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The group had made a stop after they reached Floor 6.
Floors 3, 4, and 5 were all Jungles too, and with an increasing amount of Goblins, it took them almost the entire day to reach Floor 6.
At floor 5, there was a Goblin Village with a few dozens of Goblin Magicians and even Orcs, evolved forms of Goblins who were burly and stronger and wielded heavy weapons such as axes and maces.
They were easy to deal with anyways, but Ervas and Veronica had noticed an increasing amount of power coming from them, at Floor 5 the monsters were as strong as Rank 10… well, they were still able to smack them like flies, and might continue to do so for a long time before anything can even remotely be a challenge, but everyone was still having fun smacking things like flies and gaining ridiculous amounts of Experience Points in the process.
Beaky had been gaining experience and leveled up a lot, he ended evolving like five times and became larger, and more majestic, his entire body gained golden fur and armor-like growths, his beak became metallic and the shield-like crest even larger.
Beaky had indeed become quite the majestic beast, and due to his interaction with the two godly girls, he had already begun to develop divine power… all in a single day since his taming.
However, now that they had reached Floor 6, they were greeted by a different landscape, large marshlands once more, alongside a tremendous lake they'll have to cross, and a few mountains behind the background.
Night had already came, however, so they decided to camp. Despite not feeling tired, they wanted a break to speak about a few things, also everyone here enjoyed lazing around anyways.
But the important thing was talking about what Octo found out.
Veronica and Ervas gathered with Aurora, Yggdrasil, Juliette, Anastacia, and the rest were around, hearing things out but doing their own things, such as cooking and eating, or chatting.
"The Dark Lord of the Depths? You mean… It can't be…" said Yggdrasil.
"Yeah, it's pretty obvious, the Hivemind had indeed begun to put his influence in the people of the surface." Said Ervas.
"But I never realized!" said Yggdrasil.
"That might be because you never interacted with them that much…" said Veronica.
"There is a truth to those words that only makes me grow more frustrated! Ugh…" sighed Yggdrasil.
"Well, well, calm down for now, let's assess things calmly and composedly." Said Ervas.
"For now let's assess things… So the Hivemind gained intelligence?" asked Juliette.
"It certainly had one before, but not as advanced as this one." Said Anastacia.
"If this thing is encroaching people, tricking them, and convincing them, while also using power to boost their strength and make a cult… Then he is indeed cunningly intelligent." Said Ervas.
"But why? What does he earns by doing this? He's already powerful." Said Veronica.
"He wants freedom quickly, perhaps he's trying to make the people do something, a certain thing that might allow him to be free himself quicker, or something else… I don't know, we can't really tell, he's a shred monster." Said Juliette.
"Perhaps something like that… But more importantly, I wonder something… Why is he bothering so much for it? It is really puzzling, and another thing… how? How was he able to do it?" wondered Anastacia.
"Through the Dungeon, probably. This place is connected to him even if Yggdrasil says that it isn't. if her roots were inside of his body, there's no telling that they're not being affected." Said Ervas.
"What are you implying?!" asked Yggdrasil.
"Calm down, we are not calling you out or something, but we think the Hivemind is using your connection with him as you seal his powers to ultimately manifest himself through this place, and then someone somehow found a way to grab this power carrying his influence and do something with it." said Veronica.
"Indeed, and we have something to back it up, I've recently discovered a dark miasma power surging from the goblins, the miasma of the entire dungeon in fact… and the birth of the dungeon itself, it wasn't made by Yggdrasil, the Hivemind made this dungeon out of her body." Said Ervas.
"Y-You're… right." Said Juliette.
"I can't believe we never thought about this possibility! This only means one thing; this bastard has been trying this for a while and took years…" said Anastacia.
"S-So my body was infected by the miasma the Hivemind created so it could form a dungeon through the distortion of spacetime and the roots?! Wait… this is a bit too much for me." Sighed Yggdrasil.
"But its true, the thing about monsters… how the wild animals reach this place naturally but mutate into monsters… wild animals shouldn't be able to mutate into monsters so easily, this might really be something made up by the Hivemind." Said Ervas.
"But why? I don't get it." said Yggdrasil.
"It should be obvious, like a godly being, he's gathering worshipers and creations. Back in our world, the Demon Gods were able to gain power from creating monsters and draining their energy, the monsters created by them naturally worshiped them every single day… and those altars and weird monoliths we found in the Goblin Villages should be more than enough evidence." Said Veronica.
"He's gaining divine power from creating worshipers and spreading his influence in the surface… this might be slowly letting him accumulate an explosive amount of power… I don't know, but didn't you say once that the Hivemind wasn't a divine being? Perhaps it is trying to imitate you all and do just that…" said Ervas.
"If it tries to acquire such powers, then it might truly grow into a perfect being, and this might be the demise of all." Said Veronica.
"This is indeed dangerous, if he was already so strong without even being a divine being, now imagine how strong he could get now!" sighed Aurora.
"What could we do?" wondered Juliette.
"Just exterminate as many monsters as possible while we go down, that's what we'll do!" said Anastacia.
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