Chapter 3: CH3: You Can Talk!

Vergil lacked the killer instinct Dante possessed.

 

He felt that more than ever when he cowered as Gwen consumed victim after victim. He always shrugged his shoulders when hearing about tragedies and tried to act stoically. They were distant, and he couldn’t really affect it one way or the other. But, being in the room, listening, and feeling it was different.

 

She was beautiful in a way, a horrifying predator wrapping her tentacles around her victims before ripping them apart with her beak. Each tendril was coordinated to apply the right amount of pressure before her beak delivered a death blow. Then a long prehensile tongue scooped the brains out of her victim before dropping the corpse to spasm.

 

His stomach flipped, and his latest protein bar fell on the floor. Vergil didn’t have a weak stomach, or he could have ignored things. Ki sense stole his leaving him with an awareness that wouldn’t go away.

 

Worse, he understood the brand that seared his mind also gave him terrible knowledge of cultivation. There was no better filter to search through techniques than to witness one.

 

Seeing her do the things she did and understanding it was a mind freak. Vergil saw it for what it was a body cultivation technique. The brains contained the vital energy from the bodies that Gwen and other psions used to strengthen themselves for further cultivation.

 

While it was biological, the act had a purpose that he couldn’t hide away from in ignorance. Vergil knew exactly why she did it and couldn’t hate her for it. But, on the other hand, knowing the uncomfortable truth was hell.

 

The 20 people in the room were brain dead. It was a requirement for the specific technique she was using to strengthen her body. Whoever set it up had skimped out on the bodies. 20 was insufficient to give her the vital energy needed to cultivate much further. In other words, their lives were spent for almost no reason. Someone was playing a cruel prank on Gwen, giving her only enough resources to skirt the line of cultivation in the Leviathan vein.

 

He hated knowing the brand wouldn’t let him wallow in ignorance of cultivation. It was filled with endless techniques, languages, and lore with barely a filter until he encountered something. The powerful tool branded to his brain did its job well enough to make him sympathize with the monster eating the brains of his fellow humans.

 

“Don’t hate me for what I must do,” Gwen said.

 

It wasn’t quite an order; he could practically taste the slightly greater power in those psychic transmissions. This transmission had a lighter tone meant to soothe him with its graceful frequency. After living with Gwen for a month, he felt no hatred for her.

 

At first, he tried to feel angry at how she treated him, but her minders used humans as dumb labor and snacks. He had seen humans take out the corpses to be recycled often enough. Vergil also learned something interesting. The parental units were Silver rank and living off of Gwen’s wealth.

 

Otherwise, Gwen should have been able to afford far more human sacrifices than 20 in preparation for cultivation in a leviathan vein.

 

Vergil took hold of his psychic power and thought about it. He needed to take what he learned from watching her and the information the brand gave him to streamline his cultivation. In other words, he needed to body cultivate. Only body cultivation was difficult in worlds suited to the act. Psychic techniques might not be very suited for helping body cultivation.

 

Psychic techniques followed two categories Communication and Manifestation. Those two categories could extend into many subcategories; they either used psychic energy to communicate in some way or used it to affect the greater world.

 

There was a subcategory that blended the two called Avatar. In a sense, he would communicate to a higher being and offer it his psychic power to perform an action. Knowing what he needed, narrowed down the techniques from millions to tens of thousands. He also needed a technique to produce a substance that could help his body refine. That narrowed the list of techniques down to the hundreds. Then he needed a technique that he could use at his current intermediate stage prenatal mind cultivation. That left three, and then he needed something that wouldn’t be noticed. And that left him with Black Goat’s Embryo. It took up one of the two slots he had for psychic techniques after reaching the intermediate stage of mind cultivation.

 

For the second skill, he chose something to damage his body enough for the Black Goat’s Embryo to help him. He selected Burst, a technique that needed to drill tiny apertures in the body for psi or psychic energy to flow through him to enhance body telekinesis.

 

Gwen placed her tentacles on his shoulders, and their eyes met. Galaxies spanned her eyes made of tiny blown flex amid a sea of green. She rubbed his shoulders with her head tentacles and brought him closer to her face.

 

“You must be careful when we enter the leviathan vein. Any of your actions could anger a powerful member of the Far Clan. They won’t hesitate to eat you.” Gwen said.

 

“Like you care,” Vergil said through transmission.

 

She pushed him away for a second in shock.

 

“You can talk. I thought humans could only make grunts with their mouths. Not true communication like one of the people. There have been many experiments for hundreds of years in our history. Before we colonized the planet, we made sure you were only non-psionic animals.” Gwen said, and she didn’t seem okay at all with what she had just learned.

 

Suddenly it seemed that they weren’t quite as monstrous as he originally feared, and that opened so many cans of worms.

 

“I don’t think anyone else can,” Vergil said.

 

It was to make her feel better. Anyone who came over could cultivate the mind if they decided to. Knowing how to cultivate and taking on the techniques needed to make it viable to mind cultivate from psychic transmissions were two different things. There were only so many slots open for valuable techniques.

 

Vergil had chosen the one he had for adaptability. It wasn’t the strongest animal that survived, but the one that could adapt to most environments. So case and point, Vergil adapted to cultivate the mind easier and learned techniques to body cultivate and streamline mind cultivation since they were entering into a leviathan vein. It was basically an ore in the ground that radiated psychic energy.

