After being delayed for two days, Rimuru's group finally completed all the procedures and successfully entered a lower world under the jurisdiction of the Sword-Mech Territory—
To the Collective Consciousness's highest intelligence, Rimuru and the others' arrival finally let them breathe a sigh of relief, even though all investigations and signs had remained calm so far.
Now, even when Rimuru's group merely passed through transit stations in these worlds, they would receive reverent bows, kneeling, and burning stares—but the cause of this was not Rimuru. It was Luo, who followed faintly behind them and seemed utterly unaffected by it all.
The Machine Clan were the absolute rulers of this vast world conglomerate, the Sword-Mech Territory. To those who had submitted to them, the Machine Clan's exalted ones were gods, while ordinary Machine Clan members were the agents of gods.
In short, divine envoys.
If a world-ruling civilization like the Collective Consciousness was compared to the owner of a farm, then each world was a farm, while the Machine Clan were the great capitalists standing above countless farms—the sort of capitalists who would seize everything at the slightest disagreement. After all, as a race born as weapons, the Machine Clan had a very simple way of conquering worlds: war.
Some might wonder what the other races within a world counted as under that analogy. For example, the world ruled by the Collective Consciousness had once contained humans.
Naturally, the answer was farm laborers.
That answer might sound rather inhumane, but that was the truth... To gods, races that had not reached demigod level or above, and had no gods backing them, were no different from livestock. They could be wiped out at will.
As a result, whenever Luo was spotted, the local residents would immediately rush over in terror to offer