Enemy Shadows in Dreams

The Monster Lion's dream had naturally been guided by the Overmind, who was searching through the Monster Lion's memories.

Although the Monster Lion had tested with level-seven psionic fluctuations, it was certain that this was not psionic power.

The Overmind had reached this conclusion the moment he connected to its body: it possessed none of the mental strength a level-seven psionic user should have had.

This was also the main reason the Overmind had dared to pull an individual stronger than himself, the Monster Lion, into the Hive Mind. In the mental realm, it was actually the weaker party.

Moreover, the Zerg genes inserted by the virus made the Monster Lion instinctively obey the Overmind's commands, unable to even muster thoughts of resistance. Only then could the Overmind safely browse through its memories.

The Monster Lion truly deserved to be called an extraordinary beast. Its memories were countless times clearer than those of ordinary wild animals.

The memories of ordinary beasts had no logical order and rarely any clear timeline, merely a pile of "memorable" scenes layered together. The Monster Lion's memories could not be precise down to each day either, but they were at least coherent.

Since older memories grew blurrier, the Overmind examined them from back to front. The first thing he confirmed was... this damned place truly had no changes between dry and rainy seasons. The Monster Lion had no concept of years or months; it did not even know exactly how long it had lived, only that it had been a very long time—at least several hundred years.

What followed were vast amounts of blurry, dull memories.

Nothing more than killing a bear the day before yesterday, sleeping all day yesterday, stealing a wolf's prey today and eating the wolf while it was at it...

Besides that, there were endless little tigers, little leopards, little cave lions, little lynxes, little jungle cats...

Honestly, even though he had long learned of the Monster Lion's conduct from the mother tiger's memories, the Overmind was still shocked beyond words. You're a full nine meters long! The size difference is that huge... you beast!

Still, although its private life was utterly debauched, it had yet to encounter another creature of its kind—half lizard, half lion—and had no offspring. This differed from all the other "monster beasts" in his memories.

After watching "cat videos" for quite some time, the Overmind finally found the information he cared about most.

It was also a memory that had left an incredibly deep impression on the Monster Lion:

It was an arrow, but also a "branch" with no trace of artificial crafting whatsoever, even still bearing bark.

The leaves at one end had naturally formed the shape of fletching, while the other end had only a single main root, sharp beyond compare. Thus, it formed a natural arrow, embedded in the Monster Lion's shoulder. The arrowhead had pierced through fur and hide but was stopped by muscle, unable to go any deeper. Blood streamed out, slowly dripping down the wooden shaft.

This was the first injury the Monster Lion had suffered since its birth. The surge of adrenaline meant it did not feel much pain, nor did it feel much fear. Instead, rage immediately clouded its mind.

It threw back its head and let out a long roar. The sound waves made leaves tremble within several hundred meters, and the next moment, another arrow wreathed in green light shot through a gap in the canopy and embedded itself in the Monster Lion's other shoulder.

The Monster Lion pounced toward where the arrow had come from, clawed at the trunk twice, and brutally snapped the entire tree in half.

But what followed were two more arrows lodging in its back... Even with all that adrenaline, the Monster Lion began to feel pain.

Compared to its body, the arrows were barely thicker than chopsticks. The green light wrapped around them also seemed to accelerate recovery, so the damage they caused was limited. But this inexplicable pain drove the Monster Lion completely mad. It frantically attacked every tree around it and killed every living thing it could find as though venting its fury.

Startled birds scattered in all directions. The sounds of branches scraping against one another and wood cracking rang out without pause, while the Monster Lion created an uproar as though it intended to level the entire area.

Yet before it had destroyed much of the surroundings—

An arrow shot straight at it from the front, the green light it contained nearly blinding its eyes.

Unlike the previous wooden arrows that had barely pierced the flesh, this one cleanly shot into the base of its neck, penetrating its chest cavity all the way to the fletching. Yet as though guided by a surgeon's hand, it miraculously avoided its lungs and vital blood vessels, preventing it from suffering an overly serious injury.

That arrow also brought the Monster Lion back to its senses.

Fearlessness in the face of death had never belonged to normal beasts.

Without a second word, it turned and fled.

It ran more than sixty kilometers south in one breath. The moment it stopped to catch its breath, an arrow glowing green embedded itself in its hind leg.

Like a bird startled by the twang of a bowstring, the Monster Lion fled again. After finally calming down, it had just wanted a drink of water when an arrow grazed the base of its tail. The chill at such a critical spot made its entire body shudder, deepening its terror...

And so, it ran for who knew how many hundreds of kilometers. Whenever it stopped, an arrow came. Whenever it slowed, an arrow came. Even when it turned, it got hit by an arrow. At last, it was exhausted to the point of collapse in the jungle.

When it woke again—

The arrows embedded in its body were gone. Its wounds were gone. Even the muscle soreness from all that running was gone. If not for the change in location, it would have seemed as though nothing had happened...

The Monster Lion was a beast, but it was not unintelligent. From then on, it never dared set foot north again. It traveled south for a long time, walking and resting along the way, before finally making its home here.

Beneath the strange tree.

The Overmind's expression turned grave.

He had found it.

Though that useless Monster Lion had not even figured out what species the arrow-shooting creature was, there was no doubt that a race possessing tools and extraordinary power had deliberately driven the Monster Lion away.

His caution over this period had not been wasted.

If he had truly expanded the virus and Creep without restraint, who knew whether one day they might silently creep up beside him and give him an arrow of their own.

The Overmind considered it for a moment, then abandoned the idea of sending birds north to investigate.

Even when the Monster Lion faced them head-on, it had nearly been shot into a pincushion without finding even a trace of the enemy. He did not think his birds would discover anything either. Strictly speaking, neither type of bird was a reconnaissance unit; they had no ability to detect stealth.

Furthermore, the abnormal traits of infected hosts were difficult to conceal. It would be even more troublesome if they were noticed.

"Slow the northward expansion of the Creep... I will cultivate basic sensory organs that can grow on the Creep. Agatha, establish a Creep Tumor network throughout the northern Creep," the Overmind ordered.

Making ears and eyes grow from the Creep was not difficult. But it would only be meaningful if they were immediately paired with neural structures capable of processing auditory and visual information.

Therefore, the Creep Tumors also needed some modification.

Still, it was not all bad news. The Monster Lion had wandered nearby for decades. While it did not care about ordinary ferocious beasts such as bears and tigers, it never spared a single "monster beast" with psionic power above level three.

Once he thoroughly absorbed its memories, at least within the Monster Lion's territory, there were no threats for dozens of kilometers around. The expansion plan he had been preparing all along could finally be put into action...