 

“Resistance, of course, must have been the first step to evolve for cultivation. And we have been eating your kind to make leaping into the diamond realm easier. I think I’m going to be sick.” Gwen said.

 

She twisted her lower tentacles into a corkscrew giving him an idea for his cultivation set aside for later.

 

“So about the leviathan vein,” Vergil said.

 

Gwent straightened up and relaxed her tentacles slowly.

 

“We spent a week together, and I’ve told you private things that no one should know,” Gwen said and puffed up to make herself seem more threatening.

 

“The conversations between friends aren’t for the ears of others,” Vergil said.

 

She pointed a tentacle at him before shrinking back.

 

Vergil coughed into his hand after disarming that bomb.

 

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“Human grunts are so weird; why don’t you sing everything? Like in some of the colorful moving pictures, people sing, and it's beautiful. Then you ruin it with grunting the rest of the show.” Gwen said.

 

Her observations felt entirely too hurtful to him, but he could work with her.

 

Did she only watch musicals?

 

“When we get back to my room, you are transmitting what those songs mean,” Gwen said.

 

He didn’t like being told what to do. It made him feel like being rebellious no matter what Gwen said. But, of course, there were still bodies on the floor, and he was alone with a very dangerous alien. His only way out of this place was to find the sarcophagus; he had no idea where to begin searching for it. Except Gwen was a resource.

 

She had enough standing to get close to the Far family’s Leviathan vein. While he didn’t have much of a handle on what being wealthy meant to psions, leviathan veins seemed to be an indicator.

 

Gwen captured her bearing and straightened up. “Do you have a cultivation technique?” She started spinning around in the air. “Of course, you don’t; that was insensitive of me. You’re a burgeoning psychic from a race that communicated through grunting. No matter how advanced your tools, the lack of basic mind-to-mind communication made you animals. Sapient life must at least be able to communicate through mental communication to be considered above animals. I can’t give you my technique because it isn’t built for a human psychic. My human anatomy isn’t great, but how many brains do humans have.” Gwen asked.

 

“One, but it is powerful,” Vergil said.

 

“I’m sure it is, dear, but I have 31 specialized brains, three managerial brains, and a central brain directing everything. So my cultivation technique will not work for you.” Gwen said.

 

Her tone was incredibly condescending but not wrong; her kind had multiple minds for their various tentacles.

 

“I have something that has worked so far,” Vergil said.             

 

She patted him on the shoulder and pulled him closer to her body.

 

“What do you know of the leviathan vein?” Gwen asked.

 

“Isn’t it a rock that irradiates psi?” Vergil said.

 

He didn’t bother to feign ignorance. After trusting her far enough to communicate, he might as well go for broke.

 

“Yes, but not what I meant. Do you know where they’re located?” Vergil shook his head.

 

He assumed the Far clan stored them in a room somewhere. That would make sense since they were treasures.

 

“They are in pocket dimensions created by the generation of their psychic power. Eldritch horrors would quickly overrun the planet if they were stored in the clan. So instead, we tie them to pocket dimensions to safely store their valuable energies in places we can access that aren’t disastrous to our civilization. Along with the veins, there are often other precious treasures like herbs, stones, and eldritch abominations with rare abilities. Unfortunately, we are about to spend 6 months there, and I have no allies.” Gwen said.

 

“You have me,” Vergil said.

 

“Do I after what I’ve just shown you?” Gwen said.

 

Vergil gave the bodies a good look. Men and women were shaved bald and brought out like cows to the slaughter to be food. Some still twitching their skulls were open cans with their contents sucked out. It was evil; if he could call anything that, then it was the callous death of 20 humans as cultivation aids. Worse, they were insufficient to do much more than enhance her chances of a breakthrough by 15% from what his brand told him. It was a waste, and he should hate her.

 

“Yes,” he lacked Dante's killer instinct, but she clearly didn’t. So maybe he needed a callous predator on his side. From her, maybe he could change and adopt her killer instinct.

 

She wrapped him in her tentacles and hugged him tightly while gliding. “What are you doing?” Vergil asked.

 

“This is how a senior holds a junior. You’re so warm, and your heartbeat is weird. Do you only have one?” Gwen asked.

 

“Yes,” Vergil said.

 

“What about in your gills? I’ve noticed you don’t refresh yourself in oxygenated water often. I assumed humans were like us and only needed to wet their gills every 30 to 40 hours.” Gwen said.

 

He gave her a horrified look. Did the psions not care about their human servants that much? Humans studied everything they could about dogs and cows for comparison to better keep them healthy.

 

“I am joking, mostly. I know humans have lungs; they are semi-aquatic and use tools to travel in environments they are ill-equipped to handle. It's why your kind prefers the wet depths of the undercity.” Gwen said.

 

“Let's get to that leviathan vein and cultivate. I would rather not discuss how wrong you are.” Vergil said.

 

Gwen looked at the bodies and used her body to block the sight. “Well, no time like the present. I only ask that you act like a resistant for now unless you want to expose yourself and see where the moons lay.” Gwen said.

 

Vergil decided to follow her lead.

 

“Gwen, I thought you were only going to cultivate for a month,” Vergil said.

 

“Time flows six times faster in the Levaithan Vegin dimension. It's why I brought 24 protein bars for you.” Gwen said.

 

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