Panting, Dei stood still as he saw the figure of a human walking towards him with his [Tremor Sense].
It was tall, about a foot taller than him, and muscular. He would assume that they were male because they had a beard, and they wore armor. At their hip was clearly what appeared to be a sword, and a fabric-like texture under it all.
Whoever this was, they were well-equipped. The question he had now was if they were a friend or foe?
It wasn’t a coincidence they appeared now, after he’d been chased by something for the last day, but he couldn’t jump to conclusions.
It wasn’t a coincidence, but whoever this was, might be here to kill the monster, rather than to kill the prey.
The other option was that they were here to kill him. Either because he was a fugitive from Gem Dweller society, or for some other reason, such as simply sadistic pleasure. Serial killers didn’t exactly need reasons.
He stood his ground, unwilling to run now that he was finally faced with a threat. He’d already started producing Wrath mana at the start of his escape, and it was coming to a head now. He hated running, and always would. Survival instincts trumped his anger in most situations though.
Now that he could see a potential threat, he wouldn’t have to run. He was most afraid of a dagger in the dark, catching him unprepared and dying before he realized what was happening.
Either in response to his thoughts on the fight to come, or because the person in front of him was a real danger, Vigilance again boosted his mental capacity.
Meditating to center himself, he dropped low, holding his daggers forward, and told Clever to get ready.
As the person rounded the corner, Dei finally got a look at who he was dealing with.
The man was clearly not of the Gem-Dweller variety, with tan skin and blonde hair, his brown eyes told of a surface dweller. His armor was a well polished dark blue color, and the sword's scabbard was a light brown leather.
“Dont walk any closer!” Dei shouted at the man, and he stopped.
He wore an easy smile, and held his hands up in a placating gesture. “Hold! The hunter greets the traveler!”
Dei didn’t respond for a moment, using High Mind to study his pronunciations of each word. Iora gave him a large packet of information on the gem-dweller language, and its contents had contents regarding inflections in words. This man was attempting to be non-threatening, but Dei was still not trusting of him.
“Why are you here?” he asked. If it was a few months ago, before he was a bit more seasoned, he likely would have asked for help, now he was just focused on escape.
His brows scrunched at Dei’s response, but the smile didn’t leave his face “Err, I apologize if my greeting is improper. I’ve just ventured down from the surface world on a monster hunt in the area. There is supposedly a Prime Synjer in the area, and I was sent to kill it.”
“What is a Prime Synjer?” he asked. The undercurrent of distrust was clear in the way he spoke.
The mans smile widened a bit more, showing his white teeth before he spoke again. “Syngers are sneaky reptiles that chase their prey down through a test of endurance and tracking. They hunt much like Prime Hum- err, surface humans, through endurance. Prime means that something is of the main strain of creature, so a Prime Synjer is not a variant Synger, but part of the main family. Please, come with me, the area is dangerous, and you won't know you are about to be struck down before it is too late if a Synjer finds you!”
As he man spoke, Dei found himself trusting his words. It made sense that a creature would be running him down through endurance, trying to whittle away his energy before striking. He’d already proven that he couldn’t find it, the Synjer probably realized by now that Dei was only putting up a front of knowing where it was.
Something started to nag at him though, a detail he was forgetting. He stayed silent for a second as his face contorted with focus, putting all his mind into remembering what detail didn’t fit.
It kept slipping away, running from his grasp. It was on the top of his tongue, at the edge of his memory, teasing at him, but what… was it?
Activating High Mind to stimulate his eidetic memory, felt the sensation of breaking through a barrier as a thought came to him.
He was being hunted in his dreams. Surely, Synjers could hunt in their dreams, right? He hadn’t asked, but the stranger would tell him.
He activated the eidetic memory again, replaying the last few moments, studying it.
And seeing the barrier in his mind break down.
Something was trying to block him from remembering that he was being tracked through dreams. Something was messing with his mind.
With that thought, he knew the man in front of him was an enemy. The Synjer might be real, or it might not, but the man was invading his mind to hide facts. He probably wasn’t sure if Dei knew that Synjers didn’t hunt through dreams, so he used a preemptive mental block to hide his own realization from him.
The man was an enemy, but there was more than that. More pieces to put together before he attacked.
