CHAPTER 174: A WAR OF MINDS

The psychic clash was a silent, invisible explosion that rattled the very foundations of the city. The players on the walls felt it as a sudden wave of nausea and dread. The sky above the spire seemed to shimmer and distort.

In the mental space, Nox and the Psy-Slayer were not just two consciousnesses; they were two universes colliding.

The Psy-Slayer’s mind was a perfect, cold, logical lattice. A billion voices speaking as one, a chorus of pure, consumptive hunger. It was the mind of a predator that had devoured a thousand worlds. It saw Nox not as a person, but as a statistical anomaly, an inefficient variable to be catalogued and erased.

It attacked with pure, weaponized logic. It showed Nox visions of his own defeat, mathematically-proven probabilities of his kingdom’s annihilation. It bombarded him with the sheer, overwhelming scale of the Ravager hive, the endless, screaming chorus of the trillions of lives they had consumed. It was an attack designed to induce absolute, logical despair.

Any other mind would have shattered.

But Nox’s mind was not a logical place.

It was a quiet, empty room, with a small, stubborn boy who had refused to break. It was a storm of chaotic, untamed void. It was the cold, pragmatic mind of a king and the hot, reckless heart of a brawler.

It was a beautiful, terrifying mess.

The Psy-Slayer’s logical assault hit the shores of Nox’s consciousness and just... broke. It was like trying to reason with a hurricane. His mind did not operate on its rules. It did not care about probabilities or statistics.

’You think you’re the first monster to try and get in my head?’ Nox’s thought was a low, dangerous chuckle. ’I’ve got way worse things than you in here.’

He didn’t just defend. He attacked.

He didn’t use logic or reason. He used his own, unique brand of psychic warfare. He unleashed the raw, undiluted memory of his own past. The pain, the anger, the shame, the loneliness. He didn’t just show it to the Psy-Slayer; he made it feel it.

The perfect, logical lattice of the Hive Mind was suddenly infected with a virus it could not comprehend: irrational, human suffering.

The billion voices of the Psy-Slayer screamed in a chorus of confused agony.

---

Underground, the physical body of the Psy-Slayer convulsed. It stopped its burrowing, its massive, centipede-like form thrashing in the earth as its brain was assaulted by a force it was not designed to handle.

Elisa, Vexia, and Mela arrived at its location, a small park in the center of the city that was now a mess of churned earth.

"There it is!" Elisa roared, and charged, her warhammer held high.

The Psy-Slayer, its mind locked in a desperate battle with Nox, could not defend itself. Elisa’s hammer slammed into its armored head with the force of a meteor. The chitinous plating cracked, and green, viscous ichor sprayed into the air.

Vexia was next. She slammed her staff into the ground, and a cage of glowing, silver runes erupted from the earth, trapping the thrashing beast. "It is distracted! Its mental defenses are down! Strike now!"

Mela was a blur, her needles finding the gaps in the creature’s armor that Elisa’s blow had created, her most potent neurotoxins flooding the creature’s system.

The battle for the Psy-Slayer’s body was short and brutal.

---

In the mental space, Nox pressed his advantage. "You wanted to see my mind?" he said, his voice a cold whisper in the heart of the Hive Mind’s consciousness. "Fine. Let me show you."

He didn’t just show it his past. He showed it his power. He unleashed the full, unadulterated concept of the void. The absolute, soul-devouring emptiness of his Dominion. The hungry, erasing power of his Void Eater.

He showed it the face of a nascent god.

The logical, ordered mind of the Psy-Slayer, a being that had existed for eons, finally experienced a concept it had never encountered before.

True fear.

’No,’ the billion voices whispered as one. ’This is not possible. This is... an error.’

"I am not an error," Nox’s thought was a final, absolute judgment. "I am the one who deletes them."

He unleashed his will. It was not a grand attack. It was a simple, quiet command.

’Be silent.’

And the billion voices of the Hive Mind just... stopped.

The psychic connection was severed. The mind of the Psy-Slayer was not just defeated; it was erased, its consciousness consumed and assimilated by the Void Monarch.

---

Underground, the physical body of the Psy-Slayer went limp, its thrashing ceasing. The red light in its psychic lenses faded to black.

[High-Tier Ravager Entity Eliminated.]

[Psychic-class energy signature assimilated.]

[Your Willpower has been permanently and significantly increased.]

[New Ability Unlocked: Psychic Fortress (Passive). Your mind is now a bastion, immune to all forms of hostile mental intrusion.]

In his throne room, Nox opened his eyes. He felt... clearer. Stronger. The psychic battle had been a brutal, exhausting affair, but he had won. And he had taken a piece of his enemy’s power for his own.

He looked out the window. The first wave of the Ravager attack was faltering. With their psychic commander gone, the smaller fighters were disorganized, their attacks chaotic and ineffective. His army, buoyed by Serian’s blessing and their own fierce resolve, was pushing them back.

The first battle of the war for the world was almost over.

But Nox knew this was just a prelude. The Hive Mind had tested them and failed. Next time, it would not send a scout. It would send an army of them.

He stood up from his throne and walked out onto the balcony, his eyes fixed on the massive, alien mothership that still hung in the sky like a dead, metallic moon.

’I’m coming for you next,’ he thought, a silent promise to the silent, watching god in the machine.

The war had just begun. And the king of the void had just found a new, and very interesting, toy to break.