Mushroom Lord in the Underground City

Chapter 587 - 577: Half a Step

At this very moment, conferring a new merit noble title carried a special significance for boosting morale, and naturally the propaganda followed.

Of course, what was announced to the public was limited to the heroic tale of Vera’s Squad stepping forward in a time of crisis and successfully stopping the mist from devouring Golden Valley City. The truth about him bearing "Virtue" was kept strictly secret.

After all, even if you used your ass to think, you’d know that once the matter of Virtue was exposed, the Demon Race would definitely find a way to take him out before Vera could grow.

Suddenly receiving a title others dreamed of, the three of Vera’s group were not as overjoyed as the outside world imagined.

Vera himself felt he was unworthy of it and was uneasy at heart.

Fei Ling and Fei Yin were more worried about him personally.

Fei Ling even went so far as to suspect, a bit radically, that Duke Lorenzo probably didn’t have good intentions, and merely wanted to push that heavy responsibility onto Vera so he could later force him to use the "sacrifice" ability at a critical moment!

From a certain angle, Fei Ling’s suspicion was not entirely unreasonable.

It’s just that, standing from Lorenzo’s position, what he saw was the survival of the United Kingdom and the future of humanity.

Letting a Virtue holder with limitless potential waste his talent on wilderness adventures would be the real mistake and waste.

Just as the three each harbored their own worries and were torn between gain and loss, an old Adventurer companion, who had heard the news and come to offer congratulations, brought them something completely unexpected.

Sirean was still alive!

"Absolutely true! I saw him with my own eyes at Puki’s House in Mushroom City a while back! I was even wondering then why your squad had split up. Turns out you got separated after running into the mist!"

It wasn’t like Vera and the others hadn’t posted commissions to look for Sirean, but in this era where information still relied on notices and word of mouth, unless you mobilized power at the national level, messages were hard to reach most people.

At the very least, this Adventurer friend before them clearly didn’t know what Vera’s Squad had been through or their search before.

This sudden news made all three of them overjoyed.

Needless to say for Fei Ling and Fei Yin, they remembered every little bit of adventuring with Sirean, and they’d only survived the mist thanks to him.

Now hearing that he was safe and sound, although they had many doubts in their hearts, their joy over it was unquestionable.

As for Vera, although he no longer had any memories regarding Elves, over this period he had heard quite a lot from Fei Ling and Fei Yin, and he had an excellent impression of this Druid teammate the twins always mentioned.

What’s more, even though hope was slim, he still held onto a sliver of hope that seeing Sirean might help him remember something.

However, with the investiture ceremony imminent, the three of them couldn’t just leave Oath City to look for Sirean, so they could only ask acquaintances that if they ran into Sirean, to pass on a message for them and agree to meet again in Mushroom City.

What they didn’t know was that Sirean was already on his way to Oath City.

After laying his cards on the table with Puki, Sirean gained new pathfinding Skills, making it very easy to know where Vera was.

...

Somewhere in the wilderness between Mushroom City and Oath City.

Sirean dismounted, patted the horse’s neck, let it go graze nearby, and then found an area where the Fungal Mat was dense.

"Puki, get out here!"

The surface of the Fungal Mat started wriggling in response, dense Mycelium rapidly gathering, and soon that rag-like voice Puki popped out.

However, before Lin Jun had time to speak, Sirean reacted fast—he stretched out a finger and pinched that rag’s mouth shut, forcibly stuffing back the terrifying sound waves that were about to burst out.

If he let that sound out, not only would he feel awful hearing it himself, the horse nearby would probably be scared into bolting on the spot, fleeing this creepy Fungal Mat patch without looking back.

They switched to direct thought communication.

"Where are they now?"

"Still in Oath City, haven’t moved!" Puki the navigator answered honestly. "But they did go to that human Relic Association thing, and the sacrifice matter got exposed!"

At the mention of this, a lingering sulky frustration seeped through Lin Jun’s thoughts.

If that Divine Wood guy hadn’t insisted on tagging along with Vera’s Squad, Lin Jun would’ve long since taken this incredibly promising trio into the Mushroom Garden as a hidden trump card, instead of letting such crucial information about Virtue leak to outsiders.

He’d even worked out the whole script in his head.

Lin Jun would feed them well and treat them right, raising them in happiness.

If everything went smoothly for him, then everyone would have a beautiful future.

If one day they ran into an enemy they couldn’t possibly match, he’d just toss the twins out to fall into the enemy’s clutches, then have Vera unleash Virtue and beat the enemy senseless. Perfect.

