Lucia whimpered. I expected her to complain some more, but she just stayed quiet.

  I looked over at Aisling. The feral turtle tilted her head, watching us. I kept her body at bay, preventing her from grabbing the rest of the monster girls and sticking them in her mouth. Unfortunately, even with all my tentacles, it turned out that I was not able to pick up all the monster girls.

  Aisling lumbered forward under my direction towards the monster girls. She scooped up a handful with her Kaiju-sized hands. Her clone, the imitation lure, grabbed one and picked her up. Each of the monster girls kept trying to leave to go back to the cave, but I made sure Aisling kept a tight grip. Aisling’s lure went and dismantled each collar and cuff device.

  We worked quickly. Soon, we had thirty monster girls, plus Lucia.

  “Hold on tight,” I warned them, or rather just Lucia. The other monster girls were too mindless to understand. “We move fast.”

  We turned away from the ruined outpost and the pulsating Dungeon Rift. We began the trek back to Lateo.

  I followed the linked monster girls in my internal soul map, leading us three Kaijus and the rescued monster girls toward the safety of Lateo. With Aisling and I carrying the bulk of the rescued girls, Samsara slithered behind me.

  Before we made it back to the village, there was one thing left that we needed to do: We needed to make sure that we could restrain the potentially feral monster girls. I performed [Sacrificial Soul Transfer] spell, followed by my [Sacrificial Mana Transfer] ability. Furthermore, I also did it on Lucia. This way, none of them would cause any problems after we released them.

  We crossed the invisible threshold of Lateo. Immediately, the village reappeared, revealing the familiar stilted houses and the river cutting through the valley floor.

  We headed deep inside of the village, close to where Halinka’s and Eivor’s home was.

  “Halinka! Eivor!” I shouted, my voice booming off the canyon walls. “We’re back! And we brought guests!”

  It didn’t take long. The two elders emerged from their home, heading down the mountain steps to meet us. Eivor was quite slow, and Halinka seemed to not go too far ahead of her. I could berate them, but that was unbecoming of my current personality.

  “By the Demiurges,” Halinka gasped, her fox ears pressing flat against her head. “What is going on? Who are all these people?”

  “We raided a hidden base,” I explained casually, lowering Lucia to the ground. She stumbled on her new bird legs but managed to stay upright. “Found them enslaved. Figured we’d bring them here rather than leave them to wander the Wild Lands.”

  “Enslaved?” Eivor asked, her voice trembling. “At a hidden base? This close to Lateo?”

  “Not anymore,” I said with a grin. Her eyes widened as she realized what I meant.

  “Thank you,” she bowed.

  "We found a way to potentially fix Aisling," Samsara announced, her voice echoing slightly in the valley. She gestured toward the shivering peacock girl, Lucia.

  "Fix Aisling?" Eivor asked, her voice uncertain. "How?"

  "Lucia here is an expert on… brains," Samsara said, choosing her words carefully. "She thinks she can help undo the damage. She was there at the base, the one that was kept invisible. Kind of like Lateo."

  I watched the elders closely. When Samsara mentioned how the base was invisible, a flicker of recognition had crossed Eivor’s face. It was subtle, a tightening of the jaw, plus a flick of her eyes away from us. I caught it even though she brought her pupils right back toward us.

  You knew," I stated, leaning down. My shadow fell over them. “You knew how Lateo and that base are kept invisible, don’t you?”

  Eivor went still. She looked up at me, swallowed hard, and then nodded slowly.

  "Yes," she admitted, her voice barely a whisper. But my Demiurge-enhanced hearing allowed me to hear it as if she was speaking loud and clear. "I wondered what a secret base was doing all the way out here. It is too close."

  "Does that mean you have the technology?" I pressed. “Whatever is keeping these places invisible?”

  Eivor hesitated, glancing at Halinka, who gave a minute nod. "Yes. We do. It’s called a stealth field generator."

  "And electricity?" I asked, putting the pieces together. The lamps in the village were gas, but a stealth field required serious power. "You have power generation?"

  Eivor nodded again, looking down at her feet like a child caught stealing candy. "Yes."

  "Why?" Samsara asked me mentally, her confusion bleeding into annoyance. "Why keep that a secret from the village?"

  "Why haven't you shared this?" Samsara asked out loud, crossing her arms. “The rest of the village looks it comes from the Ancient Ages! You have electricity and advanced technology hiding right under their noses.”

  "It was to keep things safer," Eivor said, her voice gaining a little strength. “If any of the villagers were captured and interrogated by the Monster Purifiers… they couldn't give up the secret of how Lateo stays hidden if they didn't know it existed. Only Halinka and I knew."

