Chapter 133: The Mind-Stealer
None of the beasts Evan knew of, or had ever heard described, formed packs like this. Predators of any real strength staked out solitary territories, especially higher-tier magical beasts — creatures already carrying intelligence close to human level. If beasts like that ever banded together, it stopped being ordinary animal behavior and became something closer to the first seeds of civilization. In nature, only a handful of humanlike races had ever built true civilizations of their own — goblins, elves — and even the dragon-kind, for all their power, had never managed it.
Evan sometimes wondered whether goblins and elves were simply branches off humanity's own evolutionary tree, one stunted in stature, the other strikingly beautiful. He didn't rule out other civilizations existing somewhere in this world, but he preferred to believe humanity remained the only truly civilized species — a conviction shaped by two lifetimes of experience now.
The beasts here clearly lived together, and their movements suggested something like a hierarchy among them. Something tightened in Evan's chest. Had that watching presence he'd felt earlier belonged to them? He couldn't sense it now.
A boar-like beast came roaring in, its thick hide shrugging off two fireballs and a wind blade without harm — not just tough skin, but a faint yellow glow wrapped around its body like armor, though that glow had thinned considerably after absorbing the hits.
Its tusks flared yellow, and panic rippled through the group — students, after all, not a disciplined army, and several instinctively stepped back.
Evan drew back the black smoke sharply, the beast-souls at its tip visibly dimmed now. Four of them shot out from four directions at once, converging on the boar, trailing smoke behind them in an eerie display. The boar's tusks swung up to meet them, yellow light flaring, and two cracks sounded as the rat-creature and the twin-winged wolf dissolved back into smoke, unable to reform. But the spider and the unicorn tiger broke through what little of the boar's glow remained in the same instant — the tiger's horn driving straight between its eyes, the spider's oversized fangs sinking into its back. A wave of cold settled over the boar at once, and as it thrashed, a ghostly shape of the beast itself was drawn out through the black smoke, growing steadily denser. It struggled at first, but as the shape solidified, the boar's shade stopped fighting entirely, its eyes gone blank and empty.
The boar's body dropped, and a fresh beast-soul rose from it. Three threads of black smoke shot toward the monkey-headed, lion-bodied beast at once — strike the leader first. It hadn't attacked the group at all, standing off to the side like some proud general, too haughty to join the pack's assault.
Evan had no intention of leaving it alone. Something told him it was the key to the whole fight, so he sent all three beast-souls straight at it, black smoke surging forward like arrows.
It looked up, saw the three souls closing in, and let out a roar that carried something close to a dragon's cry in its power. A burst of high-frequency sound scattered the souls apart at once — the spider and the unicorn tiger dissolved instantly, and the boar's soul, barely formed, held together only a few seconds longer before it too dissolved into drifting smoke just as it reached the creature.
The monkey-headed beast opened its mouth toward Evan, a ball of lightning forming inside it. Before it could fire, Evan pointed a finger, and a thin whistle cut the air — a Spirit Arrow, a low-tier spell, though as an Arcanist, Evan could cast such things instantly without any chant at all. The Spirit Arrow flashed out just as the lightning ball left the creature's mouth, colliding with it — outmatched, but the lightning ball detonated on contact regardless, flaring into a sphere of electricity nearly three cubits across and still expanding, rolling straight toward Evan.
Evan smiled faintly and called out, "Bone Wall!" A wall of bone shot up from the earth. Amid crashing thunder, the lightning ball struck it head-on, electricity flaring wildly across the wall's surface before it collapsed — but the lightning ball dissolved along with it, leaving only the echo of thunder ringing in everyone's ears.
Several of the women in the group went pale at the sight. Evan used the opening to line up his own strike — Yin-Chill Strike, already prepared. As the bone wall crumbled and the smoke hadn't yet cleared, he pointed. The air rippled strangely, and the beast, standing just beyond the wreckage, seemed to freeze in place, making no further move to attack. Evan's Yin-Chill Strike landed.
The creature let out a sharp, piercing shriek. Evan blinked — he'd never heard of a monkey-lion beast making a sound like that, and it didn't feel like a sonic attack at all, just a scream — one that didn't seem to be coming from the beast itself.
Right after the shriek, something octopus-like tore itself free from the back of the creature's neck and fled at once, and in that same instant, the pack of beasts that had been attacking the group scattered in every direction, leaving only a handful of corpses behind.
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"A Mind-Stealer!" Jessica shouted. Understanding hit Evan at once, but the creature had already vanished into the trees.
A Mind-Stealer wasn't a magical beast at all — supposedly a species that had escaped from Hell itself, possessing extraordinary intelligence but no ability to cast magic of its own. Instead, it carried one particular gift: the power to control the minds of beasts and humans alike, amplifying their brainwaves a hundredfold. Whatever it controlled became little more than a walking corpse in its hands, and through a beast it had seized, the creature could call on whatever magic that beast knew, and to some degree, control the pack around it as well.
