Psychic Parasite

Chapter 432: In Times of Need, Hallucination and Betrayal Can Be Scary
As long as they were given a chance and some time to think, people would try to come up with something that would ease their lives. No one would blindly charge forth and flaunt their foolishness.

After all, just by preparing a little, they would save a lot of time and increase their chances of survival. So, Jyorta wasn’t surprised when he saw the teams of Haesha and Esina work together. Rather, he liked their plans and how they had searched for a Web World first to obtain that rope.

Only after that did they begin to climb up the path. Jyorta also noticed how all the students in their teams had tied silk ropes around their hips, hands, and legs. This way, they reduced their weight to a considerable extent, decreasing the amount of stamina they had to expend to move.

Though, they also ensured to not reduce their weight completely. Without making use of the weight, their attacks would lose most of its power. That’s why, they balanced it realistically, keeping their priorities straight.

Moreover, Jyorta noticed one student who hadn’t fought from the start. He was carrying a bag, within which, what seemed to be rocks were placed. It was the Web World they had raided before.

Now, after stuffing it full of rocks to prevent it from flying away, they used it as a defensive barrier to rest behind. Moreover, in the case they needed more lift, they would just dump the rocks from it and use the extra silk.

They had prepared in their own way.

As the Battleship flew closer, spindles shot forth from it, attacking the Steel Porcupines, killing one every second. Haesha turned around, smiling as she noticed the structure flying towards her in the air, ”Only one person makes such stuff.”

”Ohh, it’s your guy.” Esina snickered.

”Shut up.” Haesha lightly hit her head.

The two felt the tension on them reduce a lot as the Battleship came into the scene, causing most of the Steel Porcupines to target it automatically. It was because the Battleship was oozing with a presence that made them automatically target it.

It was because it had absorbed the blood of a lot of Frenzy Beasts while moving around. Even though Jyorta had expelled the blood on its surface a lot of time, he was unable to do much to the blood soaked up by the silk.

It would consume too much psychic energy to expel them, and hence, Jyorta refrained from doing so. As a result, the Battleship became the target eyed upon by a lot of Frenzy Beasts. Spindles shot forth from it, attacking the Steel Porcupines that tried their best to dodge.

Some of them managed to dodge the attacks while most were still injured. As for the ones busy attacking, they failed to dodge on time, getting impaled in the head by the spindles.

”Don’t worry about us and proceed further. We will reach the top at our own pace.” Haesha shouted the moment she noticed the Battleship begin to slow down. She also saw how the number of spikes flying towards the Battleship had increased, as it seemed many Steel Porcupines wished to take it down.

They were in a state of frenzy as they chased after the Battleship. Jyorta had just peaked out of the shaft when he heard Haesha’s voice.

’She’s a strong girl, indeed.’ He chuckled, flashing her a thumbs up. ”I’ll wait for you guys at the top.”

”Go!” Esina shouted as she grabbed the tail of a distracted Steel Porcupine and slammed it like a whip on its brethren. She used their spikes to injure each other. Both the Steel Porcupines had impaled each other and were bleeding, on the verge of death.

That was what she was using. Moreover, the moment she came across a Steel Porcupine with a body-length spike that suited her need, she targeted it first and ripped out its spike. She then whipped out a piece of silk from her pocket and wound it around the root of the spike—the one attached to the Steel Porcupine’s skin. She then considered it as a hilt as Esina safely wielded the body-length spike as a sword.

And, thanks to its lower weight and superior sharpness and rigidity, it proved a better sword than the ones she obtained from a yellow circle. Moreover, there were a lot of Steel Porcupines. So, one of their teammates was collecting the spikes to use at a later date.

The Battleship flew past them; Jyorta said to his teammates after a moment of thought, ”Try to trigger any many Steel Porcupines as possible. Let’s make the path as easy as possible for the people that would follow us later.”

