Enemies Are All Nourishment for My Fungi

The keen-eyed men all spotted several takeout bags on the table.

"Hey, isn't this from a Daijing store?"

"Is the boss from Daijing?"

"Fellow townsmen!"

"Yes, just settled down."

Ye Nai swallowed the food in her mouth and managed to reply amidst her busyness, then picked up the takeout bowl and scraped the last two bites clean.

"Wow!" Every member of the Smoke Formation Tactical Team was quick to follow up, "Then we should interact more in Daijing."

"Sure."

Ye Nai was not just making conversation. She couldn't rely solely on the internet for information; it was essential to establish some stable connections offline.

She had always been running around, and her acquaintances were only superficial. Now that she was a Daijing resident, it was time to develop her networking relationships.

Awakeners from the National Defense University were perfect, they held her in high esteem, and naturally, she would take advantage of that.

After cleaning up the trash from the finished food, Ye Nai left the canopy for them to hold a meeting and summarize, while she went scavenging.

The layout inside the Wizard Academy resembled the schools on Blue Star, with an administration building, teaching building, library, dormitories, and a kitchen canteen all in place.

Ye Nai scavenged through building after building, not only clearing out the administration and library but also taking all the personal belongings and furniture from the teachers' and students' dormitories.

She even found the school's secret warehouse. Upon sneaking in, she discovered it was filled with various resources useful to wizards, including Heart Cores, tools that seemed like they were for alchemy, and raw materials from plants, animals, and minerals.

Ye Nai created a Fungus compartment in Space as large as this secret warehouse and moved everything in, arranging it exactly the same way.

After thoroughly scavenging the area, Ye Nai, still not satisfied, used Space Teleportation to check the neighboring main city.

She landed directly on the city wall, and the first thing she noticed was that her banners were gone, but the newly placed banners were also not the original ones.

Then, peering over the city walls into the streets, they were deserted, although bustling with people in the early morning, now only fully armed soldiers patrolled, and the whole city appeared to be under lockdown.

The soldiers from the Military Fortress were missing, the Duke's family was captured, and the only forces left to rapidly control the city must be the private knights of the Wizard Association and the Civil Affairs Officers.

The Fungal mats freely grown beneath the main city by morning had thickened considerably, bringing the entire city under spore control.

At Ye Nai's command, the patrolling troops instantly vanished on the spot, becoming her spoils of war in Space.

Next, the spores in those important and grand buildings also began to act, scouring up and down, in and out, adding many well-dressed men and women to her Space.

None of them were dead; these were important captives that needed to be taken back alive.

This second scavenging was even more meticulous; she found her missing banners inside the civil administration building, poles included, and retrieved them to reattach to the flagstaffs.

The spores surged in the crevices of the city wall, protecting both flagstaffs.

Previously, since the Fungal mat had not spread throughout the whole city, the banners becoming the natives' war trophies was expected. Now, reinserting them meant anyone attempting to remove the banners would become food for the spores.

After placing the banners, Ye Nai descended to the ground, rode an electric scooter around the main streets—all the shops along the street were shut.

She circled around the residential streets, where every household was also closed tight.

Ye Nai noticed that even the small streets and public wells were deserted, no one came to draw water, leaving the ground dry and without a trace of moisture.

But through the windows along the street, one could see people inside looking out as well.

When they saw someone riding something strange on the street, shadows darted past many household windows, and frightened screams seeped through the gaps in the doors.

Ye Nai wandered around for a while, and finally returned to the Military Fortress. He threw the officers on the ground and delivered a quick interrogation. He obtained a list of Transmission Platforms at this location and identified the one that led straight to the Royal Capital.

After making his marks, he eliminated the ones leading back to Yaqiao Fortress, leaving three that were all connected to other Military Fortresses, unsure of which path led back to Blue Star. Ye Nai didn't touch them and decided to confirm the next day.

A long pathway had multiple teleportation nodes, and the soldier at each node was only responsible for their segment. No one knew where the endpoints upstream and downstream were.

From a military secrecy standpoint, it was indeed quite effective.

After obtaining the intelligence, Ye Nai returned to the Wizard Academy, quite satisfied.

At the same time, Shi Lin's team had also walked through the entire Wizard Academy, but all they saw were bare buildings. The residual traces of dust on the floor suggested that there were once heavy pieces of furniture like desks and bookshelves, but now only the crystal lamps inside the buildings and the candlesticks on the walls remained.

The team members joked, implying that the items were left behind because they were deemed unworthy—likewise, they didn't want them either.

"Really, the boss is the boss, even the space is cleaned out not leaving a blade of grass."

"Stick close to the boss's coattails, when the great counterattack comes, we must squeeze into his team."

"Exactly, during the great counterattack, we must be with the boss."

"It seems like the boss isn't here, must have gone out to play again?"

"Can the boss even escape our sight and vanish?" the team members exclaimed again in astonishment, "My God, does the boss also know instant teleportation? That's entirely different from storage space tricks."

"The boss is the boss, blindly following him won't go wrong."

"Is the boss giving up on hiding his abilities now, not keeping them secret anymore?"

"The boss is a smart man after all, settling in Daijing. Who wouldn't want to establish some contacts and show off a bit of their skill? That's why we're all swarming to him."

"Right, we need the boss, not the other way around. We must cultivate a good relationship, how much we'll benefit depends on how close we can get."

"Is the boss single? I'm willing to dedicate myself."

"Wow, you really thought that through."

"Eh? Then I can too," a female teammate immediately offered with some extrapolation.

"Hey, hey, let's not make a fuss, girls," the male teammates cried out, feeling threatened.

"Why can't women do it? The boss doesn't care about gender."

Apart from Shi Lin who stayed out of it and just watched, the other female teammates teamed up right there.

"Hey, hey, hey, for the reputation of the school, show some ambition, hey!" the deputy captain joined the fray.

"What if the boss likes you?" the female teammates glanced askew.

"I'd for sure wait on him hand and foot."

"Tsk——"

Ye Nai quietly appeared in a storeroom at the deepest part of the academy, slowly walked out, and when he reached the large grass field, he heard the laughter of the Smoke Formation Tactical Team members coming from a building.

Having just disappeared for a while and come back, Ye Nai did not join in the fun. He pretended he still had not returned, turned around, and entered the student dormitory, choosing a dorm room to stay in for the night.