Dei thought back to how the route he’d taken was odd before, but couldn’t piece why. Using eidetic memory to sift through the sensations of Tremor Sense, broke through another barrier, allowing him to scan over his own route in a way he couldn’t before.
After the first time Dei was awoken in the night, and when he started running, Dei changed course. It hadn’t even occurred to him to continue on to checkpoint three, instead taking an “evasive” route that led in a completely different direction. He took a ninety degree angle, running straight away from the Bog.
That wasn’t what he meant to do… and he was not days further away from home, much closer to the surface. Why would he do that? It was now clear to him that he was being manipulated from the very start.
There was no monster ever chasing him, he was running into the gullet of a monster.
This man, if he was human, had the ability to track him through dreams from tens of miles away, and control him remotely.
The man had to die.
Now that he knew the man specialized in controlling his opponent, he could get a bead on his abilities. He likely had a high Magical stat to help pierce through the defenses of others, so Dei needed to avoid attacks if at all possible. He would have no chance of tanking the mans magical abilities.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
That being said, his new Null mana would be his friend. Dei now had four hundred, earning one hundred during all the running he’d been doing, and he was going to use it to cancel this mans hold on him.
The moment he did, the man would know that Dei was aware. Dei also needed to worry about Fang and Clever, to ensure they would not be controlled, and for that he had a plan.
The Null mana was already in its own sectioned off boxes in batches of one hundred, as was required to make it, so it was ready to go. Releasing the latch of the first one, he flooded his entire body with it, focusing mainly on his head.
He felt multiple magical structures breaking throughout his body, finding that there was a fucking LOT of them. Dei was infested with odd ethereal magic pathways, but they didn’t permeate his mind, they permeated his soul.
Soul mana, imbued with an intent to “control,” began flying out from his body as Dei kicked off the ground as hard as he could, sending himself towards the man.
The next thing he did was release a second latch, getting another two hundred Null mana, and exploding it outwards from his body, sending it all into the area.
Using Soul Sight, he watched as structures built into Clever and Fang were also disrupted, breaking his hold on them.
The smile on the mans face widened to an impossible degree, and Dei watched as hundreds of threads composed of Soul mana shot towards him. Most of the threads bounced off the cloud of Null mana, but when one did, no other Soul mana would run into that particular piece of Null mana.
The man had such a high Mental stat, that he was tracking where every point of Null mana on the battlefield was, despite them being invisible.
Dei swatted the threads that closed in on him, glaring at the man as the Null mana permeating Dei’s body formed a barrier just below the surface of his skin.
While Dei was completely unable to control mana outside of his body, he found a supernatural control and awareness for any mana inside his body.
The tendrils continued to rain down upon him though, digging deeper into his body. They did not physically hurt him, but seeked to disable.
Clever and Fang were also coming out of their stupors, finding that they were under attack and completely unprepared.
Dei tried telling Clever to not use his beam attack, as it would refract off all the Null mana in the air and probably blow everyone to bits, but the message was also torn apart by Null mana. He would have to trust Clevers judgement.
A second footstep carried him over halfway to the man, and Dei was beginning to leave the cloud of Null mana, more Soul mana was making its way into him, digging deeper. He went to release a second latch, when a strong memory was retrieved, from deep within his soul.
* * *
Dei sat on the couch, his mother in the kitchen, humming a happy tune-
* * *
A desperate pulse of mana from Fang broke the spell over him, and he gasped as he was halfway fallen to the ground. Her pulse wasn’t able to break the connection fully, much of her own spell was shredded from Null mana, but it gave him the autonomy of his actions to flip the second latch on his Pandora’s Box, releasing another flood of one hundred Null mana that fully shook off all the structured Soul mana.
Dei was beginning to sense a shaking pain throughout his soul, and he noticed that the strands of [Connection] that held it together were being pressed against by Null mana. The Null mana wasn’t strong enough to break the white strands, but the pull against his iron stitches hurt like fucking crazy.
His third step cracked the ground as he pulled everything he could into going just a bit further. Every foot would count, as he needed this thing dead before his Null mana ran out. Close enough now, he released the final latch of his Null mana, but didn’t fire it into the environment, keeping it contained within his body. If he shot it outwards now, he wouldn’t be able to coat the man in Null mana, which was Dei’s plan to counter any magical barriers he potentially had.
