Ch.42 Bitten By Your Own Tail

Outside of Muscles' cave, Earth was indifferently looking at Fire and Wind while they tried to coax one another to go in first.

Turning his attention to Water, he felt her awareness focused on him. Mhm... smart as always, thought Earth. While those two bickered with each other, he had stealthfully use some of his tentacles to pull at the uncorrupted Earth Element making this Mindscape, digging closer to his Imprint.

Seeing that he was discovered, he speeds up his pace. Water, on the other hand, pulled at the rivers nearby while protecting them from being corrupted. The cave was quickly surrounded by water, blocking the small traces left behind by the shifting Earth Elements.

Noticing the commotion, Fire and Wind stopped their useless bickering and decided to cooperate. "It will seem we are all running out of patience, he-he," said Wind with a smirking tone.

Fire sent him a feeling of disgust while turning to Earth, "I presume you have no complaints?". Earth sends the feeling of agreement, as his tentacles got wrapped in the soil nearby, moving towards the blackened soil of the cave entrance.

Suddenly, emotions of confusion radiated from Earth's projection, as the other Jewels also started to radiate the same feeling. They felt that their Imprint had somehow split into two, one of them quickly approaching them.

"Thump... THUMP!... THUMP!!!"

Before Earth's tentacles could enter the cave, the earth around them started shaking under the weight of the approaching creature. The Jewels could feel the alarming presence of the thing hidden inside moving closer, before long they could see a towering Lingering Will of a Wolf-Beastmen, staring at them with his blood-red eyes.

Recoiling from the danger, Earth's tentacles retrieved alongside the churning waters around the entrance, gathering around their respected Jewels as a form of barrier.

"Crunch!... Crunch!..."

The Jewel's nerves were tense as they prepared for battle, while the small mountain of muscle stood there, seemingly waiting for something. In the silence before the storm, the Jewels started to feel their connection to a large portion of their Imprints being erased.

"Crunch!... Crunch!..."

Worried, but not daring to move or to take their eyes off the rank eight creature, they stood in high alert of any attacks. Even if they were to use all their means, it was unlikely for them to defeat this thing without sacrificing one or two of them.

"Crunch!... Crunch!..."

The unsettling sound of crunching finally drew their attention. Focusing their senses on the mouth of the beast, they saw a half-eaten arm sticking out of its mouth. The arm was deformed, with a blacken-rainbow color, each bite from it erasing large portions of their imprints.

For a moment the Jewels panic, however, they were not stupid, if the Dungeons consciousness body was really eaten by this Lingering Will, the whole Mindscape would have collapsed by now. They could still feel a much smaller imprint inside the cave.

Communicating with each other, they started to gather their respective elements for a massive combined attack, but before they could, the whole Mindscape started to shake while they felt that the bridge connecting them to it was being suppressed.

In the Mana exchange market, the stage-like pool of mana in the shape of a planet started to ripple, which quickly formed into waves that crashed against the light channels the Jewels tentacles were coming from.

Feeling that the bridge connecting them to this core was being attacked, the Jewels were shocked. After so many years, the Jewels had forgotten how it felt to be attacked and rejected by other cores not part of the Jewels. The bridge was already squeezed to its limit, only allowing the power of the six ranks thru it, and now the sliver of consciousness they condense after so much trouble started to crack.

Both enraged by the pain and frustrated that their only chance to evolve is slipping away, the Jewels could not hold back anymore. In the pool of Mana, the dots of different shining lights brighten significantly. The Mindscape's beautiful sky turned cloudy and gloomy, the elements of wind, fire, water, and earth went astray.

The whole place looked like a catastrophe, whit fire raining down, violent wind gusts, earth constructs, and water snakes. However, all of these formidable elements carefully weave and ducked under the canopy of trees and buildings, not daring to harm a single tile or leaf.

"RAAAWWRRRRR!!!"

With a powerful shout, the small giant charged at the Jewels, each step forward expanding the corrupted area as the ground and trees blacken and rotted into dust. With a lot more room to maneuver, the Jewels started a battle with the beast.

The battle was fierce, with the Beast attacking like a rabid dog, each swipe or bite destroying anything nearby. Yet... something was wrong. Even with the Jewels going all out, nearly strangling themselves to pass the slowly narrowing entry points, they should not be able to damage this beast without a single casualty.

