Riezel and I were minding our own business when I heard the distant sound of gigantic insectoid legs beginning to dash towards us. I turned to Riezel and spoke, using my actual voice and not telepathy.
"Hey, it seems that the insects get mad when we take emeralds. They're coming. Get ready." I warned her, causing her to nod at me even as she gave me an annoyed look. She notched an arrow onto her bow and readied herself. I sensed her sharpening her senses and readying herself for battle. I turned and faced the depths of the cavern, where I knew the monsters were coming from.
I opened my hands and flexed my fingers as I watched and waited for the gigantic beasts to come into view. I intended to experiment today and come to a few conclusions about monsters before we left the dungeon so it made sense for me to get creative.
Off in the distance, the first of the creatures surged into view from beyond the darkened cavern. The creature that raced towards me was what could only be described as an utterly gigantic ant one that was taller than the average inhabitant of Jasper. It had the same basic structure as an ant, aside from its enormous size and it was surging towards my companion and me faster than a galloping horse. Riezel tensed as she felt the thing beginning to close in on her and me.
Now that I could see it in the distance I aimed at the beast and focused. I reached out with my mind across the enormous distance that separated us and when I felt the creature's mind I forced my way into it as if I were attempting to punch through a wall. I was normally subtle but I didn't need to be subtle here. I was both lucky and unlucky as I found that the beast had no resistance to psychic abilities and when I forced my way into its mind it had no ability to resist my mental prodding. And the monster's mind was a strange place.
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A humanoid's mind, in my experience, tended to be a somewhat ordered place where thoughts were organized and based on stimuli and were structured into words and sentences. A demon's mind, if one assumed that Riezel was fairly normal for her kind, was a strange but still understandable place, where chaos and oftentimes but not always maliciousness or selfishness informed thoughts which usually presented themselves as words but sometimes were transformed into mere sensations instead. This creature's mind was neither of those things.
In my mind's eye, I found myself in a strange, utterly dark sort of place. At first, that was all there was. It actually reminded me of the dreamscape I was in when I ascended. But after a few moments of being "inside" of the creature's empty mind, I felt something I had never felt before: another presence. I was not the only alien being in this place.
I felt myself be noticed by the alien mind, and as I did I felt... cold. I wasn't scared, not really, but there was something utterly inhuman about the other alien. Something completely detached from anything I could understand, even from maliciousness or anger.
The other presence was unimaginably large, and if I had to guess I'd probably hypothesize that the cause of the strange darkness that utterly consumed this place was this other presence. I couldn't "see" the other presence, in so far as I could "see" anything in a mind, but it was definitely there. I could feel its alien presence as easily as I felt my own. If so this darkness might well have been the thing driving monsters to attack humans, or at least this dungeon's monsters to attack humans.
The strange entity and I mentally "gazed" at each other for a moment. Well... That might have been me giving myself too much credit. The entity gazed at me, and I was in its presence, staring at the strange, empty mindscape which surrounded me. After a few moments I "spoke" into the creature's mind, and "to" the presence.
"Are you a manifestation of the dungeon core? Some sort of controlling ego that drives these monsters?" I asked, my hyper-intellect driving my line of questioning. The presence didn't deign to answer my questions, but I continued to feel it, studying me. I stayed in the entity's mind for a few moments before sighing and leaving in annoyance.
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"Well that was useless" I muttered, out loud when I retreated from the mind of the monster. The creature continued to charge at my companion and me, and in a huff of annoyance, I rose my hand and lifted the creature into the air using my potent telekinesis. I froze it solid using my mind, exerting enough mental force to not only keep it from moving however it wanted but to actually keep it from moving at all.
"That's enough." I uttered, before dragging the beast through the air towards Riezel and me. As I dragged the creature through the air I felt it enter a state of fury and inarticulate rage. Before it had only been obeying orders, but now the beast was actually actively angry that it was interrupted and was being overpowered. Nevertheless, I continued to drag the frozen monster towards me. I needed it to begin to understand the limits of my own power.
