The Twelve Apocalypses: A Damned Soul's Path to the Abyss-Chapter 84 137: The Best Approach

Watching the yeti interact was both odd and uncomfortable.

My senses were keen enough to pick up the guttural language they spoke, and though I shouldn't have been able to understand them, flashes of insight materialized effortlessly inside my head. I couldn't translate everything one to one, but only because their language was barely a language at all.

Oh, they communicated. They even shared highly complex and nuanced ideas with one another. Still, this exchange didn't depend on words in the traditional sense.

It was only halfway through watching the chieftain organize several bands of scouts and hunters that I realized exactly which of my senses was feeding me their conversation, and why it made me feel so strange.

It was soul sight. Well, 'sight' doesn't really describe the pervasive and holistic experience of sensing souls, but that's what it was. Somehow, I was picking up on everything they intended to say, rather than having their words translated for me.

Despite the overall discomfort of this experience, the content of their discussion was amazing news for us.

Most of the yeti's attention was fixed on mundane tasks like hunting, gathering, and generally providing for the tribe. However, two groups of five each were assigned the prestigious task of investigating the strange creatures sighted by the original scouts. Their orders were simple: figure out if the strangers were strong, and if they weren't, kill as many as they could and bring back the meat for the tribe to feast on.

I scoffed loudly and openly. Even if Mia's perception dampening spell were to fail that very second, I wouldn't have cared. There I was, lamenting the fact that I'd lost most of my sympathy for mortals, and then I ran into the one group that would happily kill and eat me.

At least when we tailed one of the two groups out of their little settlement, I didn't have to beat myself up over not feeling bad for them.

The two groups were not setting out together, which was another point in our favor. One group would retrace their steps and very carefully approach the demon camp from the same direction as last time. The scouts were convinced they hadn't been spotted before, because no one had given chase, so they were happy enough to sneak up to a camp full of demons for a second peek. The second group would take a longer way around.

Mia and I trailed after the second group. It would take more time for the yeti to notice their absence, which minimized the chances of them reacting disadvantageously, be that assaulting our camp in retribution or fleeing for their lives.

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"Can we kill them now?"

It must have been the twentieth time Mia had asked me that question. Like every time past the first few, I sighed wearily and rolled my eyes. "No, Mia. We need them to take us back to the surface first."

"We can find the way."

"It would waste time, and we'd have to be even more careful with the traps." That was true enough. The yeti, too, had to move with caution around the purely physical traps, and it turned out the magical ones also required temporary disablement. "And it's not that bad."

It was that bad. The pain inflicted on my senses by yeti chatter was only rivaled by the pain of their smell. Judging by Mia's narrowed eyes, she knew I was bluffing and resented me for it.

"Can't we just pull the info out of their souls when they're dead?" she begged.

I froze mid-step, and my keen kitty cat noticed.

"Hayden?" There was danger in her voice. "Did you forget you are a demon now?"

I looked away immediately. "No?"

"I thought you wanted to present all of their souls to Glaustro, and that's why you refused!"

"I have a lot on my mind, okay?"

It was not okay. Even as she dropped the perception dampening spell, Mia continued grumbling about the stupidity of males.

To their credit, the yeti reacted instantly when the sound of our footsteps was no longer masked. All five of them spun around and bared their fangs, the three women and two men doing their best to posture as big scary predators.

It might have worked, if they weren't facing demons.

I was almost in the lead female's face before I realized that I was willingly getting super close to a walking source of plague and infection. To say that I called on my mana in a hurry was an understatement. With a snap of air displaced by mana of startling density, my mage shield emerged around me.

I then tried to anchor my mana in the air, mimicking elemental manipulation to kill my momentum. At the same time, without really thinking about it, I sent a mana bolt careening towards the yeti. Her head blew apart like a watermelon introduced to a heavy steel bat.

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Honestly, even knowing all I was capable of now, I still spent a moment gaping at the yeti corpse as it slowly collapsed backwards. Already, I was passively running both my strengthening and body refining techniques, constantly tweaking both to better suit my new demonic form. With all the other spells and mana manipulation I had just managed on top of that… if I were still a human, my brain would be trickling out of my ears.

An abrupt explosion of mana blew apart another yeti and sent bits of flesh and blood raining down around me. I mustered up the best glare I could in the heat of battle. If I didn't have my shield up, Mia's ranged attack would have showered me in the stuff!

Reluctant though I was to resort to melee, I drew my soul-blade next. I could literally track the soul of the first slain yeti as it trailed through the air and got sucked into my soul pouch, but since I wanted the locals' knowledge, it was better to rely on my sword. At least I wouldn't have to shove the soul down my throat while pondering the yeti's insanitary condition.

