I turn to the last demon, the mage, and immediately resume my icicle barrage in order to give myself a little time and space.

Holy moly! I’m tired. That took a fair bit out of me, but so long as the Colony is close enough, I will never truly tire. Sure enough, as Will continues to flow through the Vestibule, my brains are soothed, my muscles restored and my stamina replenished.

This is the power of family! Gwheheheh!

With my siblings helping me, I need never fear a tier seven demon ever again!

Having said that, the Altar is looking a little forlorn. The attacks I’ve used so far have taken a huge chunk out of it, and with the gravity domain active, it won’t gain any power either. I’ll have to finish this last tier seven without it.

I mean, I could turn off the domain spell, but then I’d be swarmed by the masses of weaker monsters. No thanks. I’d just get bogged down and lasered in the face a bunch of times. I’m not in the mood for a ranged battle against a specialist spell demon. Fighting Invidia once was enough for me to swear off that for the foreseeable future.

My ice spears rocket through the air, shattering noisily against the demon’s shield and filling the air with a frozen mist that quickly burns away. Eyes burning with mindless rage, the mage hisses in agitation, returning fire with more lasers that sear across my carapace.

That spell is so damn fast!

Unfortunately for my opponent, it may be able to hit me, but it doesn’t pack enough punch to inflict lasting damage to my carapace. With gravity mana constantly flowing, my body is humming at max capacity and the inner-plating is doing its job repairing my exo-skeleton before any weaknesses can really appear.

What I don’t want to do is wait around and find out a more powerful version of this spell exists that melts through me, so I need to keep moving and distract the enemy.

As I start to circle around, I decide to change my magic based attack mode. Mind mana, a constant requirement to maintain my constructs, begins to flow brightly as the mana in my core is converted. Experts at handling this particular flavour of mana, the sub-brains and the constructs they work with leap on the energy and begin pumping out mental-attacks.

I’ve not grown to specialise in these methods, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t useful. Against Garralosh, the mental-attack was extremely effective, and defending against this method is also important.

Woven with incredible speed, hundreds of strands of mind magic zip through the air, rushing toward the demon. My sudden shift in tactics causes a moment of hesitation, which nearly proves disastrous, before her mind reaches out and begins to shred my mana before it can touch her.

Ooo, that was close. Still, that might keep her more busy and prevent her from firing that -

ZAP!

Yeeeouch! Apparently not. Ah well, at least if my opponent tries to go harder on the offensive, I’ll immediately gain ground in the mind war, which is one that she really can’t afford to lose.

I pick up speed and circle closer and closer, shortening the distance between us and increasing the pressure of my mind attack. The demon is far from helpless and fires back repeatedly with burning lasers that sear into me and at one point threaten to slice off a leg.

Thankfully, I manage to get myself out of the way before the laser can cut through.

The ol’ legs are still my weakest point. I really need to chunk them up at some point, especially the joints. Now that my carapace is truly difficult to penetrate, the go-to tactic of aiming for the joints and legs is going to come back, I can already tell.

Except, it isn’t enough to prevent me from descending on this hapless mage.

The pressure of my mental attack continues to build until a few different bits and pieces begin to slip through. Random thoughts, false sensory impressions, sounds and sights that bewilder and confuse. Once it begins, there’s nothing the demon can do, and I arrive within chomp range quickly.

Naturally, at that distance, this type of demon is no match for the barrage of physical attacks that rain down.

Holy moly!

I jump back after delivering the final chomp as an explosion of guts and brain matter projects out from the mage.

YUCK!

I always forget that these slimmer demons, and truthfully, even some of the larger ones, are packing a heap of their organs into little pocket dimensions.

[Master, are you alright?] Crinis calls me.

[I’m fine! Just… cleaning up the mess, I suppose.]

I look around at the field of battle and sigh. I’ve defeated my three opponents, with surprising ease, I might add, but there are still thousands of weaker demons about.

Just so I don’t have to bother with them, I let the gravity domain continue as I stomp around, kicking the demons off of my precious Biomass and dragging it all together in one pile. One of the demons is flattened into… I’m not sure what word I would use to describe it, but at least the other two left something behind that I can feast on. This is a rare treat. Tier seven monsters don’t grow on trees!

I begin to stuff my face, racking up the points as the weaker demons stumble and crawl on the ground around me. Further away, the battle rages as Tiny, Crinis, Invidia and the bodyguards do their best to fight through the entire horde.

From where I sit, it looks like it's all working out splendidly. They should be finished right about the time I’m done eating!