After the Elf collected the clothes from the treasure chest, the stay duration had likely expired. In just one second, the scene shifted, and they were sent back to the Woodland.
They were out.
‘As expected of a god’s arrangement,’ the mushroom thought. ‘Not only did I feel nothing when entering, but even when I kept a careful eye out while leaving, I didn’t observe anything special.’
Marlow’s heart was full of regret regarding this. After all, opportunities to understand a god were rare.
When they stepped onto solid ground and the Fungal Network reconnected, Marlow realized this position was exactly where they had entered the Hidden Room based on her previous impressions.
‘If this is the mechanism, wouldn’t camping this spot be one hundred percent successful?’
Being quite adept at exploiting rules, she thought sinisterly, but then immediately dismissed the idea.
Hidden Rooms were already difficult to find, and the probability of accidentally witnessing someone else entering was minuscule—unless she found one herself, didn’t enter, and tricked someone else into going in while she waited outside like a predator.
Ah, it seemed she had found the correct way to use this thing.
Lumina had no idea what dark things Mushroom Miss was thinking about again. She was busy reaching out her hands, exploring the area in front of her like a blind person.
After a long while, she muttered with regret, “It seems the records in the books were true.”
The location of a Hidden Room was not fixed; instead, it refreshed randomly every time the items inside were taken.
Although she knew this was the case, she couldn’t help but wonder what if it just happened to spawn in the same spot.
Everyone has dreams. Who says daydreams don’t count?
Marlow, who finally understood what she was doing after watching for a while, couldn’t help but complain, “Ah, what a greedy Elf.”
The little Elf flinched at the voice that suddenly appeared by her ear. She nervously shrunk her neck, but then realized it was Miss Marlow and immediately regained her confidence.
“You saw wrong! I was… getting used to the new clothes! Yes, new clothes require more movement to fit the body and adapt to actions.”
As she spoke, her hands followed her previous movements to perform a set of Another World military physical training routines.
Marlow guessed they were.
After all, the moves were coherent and practiced; they definitely weren’t something the Elf had improvised on the spot—she didn’t have the brains for that.
Without exposing the little Elf’s true thoughts, the mushroom merely gave a faint reminder, “Alright, the clothing problem is solved. Although we were delayed by the bees, the roadblock has moved now. We still need to get the map.”
“Of course.”
The small brown boots stepped forward, *tap-tap*, walking briskly. Every step was half a step wider than before, and even the swing of her arms was slightly larger.
Lumina did not notice these small details at all, only feeling glad that she had managed to bluff her way through her childish behavior.
She warned herself in her heart, ‘You’re not alone now. You also have a mushroom on your head. You can’t just act on every whim without thinking anymore, or the mushroom will laugh at you.’
Well, although Miss Marlow was one of the reasons, hadn’t she already decided even earlier to get rid of her former childish self?
She was the team’s reliable and steady Priest who could provide support. Such an important position must never leave the teammates with an impression of being unreliable.
Because of this, she had to grow.
‘Perhaps with the mushroom around, I can move toward my goal better,’ she thought. ‘Since we are two in one, Marlow can supervise my behavior at all times.’
When she thought about it this way, the mushroom had yet another benefit.
—
Because they were still within the range of the Fungal Network, Marlow temporarily placed Lumina on “auto-pilot” after planning a route for her. She then transferred her consciousness to another part of her main body in the Cavern Area.
Login successful.
The situation with her “alt” was the same as usual, with no changes.
If she had to say something, the mushrooms by the wall had grown more plump. The mushroom caps were rounded and shiny, and the stalks were thick and fresh. They looked delicious just by looking at them.
Everything was thanks to those fully-equipped Guardian Mushrooms. By dealing with natural enemies like Slimes and letting the mushrooms grow without worry, they also provided a lot of nutrients for the Mycelium.
However, she hadn’t specifically switched over to check on the growth of the mushrooms.
During the subsequent entanglement with the bees, her level had unknowingly risen to Level 5. Her various stats had also reached the early 20s, completely surpassing ordinary Slimes and rising from cannon fodder to the ranks of low-level monsters.
It was worth celebrating.
Though, she felt that this level was still a bit low compared to the number of bees lost.
The Individual Level was likely different from the skill level. She could obtain skills or skill experience by eating monster corpses through her title, but the way to obtain level experience seemed to be only through completing kills.
Since she and the Elf were bound to each other, she could also get experience from the kills the other made.
This could be verified by the experience bar.
However, it had to be a completed kill. When the Elf caused massive damage with her beam magic, leaving them with low health, and the Knight ended up landing the finishing blow, they didn’t gain any experience.
Otherwise, if those were counted, she would be at least Level 6 by now.
Setting the level aside for now, next were the newly acquired skills: **[Iron Armor Lv 1]** and **[Flying Tongue Lv 1]**.
The former came from a stolen Knight Bee, and the latter came from a frog the bees didn’t want. Although there was a high probability they would be useless, she still wanted to try them out, refusing to believe in bad luck.
**[Flying Tongue]**, as the name suggested, was an attack by spitting out a tongue. It was very suitable for frogs and was likely a racial talent similar to flying.
As for **[Iron Armor]**, she really couldn’t say for sure if it would work.
First, she created a Purple Mushroom with the **[Flying Tongue]** skill. She also included the basic **[Unified Will]** and **[Spore Ejection]**.
Alright, it was useless because mushrooms don’t have tongues.
Next.
‘Wait, why is there insufficient mana?’
Looking at the prompt on the System Panel, the mushroom was in a state of confusion.
One should know that she was not like before. While her mana was as high as 23 points, no matter how much she consumed, it would recover to the limit in a very short time.
The fact that it showed insufficient mana even when it was full could only mean one possibility… the mana required for the **[Iron Armor]** skill had already exceeded her current mana limit.
Her previous worry had happened: another case of having a skill but being unable to use it.
‘What if I reduce some more skills?’
She tried removing **[Spore Ejection]**. Not having this skill meant having no means of attack. Then she removed **[Unified Will]**, which meant she couldn’t directly control it.
When only **[Iron Armor]** remained, it cost a total of 21 MP. Under her expectant gaze, a Purple Mushroom with a bucket on its head emerged from the Mycelium.
Before it could survive for long, the mushroom’s body shriveled and dissolved, leaving only a miniature iron bucket on the ground.
She didn’t quite know how to complain about what had just happened.
Why did **[Iron Armor]** mean putting an iron bucket hat on the mushroom’s cap? And it was even a miniature version adapted for a plant’s body size.
Aside from these, the practicality of the **[Iron Armor]** skill lay in providing the mushroom with a defense attribute: 5.
However, even with 5 defense points added to a mushroom with further weakened stats on her System Panel, it still couldn’t escape the result of being stepped to death.
Looking at it this way, the **[Iron Armor]** skill was practically useless in her hands.
After all, it consumed 21 MP at once. Although it could recover quickly, the fact that she couldn’t equip the other two basic skills meant it had no practicality at all.
The only thing that could pique her interest was that the generated iron bucket would not disappear with the mushroom; it remained in reality.
This was creating something out of nothing!
Just this alone was already astonishing.
It was equivalent to her being able to infinitely produce and generate iron as a resource as long as she had enough mana.
Setting aside the yield for now, the prospects were definitely promising for the future.
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