"Such a shame. Hollingburton's wanted a Mind-Stealer specimen for ages, and it just slipped away. They're vanishingly rare — I never expected to find one out here," Jessica said with a sigh.
"Don't worry about it. If it comes back, it won't get away so easily next time," Evan said. "Everyone, gather up the beast carcasses. There's something in there we don't recognize — worth checking whether it's a new species once we're back." The students looked ragged, several of them wounded, though the potions had already sealed the injuries closed.
The students collected the carcasses, and one creature in particular drew everyone's attention — something like an oversized rat covered in scaled plates, unfamiliar to all of them. Jessica pulled out a book titled Compendium of Magical Creatures, pointed at it, and a pale yellow light shone down on the creature. The book flickered steadily, and after a moment, a fresh page appeared at the back, blank no longer — an illustration filling in, along with details of the creature's traits, a name flickering into place.
"An undiscovered species," Jessica said. "Let's name it. Any ideas?"
"Call it a Scaled Rat," Evan offered.
"Scaled Rat. Good. Let me write this down." Jessica pulled a pen from her ring and recorded the entry, along with the circumstances of its discovery, before closing the book.
Evan smiled. "Seems like this trip's turned out to be your biggest haul yet."
Jessica froze the Scaled Rat's body with a spell and stored it in her ring, while the students dressed and sorted the rest of the carcasses. The Core Stabilization spell came a bit late in the process, and they only recovered two magic cores in the end.
They spent two hours on the cleanup. Evan felt, once again, that something was watching him — clearer this time, a distinctly malicious presence, the way a hunter watches its prey. He was certain now — the feeling carried unmistakable traces of the Mind-Stealer.
A cold smile touched Evan's mouth. So it hadn't given up. The creature had clearly set its sights on him specifically — not surprising, given how it operated. Once a Mind-Stealer took hold of a mind, that octopus-like appendage burrowed into the skull, drawing out everything the target knew. Over time, it withdrew further into the host's brain, eventually merging with it entirely — at which point almost no one could tell the difference anymore. The only real sign was a mark left at the back of the skull, but even that faded over time into a faint scar most people wouldn't think twice about, let alone connect to a Mind-Stealer. Wounds happened. People and beasts got hurt all the time.
The creature was watching, waiting for its opening. It carried its own intelligence, arguably no weaker than a human's, and it never acted rashly — if the moment wasn't right, it would rather let the chance go entirely than risk exposure. It had chosen Evan as its target. Fortunately, Evan had already caught on, thanks to his own heightened senses.
The group set out again, and this time nothing like the earlier encounter came up — no sign of struggle marked the trail ahead, which set Evan a little more at ease.
He kept a faint, half-conscious watch on the Mind-Stealer's presence as they walked, and found it was still trailing them, at a distance. His brow furrowed. He held back the impulse to act and quietly reached out to Jessica and Emma through the telepathic link instead. Both women startled at the news that the Mind-Stealer had been following the group the entire time.
They glanced around, finding nothing out of place. Evan spoke through the link. Don't look around. It won't show itself now. It's probably waiting for us to settle in for the night, so it can make its move once we're asleep — quiet, unnoticed. We'll deal with it once we've made camp.
Dusk settled in, and Evan gave the order to set up for the night. They chose an open clearing, and the earth-aligned mages raised a trench and a low wall around the perimeter with their spells before pitching their tents. Evan, Jessica, and Emma laid down the protective array together. Everything looked ordinary enough.
Night fell. Evan activated his Wraith Eye, layering it with faint sight, and sent it drifting high above the camp to keep watch over the whole perimeter. Time passed, minute by minute, and one by one, the group seemed to slip into sleep.
A hundred cubits out in the trees, something stirred — a small, octopus-like creature leapt onto the branch of a tree, studying the darkened camp below. After a moment, it leapt again, its posture strange, every tentacle stretched taut and rigid, drawing closer to the camp.
Though the Mind-Stealer couldn't cast magic itself, it remained keenly sensitive to magical presence, and it could feel a powerful aura radiating from one particular tent near the edge of the camp — stronger than anything it had encountered in any human or beast before. A perfect target. It had failed with the monkey-lion beast earlier only because that creature had been the strongest thing nearby at the time; it had merely controlled it, without ever managing to merge with it fully.
Unable to cast magic, the creature's instincts still let it slip past a magical array — there seemed to be a channel running through the ward, some natural weakness in its structure. It hesitated a moment, then flexed its tentacles, its body flattening thin as paper in midair. Not casting a spell itself didn't mean it couldn't exploit one.
Evan's eyes flickered open. It had come.