Kion's world dissolved to a familiar terrain.
He knelt on the soft green grass, his breath panting and ragged. His eyes glossed over blurry details, struggling to remain focused.
His head ached with layers of pain, causing his vision to fail repeatedly.
He was aware that if he was in this place, he was already too far gone.
He was in the mind of his mind.
His dreamscape.
And the Egovore had followed him, it's branches still probing his head.
This time, it was no hallucination, some trick of the light…
Kion and the beast had both entered his sacred world.
"Fascinating." The Egovore said as it stared in awe, "this place is even more beautiful when seen firsthand. My hallucination wouldn't match it."
Kion's vision finally settled, and he could understand what the Egovore was saying.
Unlike its hallucination earlier, which was nothing but a blend of sharp colours, this dreamscape felt more real, more vivid. Kion had thought it only a metaphysical space conjured up by his mind, but being here, it felt real, existing…like he was experiencing it all in the physical.
"This is where it insists on taking me whenever I want to feed. It seems to be the main core of your mind: this world. Your mind is just full of surprises is it not?" The Egovore said with a hearty laugh.
Kion couldn't talk. He couldn't form words, he felt his consciousness slipping away very quickly. But at least, he could still think.
The fight was not over yet.
"Don't worry, it would all be over soon."
Heh. Funny. Kion thought.
At the edges of his vision, he could see the fabric of reality of his world begin to wither and shimmer away.
It caused a terrifying, psychedelic effect, like running a stream of water over a freshly made painting.
It was time to act now.
Kion closed his eyes, feeling the ambience of his dreamscape all around him. He filled his memories with all the precious things he wanted from it, and all the rubbish things he wanted out of it.
He felt his world's pain as it withered away, and let it bleed into his own agony. He called upon its power for a last ditch effort at saving them both…
"It was your power that even brought me here…"
Kion remembered the first time Tyril had visited him in his dreamscape, claiming that it was Kion who had brought him there in the first place.
"It is your world of possibilities…"
Thea had told him on their last encounter.
It was HIS world. Out there, maybe the Egovore was in charge but in here…
He made the rules.
Beads of sweat formed on Kion's forehead as he struggled to focus through his waning consciousness.
The Egovore sensed the strangeness in his energy. "Struggling now would be futile, young human. You've already given yourself to me. Just let it all happen."
Kion focused even more, gritting his teeth.
The air warped around his left hand.
The Egovore noticed. "What the—"
And then, out of thin air, a sleek dagger materialised into his grip.
He stabbed it into his shoulder.
"No!" The Egovore wailed alongside him. The dreamscape world collapsed, dragging both of them back to the monster's illusion.
Kion found himself back in the forest clearing, the Egovore had removed its branches from his brain, temporarily stunned. The vines had slackened as well. Kion looked down his left arm.
The dagger was still there.
"Hrragghhh!" He cut himself free, dropping to the ground below.
He quickly downed his vitality potion and a storm-pill to cultivate and replenish his mana. He was aware of the side-effects it would cause, but that was nothing, at least, when it came to his survival.
"You sure know how to lie for a dead tree." He said.
The Egovore roared at him.
"You—" he pointed his sword at him, "do not feel for your victims. You don't care about their pain, you only care about what it does to their mental psyche."
The Egovore's eyes widened slightly, expressing surprise.
"Pain is like a bad ingredient for your precious soup. It makes it taste all wrong to the point that you can't have it. That was why you hesitated when I was in pain. You couldn't have a clever mind such as myself going to waste, could you?"
The Egovore roared at him again, almost like it was angry that he had unveiled its cheap tactic.
It had tried to break him down with so much pain, so that in the end, he would have no other option than to resist. It would've worked, and for a moment, it did, but Kion suddenly remembered who he was.
And that he was not going to end his second-life dying by the branches of a fucking tree, whatever class it was.
"So all I had to do was cause myself a great deal of pain to disrupt your mind-feeding." Kion mused. "Good speech though. The part about serving a greater purpose. Did you think I would have entertained that?"