Yet the beast seems all too willing to walk right into the path of our attacks. At first, they thought that it was intending to trade blows but quickly noticed that even if there was a chance to kill one of their projections it would quickly stop and embrace the other three's retaliation.

The Rank eight creature slowly weaken after taking so many attacks, becoming closer to the peak of Rank six as his giant body shrank noticeably. The fight became easier and easier, apart from the strange actions the beast did, the area of corruption had grown to a point the Jewels could indiscriminately attack with no worries

Even if they were to get cornered, they would have enough power to resist one of the Beast punches mostly intact. With his life out of danger, Earth started to have little thoughts. Continuing to battle, Earth attacked less frequently, to not encore suspicion, he had his constructs focus on defending the rest, allowing them to focus solely on attacking.

Continuing where he left off, he pulled more uncorrupted soil from the Mindscape, drilling closer to the now much smaller imprint while protecting the elements from getting corrupted.

Suddenly, he stopped. Even though the soil was now controlled by so many different wills, that it can't maintain the form of Elemental Earth anymore, as the Jewel of earth, he could still sense what was happening in the deform earth nearby.

Small nearly unnoticeable vibrations were heading towards the smaller Imprint in the cave. He quickly Thought Water was scheming something, however, she was still fighting behind his shields, no matter how weak the will had gotten, it can still kill any of these rank six projections.

Using one of his tentacles, he draws closer to one of the vibrations. Close enough for his senses to see the source, he sees a small worm quickly digging thru the corrupted soil. To his surprise, he was only slightly faster than it. Nearly reaching the worm, he started to get a familiar feeling from it, this feeling was... the Imprint?

At that moment the worm stop moving forward, seemingly aware of Earth's presence, the 'head' of the worm turns to him. There, attached to the front of the worm, was a small silhouette of half a face, pure white with a large smiling eye and mouth. The feeling of familiarity increased, this... this was definitely the Imprint but... I can't feel my control over it?

The Imprints were refined out of their own will fragments, it took a lot of work to copy the blind faith the Church can instill in creature's minds. This form of intent was natural and seamless, the victim taking these new thoughts as their own. They were all tools for their plan to bypass the shackles the Worlds Will had on them.

After so many failures they managed to create the intent of loyalty, love, bravery, and reliance towards them in such small quantities to fool the World's Will. The donated emotions acting like an egg, they would both protect and keep the Cores safe by teaching them how to survive, as well as giving them the willpower to fight off the lingering wills, before they willingly submit to them.

This core however was a special case. Being a Prismatic Core, it could accept the donated fragments of all four of The Jewel's, drastically increasing the imprint's growth. Adding to this, for some unknown reason, the Worlds Will failed to fuse completely with this core.

Both the speed of the imprint's growth and the incomplete fusion gave this core the opportunity to notice something was wrong. It got to a point that they felt their imprints were discovered and actively resisted against.

If not for the Worlds Will seeing this act as dangerous to its Host, and protecting the core fragments with Imprints on them, they would have lost any chance to forcefully connect to this Mindscape, not to mention the Core could have shattered itself.

Seeing this thing he immediately when for the kill, with this imprint no longer under their control, it can simply piece together the leftover memories donated to the core, and create a lesser clone. He could not allow an alternate ego of one of the Jewels to be born! That would be disastrous!

"Earth!! Watch out!" Screamed Water at him. Feeling Fatal danger towards his projection he stops the attack on the worm, immediately raising several new earth walls and golems to act as his shields.

"SSSMMMAAAAAAASSSHHH!!"

A single punch crushed nearly all his defenses. Looking past the shields he saw the beast had attacked him with full force, the red and bloody face of a beast that knew only how to kill was gone. In its place were pure white features radiating compassion and warmth.

Large smiling eyes and a big happy smile had replaced the mindless beast face. A shiver went thru Earth's consciousness-body, he could sense the emotions radiating from the beast, it was a pure absolute feeling of regret as if his life ending was truly the best thing for him, and this thing was sad not to deliver it to him.

The other Jewels had stopped attacking not from worry, but shock, they could feel their imprints inside the Beast again. However this time it was not under their control and it had clearly formed a mind of its own.

