Mushroom Lord in the Underground City

Chapter 593 - 583: The Affable Non-Mogu

Mengya and Stinky Fish had no way of knowing Chis’s panicked, bird‑startling train of thought, much less imagining that it was a batch of newly born Little Slimes that, by sheer accident, frightened off that terrifying swarm of bugs.

Only after they had, with extreme caution, repeatedly scouted around and confirmed that those terrifying bugs had truly left completely, did they dare, trembling, to feel their way back to the harbor.

They didn’t want to return to this place where a nightmare had just played out, but they had no choice.

If they didn’t come back to gather some supplies, they probably wouldn’t even make it to High Castle Fortress.

However, the scene before their eyes was still far more brutal than they had imagined.

The flames they had seen from afar earlier had mostly gone out.

It wasn’t that anyone had put them out; it was simply that almost everything that could burn had already been burned to ash.

The city gate stood wide open, its heavy panels reduced to a groundful of charred, twisted fragments.

Many sections of the city wall had collapsed, as if some giant beast had smashed through or dug past them with brute force, rubble and splintered timbers mixed with dark red bloodstains.

The city within was also a mess; many buildings had been violently dismantled, wooden structures gnawed into huge gaps, and stone walls covered in deep claw marks.

In some places there were traces of fierce resistance: broken weapons, shattered shields, and fragments of damaged armor belonging to Demon Race soldiers scattered here and there.

Yet all along the way, they did not see a single corpse.

Demon Race or bug, there were none at all.

Mengya could more or less imagine where those bodies had gone, and couldn’t help but shiver.

In the end, near a large stone‑built warehouse that had suffered relatively little damage, they found some survivors.

Roughly twenty to thirty demons were huddled against the warehouse wall. Most of them were wounded: some had ragged, blood‑soaked bandages wrapped around them, some had limbs bent at unnatural angles, their faces smeared with blood and streaked with still‑damp tear marks.

Their eyes were vacant, filled with the dazedness of having cheated death and a terror etched into their bones.

Their weapons lay scattered beside them. Many were just hugging themselves tightly, their bodies trembling slightly beyond their control.

A few who looked like low‑level officers were forcing themselves to stay awake, quietly maintaining order, counting the number of survivors, while also doing their best to gather whatever scraps of supplies could still be used nearby.

When the figures of Mengya and Stinky Fish—especially the round, rolling silhouette of Puki following behind them—appeared in their field of vision, these survivors first flinched in terror by reflex, almost snatching up the stones at their feet.

Only when they saw clearly that the newcomers were demons and a walking mushroom, not those hideous bugs, did they seem to have their spines pulled out all at once, collectively letting out a sigh of relief. But their taut nerves did not truly relax; despair and confusion still shrouded every demon.

These demons had already had their courage shattered by the bugs.

As a frontline strategic harbor, although most of those active outside on a daily basis were small groups from within the Empire or Mercenaries, the ones responsible for the harbor’s actual defense were a bona fide Imperial regular legion.

When Chis’s swarm launched a surprise attack from the sea, although they suffered heavy losses at first due to being caught off guard, the Demon Race commander stationed here, who had experienced the baptism of real war, still quickly displayed the qualities he ought to have.

In an extremely short time he rallied the troops, relying on the city defenses to organize a tenacious and orderly resistance.

However, no matter how elite and fierce a unit is, when facing a swarm that is stronger, more numerous, capable of turning invisible, and utterly unconcerned with death, they still can’t hold!

What’s more, the Demon Race underestimated Chis’s intelligence, treating them as Magic Beasts at first, and that cut off their final sliver of hope.

After the fighting began, Chis used the Eye Worms he had scattered to lock onto those Demon Race Mages on the battlefield who could cast anti‑stealth Magic and detection Magic.

He then launched premeditated surprise attacks against these Mages, not hesitating even if it meant losing more bugs in the process.

As one Mage after another was torn apart amid screams, the Demon Race garrison was like a group of blind men.

Although Refraction Invisibility was not perfect and there were still footprints, water traces, smoke and dust and other ways to detect the bugs’ tracks, expanded to the scale of a battlefield, it was still an enormous advantage.

The defensive line was ripped open again and again from unexpected angles, and when casualties soared to thirty percent of total strength in a very short time, every soldier became afraid.

Discipline and honor crumbled before the instinct to survive. Even though they knew that running would only make them moving targets for the bugs’ pursuit, even though the commanders shouted themselves hoarse trying to suppress the panic, the collapsing garrison still wailed as they threw down their weapons, stripped off the cumbersome heavy armor that hindered them, and swarmed like headless flies toward what they believed was their only way out—the city gate.

This was exactly what Chis wanted. Just as the Demon Race soldiers began to rout, the war turned into a one‑sided slaughter.

The small group of shattered troops that Mengya and Stinky Fish had seen earlier, rushing out the city gate only to be quickly chased down by Six-clawed Worms, turned out to be the tiny handful of lucky ones who managed to break out of the harbor encirclement during this collapse.

Their number was not even one percent of the total garrison.

As for the harbor’s commander and deputy commander, those two Palace Level powerhouses who had still been fighting both openly and in secret over the division of authority just a day earlier, this time, neither of them survived.

They fought bravely at first, but after losing the support of their troops, they were still swallowed by the sea of bugs.

It was precisely because of this that in the ruins of the harbor now, only some bewildered low‑level officers remained, barely maintaining the survivors’ last shred of order.

And Mengya, who had only just reached Gold Level not long ago, actually counted as one of the strongest among this lot!

With the harbor annihilated, even if the bugs didn’t come back for another sweep, humans would sooner or later notice the change here; staying on was no different from waiting for death.

In the end, a team of just over a hundred demons was organized.

Although the bugs had looted all the food, they hadn’t taken a fancy to other supplies like Potions, leaving those to them.

Most of the supplies had been destroyed in the fighting and the fires, but there were still some leftovers, and as it happened, there weren’t many Demon Race survivors either.

Not daring to linger, after hastily gathering the supplies, the survivors set out toward their only way out—High Castle Fortress.

Mengya and Stinky Fish naturally went along as well.

All the way, every demon was on edge, terrified of being discovered by humans.

However, instead of running into human Adventurers, they were ambushed by the Cult!

At the critical moment, if Thirteen hadn’t suddenly exploded into action and butchered two Gold Level Cultists in a row, Mengya and Stinky Fish would have ended up as sacrifices yet again.

And the two of them were astonished to discover that the Puki they had always thought of as weak was actually the strongest in the whole team.

Thirteen saved Mengya in order to follow her back to the Empire; as for the other demons, it didn’t care.

In the end, fewer than ten demons reached the foot of High Castle Fortress’s walls, all of them bedraggled, looking less like soldiers or spies and more like beggars.

These demons, along with Mengya, Stinky Fish, and Thirteen, were soon brought before Sigmund.

...

The fall of the harbor was no small piece of bad news!

But its impact on the Empire’s current situation was not great; with the sea routes cut off, that stretch of the West Coast had indeed become somewhat tasteless and dispensable.

Therefore, compared to these Demon Race soldiers, Sigmund’s attention was focused more on that Puki.

No matter how hard Mengya tried to block Thirteen behind her, it was clearly pointless.

"That one... isn’t an ordinary Puki, is it?"

Sigmund finally voiced the question Mengya feared most.

She could already picture the scene of Puki being taken from her, her bright future bursting like a bubble.

Thirteen, however, was a bit puzzled at this moment.

Why did this non‑mushroom, who wasn’t even a Mushroom Servant, give it such a very familiar feeling?