This Dungeon Grew Mushrooms - Chapter 583

Moya and Stinky Fish had no way of knowing about Qis’s jumpy, paranoia-filled train of thought, much less realizing that a group of newly born tiny slimes had, by pure coincidence, scared off that terrifying insect swarm.

Only after repeatedly scouting with extreme caution and confirming that the horrifying insects had truly left for good did they dare, trembling, to creep back toward the port.

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 would never make it to Highkeep Fortress.

However, the scene before them was even more horrific than they had imagined.

Most of the flames they had seen from afar had already gone out.

Not because anyone had extinguished them, but because almost everything that could burn had already burned to completion.

The city gates stood wide open, the heavy gate panels reduced to a field of charred, twisted fragments.

Large sections of the city walls had collapsed, as if smashed open or tunneled through by some colossal beast. Rubble and splintered wood were mixed with dark red bloodstains.

Inside the city, devastation reigned. Many buildings had been violently torn apart, wooden structures chewed open with massive gaps, stone walls covered in deep claw marks.

In some places, traces of fierce resistance remained: broken weapons, shattered shields, and scattered fragments of ruined armor belonging to demon soldiers.

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

Not demon corpses. Not insect corpses. None at all.

Moya could roughly guess where the bodies had gone, and she couldn’t help shuddering.

At last, near a large stone warehouse that had suffered relatively little damage, they found some survivors.

About twenty to thirty demons were huddled against the warehouse wall. Most were wounded: some had ragged, blood-seeping bandages, others had limbs bent at unnatural angles. Their faces were smeared with blood and half-dried tears.

Their eyes were hollow, filled with the dazed shock of survival and a terror that cut to the bone.

Weapons lay scattered nearby. Many simply hugged themselves tightly, their bodies trembling uncontrollably.

A few figures who looked like low-ranking officers were forcing themselves to stay alert, quietly maintaining order and counting survivors while desperately gathering whatever usable supplies they could find nearby.

When Moya and Stinky Fish appeared—especially with the round silhouette of the puji following behind them—the survivors recoiled in reflexive fear, nearly grabbing stones from the ground.

Once they realized it wasn’t those monstrous insects, but fellow demons and a walking mushroom, it was as if their bones had been pulled out. They all let out a collective sigh of relief. Still, their nerves did not truly relax; despair and confusion continued to hang over every demon present.

These demons had been completely broken by the insects.

As a frontline strategic port, although most of the demons usually active outside were from small internal imperial groups or mercenaries, the forces responsible for defending the port itself were genuine Imperial regular troops.

When Qis’s insect swarm launched its surprise attack from the sea, the defenders initially suffered heavy losses from being caught off guard. But the demon commander stationed here—someone who had truly experienced war—quickly demonstrated the competence expected of him.

In an extremely short time, he regrouped the troops, relied on the city’s defensive structures, and organized a stubborn, orderly resistance.

However, no matter how elite or brave a force was, it couldn’t hold against an enemy that was stronger, more numerous, capable of invisibility, and completely indifferent to death.

What’s more, the demons underestimated Qis’s intelligence, initially treating the swarm as mere magical beasts. That mistake severed their last thread of hope.

Once battle was joined, Qis used its dispersed eye-beasts to lock onto demon mages capable of casting anti-invisibility and detection spells.

After that, it deliberately launched targeted assaults on those mages, even if it meant sacrificing more insects.

As one mage after another was torn apart amid screams, the demon defenders were effectively blinded.

Although refraction invisibility wasn’t perfect—footprints, water trails, and dust could still reveal insect movements—on a battlefield scale, it was an overwhelming advantage.

Defensive lines were ripped open again and again from completely unexpected angles. When casualties skyrocketed to thirty percent of total forces in a very short time, every soldier broke.

Discipline and honor collapsed before the instinct to survive. Even knowing that fleeing would only turn them into living targets for pursuit, even as commanders shouted themselves hoarse trying to hold them together, the crumbling defenders still wailed, threw down their weapons, stripped off their cumbersome armor, and surged like headless flies toward what they believed was their only escape—the city gate.

This played perfectly into Qis’s hands. The moment the demon soldiers began to rout, the battle became a one-sided massacre.

The small group of routed soldiers that Moya and Stinky Fish had seen earlier—those who burst out of the gate and were swiftly hunted down by six-clawed insects—turned out to be among the extremely few lucky ones who escaped the port’s encirclement.

Their number was less than one percent of the total defending force.

As for the port’s chief and deputy commanders—the two sanctum-level powerhouses who had been openly and secretly fighting over authority just a day earlier—not a single one survived.

They fought bravely at the start, but once deprived of army support, they too were swallowed by the sea of insects.

That was why, in the port’s ruins now, only some bewildered low-ranking officers remained, barely holding together the last scraps of order among the survivors.

And Moya, who had only recently reached the gold rank, was now among the strongest individuals left!

With the port destroyed, even if the insects didn’t return for a second sweep, humans would eventually notice the change here. Staying any longer was tantamount to waiting for death.

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

Although all the food had been looted by the insects, they had left behind other supplies such as potions.

Most materials had been destroyed in the fighting and fires, but some remained—and fortunately, there weren’t many survivors to share them.

Daring not to delay, the survivors hastily gathered supplies and set out toward the only remaining path to survival: Highkeep Fortress.

Moya and Stinky Fish naturally went along with them.

Along the way, every demon was on edge, constantly wary of being discovered by humans.

They didn’t run into human adventurers—but they were ambushed by a cult instead!

At the critical moment, if Thirteen hadn’t suddenly erupted and slain two gold-rank cultists, Moya and Stinky Fish would have become sacrifices once again.

Only then did the two realize, to their shock, that the seemingly weak puji they had brought along was actually the strongest member of the entire group.

Thirteen saved Moya because it wanted to follow them back to the Empire. As for the other demons, it didn’t care in the slightest.

In the end, fewer than ten demons reached the gates of Highkeep Fortress. Each one was filthy and ragged, looking less like soldiers or spies and more like beggars.

These demons—along with Moya, Stinky Fish, and Thirteen—were soon brought before Sigismund.

…

The fall of the port was no small piece of bad news.

Yet it didn’t have much impact on the Empire’s current situation. With the sea routes cut off, the western coastline had indeed become somewhat expendable.

Thus, compared to the surviving demon soldiers, Sigismund’s attention was focused far more on that puji.

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

“That one… isn’t an ordinary puji, is it?”

Sigismund finally asked the question Moya feared the most.

She could already imagine her puji being snatched away, her bright future popping like a bubble.

Meanwhile, Thirteen felt puzzled.

Why did this non-fungus—who wasn’t even a fungus servant—give it such an inexplicably warm and familiar feeling?