***
You have defeated Rebos Mentalist (Level 33,33,35,30). Bonus experience awarded for killing enemies above your level.
+5 Gold
***
“Fuck,” Alex muttered as he expanded Sixth Sense. He was worried about how this new species of ant would affect his plans, but first he needed to figure out if any more of the beasts were headed in his direction. His inexperience with fighting against mentally focused opponents left Alex unsure what to expect, but he wanted to be as prepared for whatever it was as best he could. Before the battle, there had only been one other group in his skill’s range. That remained true now, and after a few minutes of observation, Alex let his mind shift from combat, to the larger issue of the psychic subspecies as a whole.
As their name suggested, these Rebos used primarily mental abilities, counter to the physical based ones their cousins focused on. On a scale rating all the ants he’d encountered by difficulty to kill, Alex was a bit unsure where to rank them. Their bodies were as frail as the workers, potentially even the drones, and their lack of air superiority made them easier to reach… as long as they didn’t freeze him in place with a thought. That last bit put them at least on the same level as the warriors, with the mentalist easily clearing the larger Rebos if he encountered a significant group of them.
The situation left him with a similar choice as to when he’d debated postponing his encounter with the drone general, though retreat seemed even more pointless now. With only two other generals left, the likelihood that Alex could gain an ability, or enough levels, to severely affect the battle was slim. Besides, he’d recently upgraded to an ability that just might counter the beast's magic, though his disuse since the upgrade had him rereading the ability’s description to verify.
***
Skill
Name: Mental Fortress
Rarity: Uncommon
Grade: E
Level: 26
Mode: Passive
Description: The mind is the central pillar of all conscious beings. It is the temple that houses perspective and the shield that wards against the abyss; granting awareness to those who possess it, allowing them to escape the tedium of a natural existence. But like any structure it is vulnerable to attack, and shall it crumble, so too will you. Protect yourself from that possibility. Gain increased awareness and resistance to mental attacks, both from within and out. Fortify your mind against the nocuity of nihility. Skill ability correlates to Willpower and Wisdom.
***
Alex wasn’t sure how exactly a mental attack could come from within, something like depression maybe, but the rest suggested the ability did have potential. He just wasn’t sure how well it would fair in his current situation. The skill’s passive nature meant his mental defenses were always ready, but the stats it scaled off severely weakened that advantage.
Wisdom was fine; at sixty-seven points it was one of Alex’s more middling attributes, but the two points per level his classes granted was excessive compared to the zero in Willpower he received. The differential had grown so bad the ability’s main stat now sat more than sixty points behind his highest, Dexterity, leaving him a bit skeptical about its combat effectiveness. Luckily for Alex, he knew of a surefire way to test exactly how useful the skill would be, he’d just need to risk his life to do it.
Placing the three free points from his latest level in Willpower, he continued moving toward the center of the mentalist hive. When it came to stuff like this, Alex was normally the type to err on the side of caution, even if it that meant failing his quest. Just as the skill description had pointed out, his mind housed the very idea of who he was, risking that pointlessly was beyond idiotic. Besides the mandatory, or relatively safe, quests, Alex had been against purposefully involving himself in life-threatening situations, but he was starting to feel like that was the wrong mindset.
It wasn’t like he was suddenly turning suicidal; he had no plans to immediately charge the beast king, or the next general even, but now that he had a few levels under his belt, actively choosing to take on harder battles would be important. Sitting around and playing it safe might assure him to live through the next five weeks, but it would also plummet his chances of living past that point. Because no matter how strong a creature he fought or how big a risk he took now, nothing would compare to the strength of his true target.
First, he’d do some testing, and within a few hours he’d hopefully have killed his third general. Though it was looking like Alex might need to clear out another section of anthill before he felt ready enough for that. His recent encounter had made it clear the meager resistance he’d managed against Dora’s ocular ability had not been due to any proficiency on his end. It was much more likely her use had actually been unintentional, since a beast sufficiently weaker than the woman could near incapacitate him so easily.
A minute of travel had Alex within a decameter of the next group of Rebos, and he readied his mind for another fight. The lack of curves or offshoots in this section of the tunnel forced him to initiate this fight differently from his last. Alex considered a direct charge. A few energy expensive skill activations would immediately put him in melee range, but as fun as constant teleports were, he decided to go down a more resource conscious route.