  I was tempted to argue with Eivor that her logic didn’t make any sense. The Monster Purifiers did not interrogate monster girls—they killed them. However, I decided to let her stew in silence instead. Perhaps she would reveal more to us.

  She paused, looking up at us. "However… since you two are leading now, and you seem capable of protecting us... I suppose I can share this knowledge. I can give access to Nilo, Atgo, and Kanes. They seemed to understand machines."

  "I really don't like how she's been hoarding secrets," Samsara told me mentally. “It seems like she has massive trust issues.”

  "We could eat her," I suggested casually. "That would solve the trust issue."

  "Ramona!" Samsara scolded. "I wouldn't like that, and you know it."

  "Fine," I conceded. "Look on the bright side. She's telling us now because she's terrified of us. Fear makes people remarkably honest. Eivor fears us more than she fears the villagers rising up against her for keeping these secrets."

  "Where is the generator?" I asked Eivor.

  "Underground," she replied. “Under the river.”

  I hummed in thought. The hidden mining base we just destroyed didn’t have anything that looked technologically advanced, excluding the Rift Harvester. Did that mean the base had a stealth field generator that was underground? Just like Lateo?

  "That mining base definitely used the same tech," I told Samsara. "It might be useful to go back and salvage it. If Nilo and the others are going to be our tech support, they'll need spare parts. Plus, we left that truck full of ores."

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  "Are we going back?" Samsara asked. "Isn't it dangerous? What about the Rift?"

  "We have [Color Camouflage II]," I reminded her. "We can grab the truck and the generator and be gone before any Aberration notices. Besides, it might speed up Lucia’s attempt to save Aisling.” And that meant I wouldn’t have to deal with taking night shifts anymore.

  “Okay, that makes sense,” Samsara agreed.

  "Eivor, Halinka," Samsara said out loud. “Please find housing for these monster girls. They’ve been through hell.” Each one stayed in place, not acknowledging Samsara’s words.

  "And get the tech out from underground," I added. "Show it to Nilo, Atgo, and Kanes. They're going to modernize this place."

  I nudged Lucia forward with the tip of a tentacle. To her credit, she didn't scream this time. Was she imitating the enslaved monster girls?

  "This is Lucia," I introduced her. "She's going to be helping out. Specifically, she's going to work on freeing the minds of these enslaved girls. And fixing Aisling."

  Lucia stepped forward, wringing her feathered hands. "H-hello. I'm Lucia. I'll… I'll do my best to help."

  She kept her head down. She realized the precariousness of her situation. If she told anyone here that she was the lead scientist responsible for enslaving these monster girls, then the villagers would tear her apart before I could even stop them. Or maybe I wouldn’t stop them. So she was forced to keep quiet on how she became a monster girl.

  Thankfully, that meant I didn’t have to hear her rant about how her life was ruined or how she needed to turn back into a human.

  "She's not complaining," I noted to Samsara. "She knows one wrong word gets her killed. Let’s go get that tech."

  “Sure,” Samsara said. “Let’s take Aisling with us.”

  Us three left the village, crossing the invisible threshold back into the Wild Lands. I broke into a run, retracing our steps toward the ruined mining base.

  As we neared the ridge that hid the base, a sound cut through the silence.

  A roaring of jet engines echoed in the distance.

  On instinct, I activated [Color Camouflage II]. I had Aisling turn invisible too.

  “An Airship,” I noted. “The Monster Purifiers came back to check on the base. Probably because it lost power and couldn’t broadcast any signal.”

  We began walking forward. As I got closer, I heard the sounds of beam firing synchronized with the cracking and splitting of bones. What the fuck?

  An airship hovered above in the sky, with flying humans descending from its underbelly. Each one carried a beam gun and sported a jet pack. Unlike the other beam guns I had seen, their rifles seemed bigger and longer.

  I began walking closer to the source of the battle. We approached from an angle. To the left, the Rift was still there, but to the right, there was something unexpected.

  In the center of the ruined base stood an Aberration. It was quite different from the marble woman we had eaten. This one was skinny, having no fat at all. That was probably because she didn’t even have skin—her entire body was made of bleached bones. She stood tall, maybe 120 meters. Quite shorter than us.

  One noticeable difference between her and a normal skeleton was the fact that her rib cage was completely covered in bones, leaving no air gaps. Plus, she had hair made of bones that swayed in the air, almost like my hair tentacles.

  As we watched, new bones sprouted from her joints with sickening wet snapping sounds. Ribs extended, femurs split, and phalanges multiplied. They broke off her body, creating an endless, clattering stream of osseous projectiles that floated for a split second before launching toward the humans. Unluckily for the Aberration, each human dodged out of the way, expertly dodging the whirlwind of bones slicing through the air.

