Too many mushrooms had sprouted from the ground. A Puki in full sprint was unexpectedly tripped by an especially plump mushroom, losing balance and rolling like a springy ball, crashing hard into another companion.
This chain reaction caused the hit Puki to topple two more beside it, resulting in four downed, creating a brief gap in the Puki encirclent!
Sirean bounced up from the ground, drawing his Elf Dagger with a flash of cold light, preparing to charge through the opening.
"Don't be rash!" Fei Ling quickly reacted, grabbing Sirean, his voice pitching with urgency.
"Calm down! Sirean! Don't provoke the Puki!" Vera also hurriedly urged.
While the foreign Elf didn't understand, the three locals did.
ssing with the Puki here was sure to bring trouble. Vera was already regretting her earlier suggestion to accelerate the mushrooms.
Indeed, on the nearby fungal mat, more Puki were popping out, and in the blink of an eye, they had surrounded the four completely.
Around their legs, the dense caps wriggled, and there were likely near a hundred!
Understanding the explosive power of Puki, Vera didn't dare move a muscle, beads of cold sweat dripping from her forehead, while Fei Ling and Fei Yin were ashen-faced and clinging tightly together.
"Now...what do we do?" Though Sirean hadn't put away his dagger, his arm lowered slightly; he had seen Puki in battle before.
"I don't know..." Vera's voice was dry, "We can only...see what they intend to do next..."
Soon, the Puki began using their round, springy bodies to nudge them forward.
Seeing the direction leading straight to the Underground City entrance, Fei Ling's voice took on a sob, "Are they...planning to push us into the Underground City..."
Wouldn't this an perishing along with the Underground City?
There was no choice, unwilling as they were; they had entirely beco prisoners of the Puki, involuntarily swept along by the fungal tide into the first level of the Purple Crystal Dungeon.
Upon stepping into the first level, the sight of countless visible rifts made their hearts sink.
Vera, slightly regretting her decisions, said to the Elf, "Sorry...maybe we really should have fought our way out earlier..."
"The monsters here...are they all...this unique?" Sirean's tone was filled with incredulous confusion and a hint of absurdity.
"Ugh...they aren't trying to push us into the Swamp, are they?" Fei Yin, too afraid to move her legs, was being "carried" forward by the Puki's cap nudges.
However, as they were pushed deeper by the Puki, the unsettling spatial rifts around them visibly decreased!
Finally, they were led to the sixth level, where the scene before them made them gasp in shock — a barren, desolate wasteland!
All the plants had withered to blackness, crumbling at the slightest touch. The curse had devastated half of the sixth level's ecosystem; although the rifts had been stitched up, what was destroyed could not recover.
The Puki herd brought them to the center of this scorched land and halted, ceasing their nudging.
"What...what does this an?" Fei Ling looked around at the still mushroom crowd, bewildered.
Sirean's erald eyes suddenly brightened, as if realizing sothing.
He crouched down, disregarding the thick ash on the ground, and gently placed his hands on the soil. A soft erald glow emitted from his palms, though it wasn't the "Song of Abundance."
He quietly chanted an Elf Spell, and beneath the ashes, a weak but resilient green shoot trembled, erging as the first sign of life in the vicinity!
Once that green appeared, the Puki scampered away, leaving only a few still following them.
The sudden relief of pressure allowed them all to let out a sigh of relief.
"Sirean, what's happening here?" Vera's gaze fell on the fragile sprout, questioning in confusion.
Standing up, Sirean looked over the scorched ground and, based on experience, speculated: "In the forest...so intelligent animals, when their habitat is destroyed by wildfire or poison, will guide Druids like us to the devastated areas, seeking help to restore life to the forest. Perhaps these Puki an the sa? Are they...asking us for help?"
Help?
Vera thought it made so sense, yet felt sothing was off.
Help or not...those animals definitely wouldn't kidnap an Elf to ask for it, would they?
"So now..." Vera scratched his head.
Upon entering, he realized the rift problem wasn't as severe as he imagined, even better than when they had left, with no rampant monsters.
Safety was no longer a concern, but looking around at the desolation, he wondered how long they would need to toil before the Puki would let them leave.
Sirean sighed, bending down and continuing to cast spells beside the sprout: "Let's start working, just hope there's food nearby..."
A half-day later, they awkwardly divided and ate a mushroom soup scooped from the body of a bizarrely shaped, feverish Puki...
…
Regarding the rift on the sixth level that leaked a terrifying curse and destroyed half the ecology, Lin Jun, after repeated deliberation, chose to completely seal it.
However, the rift on the fifth level connected to the Scarecrow, Lin Jun left a small hole just big enough for Puki to pass through.
This rift, too, had faint hints of curse energy seeping through, but its impact was limited, far less than the sixth level's.
Thinking about it, leaving this weaker one in different levels of the sa Underground City was better.
Seeing the Elf could actually understand his intentions, Lin Jun felt quite gratified.
Frankly, if the situation were different, Lin Jun almost considered parasitizing the Elf, as Natural Magic is rare here.
But given the Elf was with Vera and the group, he had to abandon that thought.
Lin Jun, who peeked daily at the adventurers of the Underground City, knew these three were the helpful, attention-seeking type.
They were social butterflies among adventurers, the kind Lin Jun least wanted to parasitize — too high a risk of exposure.
To blend on the surface, revealing the ability to parasitize humans was out of the question.
Originally, Lin Jun intended to confine them in place until he understood before setting them free!
Thank goodness the Elf's high intelligence saved Lin Jun a lot of effort.
As for them discovering fewer underground rifts, that was irrelevant.
By the ti they finished their work and returned, humans should notice the changes in the Underground City.
As for Puki forcing them to work?
Anyone in the Purple Crystal Dungeon knew that Puki punished rule-breakers, from blowing them up to robbing them.
Compared to that, having these Magic Power thieves roll up their sleeves and work to restore the ecology was an act of imnse rcy!
Unexpectedly for Lin Jun, his Tree Demons seed to sense sothing and even stepped out of the Secret Forest to assist the Elf.
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