Keeping Stealth active, Alex attempted to sneak up on the group. If he could just waltz up to the ant squads and kill three of them before the final even noticed his presence, training would be easy. As part of Alex’s mind was occupied by delusional fantasies of anything but speed running death being easy in this tutorial, he saw one of the mentalists raise what passed for its head in his direction. Still a healthy distance from the group, he barely registered the motion before an accompanying wave of mental force hit him like a truck.
Unlike the last psychic attack he’d experienced, this ant hadn’t delivered a command in its opening salvo. While initially he appreciated not having to contest with an outside force limiting his movements, Alex realized how easy he’d had it earlier. It might have been a difference in level, or just the fact the creatures could exert more power when not instructing the actions of a target. But as it continued to increase, Alex found this mentalist could exert much more pressure onto his mind than the last.
The energy hit in waves, its potency tripping him as he tried to shift his crouch walk into a run. Recovering, barley, Alex was reminded of the scorching aura Janet had emitted on his first day in the tutorial. Unlike then, however, he could now do something to fight back against its originator. Throwing his previously energy conscious decisions out the window for the moment, he became a blur of motion as two Silent Strike empowered steps brought him within ten feet of the beasts, Echo Relocation instantly closing the remaining distance.
Aiming for the first beast who had raised its gaze towards him, Alex stabbed a baton straight out at the creature. He’d opted to switch back to his arnis sticks for this fight, even before he’d given up on rationing his mental energy. Despite his reluctance to have another headache from hell, Alex thought being stingy on attack power in such a battle would be far worse.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The batons lightweight, mana infused strength, had made them the perfect weapon for fast high impact damage, something Alex knew he would need when the very essence of his being was at risk. While aiming for the head proved to be an exceedingly effective way to deal with these mind mages, the relief he expected to come with the kill never did. The strain on his mind only growing as the others in the group watched their comrade fall.
One stick still lodged in the dead beast’s skull; Alex struck out wildly at another of the survivors. With all the Rebos’s attacks taking place in the non-physical plane, there was no way for him to determine who to kill first, only play the odds and hope for the best. Luck was on his side, however, the pressure on his mind increasing momentarily before vanishing as pieces of chitin and brain matter sprayed against a nearby wall. Having grown more familiar with the rapid pace of combat, Alex didn’t let up. With a flex of his muscles he ripped the blade from the impaled corpse, quickly turning the momentum into a downward strike that threatened to split the next beast in too, blunt weapon or no.
And it was a good thing he did, Alex barely getting halfway through his movement before he felt two new sources of pressure immediately enter his mind, the immensity of which caused him to drop to one knee. Time began to stretch as the agony of a forcefully scrambled brain began to make itself known. Alex had activated Battle Trance in an attempt to give him more time to react, but the ability only seemed to prolong his suffering.
A worried thought about mana usage bubbled up, but the idea was so foreign compared to the pain, it might as well have been said on the other side of the world. To simply call the sensation pain was an injustice, it was closer to the crippling ache of a chronic migraine on the downturn of a seven energy drink deep caffeine crash, which was to say very bad. Darkness began to encroach on his vision, a sensation Alex had become intimately familiar with over these last few weeks, and he pushed all the ideological Willpower he could manage into fighting off unconsciousness. He barely felt like himself by the time his third attack connected, the strike only hitting its target more due to honed instinct than any active attempt.
It wasn’t where he’d been aiming, the strike having strayed at some point, but the connection had maimed the Rebos to the point that the creature couldn’t focus in its assault. Regaining a modicum of awareness as the pressure on his mind halved, Alex surged his mana to increase the size of his weapon's range. Doing so resulted in a major uptick in Mana Manipulation’s drain, but he regretted nothing as the retreating beast failed to escape.
Having seen all its comrades die, and likely already exerting its maximum mental force, he could almost sense the fear of the creature as it also made to retreat. Nearly losing his balance on the step he took to follow, Alex had to actively force himself to not immediately kill the creature as he entered striking distance. Instead, he swung low, removing both of the creature's legs in a single strike and sending it crashing into the nearby cavern wall.
The shock of the injury gave Alex a moment of relief, but as the mentalist found retreat to be futile, it intensified its attack, throwing its first command at the Planestrider. Rather than a call for him to disarm, Comprehend suggested the beast was trying to make him its servant. Alex wasn’t sure the exact details, but he continuously had to stop himself from stepping towards the creature to help with its wounds best he could. While he was pretty sure he'd managed to keep the weakest of the bunch for last, he barely lasted two minutes before he was unable to safely withstand the compulsions and decided to kill the creature. It was slightly wasteful, since Alex was unsure of whether he’d actually reached his limit just yet, but he’d managed to get the information he wanted in the form of a new skill level.
