The top floor of the command tower was a circular hall, unsettlingly empty.
The floor here wasn't metal, but a purple-black biomass carpet that squirmed slowly. The walls were inlaid with countless mirrors of varying sizes, reflecting bizarre, distorted images. The air was filled with a sickly sweet scent so thick it was nauseating—a high-concentration psychoactive hallucinogen.
The Slayer kicked open the door melted by the BFG and walked in.
His war boots squelched on the soft ground, sounding like he was walking on the entrails of some massive creature.
In the center of the hall hovered a giant, irregular mass of flesh.
It had no limbs, no mouth, not even a torso.
It only had eyes.
Thousands upon thousands of eyes.
Some as large as wheels, some as small as grains of rice. Some eyeballs were bloodshot, some pupils spiraled eerily, and some were even oozing pus. These eyes were densely packed on the surface of the flesh ball, some even squeezing and devouring each other.
The Thousand-Eyed Tyrant.
The true master of this mine, and an extremely rare psychic-type Demon Lord in the Abyss.
It didn't roar or charge like other demons.
The moment the Slayer stepped into the hall, thousands of eyes rotated simultaneously, all gazes focusing on the green intruder.
*HUMMMM——————*
An invisible, high-frequency mental wave erupted instantly.
There was no physical shockwave.
The Slayer's body stiffened abruptly.
On his visor, the originally clear data stream suddenly began to jump frantically, turning into strings of meaningless gibberish.
[WARNING: System Intrusion.]
[WARNING: Visual Nerves Compromised.]
[WARNING: Massive Unknown Psychic Beacons Detected.]
The Slayer did not retreat.
He raised the Yin Yang Shotgun in his hand, trying to lock onto the target.
But in his vision, the flesh ball vanished.
Replacing it were countless overlapping phantoms.
The Thousand-Eyed Tyrant was on the left, on the right, overhead. Even beneath his own feet, countless eyes sprouted, staring up at him.
The Slayer pulled the trigger.
*BANG!*
Golden lightning blasted the phantom on the left. The phantom shattered, turning into a puff of purple smoke, then quickly coalesced into a new eye that emitted a soundless mockery.
This wasn't just visual deception.
This was Sensory Deprivation and Reconstruction.
"Look into my eyes... and drown..."
A cold, viscous voice sounded directly in the Slayer's mind. It wasn't heard through ears, but burrowed deep into his consciousness like a parasite.
The Slayer felt the surrounding space begin to twist.
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The originally flat floor turned into a bottomless vortex. In the mirrors on the walls, the reflections were no longer himself, but countless versions of himself being skinned, dismembered, and screaming.
This was Mental Pollution.
It dug for the deepest fears in the Slayer's heart (though it found none), attempting to crush the warrior's will with chaos and madness.
A trace of lag appeared in the Slayer's movements.
His Chaingun began to spin aimlessly, and his shoulder cannon locked onto dust motes in the air at random.
The Thousand-Eyed Tyrant saw an opportunity.
Its massive body swelled slightly, and hundreds of main eyes lit up with purple light simultaneously.
[Psionic Storm · Gaze of Terror].
Beams of purple light didn't shoot at the Slayer's body, but directly at his head.
The Slayer felt the pressure inside his helmet skyrocket, as if countless red-hot steel needles were piercing his temples.
If it were an ordinary person, or even a strong-willed cultivator, they would have suffered a mental breakdown in that instant, turning into a drooling idiot.
But the Slayer...
He stood his ground, leaning forward as if fighting an invisible hurricane.
His hands released his weapons.
Just when the Thousand-Eyed Tyrant thought he was giving up resistance.
The Slayer's hands violently grabbed his own helmet.
*Thud! Thud!*
He wasn't holding his head in pain.
He was hitting the sides of his helmet hard. Like slapping an old TV with bad reception.
The movement was extremely crude, carrying a violent "fix yourself right now" irritability.
He didn't need to see through the illusions.
He didn't need to understand the whispers.
He just needed to clear his head, even if by physical means.
The Slayer's fists clenched tight, knuckles turning white from excessive force.
He was angry.
Not because of fear, but because the feeling of being peeped at, interfered with, and having garbage information stuffed into his brain made him feel incredibly disgusted.
This disgust transformed into a purer rage.
The Slayer snapped his head up.
Although he saw countless enemies in the illusion, the eyes hidden behind his faceplate stared dead at that ethereal position in the center of the hall.
Instinct.
The primal instinct of a hunter for its prey.
No matter how many illusions you create, no matter which dimensional crack you hide in.
As long as you exist, I can tear you apart.
The Slayer grabbed the chainsaw from the ground again.
*VROOOOM—!*
The Tiger Soul seemed to sense its master's anger, letting out a deafening roar that forcibly tore through the sticky mental fog around them.
The Slayer took a step.
That step crushed the "Void Vortex" illusion beneath his feet.
Another step.
Shattered the "Mirror Clones" in front of him.
Like a bull, closing his eyes (not literally, but ignoring visual signals), relying on that suffocating killing intent, he charged straight toward the center of the hall.
For the first time, a look of surprise appeared in the thousands of eyes of the Thousand-Eyed Tyrant.
It couldn't understand.
Why was its mind control ineffective?
Why was its fear projection bounced off?
It tried to increase output power, tried to read the Slayer's thoughts to find his weakness.
But the moment its mental tentacles touched the Slayer's mental defense line.
*BOOM!*
It was like hitting a wall cast from high-density lead plates.
And on the other side of the wall, there were no complex thoughts, no tangled emotions, no weakness to exploit.
There was only one thing.
Noise.
Deafening, violent heavy metal noise, like an industrial crusher running at full power.
*Thump—Thump—Thump—Thump!*
That was the rhythm of the Slayer's heartbeat.
That was the BGM of his soul.
The Thousand-Eyed Tyrant's mental tentacles were instantly shattered by this wave of sound.
"AHHHH—!!!"
The Tyrant let out a scream, its body trembling violently, several eyes bursting and bleeding from the psychic backlash.
The Slayer had already rushed up close.
He didn't hesitate for a second.
Raised the chainsaw.
Aiming at the main body of the flesh ball that still reeked of stench even within the illusion.
slashed down.
...
Netherworld Control Center.
Singularity watched the gibberish on the screen gradually fade, redisplaying the Slayer's indomitable figure, and let out a long breath.
"I knew it..."
Singularity wiped his sweat and wrote a note in his logbook:
"Psychic attacks against the Slayer = Suicide."
"This guy's brain structure... probably doesn't even have a 'Fear' partition. His neural circuitry only has two wires: one connected to the trigger, the other to the speakers."
Watching the Thousand-Eyed Tyrant on the screen being chased around by the chainsaw, trying to summon minions as meat shields, Singularity shook his head.
"Those who play with minds are most afraid of meeting this kind of heartless brute."
"However..."
Singularity looked at another strange control rune suddenly lighting up on the Tyrant's body. That rune didn't connect to the Slayer, but to the Spirit slaves in the mine below who had just been rescued and hadn't had time to evacuate yet.
"Slayer, watch out!"
"Since this guy can't control you, it's going to control others to disgust you!"
*Next Chapter: Psychic Attacks Ineffective. The Tyrant realizes force won't work, so it decides to play dirty. It controls the Spirit slaves to rush up with pickaxes to their deaths. What will the Slayer choose? Kill them all?*
