The serious work on the Withered Skulker started around two hours before nightfall. Not only did that give me more than enough time to rest but it also made sure that, if the Withered immediately noticed the thing’s distress and sent our Hunters to attack us, they wouldn’t reach us around nightfall, giving us the entire night to fight or evade them.

The work itself was quite fascinating. It wasn’t just torture, or rather, not just causing pain, but the majority of what I did was more in the line of sensory manipulation. There was quite a bit of Darkness Magic used in my efforts, mostly creative applications of the concept of Concealment, alongside a lot of Mind Magic in its various forms.

Interestingly, I could feel the Withered Skulker radiate its psychic powers and Alex and I made a game of countering those emanations. Not only did we repeatedly smack them back, I also experimented with how far I could stretch them, testing how much I could do with the Astral Interference trait. It was a fascinating thing, and I truly wanted to test it on Divine Powers, but for now, the best I could do was the psychic power I had here.

The power’s texture itself was quite similar to normal Astral Power channelled through the Mind Magic skill, though it wasn’t the same. There were some minute differences, enough to compare but I wasn’t yet able to figure out what the differences meant. It might just be that the psychic powers were purpose-bound, but I had a feeling that there was more to it. Maybe a gut instinct but I wasn’t sure.

Interestingly, the psychic powers Alex could use, while far, far weaker than those of the Withered, had a texture that was different from both, the Mind Magic and the psychic powers, to the point that I began to wonder if it wasn’t a difference in magic power I detected but a difference in the individual. I’d need a few more Withered Skulker to test that theory, though given that I lacked a control sample to see if the Mind Magic texture I was currently working with wasn’t just unique to me.

Alas, while the magical side of the experiment was incredibly fascinating, the primary purpose of it was to break the Withered Skulker and by the time midnight rolled around, the thing was barely twitching any longer. It was thoroughly catatonic on a physical level, despite the care I had taken to keep the body relatively whole and healthy, but on a psychic level, it was far from inactive. There, I had to reign in my own senses a little, the only thing I could compare the thing’s emanations to was loud, pained screaming. It was even worse than physical noise, there, I would be able to cover my ears or close a door, but the psychic variant managed to get through walls and breach my brain, leaving me with a headache. The thing didn’t even need to breathe to scream that way, something it took full advantage of.

Luckily, lining a cage with Concealment and Darkness Runes was enough to keep the screaming, well, concealed. Otherwise, it might have given our approach to Racoon City away, which is where we wanted to take the Skulker.

Given that there was still enough night left for us, the four of us set out as soon as I felt the thing wouldn’t stop screaming, ever. It was quite interesting what agony contamination with Miasma and Necrotic energy, the channelled essence of Death Magic, in a body could cause. It might have been what ultimately broke the Withered, though I’d need to test some more, for science. Maybe I could even manage to create some mental contamination, similar to the contamination caused by Death Magic, just not physical but targeting the Mind. Or maybe even the soul, though that might require a combination of Mind, Death and Blood Magic. I could wield all three but I was far from mastering any of them, especially Death Magic would take me a whole lot more time, even with the skill points I had recently gained. By now, it was level thirteen, while Mind Magic was at thirty-six and Blood Magic at twenty-nine. Torturing the Withered Skulker had been quite beneficial to all three skills, though I had been using them in combat these last few days as well. Just not as much and certainly not in so many new and creative ways. And people said torture was pointless.

In this case, the torture most certainly had achieved its point, and now, that point was carried by Lia in an enchanted cage. The effect of the runes inscribed on the bars was quite interesting itself, it created a weird, somewhat swirly disturbance that I could faintly see through but not quite. If I didn’t know where to look, or if the cage itself was gone, I might easily overlook the effect in the darkness, though that probably should be expected, it was a concealment field after all. Just one that focused on concealing the world from the creature within it, leaving it rather disturbed.

Once we got to Racoon City, we moved roughly to the area where we had taken the Withered Skulker before setting the cage down. Given the state it was in, and the amount of magic I had needed to keep it stable, I could estimate that the concealment magic would fall apart within the next twenty minutes, while the cage itself would keep together longer, maybe for a few more hours. But my Crystal Magic, while growing, was far from perfect, leaving a lot of imperfections in the connections I had created between the scrap metal and those connections would easily break, especially after the Darkness Magic flowing through the runes had weakened them further.

But it was good enough and it gave us more than enough time to put down the cage, right in the middle of an intersection, and get to a good spot to watch what happened with the Skulker.

Our observation spot was almost a hundred metres from the intersection, on a rooftop with a direct line of sight to the cage. The great thing about the spot was that the roofs on either side of the building were almost as high as the one we were on. While it would be a little rough to jump from one roof to the next, we should be able to do so, especially if I pushed myself with magic. It would be a somewhat painful landing on the other side, but it was an excellent way out if we needed to escape.

That there were more roofs we could escape over, all roughly the same height, was only a bonus, giving us ample ways to escape if we had to run. But maybe, we could simply watch what happened down there, before making our way out.

The moment the concealment spells failed was bleedingly obvious, especially to Alex and me. Both of us could feel the psychic emanations and they were still as agitated as they had been the entire night. Or maybe even more so, and we could not only feel them but also the response, and what a response it was. The entire area was suddenly filled with psychic emanations, as if everyone was screaming, all at once. It was strong enough to give me a headache, even with multiple concealment spells woven around me in an attempt to blunt some of that power and while using my Mind Magic to shield myself.

Even Lia, sitting right next to me, started to massage her temple, and she could normally only hear the faintest of buzzes if we were around multiple Withered, all using their abilities. But here, she could easily perceive them all, to the point that she was getting a headache.

And the reaction wasn’t just on the psychic spectrum, it was only that we could perceive that aspect of it far from the physical aspect. For that, we only had to follow the dozens of psychic signals, all moving towards the intersection, coming from all around us.

Now, I was a little annoyed that I hadn’t prepared some nice surprise for the Withered, something explosive of fiery, Alex would certainly have some fun ideas for something like that. Alas, not today. But maybe the next time we did something like this. The sheer amount of Withered converging on the cage we set up was quite attractive to blow up.

Moments after the Withered arrived, I had to swallow a little, the sheer fury of the creatures we were watching was rather intimidating. The metal cage the Withered Skulker had been in was instantly destroyed by multiple Hunters pouncing on it and the Withered Skulker I had broken didn’t last much longer.

Normally, Withered Hunters were brutal and efficient but this, this went far beyond their usual behaviour. They tore the broken Skulker apart and even after it died, they continued to savage the body to the point that they hurt each other in their frenzy. It was incredibly brutal and all of them were drenched in blood, far more blood than the Withered Skulker could have in its body.

And yet, they weren’t sated and started to fan out. Looking for us…