***
Your skill [Mental Fortress] has advanced to Level Twenty-Seven.
***
With a proof of concept to back his theory, Alex took a short break to recover before attacking another few groups. The first went fine, with him being spotted in a similar manner as the last. Having been prepared for it, Alex managed to kill two of the creatures with thrown daggers just as their opening attack hit, resulting in a cleaner if not any less painful encounter. The third attack was the messiest of the bunch, throw up on yourself from a psychic ant induced regurgitation messy. It wasn’t really Alex’s fault, he’d just failed to discern the levels of the creatures and had left the strongest of the group until the end, forcing him to kill it without his scheduled training session.
By the time he finished the sixth group, over an hour had passed and Alex had gained an additional three levels in Mental Fortress. He had a solid understanding of his limits and could even shrug off the compulsion of some level thirty beasts he’d run into. Unfortunately, the mentalists had grown stronger with every group he’d fought, meaning Alex was likely fighting against the best the tunnels had to offer besides the general. He still wasn’t confident in fighting the section leader just yet, but felt like he’d hit diminishing returns rather quickly if he headed away from the central chamber.
Deciding to scout out the subspecies leader before making a decision, Alex took another break to solidify his gains when he noticed an issue. His time fighting the mentalist hadn’t only increased his understanding of his own skills, but also that of the beast’s abilities. One in particular that had interested Alex was their proficiency in sensing him during his approach. It didn’t matter what skills he used to counter, if he was in sight they could sense him. By the last fight, Alex had begun to detect something in his sensory skill, what he now believed to be the awareness that allowed them to spot him before he should have been noticeable.
Now came the problem. He’d thought the field to disappear once all the nearby mentalist had died. That would have supported his theory, since no beasts would mean no skill, except he could still feel the ability. It was slightly different now, potentially more powerful, though the biggest change was its range. No matter how much he extended his range the field was still there, and as he accidentally maxed out Sixth Sense, Alex discovered why.
The nervousness he’d been suppressing made its way to the surface as he caught sight of a lone figure sitting cross-legged in an excavated section of cavern. It wasn’t nearly as large as the drone enclosure, but significantly more spacious than the tunnels he’d spent the last hour trolling. There was what appeared to be furniture spaced about the area, giving an almost human feel to the very alien creature. Silently cursing Alex had a moment of indecision where he once more debated retreat. If the creature’s mental awareness was this large it had to know he was already here, but if that was the case, why hadn’t it moved. Were its abilities also limited to line of sight?
As if both reading Alex’s mind, and one for a dramatic entrance, the general picked that moment to rise from its still position. Raising its head to the ceiling, the beast let out a harrowing mental call. Alex immediately braced for impact, his passive mental skill primed and ready, but the shriek came with neither pain nor command.
Keeping one spiritual eye on the creature that had tried to pop metaphysical eardrums and the other on his surroundings, he hastily looked out for any changes. His full attention was quickly refocused on the general, however, as what substituted for the creature’s eyes seemingly ignored the layers of stone to stare directly at him. A chill traveled down his its needle-like teeth transformed into a rectus grin fully settling the dial in Alex’s mind on the retreat option.
He could come back later, sure he didn’t have to complete the quest, but after all the work he’d put in it was definitely preferable. It was a bit sunken cost fallacy, but he wanted the rewards he’d worked for and was curious what item a psych general like this would award. Planar Phase still had forty-three seconds of free usage, so he could wait a few hours, then drop in the general's room directly. The only reason he hadn’t done so in the first place was his lack of information about the subspecies, but now that he knew, the fight should be straight forward.
Just as Alex was readying to stone swim his way back to the surface, however, he felt a rumbling in the tunnels. It only took a moment for him to realize the cause. The beast’s howl just hadn’t been to simply scare the shit out of him, it had been a call, and the recipients were answering in kind.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Alex half screamed, each expletive getting louder as he rapidly looked around him. Sixth Sense was already at max range, but he had yet to spot any enemies. Still, based on the rumbling, every beast in a mile radius could be headed in his direction for all he knew. Chaos was coming, and if he didn’t kill the general now, he might never get the chance. If the general knew there was an invader, it was unlikely the creature went back to business as usual before his time limit was up. Seeing no good options, Alex sent a pulse of mana to Planar Phase’s skill location at the back base of his skull and charged.