This was bad! They needed to deal with this thing fast or it would follow their lingering desires and fully control this core. They all attacked without delay, not caring if they hit or killed Earth.

Fire was the first to attack, his firestorms condense into balls of fire similar to [Pyro Ball's] as they blasted towards the beast. Turning his compassion-filled eyes towards The Jewel's attack, the Beast raises one hand toward the firewalls. The black and corrupted soil around them suddenly rose, forming earth walls and golems, protecting it.

Water had condensed her water snakes into strings, as she weaves them into a spider net heading to the Beast. Again, the Beast raises his hand to the new attack, only for the remaining flames from the previous attack to blacken and gathered around his hand.

A large amount of now pitch-black flames swirl around the Beast hand, followed by the blackened soil, forming into a ball that quickly shrunk into the size of a marble. Just before swinging his arm towards Water, the marble was surrounded by dark winds making it spin violently

In the next moment, the ball was sent hurling directly to Water's consciousness-body. In the blink of an eye, the ball had reached the net of water, increasing in size and growing earth spikes, while still spinning. Tearing the net to shreds, the spike-ball continue on tearing the earth walls and golems to pieces.

Sensing danger, Water gathered all rivers and moisture nearby condensing them into a paper-thin film around her projection. With a large impact, the spikes failed to pierce the film completely. While the Beast had just attack, Wind had lunched his own, however, the spike-ball started to wiggle like something was inside of it, expanding in a second, and exploding into a shower of spikes and lava.

"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!" Waters scream was the last thing they heard as her projection shattered into pieces. No longer supported by her will, the gateway in the mana stage was drowned and collapse by the constant mana tidal waves.

Just as Water was killed, Winds attack reached the Beast, twisting the gales into a tornado and condensing it into a blade he managed to slice the beast's midsection in half, turning into meat chunks by the tornado of wind blades.

With the same happy smile, the Beast that was now only an upper body, shrank even more than before while growing the missing body parts. "DESTROY THE PIECES OF FLESH! HURRY!!" Screamed Earth, the remaining Jewels focused on the chunks of flesh as they squirm, turning into tiny worms with smiling half faces, not dissimilar to the Beast's own.

Immediately realizing what was going on, they attacked the escaping worms. Before the Beast could stop them, Earth had created an earthquake, cracking the corrupted soil around the Beast revealing healthy soil underneath it. The clean Elemental Earth quickly formed into golems piling on top of the much smaller beast, as earth walls surrounded them, trapping it inside the earthen prison.

Managing to destroy a large portion of the worms, Fire and Wind quickly went after the ones slithering into the cave. Reaching the deepest end of the cave, they saw the worms integrating with a lump of white flesh about the size of a head. Squirming, the lump of flesh floated into the air, after the worms went inside it, looking at the Jewels with warm eyes.

"This is... the consciousness created from the Imprints?" Looking around, they did not found the Cores own, radiating bloodlust and fury they said, "WERE IS THE CORES CONSCIOUSNESS! Tell us and we might just let you live as one of our supporting cor.........!" Before finishing their words, they shattered into pieces.

Having blacked out, the Jewels came to and saw that they were back in the Mana pool stage, the mana had surrounded them like a cocoon, slicing apart their connection to anything outside the pool.

In their fury, they regrew their tentacle stumps while attacking the mana cocoon, to no avail. Seeing as most of the consciousness body had been severed from them, as well as the slowly shrinking cocoon of mana, they could only leave now or get completely destroyed.

The remaining Jewels could sense someone else was nearby, looking toward that direction, they saw a blacken-rainbow body that was missing an arm and half its face, a Lily monster close by. The remaining hand of that thing was inside the Mana pool, now that they were so close, they could tell the pool was going crazy due to the lingering wills invading it.

What was left of the face turned to The Jewels, as its eye changed from emotion to emotion, settling on mockery, " ThAnKS fOR cOmINg, dOn'T cOmE baCk!"

Radiating rage and unwillingness, the Jewels left thru the shaky bridged connecting them to this Mindscape, although this fragment of their consciousness had been badly damaged, they can still heal from it quickly unlike Water who had hers completely shattered.