Still, the cause of this sixth-floor slime explosion had to be uncovered—without that, Lin Jun couldn’t rest easy.

And of course, a war raging along the rock walls couldn’t escape human adventurers’ notice. Lin Jun hadn’t planned on hiding it anyway.

Lately, taverns were full of chatter from adventurers passing through the sixth floor, bringing back tales of Puji-versus-slime battles.

Ever since the demon tide, everyone had realized: mushrooms and Pujis were now a major force in the dungeon.

On the small scale, mushrooms consumed all Firefly Grass wherever they spread, replacing it with glowshrooms. Illumination levels dropped by two grades, making long-lasting light tools or magic a necessity.

On the large scale, if Pujis wiped out the sixth floor like they had the fifth, then formed defensive swarms, adventurers’ income sources would shrink again.

At this point, saying that every move of the Pujis tugged at adventurers’ hearts was no exaggeration.

Even Norris, a bronze-ranked miner-adventurer who earned purely by digging ore, felt the same.

Though in his case, he was hoping the Pujis would wipe the sixth floor clean…