Mind Demon's Path of Domination

"So, a human who ingests the Heart Blood thing of the Golden Savages transforms into Bronze and Silver Savages? Tell the demon the answer."

"Yes. If you get more Heart Blood, you can become a Silver Savage but if you were unlucky, you can only be a Bronze Savage because the Golden Savages won’t give you enough HeartBlood to turn your own Heart into silver."

"How does your power work?"

"The stronger my heart is, the stronger my body will be. As for my power, the defensive Savage Magic—Glass Dome, you have to learn to use it by training on it. Any savage can train it, but only a Golden Savage can train two Savage Magic at the same time. As for Bronze and Silver Savages, we can only train one Savage Magic in our lifetime."

Now, it made sense that he saw many Savages with similar powers.

There was a lot to learn about the savages. It was a whole other path to study, and Mark was lost in the interrogation for a long hour. One question after the other, he asked, and when it was over, the savage was a blank-eyed unmoving thing.

Mark wondered if it would ever regain its true mind. And if so, would it have gained a resistance to Heart Input?

He threw the man on top of a boulder and used Alchemic Shapeshifting on the boulder, making the boulder accept the body of the mindless man inside it. Keeping the head outside, Mark made the boulder act as a prison around the savage’s body.

Curious about something, he checked an average savage’s stats.

==•==

[Silver Savage]

[Tier 1]

[Physique: 100 (Pinnacle)]

[Mind: 100 (Pinnacle)]

[Savage Magic: Glass Dome.]

[Resistances: None.]

[Traits]

[Mask of the Savage]

[As long as their Masks are not broken, they can revive themselves even if they get beheaded.]

[All abilities are enhanced by a Minor Tier.]

==•==

"Don’t feed him anything," Mark said, "if he ever wakes up, he will be too famished to move against us."

Yuri asked, "So what did he say? You took so long."

She didn’t know the language. Mark took a deep breath and quickly explained what she had to know—it might become useful. After that, he looked at Dona who was lazily sprawled on the ground, and with a smile, left his World Space.

Mark’s consciousness appeared back in his body in the underwater cavern.

The small hamster was nibbling on his fingers when he came to, and Mark petted it. Should I let the Boss Demon make a Dungeon here? It’s an underwater cavern, so I doubt they could easily reach here to kill the Boss.

If somehow, he could help the Boss expand that Dungeon into a Mega Dungeon, he would have a chance to conquer this entire world. No, that’s too time-consuming and if I really do become a threat to this world, the Golden Savages would storm me together like the Hunters stormed the Boss Demon together.

Then again, Mark waved his hand and a pitch-black demon appeared beside him. Since the Boss Demon had a Dungeon Heart seed inside it, it didn’t have to worry about the World Will finding it.

"From now on, I might have to enter a battle at any time. If you are summoned, don’t immediately make a lot of noise unless I allow it."

He reabsorbed the Boss into his World Space and brought out something else this time. It was a huge corpse of a green-skinned goblin-like creature. This was the corpse he bought from the Rat Businessman.

The corpse of a Tier 3 Upper Demon.

Mark touched its face. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Alchemic Shapeshifting.

Nothing happened! It wasn’t hurt at all.

Upper Demons have a more advanced version of Defensive Magic Aura—theirs was completely unbreakable. A Middle Demon’s Defensive Magic Aura can be broken by a Tier 2 Low-level attack, and then, they can be hurt by lower-tiered creatures.

An Upper Demon’s version of it, on the other hand, can not be broken and thus, lower-tiered creatures, no matter what kind of abilities they use, cannot hurt them.

"Invulnerable Physique. An Upper Demon does have the right to be arrogant, since truly, they are invincible against an army of lower-tier creatures," Reol’ran said, her voice curious. "You are no different Mark, you can’t hurt an Upper Demon no matter what your tricks are."

"But don’t you see it, milady?"

"I do see it."

If he could enter into a Dream Gamble with a mortal, and then help them become a savage. When he wins the Dream Gamble, he can ask them to give him the Mask of the Savage. Having that mask made all abilities perform one Lower Tier higher.

It was a cheat.

He had come here to improve his chances to win in a Battle Royale and if he had that, he would be able to hurt even Upper Demons, not to mention a mere... Battle Royale of Middle Demons.

For the fun of it, Mark tried to attack the Upper Demon Corpse some more times. Using different abilities to do it. He even tried using his Ultimate Demonic Art, and even after some long minutes, nothing ever hurt it.

Not even a small chip.

It was then that suddenly, Mark’s eyes widened. He looked at his own left palm, then at his right palm. He chuckled wryly and immediately sat down, closing his eyes, contemplating.

When he tried to fuse one demonic trick to the other, it never worked like he wanted it to. The gem representing the demonic tricks always repelled each other. Why was it so? It was because two demonic tricks just weren’t meant to fuse into one and become an Art.

Reol’ran had once told him to find the connection between two demonic tricks to make it fuse. It couldn’t be forced, he had to be gentle. Until now, he had indeed found some connections between them but it had always seemed to not be enough.

For example, both Dream Shock and Heart Input affect the mind in some way. That was a connection. But even though he knew that it hadn’t been able to fuse into an Art. Then, both Dream Gamble and Dream Shock were dream-related, why can’t they fuse?

Can’t two fire-type abilities combine to create a fire-type Art?

Now, he understood.

It was not the true connection between them. Fire-type, water-type, it didn’t matter. If two dream-type abilities can combine, what if one dream user attacked another dream user and that dream user used a dream-type defense?

Would the offense and defense fuse? Even though it was the abilities of two different people?

Demonic tricks were fundamentally conflicting with each other so as not to let that happen. If they end up fusing with the attacks of enemies, a Trick would become useless to its user. So, what did he need to show the demonic tricks that the tricks inside his own World Space were not enemies but allies?

Yes, the commonality between his demonic tricks wasn’t that they were of different types. The commonality was that it was his demonic tricks. Now, if he could make two demonic tricks know that they were allowed to fuse, he could, he realized, fuse them and turn them into Demonic Arts.

What is a demonic trick in the first place?

He entered a sort of meditative silence and when he woke up, breathed out all his questions. He had a feeling that he was still missing a lot of the answers, but questions like the fundamental source of demonic tricks were too far from him, but one thing became crystal clear to him.

"I have to make my demonic tricks realize they are all mine."

And then, he would be able to fuse them and create Arts as much as he wishes.

And now, he had a clear idea of what to do to do that.