They had all wanted answers from Mushroom Concubine. But after clearing away the surrounding mycelium and reaching the eighteenth floor, they found the situation was worse than they had imagined.
Mushroom Concubine... had lost her mind.
Her entire body was enveloped by a giant mushroom. Only her face showed on its cap.
They could clearly hear the woman's mouth opening and closing as she repeated, "World-Grinding Day has come." Beyond that, she showed no sign of reason.
Like the Corpse Grinders, her eyes had blood-red pupils set in whites threaded with black lines.
When she saw them enter the room, she merely sent mycelium to attack them. There was no sign of awareness in her response.
"Mushroom Concubine may have had a difficult personality, but her intelligence was never impaired. This isn't normal. It feels as though that mushroom has sealed her inside," Gleipnir said.
Mushroom Concubine was a Mound-Grinder. The emphasis was on "person," not "mound."
The Mushroom Concubine before them was nothing like the prospective Time Doppelgänger Gleipnir remembered. That body had been a tall, humanoid woman. Now there was only a face on a mushroom.
That was why Gleipnir wondered whether Mushroom Concubine's loss of reason had something to do with being sealed inside it.
Neither Angel nor Laplace could answer her. Laplace, however, was a man of action. Whether or not the giant mushroom had sealed away Mushroom Concubine's mind, he thrust his dagger at it.
But unlike the mycelium, which scattered with a single sweep, the mushroom stopped Laplace's dagger before it could pierce its surface. An invisible wall of light blocked the blade.
The moment the wall appeared, a vast presence filled the cramped room.
The next second, Angel and the others felt weightless. The space around them turned strangely fragile, shimmering with color