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The Duke of Yggdra received some bad news, the monsters they had been preparing for three days using experimental items were a terrible failure and were slaughtered with ease.
The magical artifacts in them that showed their life signs were suddenly deactivated, showing that they had clearly died.
The Duke of Yggdra felt utterly frustrated, but above all, fearful.
It knew that the influence of the Dark Lord of the Depths was strong in the entire Kingdom, even as the Duke of this famous city that surrounded one of the continent's World Trees, he still had less influence and power compared to this cult, that was even capable of controlling the King, his father.
Without many hopes left, he began to consider what to do now… without any way to eliminate the threat that the Dark Lord of the Depths wants to slay at all costs, he'll have to let the Cult do their thing and take action themselves, while he would receive a fitting punishment, perhaps…
"I'll have to escape then… B-Before that woman comes…" he thought, as he was about to leave everything behind until he heads the voice of a woman behind him.
"Dear Duke, where are you going? Do you know that its impossible to run from us?" asked the woman.
The Duke fearfully glanced behind him!
"GYYAH!" he cried in horror.
"Why so scared? I came here after I was told that the trio failed… You know that they were made using some very rare items, the divine flesh of our lord is not something you play around with!" said the woman angered.
"Guhh?! B-But how could I even know there would be someone so strong? It is not my fault that they had failed to exterminate her!" said the Duke.
"Hm, you're right, we would be acting unreasonably if we blamed it all to you! Right? We are not crazy after all." Said the woman.
"Ah? Eh? Really?" asked the Duke
"Yeah!" said the woman, as dark magic circles emerged around her and claws made of shadows came out of them, grasping the Duke's entire body.
"Uuuuaaaggggghhh…! W-Wait! I can do something! Let me… Give me another chance!" cried the Duke.
"Our lord is very unpleased by your lack of faith. He requires faith above all after all, he wants everyone to know about his LOVE… Ah, don't worry, we are not going to do anything bad to you, just some… reeducation." Said the woman, as her eyes gleamed with bright crimson-red light.
"Y-You're all crazyyyyyyy! GRRRYYYAAAAHHH…!"
Shadows consumed the Duke's entire body, as they entered his entire body and began to parasitize his interior, reaching his brain and mind.
After some time, the woman retrieved her strange magic, as the unconscious body of the Duke was left over the floor.
She looked down at it with a cold stare.
"Now raise, Shadow Marionette." She said.
TRUUMMM…!
Suddenly, the Duke began to move, but his eyes seemed devoid of light, a dark, shadowy aura began to come out of his body, encompassing everything around.
It was a terrifying sight to behold, as if the Duke himself had changed and become… simply put, something else entirely.
"…"
"Good, now that you're part of our Religion, kindly begin preparations, we must spread the religion as fast as possible, there are nuisances trying to annoy our lord after all…" said the woman.
The Duke quickly moved forward as he used his influence to do many things.
The Cult of the Dark Lord of the Depths thought of themselves as the true religion and had already taken over several Duchies within this Kingdom and even entire Kingdoms in the continent, spreading across the globe.
However, the power of Manationia threatened everything and was problematic, especially because she held the power to stop them.
And now, even more, she had also offended the Dark Lord of the Depths who had offered her to become his pawn.
Instead, she refused and even dared to retaliate back when her life was about to end in that dreams! How could she dare do such a thing?
Furious, this entity quickly ordered the Cult that controlled the entire continent to quickly move to Yggdra, even if it meant bringing thousands of troops with them to exterminate this problematic girl.
Indeed, the entity was incredibly vengeful, it was already offended and even had his soul damaged in the process, it won't rest until he could see her suffer a painful death.
But it also had many plans by itself, one of them including the involvement of many people having a strong faith on him! But another of these things was gathering a certain amount of power.
Manationia's case was something that came after everything after all, plans such as gathering this power and slowly giving away certain items to his faithful followers was already in plan, and was being done for many years now.
It was finally all coming together at long last, the Dark Lord of the Depths wasn't going to let anyone intervene… Manationia ended getting involved in all of this at the end, so she was a nuisance that must be exterminated as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, there were a certain group of people walking across the roots of the World's Tree, defeating the monsters there and hunting down anything they could find, surprisingly gaining a great amount of EXP in the process, discovering the energy-rich monsters of this world were able to give a nice amount of power when defeated through the energy extraction function of the Samsara System, which was what they called EXP.
The Dark Lord of the Depths already knew about them, just as they knew about him and his real identity being… the Hivemind! Of course, the one behind all of this Cult, was the Hivemind himself, who had developed a sharper mind and a scheming personality through all this time.
He had been evolving his ways to use magic, and taken over the influence of the dungeon with every passing second until reaching this point…
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