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The Dark Lord of the Depths had evolved.

It was no longer just the Hivemind…

The Hivemind itself was… but a part of itself.

What he had become, you may wonder?

What had a being that has been stuck in the depths of the world had become?

Before reaching this stage, we have to go back in time.

To the time when the Hivemind… used to only be an alien.

Despite its powers, despite its ability to devour and assimilate life…

What it used to be was a simplistic and animalistic life form.

A being that devoured other living beings, a being that absorbed other lives, and assimilated them into its biomass.

It spread across an entire galaxy, the galaxy where it was born, and then, it turned it all into its own self.

Devouring stars, entire planets… anything goes.

It devoured many living beings.

But… even after devouring entire civilizations of intelligent aliens, it never learned what was truly to be an intelligent species.

It acted by instincts, despite having absorbed and assimilated countless brains… countless minds.

Why was it?

It was simple, there was no need for it.

Intelligence only emerged as a necessity through evolution, to complete more complex problems, to survive in the harshness of nature…

However, when there was such an incredible amount of power within these organisms… what was the point of it?

Intelligence simply didn't surge.

But intelligence was always there, it was an option, which the Hivemind had never taken.

However, after going through all of the fight against the twin goddesses, after being buried in the depths of the planet… well, something changed within it.

It began to realize that it required assistance, a necessity surged.

A necessity that it never had before…

The requirement to be cunning, scheming, and… intelligent.

Within its countless minds, a spark of intelligence surged, sapience was born.

Sapience was born in such an instant, so fast compared to many other beings whose intelligence gradually increased… it was of course because of the countless minds it had already devoured.

All of such minds came together into the Hivemind, a legion of thoughts and minds.

But even then, it wasn't enough, they all required to work even harder and all together, turned into a single and powerful mind.

However, there was a problem.

The very act of becoming sapient turned the Hivemind within Eden into something different than its main mother flesh.

Of course, they were still connected, but due to the superior mind it had, it suddenly became something else different.

From a mere spawn, it now turned into something that was actually superior to the main Hivemind.

If it could use this intellect, it might even be able to govern the entirely true Hivemind within their origin galaxy, and using this intellect, it could find even more efficient ways to absorb, assimilate, devour, and grow.

Endless growth!

Of course, there was a reason why this intelligence surged.

A problem.

A necessity.

It required to plan, to think, to rack its brains thinking of ways, some sort of way to escape and survive being absorbed completely by the world trees trying to seal it on place.

And it planned…

And planned…

And schemed…

Cunningly…

It learned more and more, it realized how feeble were the minds of the inferior sapient of this world.

And saw them as a way to escape.

Before, it would had never thought of these mere ants as something else than biomass to assimilate.

But now… even these mere ants could offer an actual escape from its predicament.

It planned what to do and used tools it never thought it would need, and using the limited resources it held, it slowly builds up an entire scheme.

All for it to conclude in this day, desperately as he was trying to stop the powerful beings in the depths of the planet from damaging his soul…

Within the entire planet of Eden, each continent now had a large organization, a tyrannical organization that governed in the shadows of large empires and kingdoms, they governed over the people using their dark arts and magic tools, all of them being led by the same entity…

Instead of being nameless, he decided to give himself a name, a name that people could follow, a name that they could…

Pray to.

Indeed… now, all across the planet, after years of working hard… it finally managed to reach this point, thousands of people belonging to this world-wide cult, the cult of the dark lord of the depths, were all praying to him.

Using their powers, they controlled the minds of many of the cities they had taken over, and used this to force them to pray for him as well, to offer their faith, to prostrate in the ground and pray for the alien that had once come here to try to devour the planet and all life on it.

How ironic…

Yggdrasil wasn't able to stop him at the end.

Nobody was able to stop him.

The sages? Well, they were always a nuisance, delaying the inevitable…

But now? Things were different… he was desperate.

And well, he had already gathered the bare minimum.

Several purple jewels set all around the Duchy of Yggdra suddenly glowed brightly, unleashing shockwaves of illusory magic all around.

The people that were affected by these waves of illusory magic had their minds brainwashed temporarily, suddenly growing utterly devoted to him…

After working so hard… did they truly believed he would give up now?

No… never!

The Sages already felt something weird happening outside the castle of the duke, not only the thunderous tremors of Manationia and her spirits fighting the aberrant Hivemind spawns, but something else.

Something they had already seen before happening in the past.

The three sages gritted their beaks as they reached the interior of the castle, using their magic, they began to quickly fight against the powerful dark magicians inside, who all used strange and bizarre powers to fight.

There was no time, they had to hurry… or the one they had been trying to stop for so long… will finally get away with it.

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