Riezel's senses were less honed than mine were so when the creature, in her eyes anyway, appeared in mid-air, frozen in place she let out a small gasp in surprise and took aim at the thing. When she had the creature in her sights and was aimed at it, she was unsure of what to do and called out to me.
"Do... Do I take the shot? You're holding it still, right? Do you need help or is there a reason why you're doing this?" She asked me.
"Not yet. Just... give me a second. Keep your eyes straight ahead. I can deal with this one, and there are more coming. I need to test something." I replied, before flipping the creature in mid-air so that it wasn't facing us as some of these monsters were known to spit acid and venom. I lifted it so that it was in the air almost directly over my head before releasing some of the tension and allowing the creature to move one specific body part: its head.
The second I gave it the room to move its head it began to screech, the noise loud but not quite stunning either Riezel or myself even though it definitely made us wince in annoyance and shock. The sound it made was an unintelligible one, the roar of an enraged animal. It continued to wail like this for a few moments, almost long enough for me to shut it up before finally making different sounds. Ones I could actually understand.
"Kill! Kill! Crush! Break!" The creature roared, causing me to smile. A second after the beast began to roar in its strange language, I glanced at my companion and read her mind to see if she could understand the little nightmare. I didn't know much about demons so I had no expectations one way or another as I peered into her memories.
I quickly found that to her the creature's nonsensical noises were all equally incomprehensible. For a moment I considered bestowing upon her the gift of omnilingualism, but I quickly shook that thought out of my mind.
I lowered the beast and brought it closer to me to test another power of mine on it. In the distance the next three of the creatures just reached far enough away that I could faintly see them, meaning they were still kilometers away from where I was. I wordlessly began to activate another of my powers, curious to see if my pheromones would have the effect on it that they had on other creatures.
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My ability to utilize pheromones was one of my more potent abilities, especially in its capacity to neutralize enemies. My pheromones worked by allowing me to seize control of a potent portion of an enemy's mind: their nucleus accumbens, or the part of the mind that controls pleasure.
An enemy that inhales my pheromones, be it one that is sapient, unintelligent, or sentient, should be able to be affected by my pheromone power and thus face great difficulty in attacking me. My pheromone power was also one of my more intense ones, as it allowed me to rewire portions of someone's mind if I wanted, though I didn't feel bad about using it to stop an enemy attacker. That said, a lesser undead creature, a creature with no pleasure centers in its brain, or is somehow immune to such tampering could ignore my ability.
Dungeon cores made monsters out of magical energy, so it was certainly possible that such monsters could be immune to my ability. I was determined to test that out here and now, before testing that would be disastrous. This was why I had only dragged one of the creatures my way, so I could conduct this experiment under controlled circumstances.
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I controlled the range of my pheromones and kept them from radiating too far out of me. I didn't want to distract Riezel who was a good distance ahead of me and keeping watch. In time I intended to join her and if necessary defeat the remaining ants through violence. I fully expected that to be necessary, given the strange nature of the ant's mindscape.
I concentrated the pheromones in a very small radius around myself and froze the monster when it had its mouth open so that the pheromones could fully seep into it. I then began to study the monster's physical body and its mind to see if any changes occurred. Nothing happened right away, which was a possibility I had considered.
And then a few moments passed. And nothing happened. In studying the creature's mind I realized, with some degree of annoyance, that the presence within it was able to fully block my pheromone power, and beyond that, it was certainly possible that the creature had a sort of mind that was simply immune to pleasure-based manipulation. With an annoyed grunt, I placed my hand on the side of the giant ant and disintegrated the thing through a simple usage of my "Destruction" power. I watched as the ant began to fall apart and turn to dust, before blowing away entirely. As I did so I shut off my pheromone power, my body immediately ceasing production of the powerful scent.
