Chapter 147: Mind Break. (DOUBLE CHAPTERS TODAY!!!)

The world shook. A breath escaped my mouth in a low growl. My head hurt so fucking bad. I opened my mouth to say something, but then the pain in my brain only quadrupled as I felt a strong impact at the back of my skull.

“Fuck…” I glared now finally getting a good look at the inside of a wagon, the reinforced bars that sealed it, and faces both vaguely familiar and not.

I felt another strike on my head, and then another, until I was forced to sleep once more.

I woke up. I was in a cell, behind bars… a dungeon of some kind! Templars waited stoically beyond my prison. The cold touch on the stone floor was palpable through my skin. I no longer had my armor but only fucking rags.

I breathed harder. My eyes narrowed. I should not be here, I had been captured. So I must stay here and wait for further instructions.

A pain seized my body. Wrath overtook my mind. I screamed and the templars startled, now raising their weapons. But they shouldn’t be worried because I would not dare attack them when they were the solfiers of the Angels–

Huh?

What?

My headache worsened with every passing moment. The wrath… it was caused by magic, and now its source moved frantically about inside my own body. It was… it was… it meant something. It wanted to convey something… I needed to remember…

The orb. The core. The memory core!

I took hold of the Mutation and extracted all of the knowledge I could. Instantly, I remembered who I was. The memories came flooding back. I was Haell fucking Zharignan, a demon, and I was not to be contained!

“LET ME OUT OF HERE!”

I kicked the bars that kept me in my prison. They shook and faltered, but did not fully break. It was made of sterner stuff than expected, whereas my own body was more gaunt that I remembered. No matter. I drew upon my anger at having had my mind violated and kicked harder. It was an insult of the highest fucking order. The metal balked, and so did my bones, but I would break everything including myself if it meant my escape.

“Hey! Stop that!”

“Get back in your cell!”

“She should not be trying to escape right now.”

“Well, she , so help us contain her!”

The four templars began shouting. They poked their weapons in and injured me, but flinched when the same pain was visited upon them by my vengeance passive. I filled the space in front of me with hellfire, hoping to weaken the bars further, and sending the guards outside screaming and rolling as a big bonus. I kicked and kicked and kicked again until my hooves felt like they would fall off at any moment, but finally the gates broke at the hinges and blew wide open.

I immediately rushed out. The templars had somehow gotten back to their feet, though half were trying to escape. I dodged the attacks of the two that stayed to fight me, and then I punched one in the face and stole his sword.

It was a regular sword, way too small for my liking, and made of some stupid material, but for now it’d have to do. I finished off the guy I stole it from, killed the other templar, and then stabbed the two running ones in the back. Only a long corridor awaited me from there, and then a massive reinforced vault door, so I quickly made way to the only exit in this hopeless fucking place.

I slammed the regular puny sword on the door. It shook, but did not budge any further. I gritted my teeth and activated the confluence of my wrath even with this lesser vessel of a sword, and I managed to get some decent-ish power, but it was not enough to break open the gates. Only leave a deep gouge, while the weapon that I’d stolen broke into pieces.

“Fucking hell. Can’t even equip their own templars properly.”

I resorted back to kicking. This time with the other leg so I did not entirely cripple myself. I was sure there would be more to fight and kill out there, to punish for this atrocity that I had suffered and endured.

The doors slammed open, but in the entirely wrong way. It smashed into me, and I was blasted back, but I was immediately back on my feet as templars and guards streamed in. I was upon them before they knew what was happening, biting, kicking, screaming, and stealing their own weapons to stab them with. And then, someone particularly strong grabbed my arm and tossed me into the ground. I coughed up blood, but that did not stop me from glaring at her. A level 40 woman in resplendent golden armor…

“Fuck. Why are you alive. I fucking killed you!”

“As if I would die to a silver ranked monster like you. The angels have greater plans for me–”

I tuned out the rest of what she was to say. I was naked, alone, outnumbered, and without my proper weapon.

The chances were slim, so I had to use everything I could.

I had done it once already, and I survived. What’s one more more time?

I seared the objective into my mind as I reached for my hyperdemon gland and squeezed.

I felt my mind melt into its most primal state.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

I latched onto the dead woman walking. Her hours numbered, and her death by my hands inevitable and unstoppable. I was unstoppable. I bit into her helm, punched her, stabbed with daggers, smashed with maces, the dumb bitch staggered, I gave chase, she would not be saved, no one would save her now, she was in my clutches, she desperately retaliated, but her strikes were nothing to me, I would crack open that shell, cook and rot the meat within so die die die die die die die die– My strikes were getting weaker. I growled and gnashed and struck and slammed my head in frustration, but the power was leaving me along with the lifeblood. I detonated it all, along with what was left inside, and blood poured out the woman’s helm, she was dying and I would be her end. But she would not fall, the world was rapidly turning dark, and before I had the chance to kill who I wanted to, . It was frustrating. It was maddening. The other templars were getting in the way. I had to swim through all their bodies to reach the one I hated the most. Fucking leave me alone. I would destroy it all, before I could be taken again, so feel my rage and fury for the final–

Fuck.

FUCK!

I did not go through with it this time either.

I gased. I woke up with fingers digging into my skull. I immediately glared at the shepherd man who sneered down at me, a dozen shepherds around us, all with the exact same indignation in their stupid faces. I could feel their magic, questing around, now digging inside my mind. Some were grimacing from the pain, but they needn’t have worried. The pressure on their minds lessened, and their faces gradually slackened, as I was sure they were glad to finally get some gradual relief.

“So you’re Haell,” Duke Astro said. I pieced together from disjointed memories his real identity. “You’ve really made a mess of things here. I’m almost impressed, you’ve managed to undo my influence and kill so many good templars. It gives even me a headache just to touch your mind like this. I can feel it in my mana, curse invading it from within. But there’s just no way I’d even be able to affect you at all if I did not connect my own mind to your absolutely twisted one. Tell me, how did you do it?”

“Fuck you,” I spat on his face.

Astro frowned, and the rest of his retinue were utterly incensed.

“No matter. You’ll tell me all the answers I need soon enough.”

His disgusting tendrils of mind magic invaded my head even deeper. I could feel it, the ideas he wished to impart, and my very sense of self being overwritten. There was no feeling more mortifying, so I resisted with all my might for every inch. The chains around me grew taut, the metal dug into my skin, but they did not break.

“Tell me,” he asked. “What am I to you?”

“Duke Astro, a High Priest and a great general–No, no. Fuck that! NO!”

“Yes,” he smirked in the most self-satisfied manner. I screamed and spat at him, but that only made him break me faster.

The interrogation continued. Questions were asked, and I grimaced whenever I gave the ‘correct’ answer, before quickly taking it all back. However, as time passed, even my resistance began to fail. I grew exhausted from the efforts of constantly trying to resist. I struggled to keep myself together.

The shepherds showed no mercy and pounced on my weakness. They dove into my mind even deeper, and destroyed what beauty they could, only to replace it with their putrid own. My mind was breaking. I was forgetting. Who I was. What I stood for. What it meant to be a demon. What it meant to be .

The madness and my ego intersected. That which I had held back came flooding out. The blood drained from my head and dark spots immediately began forming in my vision.

In unison, we proclaimed,

“MINDBREAKER!”

My enemies fell. The curse traveled up the bridges they’d so foolishly built into my mind. They all convulsed on the dirty ground, spasming uncontrollably. But there was no panic in their eyes, for the unblinking stares they gave were completely empty blank. Utterly devoid of thought. Forevermore.

I laughed.

Oh how I laughed.

And laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.