The man thought quickly as well, though, and Dei saw Clever charging up a beam.
The Null mana was thin enough in the air for Dei’s message to carry over, telling him dont fire! But Clever acted like he didn’t hear him, opening his mouth as a red hot glow became brighter and brighter.
Dei wasn’t stupid enough to think that the beam was headed for their enemy though. Clever didn’t have any Null mana in him anymore. If he did, he wouldn’t have been able to charge the beam. The man was puppeteering Clever, and Dei expected the korgonda to turn at the last second, firing it at Dei.
When Dei was almost on top of the man, the expected happened. Clever turned towards Dei’s head, and fired his beam.
Dei was ready.
A wall of one hundred concentrated Null mana focused onto the half of his head where the beam would have struck him. He held it with all his might, pushing the Null mana to the edge of his skin as he tilted his head at the perfect angle.
The beam struck the entire right side of his head… and ricocheted.
The angle carried the beam straight into the center mass of the man. It only lasted a single second, but Clevers beam was not to be trifled with.
Dei ignored the after-effects of the man,confident enough that he would at least be stunned, as he sent one command to Clever. “Reverse yourself by two seconds, NOW!”
Confused but trusting, Dei watched the cooling form of Clever flicker for a second, before his usual glow returned, and he slumped in exhaustion. Foremost, Dei wanted to make sure Clever was in top shape if they needed that beam again.
Winning this fight was important, but he could not forget the next fight. He couldn’t risk being attacked with an injured Clever, so he needed him to reverse time and earn his heat back.
He wasn’t even sure if it would have worked, but Clever looked to be his glowing self again, so he put it aside and scanned the man.
Or at least, what remained of him.
The beam became wider as it traveled, so by the time it hit him, it obliterated his entire body from the stomach down.
Dei was aiming for his chest so he wouldn’t miss, and hoping to encompass the man's head, but it seemed he was slightly off.
The man hadn’t even finished falling, the look of clear shock in his eyes as the top half of his body fell onto the molten ground. Despite it all, the creepy smile never left the man's face.
The entire fight took only seconds. From the time when Dei first kicked off the ground to the moment that the beam shredded the man, was only about six and a half seconds.
Dei breathed deeply, smelling charred flesh as he brought in air and tried to calm the pounding of his heart. His teeth were clenched so tightly that he was sure a few would be cracked when he relaxed them, but he didn’t not yet.
Dei wasn’t going to wait for the man to catch his bearings. He knew how effective healing passives in this world could be, and didn’t know if this man had some sort of super regenerating ability.
Using the two hundred remaining Null mana in his body, Dei blasted the man, watching the remnants of multiple Skills stop working as the Null mana canceled them all. It was both shocking and not surprising to see he had over five Soul-based Skills working to repair his broken body.
Dei let out a shout, bringing the red blade down on the mans head and slicing between the eyes. Still, he did not get a kill notification, so he stabbed Fang into the mans chest, where it started pulling his Soul mana away. Next, he brought the flat part of the red blade down on the mans skull, feeling the bones cave him.
Again and again Dei brought the flat of the red blade down, turning the man's head into paste.
But he still didn’t get a kill notification. Pulling Fang out of the body, he went about carving the man up into smaller chunks, tearing him apart piece by piece, while also saving up heat in his body.
When he was full of heat, Dei jumped back and sent a spark of Snap and Heat mana at the body. The Null mana in the area was finally dissipating, and the spark made it to the body unhindered.
He didn’t even realize that it was more heat than he’d ever saved up until the explosion rocked the entire cave system and, finally, Dei felt a notification sound in his head.
His entire body hurt as he slowly picked himself back up, checking the notifications just to be sure.
[EXP gained for killing the Smiler (Level 352). EXP gain raised due to level disparity]
Sweat, dirt, blood, and guts caked his skin as he realized it was finally over. Dei had never fought anything so fucking resilient before.
He had to get away from the explosion, it was sure to attract scavengers, and he didn’t think he was in a condition to fight. The vibrations from the explosion dazed him heavily, but he had to run.
Stumbling away, he desperately searched for a safe place to rest.