Mythology: Ragnarok

The soldiers hurriedly followed Agreed's instructions and began to finish off the remaining enemies. After everything was done, the soldiers advanced according to Agreed's orders. They now had a strange sense of security from Agreed, which made them obedient to his words.

Agreed had expected to be surrounded by traps and countless enemy minions, but to his surprise, the mind flayers attacked first.

As the army cautiously advanced, hundreds of mind flayers suddenly appeared. They coordinated their psionic powers to unleash a wide-ranging psychic storm, instantly stunning the soldiers who had not been protected by enchanted items. Then, the more than three thousand soldiers who were still conscious and protected by items immediately reacted and began to fight back.

Hundreds of warriors armed with bows and arrows seized the opportunity to fire at the mind flayers, but the arrows flying in mid-air were all repelled by their psionic energy. Seeing this, Pushkin took to the air and flew towards the mind flayers. With his powerful combat strength and the protective gear on his body, he charged into the ranks of the mind flayers and began to wreak havoc.

At the same time, Agreed quickly cast a spell to assist Pushkin. Then, hundreds of mind flayers appeared from behind, using their psionic powers to grab the unconscious soldiers and carry them away silently.

However, Milton quickly discovered them and immediately released hundreds of enchanted golems to attack the enemy.

Soulless puppets, immune to psionic magic, are the most troublesome type of enemy for mind flayers. So, when the mind flayers were in danger, they suddenly became ferocious and used the tentacles on their faces to swallow the heads of the human soldiers in their hands. Their sharp, cone-shaped mouthparts suddenly exerted force and pierced into the human brains, then sucked out the soldiers' pink brains and delicious brain fluid.

After feeding, the mind flayers' psionic energy surged, and they instantly used their mind control to twist the puppets into pretzel shapes. The soldiers who were still conscious rushed forward to rescue their comrades from the mind flayers' grasp.

Unfortunately, the mind flayers' combat power surged after absorbing brain marrow, and their invisible psychic power overwhelmed the soldiers, leaving them struggling to cope. In the end, the mind flayers swaggered away and kidnapped thousands of soldiers. Agreed, who was busy fighting the mind flayers with Pushkin, had no choice but to let them escape.

After the battle, the mind flayers left behind more than a hundred corpses, but nearly ten thousand human soldiers lost their fighting ability due to the conflict.

Looking at his troops, which had already lost a quarter of their numbers, Pushkin was filled with self-reproach, saying, "It's all my fault for not protecting them."

Agred held a surviving mind flayer in his hand and reassured it, "It's not your fault. Besides, most of those soldiers were taken away by them, either as sacrifices or as food supplies. We still have time to rescue them along with the kidnapped people." As he spoke, Agred activated Soul Search, directly searching the mind flayer's memories. After a while, the mind flayer's head exploded, and Agred obtained all the information he wanted.

"We've been tricked! Those guys were deliberately interfering with and delaying us. They moved away as soon as they found out we were here. They're like rabbits with three burrows. Their new migration site is at least seventy kilometers away from here," Agreed shouted with a grim face.

Pushkin frowned and asked, "That shouldn't be the case. How could they just leave with such a large estate like that?"

Agreed explained, "Mind flayers don't have much to carry, and their convenient psionic abilities make moving as easy for them as sucking out brains."

Milton asked anxiously, "Then what should we do next?"

Agreed smiled confidently and pointed in another direction, saying, "Let's go that way! They can keep moving and playing guerrilla warfare with us, but they will never abandon the 'brain pool' they've built up over countless years, because that's their lifeblood."

As he spoke, Agreed led the main force toward the location of the brain pool he had obtained. On the way, Pushkin asked.

"Why don't mind flayers just abandon the Brain Pool? They can just build another one somewhere else."

Argreed then explained, "This is related to the way mind flayers reproduce. Mind flayers reproduce in two ways: asexual and sexual. Asexual reproduction is used when there are not many individuals left in the species. A mind flayer can only ovulate asexually twice in its lifetime, but each time it can release at least a thousand fertilized eggs that can hatch. Sexual reproduction is when two mind flayers mate and reproduce in a normal way. Each time, it can produce 'ten to twenty-five' fertilized eggs. Although the number is small, it can produce one offspring per year. By the way, every mind flayer is hermaphroditic and has both male and female organs, so during the breeding season every year, mind flayers play very openly... basically the entire species is pregnant."

Their newborns' development relies entirely on the brain cisternae. The tadpole-like larvae hatching from the mindfinder eggs grow in the brain cisternae, nourished by the brain matter and provided with brain food, for ten years or even longer. After the larvae are fully developed, they transform into a small octopus-like form. And then comes the most crucial step in the mindfinder's birth: 'parasitism'!

"Parasitism?" Pushkin asked in bewilderment.

“Yes, parasitism!” Agreed nodded and continued, “Those fully developed larvae will be injected by the mind flayers into the ears of humanoid beings in a state of abandonment. The mind flayer's octopus offspring will burrow into the victim's brain, quickly attempting to devour its gray matter and replace it with their own filthy body tissue. Under this influence, the octopus offspring will fuse with the victim's undone lower brainstem, erasing all remaining personality and soul from that body. Once these things have completely disappeared from the body, the mind flayer larvae will use the parasite as their own body. Within a day, the victim…” The victim's physical form will also begin to change, until they become a hermaphroditic adult mind flayer. Because of psychic energy, mind flayers can only parasitize intelligent beings. Therefore, every year they hunt and capture dwarves, elves, humans, goblins, and other humanoid creatures from both inside and outside the dungeon. This is why they cannot leave the Brain Pool. The brain matter in the Brain Pool is manageable, but countless hungry infants are waiting there to be parasitized and become humans, making them impossible to move. If anything happens to the Brain Pool, the mind flayers will not have any newborns for at least ten years.

Milton said happily, "That's great! That way we can just wait and wipe them out all at once. That would be a perfect solution!"

However, Agreed warned, "Don't be too happy yet. The Brain Pool is usually guarded by the strongest mutant among the Mind Flayers, the 'Soul Eater' Elder. And below the Brain Pool is usually the Mind Flayer's mastermind, or the residence of the strongest Mind Flayer. Psionic energy allows them to receive commands from the mastermind in real time. In other words, if we attack the Brain Pool, we will definitely be surrounded by Mind Flayers."