Chapter Ninety-Seven: Mental Assault

David endured the brain-worm’s relentless psychic assaults while, through the Shadow Attendant’s eyes, he watched the creature itself. One moment his thoughts could barely hold together; the next he was terrifyingly clear-headed.

The strange sensation made him wonder whether he had truly split into two people.

Unfortunately, he had left too little of his mind behind in the Shadow Attendant this time. He could only observe and judge; unlike when he had killed Trainer Jeremy, he could not have the Shadow Attendant operate the long-range sniper cannon remotely.

That required the main body’s concentration, and his body was already on the verge of collapse.

The two armored soldiers beside the brain-worm stepped forward, their first-rank battle axes hacking down at the door of Sniper Control Room Five.

Even though the chamber had been built to military-fortress standards, it could not withstand a first-rank battle axe. In just a few blows, the door would be breached.

David had little time left, and anxiety gnawed at him.

He could not help recalling what the records said about the brain-worm’s appetite: it was a creature that fed on the brains of intelligent life. If he did not find a way soon, his own brain would likely become its meal.

And just then, the brain-worm’s psychic attack struck a peculiar place within David’s soul, where a seedling grew.

As though sensing an outside impact, the seedling burst into dazzling light and repelled the unprepared psychic assault.

Though the counterstroke lasted only an instant, granting David merely a breath’s respite, that was enough.

Seizing the opening, David regained control of his own thoughts. Under his command, the tenacious, arrow-like mental force from within the seedling shot along the path by which the brain-worm’s power had come.

If the brain-worm’s psychic power was a tide, then David’s mental arrow was a water-splitting spear, surging upstream through the flood at astonishing speed.

The brain-worm’s psychic strength was formidable; by measure alone it was at least several times David’s. But it was busy controlling every living thing within a five-thousand-meter radius, while also continuously crushing the minds of more than a hundred armored soldiers outside. Most of its power was tied up in those tasks.

Very little remained to deal with David. Moreover, the brain-worm wanted David’s brain as food and had no intention of killing him outright with its mind. Only a living creature’s brain was delicious.

And because it had finally encountered an intelligent being capable of resisting it mentally, the brain-worm was even inclined to toy with him.

It was precisely under these conditions that David’s mental arrow succeeded in striking the brain-worm.

The creature suddenly felt as though a tiny thorn had pierced its brain, and a wave of pain rippled through its soul. That soul-deep agony severed its control over the nearby minds.

Normally, even a brief loss of psychic control over the intelligent beings it had dominated would not allow them to retaliate in time, because wounds to the soul did not heal so quickly.

But here there was an exception.

David was that exception.

The moment he loosed the mental arrow from the seedling in his soul, he immediately transferred all his consciousness into the Shadow Attendant’s body.

The instant his mind settled there, the brain-worm recovered. Its formidable psychic power shook off the impact with ease.

In fury, the brain-worm unleashed another psychic blast at David’s body. This time the force was doubled, for it no longer wished to preserve his soul intact.

If that strike had landed while David’s consciousness remained in his body, it would have dealt a fatal blow to his mind and grievously damaged his soul.

But the absurd truth was that David’s consciousness was wholly within the Shadow Attendant, and had not received even the slightest impact. Thus, his soul could not be shattered.

The soul is formless and intangible; its channel is the mind, and in David’s present state, the outward expression of mind was consciousness.

Like striking dead matter with no soul, the brain-worm’s repeated psychic blasts received not the slightest response.

This perplexed it, yet its psychic senses told it the human in the control chamber was still alive.

It once again seized control of the two battle-ax soldiers and resumed battering the door.

At that moment, no one noticed that the Seven long-range sniper cannon was adjusting its barrel, while inside the control chamber the Shadow Attendant’s hands were locked onto the control console. Through this, David was operating the Seven long-range sniper cannon.

With one final powerful swing from a battle-ax soldier, the control room door was torn open and the heavy slab crashed to the floor.

The impact was thunderous, like a peal of lightning, and the wall itself trembled.

The brain-worm felt an overwhelming danger, but moving its body required preparatory motions. If it wanted to move now, it would first have to twist around, and by then it would be too late.

The brain-worm had its own defensive method. The two civilian armored soldiers it controlled leapt up and threw themselves in front of its head.

It knew exactly where its weakness lay. When it sensed danger, it knew instinctively what to protect.

The ammunition in the Seven long-range sniper cannon was second-rank ammunition. Against that, and under the violent impact of a long-range sniper cannon, the exoskeletal armor of two soldiers was as thin as paper.

The second-rank sniper round punched clean through both soldiers without slowing, then slammed into the center of the brain-worm’s head.

A flash of deep blue light later, the round vanished into its skull.

The first to suffer were the nearest thirty-three civilian armored soldiers. Having been enthralled, they had stood right beside the brain-worm. The two soldiers it had just used as shields should also have been among them, but those two had been killed outright by the round that pierced them.

Psychic force, now almost physical in substance, turned into countless sharp spikes and burst outward from the brain-worm’s brain.

This utterly materialized mind power had lost the advantage of being invisible and intangible, but its lethality had not diminished in the least.

The psychic spikes tore through the civilian soldiers’ exoskeletal armor and pierced their bodies. What was most terrifying was not the outward wound, but the destruction wrought upon the spirit once the spikes entered the body.

This was the brain-worm’s final strike. All its psychic power erupted at once, forming a circle of death within several dozen meters of its body.

Every living thing within that death ring was pierced by the spikes, its spirit destroyed.

The only exception was still David. The walls of his control chamber were riddled with more than a dozen through-holes, and he was unhappily struck by two psychic spikes.

Fortunately, the wounds were only to his left shoulder and right leg. The soul-shattering force contained within the spikes did not injure him.

At that moment, David paid no attention to the injuries to his body. He was instead lost in an exquisite bliss.

The Shadow Attendant he inhabited had first absorbed two weaker souls, then a vast and overwhelming one. It was a sensation of comfort David had never known before, and the feeling flooding back from the Shadow Attendant made him nearly lose himself.

Thankfully, the sensation came swiftly and passed swiftly as well. After the great soul was absorbed, David thought it was over, but then one weaker soul after another entered, each filling the Shadow Attendant’s spirit with that same intoxicating ease.

Only after a long while did he finally come to his senses.

The Shadow Attendant flew out of the control room and saw the brain-worm sprawled on the ground, white cerebral matter and greenish blood continuously spilling from the center of its skull.

Within several dozen meters of the creature, every patch of ground, including the soldiers themselves, was riddled with tiny holes.

The soldiers’ bodies oozed red blood. The Shadow Attendant had an exceptionally keen sense for life, and with only a glance David knew that not a single living thing remained in that entire area.

He also saw the holes in the wall of Sniper Control Room Five, and his heart jolted.

Could his own body have been hit as well?

He hurriedly tried to draw his consciousness back into his main body. As it returned, searing pain flooded him.

In his previous life and in this one, David had never suffered any grave injury. In his former life, at worst, he had cut his hand, and the last thing he had felt was the impact before being struck to death. After coming to this world, he had never been hurt at all. Such pain made him think he was on the verge of dying.