“So Asher, you been adjusting well to the world?” Ben asked. “And Taya, you adjusting to existing?”

“I don’t think existing requires much adjustment,” The lightning spirit laughed while the wraith tilted his head in thought.

“It’s been unexpected but the spirits have been helping me adjust and the country has been kind to me. Compared to my life before, I have no complaints, apostle.”

Considering his life before involved centuries of imprisonment, that was far from a glowing review but he seemed positive enough at least, the intangible aspects of his nature and immortal lifespan giving him a better tolerance for what he’d been through compared to so many of the other prisoners who weren’t even safe to unseal, with all of them still weighing heavily on his mind. He’d tried to help them the best he could by connecting to them but he was no therapist and their trauma ran deep, in the end he could only feel lucky that as many of the ones he’d brought back had managed to hang on to some level of sanity even despite the thousands of years they might have been held.

It was one problem him new mental structure didn’t help him immediately solve, even if that might have been as due to a lack of useful information as anything else, but it was still something that he needed to work on, even if that matter was regulated to a different part of himself while the front of his thoughts tried to make conversation with the two unique beings as they made their way through the streets.

“And you’re making friends then?” He asked Asher, nodding to Taya and getting a confused look for the question.

“Maybe? I’ll admit their nature still confuses me. Despite being made of the same stuff, socially I believe my people have more in common with the standard mortals of the world, or perhaps its fairies would be the best comparison. Endless but not so, shall we say, focused?”

Well, I guess that’s fair.

Unlike the standard spirits or elementals, wraiths, or at least the one he was interacting with, naturally took a far more human-like shape and like both the fairies and great spirits, didn’t seem so focused on the aspects of their element that made them up as others of their nature. It made them and Asher easier to talk with but there was still the wall of eternity separating them from other mortals that set them apart from the others who made up the world.

Despite the answer though, Taya laughed, slapping his back as she did. “Ah, what’re you talking about? We’ve been getting on for months now, haven’t we? Just cause I’m not them doesn’t change that.”

“Hence my confusion,” The wraith shrugged, leaving Ben to look between the two before focusing back on Taya.

“One of the spirits that helped birth you has been getting along with Asher since he arrived?” Ben guessed, leaving her to focus back on the one at her side.

“See, he gets it.”

“Alright, I still don’t.”

“Uh, I’m not sure about your people, Asher but when spirits are born they inherit some of their… Well, I don’t actually know how they’d describe them since they don’t think of them as parents. Contributors? Either way, the new ones get some of their memories. Is that what happened? One of the spirits that made you had been talking to him.”

“Two,” She clarified. “A light and an air.”

“Them?” Asher asked, beginning to understand what she meant. “But I still see them?”

“And now you see me too.”

“...Apostle, I’d like to retract my previous statement. This world is taking a bit longer to get used to than I’d like to admit.”

“Ha, yeah, I can understand that. Still, if you’re making friends then you’re making a place here. I’d like to think that counts for something.”

They stepped through the gate as he said it, only a few steps more taking him to the untamed lands where he finally hoped to get the chance to begin his tests, with only one small problem he hoped the great spirit would be able to solve. The gate was the world’s portal to the heart of the untamed lands and as such was heavily trafficked. While there were many gates to many points of it, adventurers and armies alike would pass through for their deeper expeditions to clear out any demons growing in them and that meant the immediate vicinity was going to be safer than even most villages that found themselves far enough from a given city. If he wanted access to demons, they’d have to go deeper.

“So, will you be able to find me any demons and bring them back here?” Ben asked. “Or are we going to have to go a lot deeper?”

He already knew that they both would have control over their bodies to fly out wherever they’d need to and his level of power meant he’d be able to fly himself at high speeds as well too but before it could come to that, Taya held up her hand to stop him.

“You just wait here, I’ll be back in a flash.”

She vanished as she said it, the energy form she wore not even leaving a breeze as she shot away, leaving only a single question on Ben’s mind that had nothing to do with the speeds she could reach or if the element she ruled over meant she’d be faster than some of the more physical spirits like Abrus or Salinoth.

Did she just make a pun?

He really was going to need to try to familiarize himself with all of the new great spirits and their personalities at some point for both Thera and Mora’s sakes but that was one of many future problems. In less than a minute she was back, two demons in hand, their limbs crushed and leaving them both to scream as she dropped them at his feet.

“Sorry, I didn't ask how whole you needed them. Are these good or should I go get some more?”

“It doesn’t matter how beaten they are as long as their heads are okay but I will trouble you to get some more if you don’t mind. I don’t know how many I’m going to need to go through.”

The spirit nodded and left again, giving Ben room to begin his tests as he looked at the demons on the ground before him and connected to them, doing different things to different ones.

The first getting the full force of his mind, feeling the demon’s self be erased in the process and leaving blood to begin dripping out of its orifices only a moment later, the strain destroying its brain and killing it instantly which was not only the expected result but also one he doubted he’d been looking for. He’d been able to kill things with the strength of his thoughts even before he’d awakened to eldritch mind and while it hadn’t always worked in the past, it was often enough that it would have been more shocking if his new state hadn’t been enough to kill something like that.

It also wasn’t something he could view as a separate skill. Sure, he was breaking their minds like the skill said but he was also destroying far more than that and what he’d just done was nothing new. If that was the method through which he was meant to do it then he should have gained that skill ages ago, meaning he had to turn his attention to the second for continued testing, interacting with its thought structure in a few different ways until it too broke, putting his experiments to a pause until he got more and leaving him to experiment on each successive demon.

The small bit of instinct he could feel for the skill didn’t tell him much. He knew it was one he needed to connect to use but that wasn’t much to go off of as the bodies built up around him, drawing a few eyes from the others passing through the gate as he worked that were largely ignored. His focus was being spent on the minds he’d touch, trying to apply his thoughts and mana in different ways until he finally found one that worked.

In essence, it seemed the nature of the skill meant he could use his mind to destroy another’s in a method that was only marginally gentler than exposing everything he was to a creature to kill them instantly. Though the demon he figured it out on was essentially gone, its entire history erased from the touch of Ben’s thoughts, its body wasn’t dead nor was its soul lost. He’d done only what the skill seemed to be for and broke the thing's mind, leaving only an empty husk behind.

Which isn’t exactly useful. He admitted with it done. At least not if this is all it can do. If I wanted it dead then there’s a million better ways and if I wanted a new body to work through then condemning it would be just as good, if not better since it would get rid of the thing’s soul which means if this skill is going to have any value, I’m going to have to see to what degree I can limit it.

He could destroy a creature’s mind but did he have to destroy it in its totality? If not then a world of options would open, some of which having the potential to solve at least one of the problems he was dealing with as the successive groups brought to him became the victims of those tests, seeing if he could break smaller segments and finding success after a few more attempts, working down the degree he was breaking each time into smaller and smaller segments as he destroy specific memories and pieces of information from their minds, slowly deleting their lifetime of experiences until there was nothing left, only in a far more controlled way than the first time.

MIND BREAK LEVEL INCREASED

The level confirmed it. He was using mind break and he was mastering it quickly with all of the bonuses on him, with the skill he’d already been able to develop enough to start seriously thinking about how he’d apply it, with only one last problem to deal with before he could. Ethics.

Hey, Myriad Myriad Myriad, I need a favour.

Is it related to you being surrounded by a pile of corpses?

Tangentially. Can you get me Nare if he’s around?

I’m sure I can get him to spare you a few minutes. Why, what do you need?

Consent.