CHAPTER 407: CHAPTER 250: UPHEAVAL IN THE INSTINCT CHAMBER (PART 2)

"It seems this new batch of goods isn’t bad, haha. I haven’t even started on them, and one’s already soiled itself. I’ll be sure to try a fresh one later."

!!? Attilicia felt she was going insane!

In all her life as a Dragon, she, Attilicia, had never been so humiliated by such inferior creatures! But a terribly powerful enemy was close at hand, preventing her from daring to make any inappropriate moves.

Fortunately, what worried her most didn’t happen. Or rather, the development of events completely exceeded her prior expectations.

As the Spirit Sucker Governor, whose expression hinted at anxiety, lifted his hand and clicked repeatedly, Attilicia and a dozen other Humanoid Creatures were ’chosen’. They were bound by invisible tentacles and lifted, flying with the Governor towards the fortress’s uppermost level, amidst the disappointed sighs of two Beastman slaves.

With a THUNDEROUS BOOM, the metal door to the upper level opened, and Attilicia suddenly found herself ’arriving’ in a spacious and lofty cave. Compared to other areas, the Dwarven architectural style here was transformed beyond recognition. The walls were constructed entirely of smooth black stone, inscribed with strange runes and patterns. These symbols flickered with a dim, reddish glow in the faint light, and unsettling psychic whispers periodically echoed in her mind.

At the center of the cave stood a massive, circular stone basin filled with a faintly glowing liquid. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of translucent, jellyfish-like objects floated upon its surface.

Are those... brains?! Those were the brains of elderly Heart Snatchers!

She had heard that Heart Snatchers, whether dying of old age or accidental death, would have their brains brought back to the Brain Pool to achieve ’redemption and immortality.’

Could this actually be true? But it didn’t seem entirely true either.

Through the psychic whispers, Attilicia quickly realized that these elderly Heart Snatchers’ brains had long since lost their individual wills. They had merged, or rather, been completely devoured and assimilated by the Elder Brain. Attilicia now knew exactly where she had been taken.

She had inadvertently hit the ’jackpot,’ brought directly by a Spirit Sucker, without any resistance, straight into the Brain Pool chamber—what should have been the most heavily guarded and inaccessible part of the Spirit Sucker den! Yet, she was also undoubtedly the unluckiest, having been personally brought here by a legendary Spirit Sucker Governor for some unknown purpose.

And soon, Attilicia and the other Humanoid Creatures abducted with her would understand their captor’s purpose.

"Zenasa dhuyar (Heads, fly here!)" Abaidra, the Spirit Sucker Governor, whispered in the Spirit Sucker tongue.

With a chorus of sickening POPS, the heads of half the dozen Humanoid Creatures brought there abruptly detached from their bodies. Their faces, frozen in expressions of residual, twisted agony, flew into the Brain Pool. There, they were immediately entangled and consumed by ’spinal tentacles’—tipped with sharp teeth—that lashed out from the ’brains’ in the pool, which writhed as if in agitated hunger.

... Attilicia, her face splattered with blood from the headless corpse beside her, almost wet herself on the spot! Truly, it was a hair’s breadth from death; a single thought from that creature had almost decided her fate!

But the nightmare hadn’t ended. It was just beginning.

The survivors, including Attilicia, were manipulated by psychic tendrils and placed into individual red troughs. As slimy, clinging tentacles bound their entire bodies, Abaidra released the Suggestion Technique he had used on them. He needed this pre-mortem terror. Fear was the finest psychic sustenance. The Humanoid Creatures’ terror, and the resultant convulsions and spasms of their brains, would maximally activate their ’life’s highlight reel.’ This would also be the first lesson the Spirit Sucker tadpoles learned as they inhabited a host body.

"Where... where are we?"

"Damn it! It’s Spirit Suckers! No, they’re going to eat my brain!"

"AAAHHH!!! Mama! I want to go home!"

And so, terrified screams began to echo one after another, eventually merging into a grand chorus of fear. At this, Attilicia, who had previously been terrified of giving herself away, finally broke. She let go and screamed with genuine terror:

"Son! Save me! I’m terrified!!!"

That a Drow would cry out such words made even Governor Abaidra turn his head to glance at her. Fortunately, in the eyes of this Spirit Sucker Governor, these vessels were already as good as dead. Whatever secrets they held were now irrelevant.

Abaidra extended a purple hand into the cool Brain Pool. The tadpoles within, instinctively seeking survival in their unsettling environment, immediately swarmed around it, much like the small fish in a Blue Star fish spa. Even some far-from-mature red ones did the same. But Abaidra clearly had no time for them. He only scooped up the seven mature tadpoles in his palm, approached one of the Humanoid Creatures, picked up a tadpole, and, as the Humanoid Creature watched in abject terror, carefully placed it into its eye socket. The tadpole then instinctively burrowed through the cranial cavity and into the brain—a process not unlike what happens with mammalian ’tadpoles’.

As the Governor was implanting the second tadpole, the roar of the Dwarves’ uprising erupted outside the Elder Brain chamber.

Well done, Bergin! Attilicia rejoiced, thankful to have such a reliable partner and ally in him. Not at all like her unreliable son, David!