It stood as tall as I, and its body was feminine. She was like a living statue, similar to the old Demiurges. She wore no clothes, but white smoke poured from her hips, hiding her legs.

  I immediately noticed her stomach, which was swollen as if she were heavily pregnant. Right in the center of the belly, a giant yellow eye blinked open. The eye spanned the whole belly. The pupil was a horizontal slit, until Samsara’s hair snakes, which had vertical slit pupils in their eyes.

  I looked up at her face. It was blank. Sockets where her eyes should be were filled with smooth, gray stone. Her mouth was left agape, yet I could tell her teeth, and everything inside was made of marble, too.

  “What is that?” Samsara recoiled. Each of her hair snakes hissed.

  I stared at the stone eyes.

  "It's not a Kaiju," I realized. “It’s an Aberration.”

  The entity turned her head toward us. The yellow eye on her belly focused directly on me.

  It wailed again.

  The yellow eye began to flash, its luminosity increasing moment by moment. Samsara and I immediately began forming [Blood Spikes] on the tips of our fingers. Samsara made 10 on the tips of her claws, while I made 20 on my finger tip tentacles. We [Focused] on each [Blood Spike] and did [Blood Spike Launch]. The blue spikes on my finger tip tentacles became coated in red corrosive ink. I aimed a handful of them across her body.

  Our spikes whirred through the air towards the Aberration. She did not attempt to dodge our spikes, and several of them hit her eye. The spikes that landed against the eye pierced it, and she let out an even louder wail. However, the spikes that landed against her marble skin broke into fragments. Still, I could tell my red ink was doing work, dissolving the marble stone.

  She slowly drifted toward us. I noticed her hips didn’t move at all, so she must be floating. The white smoke descending from her hips blocked me from seeing if she was actually floating. For all I know, she might just be gliding across the ground.

  The white smoke began to rise around her. I tensed, waiting for her to shoot it at us, but it simply covered her. I activated [Color Camouflage II] and moved to the side. The white smoke began to expand outward. The wailing came to a halt.

  I performed the same attack again. 20 blue [Blood Spikes] coated in red ink. They soared through the air towards the Aberration. They vanished into the white smoke. I did not hear them impact. Did I miss?

  Small figures emerged from the drifting white smoke. They were about the height of my shins, which meant they were still huge compared to a human, but tiny to me.

  They were made of the same pristine white marble as the Aberration. Each of them looked like a tiny statue. Except, it was like the sculptor had no idea what a human looked like. One had three heads fused in a silent scream. Others had seven or eight legs of different lengths, causing them to lumber awkwardly out of the smoke. A few had arms growing out of their backs.

  They didn’t make a sound, unlike the Aberration. Just the clinking of stone against the concrete ground as their limbs moved. They scuttled towards us.

  "We're going to die!" Lucia screamed, still dangling in my hair tentacle. She covered her eyes with her feathered hands.

  I ignored her panic and focused on the threat.

  "Samsara, same strategy as before," I commanded. She nodded.

  We launched our volley. I shot twenty [Blood Spikes] while Samsara shot ten. The spikes hit various limbs and torsos on the mini statues. The blue hardened blood shattered against marble, but the red ink from my [Blood Spikes] remained. The ink hissed, sending white smoke into the air. It was eating into the stone, but slowly. The statues continued to approach us, ignoring the fact that my ink was dissolving them.

  I split my attention. Through the soul link, I saw a group of marble statues breaking apart from the main pack. They were heading straight for the cluster of enslaved monster girls near the cave. Oblivious, they continued their job of entering and exiting the mine. As the truck filled up, they dropped their ore chunks onto the ground behind the truck.

  "Crap," I thought. "I need to multitask."

  I forced Aisling to turn around from the monster girls she wanted to eat towards the approaching stone monsters. I felt her want to lurch forward to attack them. I had her try kicking one of the statues away. Except, it didn’t budge. What the fuck? I released my grip in surprise. As I released my grip, she went down to grab it and stuffed it in her mouth. Her jaws clamped down around the statue. But the marble didn’t break.

  However, her thick, caustic saliva began coating the statue, and it started melting on her tongue. The marble tasted stale. Aisling swallowed the remains.

  "Acid/corrosion works," I realized. "We just need to apply a lot of it."

  Aisling picked up two more of the statues in her hands, while her lure grabbed a third one. She tossed the one in her left hand into her mouth. Just like the other statue, this one began dissolving in her mouth, too.

  Suddenly, the other two statues began to shine brightly. Aisling shoved the one in her right hand into her mouth. I made the Aisling clone drop the statue she was holding. A muffled explosion rocked Aisling’s head back. Smoke poured from her mouth. Through our shared senses, I felt the sharp pain immediately flash all across her gums.

  “Hey, that was my thing,” I pouted. I did the same thing to the Kaiju fish girls, and now this Aberration was copying me.

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  The statues in front of me were getting too close. I activated [Serrated Tentacles]. My hair tentacles whipped towards the statues, aiming to slice through their legs.

  As they made contact, they immediately bounced off the marble surfaces. It was jarring since I didn’t see them do any damage at all.

  “We need to back up!” I exclaimed in Samsara’s mind. We both started moving away from the statues.

  I tried to use my tentacles to shove them back, but they wouldn’t budge. Instead, they kept scrambling their way towards us. This was so annoying.

  What was going on?