My sword sang through the air, and a yeti was parted from her head.

It really was as simple as that. Even with all their strange mana abilities, the yeti were pitiful opponents. I knew I was safe to indulge briefly in the flood of knowledge while Mia demolished the final two combatants.

The life of a yeti wasn't as simple or as crass as I'd expected.

Sure, the unkempt settlement was par for the course, but they showed startling care when it came to their homes. Those were kept clean, relatively speaking, and intensely private. Only Children and mates were allowed to enter the home of an adult yeti, and the homeowner would know if someone had broken the rules.

There was an entire complex culture attached to the idea of closeness, offspring, and mating bonds. The careful social dance of ideas was communicated through body language as much as through grunts and other sounds.

Maintaining your place as one of the celebrated strong was an extremely important part of their culture. Appearing weak was a sin. Anyone useful to the tribe was honored, and anyone weak or perceived as useless was ruthlessly eliminated.

There was also an unexpected tenderness in the memories. The yeti was a mother, and she was fiercely protective of her pups. As the larger of the two sexes, it fell to the females to protect and feed their offspring. The yeti I had killed was never willing to see her children go hungry, even at great personal cost.

She also had a mate she was particularly fond of and gentle with. He had fathered most of her children, and she enjoyed spending time with him even when he was relatively useless to her.

Underneath all of this were the memories of self-expression, even of art. If I had cared to check, I could have seen the elaborate carvings on the inside walls of her den, detailing the ancestry and history of its builder.

When the end of her memory unspooled, it was almost anticlimactic. She was excited for a new task and potential hunt, and looked forward to returning to her family. One of the yeti Mia was slaughtering was her favored mate, and she cherished setting out with him.

Then there was a sound, she turned, and she was dead before she properly laid eyes on me.

I let out a loud breath of frustration as I opened my eyes to the scene of our slaughter, yeti corpses scattered around us in far too many bits. Mia must have been really annoyed, because she'd been extra vindictive with all her spells.

"Learn anything good?" she quipped, daintily picking her way through the gore.

"Yes. Good and… I don't know. Frustrating? Follow me, I'll take us out of here."

As we moved on, I knew I could do exactly as I'd promised. The traps were always placed in the exact same areas of the cavern tunnels, and all the yeti were trained to set and disable them. The mana flickers required for this disabling were ridiculously basic, too. The only reason I couldn't figure them out on my own was that it would be a little like brute forcing a password. Lots of numbers, lots of potential combinations. With mana, it was even worse.

"Going to share?"

Mia's voice snapped me out of my thoughts, and I realized I'd been silently trudging along for close to an hour.

"Their magic…" I let out another huff of annoyance. "It's not something we can copy. Well, we can, but only here. It's not really them at all. It's the world."

The yeti weren't special like I'd suspected. They weren't even all that talented. They were simply inhabitants of a world so young that its laws were still in flux, with all the mana in its most primordial state.

This was what had put me in a mood. Not only was I disappointed, but I felt incredibly angry with myself for not realizing the truth sooner.

Sure, I was now a demon, but the ease with which mana answered to my call on Breskwor? The way it all but leapt to obey? That wasn't entirely normal. In fact, as a demonic invader, I would have expected the opposite.

Apparently, we had arrived on this world in its earliest days, earlier even than Glaustro had suspected. The mana was easy to claim, and the world was eager for minds to imprint themselves on it, each one leading it a step closer to nascent consciousness.

I'd heard about world eras like that. There were stories of Archmages powerful enough to level entire cities, or sword masters capable of cleaving the skies. 'Modern' scholars and mages marveled at the might of these figures, arguing whether such things were even possible. They were, because the world was just that easy to manipulate back then.

As laws solidified and the World Will grew, such feats became unreachable for all but the mightiest practitioners of mana. It was ironic, really, that 'modern' mages were almost always more powerful than their ancestors due to the refinement of advancement methods, yet only capable of leveraging their strength in vastly reduced ways.

The only reason I knew these things was the training I'd received as a kid. One of the first lessons demons gave their future soldiers was an explanation of what was worth stealing during an invasion and what wasn't. Most of the worlds demons invaded were so old, the ancient magic was no longer applicable. Useless. Not worth a second thought.

Unfortunately, a looter's perspective didn't translate well into the perspective of a budding demonic officer. I had spent so much time agonizing over the magical abilities of the locals, failing all the while to notice the glaring fact of the world's extreme youth: the information that was actually useful.

Some sergeant I am.

Worse, there was yet another secret lurking in the memories of the yeti. One that could either make or break our little venture on Breskwor.

The locals were steeped in Divinity.