Just as the young lizardmen had said, the cavern was a nice place for refuge. The danger meant that most intelligent creatures will know to keep away and best of all, there was a friendly deity to deal with the unintelligent ones.
Simply put, there were no downsides. Although Var and his small group had initially been searching for an exit… Var had long since been harboring second thoughts. After hearing about the situation with Kurgher however, he realized that there was no need to hesitate.
"Magnanimous mushroom deity please allow us to stay within your lands" Var said pleadingly, his group followed suit. The young lizardmen who was also present couldn't quite understand why they asked for permission to a weird dirt mushroom creature but it too pleaded.
'...Do you all want to come along?' W asked unsure about how exactly this had come about.
The lizardmen all furiously nodded some even going as far as dropping on the ground and pressing their heads on it. With the obvious signs of assent, W had no choice but to answer to their pleas.
'Follow me back' In the end, W wasn't actually losing from any of this. The greater the range of monsters available, the more experiments he could think up and try. Intelligent creatures were also just good for overall housekeeping.
That wasn't to say he'd be opening these guys up but extracting some skills shouldn't be too large a price for them to pay, right?
Bloody who thought it would finally be able to get a taste of the world outside the cavern and sunlight was very disappointed. Yet, Ed's command was clear in saying it had to protect W on the way there and back.
Reluctantly, the large red blob started following W who was retreating into the cavern.
"Four of you stay with Kroz and the young lizardman. I will send another four after we reach our destination" Var Agus told his lizardmen. They all nodded and went on their respective ways.
Var Agus' group needed to coordinate with the new group of people if they wanted to all live in the same cavern. The main problem was that Var's group was a quarter the size of this big group.
Leaving four lizardmen was already a risk. Var decided however that with the Mushroom deity present, the group would know to be mild-mannered. Otherwise, the cavern wouldn't be big enough for the both of them.
The trip back to the mushroom kingdom was not very arduous but it was quite time-consuming. The mushroom puppet was not very large. It hardly surpassed the height of a child.
This meant that the holes Bloody opened for W were too small to allow the lizardmen passage. Bloody itself had grown quite a bit so the trip back was delayed significantly.
Once they did make it there, however, Var Agus was awestruck.
"It's beautiful" He muttered. The other lizardmen in the group had similar thoughts and expressions as they observed the place. It was a dazzling sight.
There was a path and on its side were brilliant patches of glowing mushrooms each shining different elements. Yes, the domain of a mushroom deity ought to be like that.
But as they walked down the path they noticed it led towards a gray world. It had small patches of blue, black, and red but was otherwise bleak. No, bleak wasn't quite right a descriptor either. Creepy was more apt.
It felt like there were eyes watching them at all times and some mushrooms just had an overall bizarre appearance. If they didn't have eyes they seemed threatening enough to kill.
"This… Is this its true domain?" Var Agus muttered in disbelief. Was this an evil mushroom deity? Had they misjudged it? But thinking about it again, it had been an evil mushroom deity before right?
Var reasoned that the deity had yet to redecorate. Plus, even if it hadn't why was he being so judgmental? Var chastised himself before noticing a clear problem.
"Where will we sleep your greatness Var?" The overly loyal subordinate asked.
Var Agus frowned slightly. Most of the area was occupied by mushrooms so they didn't seem to fit in anywhere. It wasn't like they could build on the ceiling either.
"Ah!" Var suddenly became frightened after seeing a black spider looking at him and his group with hostile intentions.
"A monster!" Var said causing the others to point their spears at it. The octobuddy now seemed even more hostile as its hair stood on end and sparks of electricity started to arc from hair to hair.
It was precisely at this moment that W's transmission went out.
'Stay down' W told both groups who obeyed almost instantly thereafter. The octocrawler was frightened by the voice in its head knowing it belongs to the killer mushrooms while Var did not want to disrespect a deity in its territory.
"Great Deity, may we excuse ourselves?" Var asked with a forced smile.
W who wasn't paying much attention did not answer, as for why…
[Summoning Dungeon Champion]
The summoning message had appeared and Ed was successfully returned to his mushroom body.
'Ed, reintegrate me!' W had a lot of new things to tell Ed but why tell when you can directly transfer the information?
Ed who had been making plans up to that point did not mind the idea. W bringing it up definitely meant some big stuff had happened. At the very least, W had successfully seen the outside.
After entering the system space, Ed entered the forge and had himself bound back together. The pain was quite something but what really mattered was the new memories.
'Uurgh…!' For some reason, they were having a tough time settling in his mind.
'Damn it!' Ed cursed silently.
W had been left behind to explore and experience things for too long. Not just that, but Ed had even leveled up in its absence. A level up could not be just an increase in consciousness health since Assimilation already did that for him.
Ed believed it was a matter of differing purity and quality of the conscious matter.
'Intelligence may or may not be directly or indirectly affected by this variable' Ed speculated before his new memories finally settled in properly.
Since Ed was simply remembering things, the learning process was rather succinct.
'So that's why W insisted on merging' W managed to gather some subordinates for them to use on this floor.
'Argh, now I'm starting to think about W as a separate entity' Perhaps his memories had not properly settled after all.
'W sure has bad ideas' Ed thought to himself. He would have to put more forethought into merging back with parts of himself in the future.
'Right, I should recall my surveillance wisps too' To reduce the fog of war Ed placed wisps of himself in sentry shrooms or at times just regular shrooms.
Ed exited the system space to recall them all. Before doing so he took a brief look at the lizardmen.
'Hm? Looks like they are asking for something' The lizardmen were prostrated with nervous sweat dripping from their head. They must have been like that for a short while.
Ed however suffered from the same problem as W since they were one and the same. Var Agus and his group were begging him for something but he had no idea what.
'Whatever, I should relocate them for now' The cavern area couldn't really house the lizardmen without having some of his property destroyed.
Sleeping on the other mushroom fields could result in their death. The best outcome was to have them retreat at most to one of the first roadblocks to the surface. So Ed told the lizardmen just that and got an overwhelmingly positive response.
"Thank you! Thank you!" Var said tears threatening to burst the dam that was his dignified appearance.
After begging and pleading to seemingly no one for so long Var Agus was nervous they had been tossed aside. It sounded ridiculous but they weren't deities. Most importantly the hydra that Var followed seemed to treat him and the others as air. With such an example, how could Var not fear?
The group soon left on their merry way however and Ed was able to circle his thoughts back to his matters.
He returned to the forge and underwent the same merging procedure before splitting off these pieces of himself again. By the time he was done, not much time had passed.
Ed exited the system space at that point and prepared himself to experiment with the Spiritual Mark skill.
'Dakgu, Shel, Sharog… I am alive. I might take a while to return again, however.' Ed transmitted words towards the spiritual marks. Transmitting these signals was a matter of crossing space but the fact that Ed could sense them reassured him that the skill was likely working as intended.
'In the meantime know that the humans are still roaming the area, stay safe' Ed then transmitted another message with a more urgent intent. The humans were a threat without him there.
Last time he had told them to flee. Ed didn't believe they were stupid to attack after being given such an order. Nevertheless, he couldn't put it past Shel entirely.
'I can't have you dying in my absence' He had lost one already that way.
Ed was briefly overcome by melancholy. He was, fortunately, able to look past it by rekindling his passion for experimentation.
'It's time to visit this theater' After assimilating the Boulder of struggle, Ed had gotten an interesting message.. Now was the time to check what exactly it was.