"Enough talking." The Egovore finally said, it's raging layered voices terrifying, "you may have managed to conjure up something to save you, but I'm in control here, and it's still too late for you. I may not be able to have you but at least I'll soak in the joy of killing such a clever mind."
The Egovore lunged at Kion, its arms stretched out in a deathly hug.
Kion leaped out of the way, feeling the vitality brew quicken his muscles and the new hum of replenished mana within his body, thanks to the storm-pill.
"You're as good as dead, young human." The Egovore shrieked. "There is nothing you can do." It ripped a large oak tree off the ground and hurled it at Kion.
The tree was quite large, and it came at him so fast. Kion wouldn't have had enough time or space to dodge.
His eyes glowed amber.
[Smoke Form]
He melted into black, thick smoke and passed over the flying tree, unscathed.
Within seconds, he materialised in another side of the clearing.
"RRGGHHH!" The Egovore grumbled. He snapped his fingers, and more vines spring from the trees.
Kion fought with insane skill, cleaving through and dodging them at the same time. One came for his legs, and he jumped, twisting his body in a side leap while simultaneously cutting through another that came for his his head.
The Egovore sent hundreds coming his way at once, and he activated [Fire Barrage], channeling a stream of fire that travelled down the hilt of his sword to escape from the tip of the blade. It doused the vines in flames, causing them to wither before getting within reach of him.
"Why won't you just die?!" The monster screamed as it slammed its arms into the ground, conducting its wood-mancy deep within the earth.
All around Kion, the trees began to come alive.
Within mere moments, he was surrounded by mini-egovores.
They all came at him.
The first one stabbed its spindly branch-arm towards his head.
He bent low, arching his body backwards till his head was almost upside down. From his inverted vision, he spotted another lunge at his back.
[Fire Blade]
His right arm moved instinctively, using his longsword to stab into the rushing creature's heart, before curling his left hand over his body to slice through the first egovore's arm.
He twisted mid air, landing just in time to meet the next egovore, who came at him from the side.
At the same time, he heard a roar behind him.
"Huff!" He did a backflip, perfectly over the fourth one that came for his back, while narrowly avoiding the one that initially came for his side.
He landed on the opposite side as both tree monsters crashed into each other.
[Fire Barrage].
Kion burned them both with his hot flames.
Quickly, he turned and hurled his dagger into the eye-socket of the first egovore he had de-limbed, causing it to die instantly.
More hordes of egovores kept coming, but Kion kept finishing them off, each kill more effective than the last.
With every egovore he downed, he was coming closer to dealing with the main Egovore that caused all this madness.
Kion let his rage fuel him. He slashed, dodged, burned and killed everything standing in his way.
SLASH!
He cut through the trunk of the last one standing between him and the Egovore, and then, with no hesitation, went running straight for the monster.
"Stay back." The Egovore yelled, now fearing for its life. It had not expected to be bested by a human, not so soon. And at least not by one so weak.
Earlier, it had sensed Kion's cultivation level, and it had laughed.
An uncommon-grade warrior…
Not even epic-grade warriors could stand a chance against it. Maybe mythic-grade, but those were much harder to find.
But somehow, this one had risen above all the odds, and now he was coming for the finishing blow.
"I said stay back!" The Egovore yelled, hurling another tree trunk towards Kion, who disintegrated into ashes, the tree trunk passing harmlessly through his smoky form.
Within moments, he reformed, still running, and much closer now.
"I'll kill you!" The Egovore screamed, sending hundreds of vines his way.
[Fire Barrage]
The prince cleared through them like they were nothing.
"No, no, no!" The Egovore backed away, stumbling and falling to the ground. Kion leaped into the air, his blade poised down for a killing blow.
He would not miss this time.
"Hragghh." A sickening crunch of wood could be heard as Kion sank his blade deep into the Egovore's bark, puncturing clean through its heart.
The illusion world created by the monster instantly shattered.
Kion looked down at his now physical body. Everything remained the same, his blade still plunged into the Egovore.
Unexpectedly, the creature laughed, its eyes struggling to remain open.
"In the end, I'm glad that it's a brilliant mind such as you."
It's form withered until it was a mere pile of sticks.