"Yep." She takes a breath and closes her eyes, like she's about to recite something from memory. With her history interest, Agent 3 spent hours reading and rereading the Sunken Scrolls she found in Octo Valley. "'With creatures of the surface driven to extinction by rising sea levels, the ancestors of Inklings were free to haul their 10-legged bodies up onto the abandoned land. This is how the Mollusc Era began.'"

Which again begs the question why the Inklings evolved to live on land instead of remaining in the water where there's plentiful space. But Nintendo does that all the time.