  "Open fire! Keep the suppression beams focused!" a voice crackled over several ear pieces.

  The Bone Aberration wailed. She swept a hand forward, and a wave of sharpened ribs flew at the jetpack troops. The humans dodged effortlessly, while opening fire at the Aberration. Several beams hit her chest and arm.

  She screeched even louder, sending more and more bones whirring towards her enemies in the sky. Two mechs descended from the airship, each carrying a rifle with a bayonet. They fired neon white projectiles that pierced through the bones. Each strike hit the Aberration on the chest, tearing a small hole inside of her, while leaving white sparks upon impact.

  The bones immediately regrew, followed by bones spawning from her rib cage and splitting off from her main body. Moments later, they launched, sending themselves toward the mechs.

  Yet the mechs easily dodged out of the way. I could see from the side they had a bulkier and bigger version of the jetpacks that the flying humans had.

  "They upgraded," Samsara whispered in my mind. "Those guns… they destroy the Aberration's body."

  "Looks like they learned from fighting us," I mused. "Or they always had this and just didn't use it on Kaijus. Just Aberrations."

  A stray shot from one of the flying humans hit her head. She froze for a second, before wailing again.

  "Shoot the head!" a voice commanded through their earpieces. My enhanced hearing picked it up clearly.

  The mechs adjusted their aim. Two balls of white energy slammed into the Aberration's skull. They pierced her skull, entering and then exiting through the other side, leaving sparks in their wake.

  The Aberration’s movements jerked, then slowed. The bone growth stopped. She froze, her limbs locking up as the humans kept firing on her. Blue sparks from the blue beams danced over her skeletal frame. She toppled over backwards, crashing into the concrete below.

  "Target neutralized!"

  "Bring in the Extractor!" someone shouted. "Get the Core. Prepare it for transport to the Unbound Processing Plant."

  My ears perked up. Unbound Processing Plant?

  "Rift Sealer, move in with the new Harvester," another voice ordered. "We need this Rift closed before another one comes through."

  "Unbound Processing Plant?" Samsara asked, her thoughts racing. "Ramona… do you think…? Seraphina is an Unbound. She has wings. She has powers."

  "Yeah?"

  "What if… what if Unbound are made from Aberrations?" Samsara theorized, horror creeping into her tone. "They take the Cores. They process them. We gained a special mutation from eating an Aberration Core. Maybe they do the same thing, but scientifically."

  "That… makes a disturbing amount of sense," I admitted.

  From the hovering airship, another human descended. She was wearing a heavy, industrial-looking suit with a jetpack on the back. A massive mechanical prosthetic emerged from her jetpack, looking like a construction crane’s claw. And in her hands she carried a drill that was nearly the size of her.

  She descended, her jetpack slowing her fall until she landed squarely on the Aberration's heaving chest.

  "Extractor deployed," the woman said calmly. "Beginning extraction."

  She unslung the drill. With mechanical precision, she positioned it over the center of the Aberration's sternum.

  The drill spun up, a high-pitched whine that set my teeth on edge. She drove it down. Bone crunched and shattered. The Aberration stayed motionless as the Extractor dug into her.

  The Extractor worked fast. Within seconds, she had bored a hole. She set the drill aside and engaged the massive prosthetic claw.

  The metal fingers dove into the chest cavity. There was a wet, squelching sound, and then she pulled back.

  Clutched in the metal claw was a sphere. It glowed with an orange light. An Aberration Core.

  "That Core," I thought, saliva pooling in my mouth. "It's huge. And she did all the hard work for us."

  "It would be good to stop them," Samsara said. "If they use those to make more Unbound… we don't need more enemies like Seraphina."

  "My thoughts exactly."

  As the Extractor hooked the Core to her belt, I lashed out. A single, invisible hair tentacle snapped forward.

  I wrapped it around the Extractor's waist, pinning her arms to her sides.

  "What—?!" she started to yell.

  I yanked. She flew through the air. The Aberration Core dangled from her belt, glowing brightly.

  I brought her straight to my face. I opened my mouth wide.

  "No! Wait!" she screamed.

  I stuffed her into my mouth, metal arm, drill, jetpack, and Core included. I clamped my jaws shut. The taste of metal and oil mixed with the savory explosion of meat, blood, and sweetness. I chewed quickly, swallowing the mess in one large gulp.

  "Extractor lost!" the radio screamed. "Reading heat signature! It's right there!"

  "Is it another Aberration?!"

  The humans panicked, turning their beam guns toward where I was standing. Blue lights flared as they began to charge their weapons.