The Martial Unity

He carefully reviewed and stored the data that he had collected. If the obscure and rare angel species were present in the dungeon, then there was a very realistic chance that the Master-level beast was at the core of the dungeon guarding the source of the Mellow Manifold.

He recalled its message to him.

Submit to the hive.

"Hive…" His eyes narrowed. "I see."

It appeared that he had underestimated the degree to which the dungeon had integrated the beasts and creatures into its system.

His eyes turned to the corpse as something caught his eye.

Several subterranean rodents emerged from the ground around the angel, digging the ground underneath it as they quickly pushed the creature further and further into the soil.

His eyes lit up with interest as glowing roots became exposed meters underneath the land. The little rodents wrapped up the corpse in the long glowing roots before covering all of it up in soil and returning.

He hadn't missed the fact that each of the rodents was in a deep trance.

This wasn't the first time he had seen it, having butchered plenty of monsters. However, in light of what the angel had told him, he saw it in a new light.

"Normally, the roots of the dungeon do this," Rui narrowed his eyes.

In both the Shionel and Serevian Dungeon, the roots of the dungeon were mobile, able to sense and absorb the corpses for nutrients.

In fact, the inheritance of the Elder Tree blatantly told him that this was the norm for most dungeons.

His eyes lit up as an insightful realization. "Could it be that the reason that this dungeon evolved the ability to put creatures in a trance and enslave them rose as a result of its immobile roots?"

If that was the case, it would explain why the dungeon needed to enslave all creatures in the dungeon. If it was an immobile entity, it needed something else to control that would serve as its arms and legs.

Naturally, it would also explain why it desperately needed these creatures for protection.

The Shionel and the Serevian dungeons did not necessarily require monsters and beasts to defend themselves or to mine esoteric substances. Both dungeons possessed substantial physical power of their own, relatively speaking.

Perhaps that was why they hadn't evolved such a trance-like mechanism.

Perhaps that was why the Mellow Dungeon did, to the point that an intelligent being like an angel called it a hive.

That was rather telling.

If that was the case, then all the pieces fit in. The oddities that he had observed in the Mellow Dungeon set it apart from all other dungeons. All became explainable if the Mellow Dungeon was impotent in one of its own capabilities, requiring other species to do what other dungeons would be able to do by themselves.

"No wonder it pursued the aggressive strategy of selective breeding and Darwinian evolution." Rui realized.

The creatures of the Mellow, barring some here and there like the angel species, were most likely far too weak to guard what was probably a Transcendent treasure. If the dungeon felt that it was too vulnerable, then Rui could fully understand its decision to leverage the esoteric substance's space-time power to create a domain isolated from the rest of the Beast Domain to accelerate the evolution process of the weak creatures by a factor of one hundred and forty-four.

"It would also explain why it keeps absorbing phenomena above a certain level of esotericity and power," Rui murmured impassively. "It can gain more security for itself if it is able to absorb powerful beasts and monsters."

That would explain why creatures non-native to the Mellow were present in the Mellow Dungeon. Perhaps there were some monsters from the surrounding Master-level danger zones that wandered into the Mellow looking for easy prey but were, in turn, absorbed by the Mellow Dungeon and became a part of the hive, forced to breed, evolve, and do the bidding of the Mellow Dungeon.

The angel had demanded that Rui submit to the hive.

"…That means the Mellow Dungeon wants to enslave and make me a part of its hive?" Rui narrowed his eyes coldly. "But why not just send the Master-level beast instead of a creature weaker than me?"

Rui knew that a Master-level creature would have been able to apprehend him effortlessly and drag him away to the core where the trance enslaving most likely happened.

There was no logical reason that it would not make this choice. Either he had deeply overestimated the intelligence of the Mellow Dungeon's consciousness, or the reason that it didn't deploy the Master-level asset of the Mellow Dungeon was that…

"…it can't?"

If so, he had stumbled into some truly astounding insights. He could infer that there was a significant possibility that the Master-level asset of the dungeon was limited in its ability to be deployed. Rui didn't know how or why this would be the case if it truly was. But he was unable to figure out any realistic reason for the dungeon not to deploy the master-

level asset if it was able to.

"If so, this could be the key." Rui realized. "If it has limitations or conditions, then they can be exploited to reach the source of the Mellow Dungeon safely and break out of this place without a fight potentially."

Of course, this was the most optimistic possibility. Rui was not naive enough to believe that reality would be in his favor. However, the best part was that he was learning more and more about the dungeon and the threats he was to face so that he could better plan their escape from the Mellow Manifold. It also increased the probability that they would be able to convince the Divine Doctor to accept their offer and concede to helping Rui's father from his condition.

RUMBLE

A wave of seismic radiation from within the depths of the dungeon broke him out of his reverie, drawing his attention.

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