Lin Jun himself would suffer a bit and take the blame for sacrificing others for his own sake.

Unfortunately, Divine Wood wouldn’t let him interfere too much.

Now he could only watch with his eyes wide open as Vera was tied down by that short, fat Duke with a Viscount title.

Tch, what the hell is a Viscount.

As for those Viscounts from the Empire side, he’d lost count of how many he’d already dealt with. They think they can bind sacrifice with this little sweetener?

Just the sight of it made Lin Jun seethe.

Upon hearing that the sacrifice had been exposed, Sirean wasn’t exactly surprised, just a bit emotional about Vera’s almost predictable future.

He then pushed the voice Puki back into the Fungal Mat and continued hurrying toward Oath City.

Only, when Sirean finally arrived at Oath City, covered in dust from his journey, and saw Vera, who had just finished his ennoblement ceremony as a Viscount.

The reunion scene seemed to be just a tiny bit different from what he had imagined.

...

"Vera! I finally found you!"

A clear, ringing Elf voice came from ahead.

Vera, who was instinctively tugging at the collar of his brand-new noble formalwear and lamenting that this outfit was nowhere near as comfortable as Leather Armor, lifted his head at the sound—and instantly froze on the spot.

It was a beauty he had never seen before, one that surpassed the limits of his imagination.

This Elf, just by standing there, seemed to make the air around them a few degrees clearer.

However, Vera did not sink into this shock for too long.

Soon, some almost-forgotten fragments of dreams and the reality before his eyes seemed to overlap.

Sirean walked forward with a smile, spreading his arms, wanting to give this long-separated teammate a warm hug.

Vera, however, suddenly shivered, his body reacting before his mind—he stepped back half a step.

The Elf’s open arms stiffened in midair, the brilliant smile on his face freezing as he forced out a confused look.

The surrounding people’s gazes were naturally drawn to the combination of the newly-minted Viscount and the beautiful Elf; they witnessed this bizarre scene, drawing even more curious and probing looks.

One could imagine that tonight, all kinds of gossip and speculation would spread through the taverns of Oath City.

Number Five had originally been trying to climb up Vera’s cloak, wanting to occupy its familiar spot on top of his head.

But upon seeing Sirean, its mushroom body instinctively trembled like a small animal encountering a natural enemy, and it whooshed back behind Vera’s back, only daring to peek out half of its mushroom cap to secretly observe.

Puki?!

Sirean had some guesses now, and his smile grew even more strained.

Fortunately, this suffocating awkwardness did not last long.

"Sirean! It really... really is you!" Fei Ling and Fei Yin dashed up from behind, one on each side, tightly hugging the companion they had once thought long buried in the mist.

Fei Ling’s eyes were rimmed red, tears she’d been holding back welling up, while Fei Yin completely lost control of her emotions, burying her face in Sirean’s shoulder, her tears and snot unapologetically smearing all over his clothes.

Only then did Vera scratch the back of his head, forcing down that inexplicable chill surging in his chest. With a mix of apology and uncertainty, he tentatively called out that name: "Si...rean?"

"What’s wrong with him...?"

The twins then quickly explained the whole story of how Vera had triggered the virtue of "sacrifice," which resulted in his memory loss.

"So," Sirean listened quietly to the end, his gaze returning to Vera, his tone complicated, "you just... forgot about me?"

Vera nodded a bit sheepishly, but he didn’t mention the strange nightmares he’d had about him afterward.

It was really hard to bring up; he simply chalked it up as a side effect of using sacrifice.

"I also noticed," Sirean changed the topic, his gaze seemingly casually sweeping past Vera’s back, "that you’ve gained a tiny new companion in your party?"

Taking advantage of Fei Ling introducing Number Five, Sirean smoothly reached out and gently scooped up the Puki that was trying to hide and looked a bit reluctant.

On the surface, he was warmly getting to know this new party member.

In the realm of mental communication.

"You little thing, did you do this on purpose?"

"Eek—! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I don’t know anything!" The sudden telepathic voice scared Number Five out of its wits; its whole mushroom body trembled violently and curled inward, turning itself into a shivering Puki ball in the blink of an eye.

Sirean: "..."

It took him some effort to finally confirm that the little guy in his palm, who was so frightened it was about to faint, was not that lethal-tongued one.

However, on the level of soul perception, the two of them were almost identical.

Sunstone, huh?

To actually voluntarily split his own soul...

Madman!

...

On the other side, Lin Jun happily crossed out the record of the Divine Wood’s first time calling his voice unpleasant.