A large portion of them were low-cost Cannon Fodder Puji, whose only purpose on the battlefield was to gift kill counts and give the Imperial Army a bit more confidence.Furthermore, dead Pujis could be recycled, and dead enemies could be decomposed; in this cycle, the actual loss of mana was pitifully small.What's more, with the [Mycelial Recombination] skill, many Pujis would scramble back up as soon as the Imperial Army left, crawling back through underground tunnels to be sent to their deaths a second time as new Pujis.The correct way to fight Lin Jun was, and always would be, to first destroy the Fungal Carpet and burn the corpses.Unfortunately, there were very few people who realized this now.Clearly, the Imperial generals of this Northern Expedition had none of them understood the key to this.Although General Renard's troops had achieved successive victories in their various encounters with the Pujis, the frequent combat inevitably exhausted the soldiers' physical strength and spirit.Coupled with his wariness of the seemingly endless number of Pujis, the experienced Renard cautiously chose to slow his advance.As for the Demonkin troops, just as Renard expected, after their initial encounters and easy victories over the Pujis, they mercilessly mocked the incompetence of their allies.However, after experiencing a few more battles, they could no longer laugh.It wasn't that these Pujis were particularly powerful; the Demonkin were the elite of the elite.While Renard's soldiers still needed to struggle with the Pujis, on the Demonkin's side, it was entirely like slaughtering them like melons and vegetables.After several consecutive battles, they had only lost about ten men.Yet, they were now even more conflicted than Renard.Those damned Northern tribes, those damned Pujis... they actually steal Mana Cores!As the sole source of the Demonkin's new population, the importance of Mana Cores was beyond question.In past battles, if they were victorious, they could naturally retrieve the Mana Cores of their fallen comrades with ease; even if they were unfortunately defeated, Demonkin warriors would often risk anything, preferring to suffer more casualties, just to fight to reclaim as many Mana Cores as possible.Initially, when a Demonkin warrior was unfortunately killed by one of those Pujis that could Self-Destruct and his Mana Core could not be found during the post-battle cleanup, they only blamed it on bad luck, thinking perhaps the shock of the explosion had sent the Mana Core flying into some hard-to-find corner.But by now, sixteen people had died, and only two had their Mana Cores recovered; all the others had been stolen.Yes, stolen!The moment a Demonkin warrior fell, all the surrounding Pujis—regardless of who they were originally attacking or how much damage they were taking—would swarm toward that corpse like a school of blood-scented piranhas!They completely disregarded their own losses, using their round mushroom bodies to form mycelium walls one after another, using a near-suicidal method to forcibly block other Demonkin warriors who wanted to approach and retrieve their companion.And in that brief interval bought with countless Puji lives, the Mana Core of the dead Demonkin warrior would be pried out and stashed in the belly of some unknown Puji.The Pujis would then scatter, and the Demonkin could only rely on luck to intercept them; even then, they had to brave the interference of other Pujis, and if things went poorly and they were surrounded by Pujis, it would result in even more casualties on the spot.Bang!An iron-armored heavy fist of a Demonkin Squad Leader smashed hard against a nearby piece of exposed glacial rock, causing the hard stone to split down the middle."Damn it... it must be them! Those useless ones from the North before! Only they would be so deliberate in collecting Mana Cores!""Look at the Magic Pattern on these trash; they are all Cold Resistance. Since people from other tribes survived, their survival proportion must be even higher!"The other Squad Leaders also nodded; some warriors had indeed seen figures with horns on their foreheads, suspected to be Demonkin, among those Puji Masters hiding in the distance.At the thought of the Northern tribes' fighting style, every Squad Leader present felt disgusted.Those cowards hid in the distance every time, never showing their faces on the battlefield, relying entirely on these Pujis to do the fighting.On the rare occasions their tracks were discovered, they would just turn and run.Several pursuits by Demonkin squads that had found traces of Puji Masters had yielded no results.Instead, by deeply penetrating the enemy's positions, they were surrounded by Pujis popping up from all sides and lost a few more warriors before being rescued by other Demonkin.After all that fighting, only one mage and one archer had a record of killing enemies at range; everyone else was exclusively a Puji cleaner.This was as frustrating as a battle could get.At the start, they could comfort themselves that once the Pujis were exhausted, these tribesmen would be like fish on a chopping block.Now, looking at another batch of Pujis ahead whose numbers showed no sign of decreasing, no one could say such optimistic words anymore.The most critical point was that they could no longer lose Mana Cores in the North.After some thought, unlike Renard who still intended to complete the mission on his own, the Demonkin commander reported the theft of Mana Cores by the Pujis to their own Duke, hoping to receive reinforcements to crush that Demonkin tribe in the North in one fell swoop and seize their Cradle and Mana Cores... After the front line fell into the expected stalemate, Lin Jun temporarily shifted his attention elsewhere.Ultimately, because the two Dukes had misjudged the strength of the Fungus Fortress, they had not used their full power.For the current Fungus Fortress, this could only be considered a small-scale skirmish; even if something went wrong, there were plenty of backup measures to fall back on, so there was no need for Lin Jun to spend his precious energy constantly monitoring it.In the rear, the Abyssal Magic testing ground was still under construction; taking advantage of this gap, Lin Jun intended to first fulfill the reward for the Yellow Grimoire.Being a man of his word had always been one of Lin Jun's excellent qualities.In the past, he hadn't understood why he hadn't obtained the virtue title of Honesty, but after meeting the Demon King, he realized it was because this old fogey had taken his spot.Why didn't that Link fellow from back then just cleave this Slime to death with one sword?It caused him to have one less virtue![Fi... Finally...]After waiting in agony for half a month, to the point where even D-Rank Personnel souls didn't even taste good anymore, the Yellow Grimoire finally received the boss's summons!"Don't get so excited; I never guaranteed that it would definitely work. If you start making a scene because there's no result, I won't show any mercy," Lin Jun laid out the harsh truth upfront.[Of course, of course, this lowly one knows...]Although it wrote that it knew, looking at the way its pages couldn't help but flip every now and then, it was clearly still unbearably excited.However, after it was carried into the laboratory by Marshal Puji, that excitement chilled significantly.In the hidden testing ground, a glowing stone was placed in the center, illuminating the nearby Fungal Carpet.And on the left side of the testing ground was a massive spatial rift leading to the void.Beside the Yellow Grimoire were various Pujis standing ready.The patterns on the walls also showed multiple anti-detection and trap Magic Formations.It felt as if it were about to be executed after the experiment... but soon, the Yellow Grimoire's attention shifted from the surrounding setup back to that glowing stone.Vaguely, it felt its Core being stirred by the light emitted by this stone.Could it be...?"Alright, let's first test the direct exposure effect!" Saying so, the Puji held the Yellow Grimoire up to the Sunstone and opened it to its fullest.The light from the Sunstone bathed the pages in a layer of gold.[Ohhh... this is... this is!]