The top of the mountain was as beautiful as the last mountain they climbed. The landscape spilled out in all directions. They couldn't see as deep into the Chaos Lands as they had hoped. The range was larger than they originally thought. Also they weren't traveling to the summit but instead cresting a shoulder.
The downward trek was far sketchier than the incline. Bjorn's history with falling down stairs had him worried about a potential embarrassing moment. So he was sure to dig his claws in a little harder than necessary. It took hours to climb and descend but they found themselves in the valley between two mountains. Presumably on the other side would be the steppes and beyond that the Force Isles.
Bjorn had his attention split, one side of his perception was in the middle of a conversation with Failsafe. They were going over the possible powers he gained from the new head. Every head he gained came with a new ability but, determining what magic ability it was without blasting out an unknown spell took time.
So far his first head gave him Poison Puff which had evolved into Poison Cloud. His second head gave him Toxic Fire breath which evolved multiple times into the current iteration Plague Fire Breath. His third head was Aetheric Disruption Breath and the fourth Shadow Concealment.
The odd ball was Intimidation Roar. Not because the skill was weird but because it was an ability he gained naturally. It was part of his body maturing as a hydra. It meant he would likely gain other abilities due to his nature.
The abilities he gained by losing a head were loosely related to the Magical Disciplines. Currently the well known Magical Disciplines were Nature, Starlight, Darkness, Elemental, Spellcraft and Anti-Magic. There were others outside of the orthodox magical expressions, specialist Disciplines like the Yuki's Walking Armory or Aurelius's Chaos Magic were examples.
Bjorn looked at his own magic, Poison Puff which fit into Nature, Plague Fire Breath which was elemental, Shadow concealment which was Darkness. His magic wasn't directly a copy of the world's magic systems though. He had a skill that broke the mold. Aetheric Disruption Breath, which was closer to Anti-magic in its purpose but, alien to the magic system of the world and not part of any Discipline.
"That could mean you are gaining heads depending on the magic of the world or if you have access to Higher Plane energies." Failsafe offered.
"My mother has the ability to use aether, and was our unintentional patron for maya for a while." Bjorn reasoned.
"Is it possible our new head will be the reconnection to maya?" Isin questioned. "We lost the ability when we were young because we couldn't handle it, but since then we have been exposed to it in the Chaos Lands and didn't die."
"Did you forget that we very much almost did die from that experience?" Failsafe said.
"No, he has a point," Bjorn said.
"He has a what? Am I the only one that remembers what happened?" Failsafe said incredulously. "You passed out for hours and was stuck in a memory or something, and when you woke up you came back with a split personality. Did you forget that Isin wasn't always part of team hydra?"
"That was pure maya." Bjorn said calmly. "The equivalent of a mana crystal in our world. If our resistance to it was high enough to survive being submerged in that, we probably could reintroduce maya into our alloy. Our maya won't be anywhere near that potent."
"Uh… actually that makes sense." Failsafe relented. "Doesn't mean I like it though."
"We'll wait to release the seal on our maya for the time being. It is still dangerous and I don't want a repeat of what happened to us with Sabec's caravan." Bjorn said.
"I agree." Failsafe said. "Lets wait until we are somewhere nice and safe with backup plans and possibly a maya suppression collar before we try to unleash our inner demon."
Bjorn's attention snapped back to the group as they slowed down on the path.
"We will take a break here for an hour." Aurelius said.
"We could keep going." Tanisha said.
"No, if something happens I don't want us tired." Aurelius said as he pulled out a canteen. "Fuyumi can't fight and while I trust us to be able to defend ourselves I would prefer to give us the best chances."
Everyone took a breather and Bjorn watched with mild fascination as Tanisha made a sandwich. If you can call a chicken breast between two slices of steak a sandwich. Which Bjorn did, so culinary definitions be damned. It was a good looking sandwich too. She apparently saw him staring and made him one as well.
It wasn't just meat, she made sauces that would go on her foods. Apparently she had a culinary enlightenment while she was in the Alpha Extraction Site. Her study of chemistry likely led to experimentation.
"Really taste the flavors, don't just eat it in one bite." Tanisha said as she presented the sandwich. "The meats come from a bovine and poultry from an extinct water fowl called a diver duck. But that's not the important part. Laxy helped me create this three-blood butter. She spread the marbled ivory and black-red sauce over the sandwich. "It is a butter cream with blood extract and fermentation to bring out some of the umami. It took a while to make and I don't have all the tools to do it anymore now that we aren't in the Extraction Site… Well I could probably have someone make the tools later."
An electricity crawled up her arm and into the meat heating it to a nice warm temperature. She wasn't cooking any of it of course, just warming it. One of Bjorn's heads took the food with the reverence Tanisha expected, being sure to bite it a few times to really get the flavor.
Bjorn's taste was different than he was as a human; it was mainly smells that would be appetizing. The actual flavor didn't really matter all that much from anything he consumed. Having to take his time and eat something slowly really changed his perspective on eating ever since he had become a hydra.
