[You tore my pages?]
[You sat on with a Puji’s butt?]
[You locked inside that exploding black room?]
[So—how does it feel now?] The words on the Yellow To’s page were laced with smugness.
[The feeling of your soul being pulled and stripped—unique, isn’t it?]
[To control thousands of sub-bodies, your soul essence must be enormous… perfect for savoring slowly, bit by bit, until it dissolves to the marrow!]
The Sacred Codex vented its pent-up malice with venomous words while driving the souls it had hoarded for centuries, surging against the crystal stele, staining it darker and darker.
Soon, more than half the monunt had been swallowed by gray-black corruption, and still it spread.
[Ah! It’s here!]
[Authority! I can feel it!]
The halo of motes spun violently, humming.
At that sa instant, a colossal bolt of lightning split the fifth floor battlefield below!
The thunderstrike scorched the ground into a blackened ravine, annihilating monsters in its sweep—strawn, chitin worms, phosphorescent moths, venomous lizards—all vaporized to ash before they could scream.
[Heh. Entertaining!]
After that brief play, the Codex steadied itself, savoring its triumph.
[Now for the real business.]
It turned toward the final sealed tal gate in the core chamber. Wielding its newly-won authority, it tried to open it—
The door didn’t budge.
[???]
Snapping back, the Codex inspected the crystal.
And saw it—the single glowing cyan speck within the darkened monunt, glaringly bright.
[What? After so many souls, how is there still sothing left?!]
…
Souls.
Lin Jun had never truly seen them, only hints when tearing the book’s pages.
He’d deduced his [Greed] devoured souls for skill proficiency, but their true form and place in the world had always been beyond him.
Until now.
For the first ti, he felt it—his soul being grasped!
Not a spatial link, not the network of fungus. This was deeper, more primal.
Even after severing all fungal connections, the pull clung directly to his essence.
And through this connection, Lin Jun could finally perceive his soul.
It was like a viscous, formless fluid—being drawn, sucked relentlessly into the “vacuum” of the core.
Pujis collapsed one by one, marionettes cut from their strings.
The collapse felt even worse than his worst-case plans.
But…
Was it his imagination? The “vacuum hose” pulling him in… seed too small?
Not a vacuum at all—more like sipping at a two-tone sli through a straw.
And once pulled, his soul tethered faintly with the Dungeon itself.
So—that was the trick. Controlled souls, flushing the core, seizing authority.
Fine then. Since he couldn’t resist, Lin Jun leaned into it—deliberately pushing more of himself through.
…
The cyan spot in the crystal suddenly spread.
[Impossible…]
The Codex panicked, trying to smother it with more souls, but its reserves were already spent.
[No—whose soul could be this vast?!]
The cyan spread swiftly, pressing the gray-black to the margins, crushing it into a corner.
A single corrupted soul shrieked as it was squeezed out of the monunt.
And like a dam bursting, the rest followed, gushing out into the air—only to dim and dissipate into nothing.
[NO! My souls! Three centuries of souls—gone!]
The page flapped helplessly, powerless to stop the torrent.
Before long, the entire monunt glowed pure cyan, crystalline and flawless.
And it didn’t stop.
The cyan tendrils crept from the stele, latching onto the Yellow To’s cover.
[!!!]
It tried to sever the bond, but now it too knew Lin Jun’s realization: once seized on the soul level, no barrier could matter.
[Wait! Boss! Boss! We can talk this out!] The frantic words scrawled across the page.
[Don’t… don’t co in any further!]
…
…
…
Pu-pu—
A Cowhorse Puji swaggered into the chamber, carrying a Speech Puji on its back. Lin Jun had generated them nearby after reattaching his Mycelium Carpet.
They stopped beneath the floating Yellow To.
By now, cyan markings covered its cover. The halo of motes faded, its power gone. The Codex sank slowly.
The Puji caught it gently, fungal tendrils brushing its charred skin like dusting off a relic.
“Little Puji?” the Speech Puji rasped, its voice dry and hoarse, echoing through the chamber.
[That was… a term of respect!]
“Deliberately hiding the truth?”
[I… I admit I worded things poorly! But I never ant deception!]
“Remarkable indeed—our noble Codex, enduring humiliation all this ti!”
[rcy! Spare ! I still have vital intel—news of great importance!]
ZZZZT—
An arc of lightning cracked from nowhere, striking its cover dead-on.
[Aaaaaghhhh!!!]
The page smoked, curling at the edges.
[r…cy… have…] Even the words failed.
“No worries,” the Puji croaked calmly, almost soothing. The Cowhorse Puji’s tendrils gently smoothed the scorched page. “You have all the ti in the world… to tell slowly.”
【Title Obtained: Administrator of Dungeon No.13 (Granted Highest Authority over this Dungeon)】
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