I turned my attention fully to the approaching ants, just in time to see another six appear behind the next three. I moved forward and placed a hand on Riezel's shoulder, as energy began to pool in my free hand.
"I got this. I'll leave you two to fight so I can see how you handle yourself in combat." I whispered, before I rose my freehand and fired a truly gigantic ball of energy into the air between the monsters and us. The ball sailed quickly through the air, closing the distance on the charging ants before beginning to glow brightly.
The ants rushed headlong, regardless of the odd orb in the air. That was a mistake. Once they were close to the orb the orb exploded, and from within the sphere of energy numerous rainbow colored beams zoomed out and struck seven of the ants down in one move, smashing their exoskeletons with the force of a mace swung by a professional warrior whose adrenaline was spiking. Two of the ants continued to dash forward, undeterred by the display of power.
The ball I had launched was actually the product of a fusion of two separate powers of mine. I combined my ability to unleash explosive blasts of energy with my will-casting and I created a ball that would sail through the air for a short distance before exploding into beams capable of striking down numerous enemies at once. The ants were unimpressed by it, but I felt Riezel's estimation of me sharply increase, having seen the ants die due to the explosion of rainbow colored energy smashing into their bodies and ending their lives in a multicolored mess, off in the distance.
She didn't say anything though, even as she smirked. She did speak a moment later though, while watching as the ants began to creep into her field of view.
"Two? I think I can handle two." She told me, nodding softly. I also nodded and took a step away from her. As I did, I momentarily wondered if I should give her a gun of some sort.
Guns were not things that I knew of, or at least they hadn't been. But Riezel knew of them, she even had experience with them, because she was not from this world, which meant that through her I had knowledge of and experience with guns. Riezel had explored distant galaxies and far off worlds. She had been in cultures tens of thousands of years more advanced than that of Vanheim, and had seen places infinitely more advanced on a purely technological level than anything I had ever seen myself.
I had given her a bow because in this world bows were the normal ranged weapons and her having one would answer the question of what kind of adventurer she was. But now we were alone and that meant I could be more free. I rose a hand in the direction of her bow, and I closed my eyes. As I did I began to speak.
"Actually, I'll give you the slightest helping hand. Bows aren't really what you're used to using so allow me to outfit you with something your speed." I uttered, before using "Transmutation" to transform her bow into a simple "plasma" gun. As I did I heard her gasp in surprise and delight.
"Is this a plasma pistol?! Whoa! This world has those?" She asked, causing me to chuckle as I continued to outfit her weapon. I equipped the thing with what was known in her mind as a "Sniper scope" to allow her to aim the weapon over long distances. I opened my eyes and urged her to use the scope with a gentle prod in the direction of the ants.
"This world, at least as far as I know, does not. But the thing is... You know what this is. Which is enough for me to know." I told her, somewhat cryptically. She gave me a look indicating that she was not a fan of that crypticness, which caused me to chuckle. Nevertheless the demoness did as I suggested and upon using the scope became able to spot the ants in the distance.
I watched her pull the trigger once and smiled as I watched a plasma bullet exploded out of the weapon and speed across the cavern. The bullet itself was a bright, small, fast orb that sped across the cavern so quickly that it would have been invisible to a normal human, and even for Riezel was difficult to track visually. Nevertheless she saw it when it slammed into the ant's gigantic head and caused the thing to melt into a pool of molten sludge.
I saw Riezel cheer excitedly when she watched her target stop running and instead start to crash and flip, due to the momentum carrying it when it was sniped. She began to smugly grin and got up while turning to face me.
"With this gun... Oh I can do a lot." She told me, while casually aiming her gun behind her. She pulled her gun's trigger and I watched as another bullet exploded out of the gun, and slammed into the skull of the final ant, also effortlessly murdering the final ant. I chuckled at her display and nodded approvingly.
"Not bad. You and I make for a fun team." I told her, enjoying this chance to see her in action, even though I already knew she was capable of surprising and effective violence.