Normally he would eat until he was satiated and be fine with whatever it was, even things that would have not been palatable to him as a human. He didn't chew food much either. He would swallow food whole or rip it apart until he could.
He preferred warm uncooked meat, a preference he definitely didn't have as a human. It was something he shared with Tanisha. This sandwich was immediately different from anything else that he had eaten. The sauce was absolutely great. It made him want to chew it just to taste more of the flavor.
"More?" Bjorn asked.
"You liked it? Great," Tanisha said with a clap. "I can give you a little more of the sauce but I want it to last for special occasions so this is the last one!"
The group ate and continued on their way. The path through the valley was quiet but not without danger. Bjorn could taste the presence of monsters in the area. It wasn't the refined mana of a higher tiered monster. It wasn't until the world went totally silent that he realized it was a crawling stalker pack.
The group seemed to notice all at the same time once they came into range of the silencing effect. Normally the range of that spell was a dozen feet or so at most and that was because packs aura stacked on top of each other. This time they were hundreds of feet away from the pack. Which indicated a swarm of hundreds.
Crawling stalkers were not very strong on their own. An enthusiastic farmer with a hoe could fight one off with a couple of bruises at most. Their danger came from the numbers and the sheer number of them was an early sign of the mana hurricane's influence on manifesting far more monsters than usual.
Aurelius led the team back out of the range of the silencing aura.
"We have to kill all of them." Aurelius said.
"Couldn't we just walk past them? The ambient mana is high enough to keep weak monsters like that docile right?" Tanisha questioned.
"Maybe, but it won't always be like that." Aurelius said.
"When the hurricane fully recedes the ambient mana here will decrease." Fuyumi continued. "They will start moving further into the Chaos Lands or the closest settlement but that is just one outcome. A big issue would be if they start cannibalizing each other, which they will. The strongest will evolve into dreamweavers then into nightmare cannibals."
"Any monster we don't kill is a life later down the road. When the tide comes these or whatever horror they evolve into will be part of the first waves." Aurelius said.
"I can kill them." Bjorn said with strain. "Poison Cloud will be enough."
The first time he fought the crawling stalkers was during their initiation to become temporary monster hunters with the Jackrabbits. It was also his and Tanisha's first time encountering monsters. The little freaky things were blind but could sense vibrations to track prey. The second thing was they could find the source of mana even through obfuscations. If Bjorn used any ability with mana they would target him as the source.
"They will all target you if you do that." Tanisha said with hesitation.
Bjorn's armor appeared around him from his inventory. Luckily Laxy had made the hole for his necks spacious in the event he grew another head. His new head wasn't armored but that was okay. He wasn't going to get close enough for them to attack him anyway.
He had a decision to make, while mana was his most versatile magic it was not his most potent. That was aether, the higher plane energy, was far more powerful than the mana variant. Especially after he gained the Angel Core. It was so powerful that the potency of his magic and the effects of his venom all increased with aether.
His third head exhaled a golden glow that shone like a star across the mountain face. As the light touched the creatures they writhed in what looked like agony until finally the silence ended. Screams of gurgling pain sounded across the mountainside like a macabre thunder.
Aetheric Disruption Breath targeted the active spell they were all using, some of them died from the inability to control their magic. These monsters were too weak to have meaningful magic cores so loss of control was death. But for every one that died there were hundreds more.
Bjorn marched forward into the discordant scream. His mouths opened again and rolling clouds sharp with energy like lightning flowed endlessly over the mountain side. It wasn't instant but it was inevitable. Guided by the Angel Core he could control the cloud with a level of precision he would not be able to otherwise. Given the scale in which he needed to expand the poison attack the cloud thinned into a haze, something he wouldn't have been able to do without dispersing the attack before. His control was far more absolute than he had expected.
He was also far more dangerous than he realized. A cloud that blankets a mountain and kills hundreds of monsters if turned on people… he didn't want to follow that chain of thought. He didn't gain power to hunt people or kill unnecessarily. Monsters weren't people, their slaughter carried no moral weight. Still as he took step after step and the monsters around him convulsed and died screaming he couldn't help but see the true nature of his power.
From King of Chains to Poisoner of Worlds he would always be something that drew meaning from death.
As the monsters died the mournful wails ended and the mountain grew silent. A hand touched his only unarmared neck. He looked down at Tanisha. Her hand was warm against his scales. He leaned into it a little. It was small but meaningful. Something to anchor his thoughts.
"Good job, Big Man." Tanisha said with a smile on her face. "That saved us a lot of time."
"And countless people." Aurelius added as he took the lead. "Lets continue cautiously. Keep a lookout for any more monsters if possible we should kill them even if it takes us a little out of the way to do so."
The group moved forward, none of them as disturbed by the attack as he had been. The rhythm returned to a steady pace. He realized that they weren't ignoring the fact he just killed hundreds of monsters in moments. Because each of them could have done the same. Well maybe not as fast, but just as thoroughly. He wasn't alone in his power, he was amongst peers. That alone was sobering. That alone was needed.