As so often, battle didn’t start with a bang but a whimper. We had been hunting Withered for the last few days, pushing a few more levels on our way to fifty and increasing our various skills as we went, but we hadn’t made it to the big five-oh yet. Soon, but not yet.

Tonight, however, wasn’t another hunt for EXP, it was time for an experiment. I had been trying to get a better read on the Withered and their psychic abilities for days but so far, the only result I had managed to achieve was driving them to attack us with overwhelming force.

I had considered whether it would be possible to use that almost reflexive attack to our advantage, maybe fill part of the area with gasoline or something similar, lure the Withered in, and walk through the shadows to get away before setting it all ablaze. If not for the insane instability of the post-change gasoline, I would likely have tried to do so, but it was just too dangerous. Experiments between Alex and myself, using samples drained from a number of different cars abandoned in the streets, had shown that gasoline varied in flammability, going from roughly as flammable as water to volatile enough to catch flame when removed from the tank it had been in. There was even a car that exploded the moment we opened the fuel port, luckily it was only a small explosion, doing little more than lift the car a few centimetres and send a gout of flame out of the fuel port. Nothing truly dangerous, but bad enough to make me think twice whether I wanted to mess with the stuff. Amusingly, Alex felt the same, only that for them, thinking twice meant thinking twice as much about it. They loved their explosions, not that I couldn’t see the effectiveness. Alas, Fire just wasn’t for me.

What was for me, was messing with my enemy's head, just as we planned tonight. The idea was to knock one of the Withered, a Skulker if at all possible, out and carry their limb body away, to use as we saw fit. Mostly, to see what interesting things would happen if I twisted the mind within the Withered into a pretzel, breaking it to the point that the only thing remaining was pain, maybe with a little bit of violence thrown in for good measure. Once that was managed, we could knock the Withered out again, carry it back to their territory and, well, watch the fireworks from afar.

I had no idea what the effect of a creature of pure madness linked to a hivemind would be, but I’d be damned if I didn’t want to watch the show.

The first step, knocking a Withered Skulker out, was nearly trivial. We had been sneaking up on the silly buggers for over three weeks by now and it didn’t look like they would wise up any time soon. Maybe the intelligence behind the Withered considered protecting them from attacks like ours to be too much of an effort when compared to the damage we managed to inflict, and wouldn’t that be a kick in the teeth? That we weren’t even worth the effort of protecting their minions from us, nothing more than a nuisance that could be ignored?

But for now, it served us well, the only instances in which we were met with overwhelming force happened when we tried to push into the park I had discovered by scrying, or when I tried to magically influence the mental connection between Withered. Outside of those triggers, we could use the WIthered to gain EXP at a phenomenal rate, making it realistic that I’d reach level fifty before the strongest at Apple Gate Farm reached level forty, despite their best efforts to hunt down Undead

The Withered Skulker we had designated as our target hadn’t noticed our presence, it was as oblivious as all its brethren had been. After gathering my focus for just a brief moment, Overflow activated and I channelled as much Astral Power into my Mind Magic as I could, pushing it all into a singular powerful strike. All the Astral Power, almost a quarter of my total, carried a single intent, to knock the Withered out. Nothing fancy, no fluff, no nothing, just brutal magical force.

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And as so often, brute force worked quite well, the Withered stiffened for a moment, before going limp, its breath shallow but obvious, even from afar. There was no alarm raised, no call for help went out, nothing that gave away our attack, other than the Withered going silent.

It would, most likely, result in the same response killing a Withered Skulker did, a couple of Hunters coming for us, trying to kill us right back. Normally, this would be the time that we ventured into the path of a few Hunters I could feel approaching, so we could kill them before they could try to kill us, but that wasn’t the plan for today.

No, today, Lia simply grabbed the limp Withered Skulker and we all began to run, not even trying to move in the direction we usually retreated into. For this, we had prepared a different lair, just in case things went south.

Travelling through Racoon City, even while carrying a Withered Skulker, was nothing new, especially now that we didn’t try to catch a few Hunters on our way, we only wanted to leave. Doing so was as routine as it could be and after a while, but still over an hour before the Sun would force us into cover to avoid the hated glare, the four of us reached our prepared lair.

It wasn’t anything fancy, just a bit of food and some blankets stashed in a solid cellar, but it would be enough. The only thing we now had to do was wait, I had considered starting the experiment early but decided against it. Sure, we were almost two hours from Racoon City, and that was using the speed we travelled when unimpeded, meaning the average Withered would need a lot more time. But I wasn’t about to take any extra risks, certainly not extra risks that would see us besieged without any way to escape.

So, instead of starting the torture early, I simply put together a simple cage from scrap metal, an easy task thanks to my slowly growing Crystal Magic, and inscribed runes of Concealment and Darkness all over the cage. It wouldn’t last for long, the Astral Power running through the runes was already stressing the material, causing the runes to burn out within the day, but it was enough. The idea was that it would completely isolate the Withered Skulker from the world, the concealment directed inwards, leaving it within a perfectly black void. I had no idea if it truly worked, but it was merely a security measure in case the thing woke up early.

Once everything was set up, I settled in to wait. Lia was resting, while I was keeping watch until it was time to change shifts. And so, I sat there, in the darkness, waiting and considering the best way to mess with a Withered’s mind.

What I knew about them, what I could infer about their behaviour and what had worked on Mundus, those were all important questions so I could break the thing’s mind in the best possible way. Or maybe the worst possible way, it all depended on the perspective.

Isolation was an obvious one, sensory deprivation drove humans mad and I had no doubt it would work for a Withered, too. I was reasonably confident that they were constantly in connection with other Withered, thanks to their psychic abilities. It was the primary way I detected them, making me somewhat confident that the connection was so deeply ingrained into their being that its absence would be rather traumatic. Adding deprivation of its normal senses to that and I had a good starting point.

From there, pain would be a good contrast. Going from utter sensory deprivation to a state where as many senses as I could stimulate were screaming at the mind, reporting nothing but pain had to be incredibly traumatic, especially if I managed to make it go from horrible agony back to complete deprivation afterwards. Creating a state where there were only the two extremes, I had no doubt that it would cause the mind to crack within short order.

And if not? Well, at that point I’d have to start the other things, going beyond the physical and even beyond ordinary magic. Inducing Miasma into the body, by using small, controlled amounts of Blood Magic would be the next step. Not only would that be insanely painful, but the pain from Blood Magic was something that went beyond the physical, it was a deep, soul-wrenching pain. Maybe more pain was boring, but I doubted it.

And if it was, at that point, I’d have to start with more direct applications of Mind Magic. Maybe pulling the Mind into the Astral River, as I did with my students, only without the benefit of a reference frame? Throwing the Withered into the deep end, so to speak.

So many interesting ideas, I couldn’t wait to see what would happen.