”Alright,” Bilena nodded as she focused on the Steel Porcupines chasing after them. Before they began to slow down, she aimed and shot her spindles at the tails of some Steel Porcupines, hitting them where it hurt the most.

On hearing the wails of the injured Steel Porcupines, an even greater portion of them were enraged. Their shouts increased as more and more Steel Porcupines poured out from their respective segment in the central tower, moving to hinder the Battleship.

”Let’s proceed at maximum speed. Buckle up,” Jyorta shouted as he sent a mental cue to the five Tier 2 Floating Spiders, causing them to push the Battleship forward at their maximum speeds. Slowly, the Battleship accelerated, crossing speeds of 10 metres per second. Soon, it hit the ceiling speed of 15 metres per second.

They were flying incredibly fast. Even controlling the Battleship proved to be a bit of a problem. It was because it was storing up a lot of momentum in it, so for every change, the momentum had to be countered or redirected.

This was why Jyorta hadn’t proceeded at this speed before. But now, he decided to do it since the attacks of the Steel Porcupines were causing more harm than he had expected. Without any hesitation, the battleship flew in a straight line.

Though, this made it easy for the Steel Porcupines to target it, so he had to change its positions in the air, trying his best not to topple it while varying its altitude. Thankfully, it was streamlined enough to not topple as long as he changed positions in the vertical directions.

So, that was what Jyorta did to evade most of the spikes flying his way. Duvic and Rishana had also positioned their respective cylinders towards the front, targeting the Steel Porcupines that were about to attack them.

Though, Jyorta noticed their aim was slowly going off as time passed. He then noticed they were getting tired from having used their Tier 1 Skills to such a strained extent. The Skills too were like organs. So, as they used them too much, their bodies and their respective organs were becoming tired.

Followed by a sigh, Jyorta turned his weaker psychic arm pale blue and seeped it into all of them, forming a single line. He used a bit of his psychic energy to heal them to optimal conditions, watching their aim return to normal.

Moreover, thanks to their experience, their aim was now better than before.

’Well, that’s something good.’ He thought, noticing the number of spikes lodged in the hull had crossed twenty by now. As they were getting attacked more and more, the damage on the hull piled up, allowing the successive spikes to lodge in at a deeper depth.

”We’re almost at the end.” Jyorta smiled as he could see the sand dunes become bigger all of a sudden in the path before him. From that point was the territory of the Crust-Mantles. Chasing after the Battleship were at least 60-80 Steel Porcupines.

It created an imposing momentum. So, the moment they crossed over from their sandy ground to the same sandy ground with bigger dunes, they didn’t realise it. After all, the terrain was almost the same and in their state of frenzy, the Steel Porcupines were unable to spot the minute differences.

When they had moved 100 metres in such a fashion, the mandibles of a Crust-Mantle sprung out of the sands and clamped a Steel Porcupine, shredding it into bits. Similarly, in many locations, Crust-Mantles appeared and ambushed the Steel Porcupines.

They swiftly retreated into the sand after swallowing the Steel Porcupines. As the Steel Porcupines was a race with greater unity than the other races, they immediately retaliated against the Crust-Mantles, tracking them through the sand.

A war between the two races sparked. To fuel it even further, Jyorta overlaid the place with the aura personification of betrayal and hallucination.

The Steel Porcupines had been chasing a foe that had killed and caused suffering to a lot of their brethren. They had been chasing the entity flying in the air, spamming attacks at it. It had a solid defence and had been able to resist their attacks to a great extent.

Still, upon noticing how their attacks were slowly going through it, the Steel Porcupines were assured that it was about time before they would slay their foe. And hence, they had chased after the foe into the territory of another race, the Crust-Mantles.

Since they had a shared foe, they possessed a tacit understanding that they would work together to take down their foe. But in actuality, the Crust-Mantles had betrayed them at the time of need and even began killing their brethren. The Steel Porcupines were unable to endure such betrayal and decided to retaliate, cackling as they called forth even more of their brethren.

His aura personifications had basically changed the script in play between them and fuelled their war.