  I unfurled the tentacles that made up my right arm. The parts that made up my fingers were coated in the corrosive ink, so that should destroy the statues. I sent my right arm tentacles to grab 10 of the statues. My five right arm tentacles could each pick up two statues due to the two finger tip tentacles that split off from the rest of the tentacle.

  The red ink slowly began to dissolve the statues. The marble began to hiss, and each statue began to deform. It was working.

  Then, they all flashed white.

  “Let go!” Samsara screamed in my mind.

  It was too late.

  Each statue immediately exploded. The force sent the rest of my tentacle arms back. Hot searing pain flooded my tentacles.

  I looked at my right arm. The finger part of the tentacles was shredded. Instead of red ink, I saw blue blood pouring out of the tentacles.

  We rushed backwards to put more distance between ourselves and the other statues.

  Samsara’s hair snakes lashed out, trying to bite the statues pursuing us. The snakes snapped their jaws at the marble, but their fangs skidded uselessly off the surface. They recoiled backwards and hissed.

  Samsara was frantic. “Ramona! Your arm!”

  Blood continued to pour out.

  “Why aren’t you healing?” Samsara’s panic bled into my mind. Crap.

  I checked Aisling through our mental link. Her mouth was quite injured, and her wounds weren’t healing either.

  Each explosion was shutting down our regeneration!

  “They can’t be pushed back,” I analyzed rapidly. “And they exploded when I grabbed them. The same for Aisling.”

  "We're going to die!" Lucia screamed again, kicking her bird legs in the air.

  “What can we do?” Samsara asked, eyeing the statues. “We can’t touch them or bite them. And our regeneration is gone.”

  “Option 1, we abandon the monster girls,” I said. “We activate [Color Camouflage II] and sprint away. I’ll get Aisling to turn invisible too. We’re faster than these statues.”

  “No!” Samsara rejected instantly. “We are not leaving the monster girls to die.”

  "I figured you'd say that," I admitted. "And honestly, I'm pissed off. That Aberration hurt me. I want to eat it. Thus, we go with option 2.”

  “Option 2 it is,” Samsara agreed. “How do we kill them without touching them, though?”

  “We know acid and corrosion damage works,” I said.“We’ll whittle everything down with acid/corrosion attacks. I’ll use [Blood Spikes] coated in my red ink, while I’ll have Aisling spit on the statues with her lure.”

  “I can’t help at all,” Samsara noted. I felt bad for her.

  “Also, I can try [Sacrificial Limb Bomb] with one of my tentacles and see if explosions work against the statues.”

  “Go for it!” Samsara cheered me on.

  I unfurled my left arm into five separate tentacles. Each of the statues was quite close to the other, so I [Focused] on the [Sacrificial Limb Bomb] [Incantation]. I clenched my teeth as the tentacle separated itself from me.

  I tossed the limb as it began to glow orange. It went straight towards the middle of the marble statues. A fire exploded outward, engulfing the statues. Moments later, the explosion subsided.

  Each marble statue now had a fire emerging around its waist. They each paused for a moment. But seconds later, the fires died out, and they continued their march toward us.

  “Explosions aren’t effective,” I noted, frustration rising. “It only stops them for a few seconds.”

  I checked on Aisling. She was surrounded, but she still had her lure. I had her spit at one of the statues. The drool soared through the air and landed on one of the statue’s heads. It immediately began to sizzle.

  Aisling unleashed a torrent of corrosive saliva. With her [Lure Control] mutation, she swung the small clone head back and forth, spraying the acidic liquid in a wide arc like a minigun.

  The statues hit by the spray slowed down immediately. The spit ate through the marble, turning the heads and limbs into gray puddles.

  I made Aisling backpeddle, keeping distance between her and the statues. She moved the side, luring them away from the other monster girls. One by one, the statues dissolved until they were simply a pile of legs. They toppled over as their heads sizzled into nothing.

  “Nice shooting,” Samsara cheered.

  It was my turn now.

  My right arm tentacles were useless, so I raised my left hand tentacles. The other tentacle was regenerating.

  I [Focused] on the tips of my five left-hand tentacles. [Blood Spikes] formed on each of them. Ten sharp blue projectiles formed, each one glistening with my own red corrosive ink. [Blood Spike Launch] sent them flying at the remaining statues. The spikes shattered on impact, but the red, corrosive substance remained, immediately corroding the marble beneath.

  I had Aisling circle around the white cloud of smoke to assist us. I readied another salvo of corrosive [Blood Spikes] and fired as she sprinted to our side. Unfortunately, it turned out my red ink wasn’t as potent as Aisling’s saliva. The statue's heads were only partially malformed.

  We retreated backwards while Aisling’s clone began rapid firing on the statues. Some of them started approaching her, but I made sure to have Aisling keep her distance.

  Finally, the last multi-legged statues dissolved into a puddle of goo.

  Silence fell over the outpost ruins. I looked at my right arm tentacles. They were still not regenerating.

  “We need to kill the Aberration,” I said.

  Samsara nodded.

  We approached the white smoke.

  “Maybe if I coat more [Blood Spikes] in red ink, we might be able to melt her from a distance,” I mused. “Aisling can help too. However, we should find a way to dispel this fog. I can’t tell what’s going on there. I don’t want to waste mana firing and missing.”

  “Good idea,” Samsara said.

  I waved some hair tentacles at the white fog. My tentacles guided the white puffy whisps toward the side.

  Suddenly, a yellow ring emerged from the fog. I was too close to the edge of the mist to dodge.

  It hit me straight in the chest.

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