The monster girls emerging from the cave were carrying various stony chunks with ores. There was zero expression on their faces, as if they were androids mimicking monster girls. Some of them wore clothes. Yet, their clothes were little more than tattered rags, stained with dirt and sweat. Fat collars surrounded their necks, along with cuffs on their wrists and ankles. Each of them glowed with a red neon light.

  "Why are there monster girls here?" I asked Samsara through our mental link. "And why are they carrying rocks?"

  "It doesn't make sense," Samsara replied, her mental voice heavy with confusion and anger. "The Monster Purifiers usually just kill them or shove them into vats. These ones… they’re working. Like slaves."

  “They must be the servants that woman was referring to then,” I said. “They’re not really servants, they’re enslaved. They’re just saying servants to make themselves feel better.”

  “And how are they keeping everything hidden?” Samsara wondered.

  "It must be the same tech they used in Lateo," I theorized. "The illusion barrier. I guess the humans stole it, or maybe they invented it first. Either way, it's annoying."

  We scanned the defenses. Two juggernauts stood guard near the office building's entrance, their turrets idling. A handful of men in latex suits patrolled the perimeter, holding those annoying blue beam guns. They looked anxious, their hands shaking as they held their weapons. They clearly didn't expect a 150-meter-tall Kaiju chimera to be standing in front of them, invisible.

  "We need to stop this," Samsara said.

  "Way ahead of you."

  I focused on the domed structure first. It was the largest building, sitting centrally on a concrete pad. It smelled faintly of ozone and something metallic I couldn't place.

  I lashed out with my hair tentacles, wrapping four of them around the base of the steel dome. Metal groaned and buckled under my grip. I ripped the entire structure off its foundation. Dust and debris rained down as I lifted the massive steel shell into the air.

  Suddenly, a blinding light flooded the area.

  Below where the dome had been, reality was torn open. A jagged, vertical rip hung in the air, pulsing with strange, nauseating colors. Inside the tear, a kaleidoscope of shapes shifted and turned, making it impossible to focus on any single point. It hurt my eyes just looking at it.

  Panic erupted.

  "The Rift Harvester!" one man in a latex suit screamed into his radio. "The Rift Harvester has been compromised! It’s been lifted into the air!"

  "Rift Harvester?" I questioned the name. "Were they using this thing for power?"

  The lights in the office buildings flickered and died instantly.

  "Guess so," I noted. "I unplugged their battery."

  "The Kaiju!" another latex-suited man yelled, aiming his beam gun with shaking hands. "It must have been invisible! Open fire!"

  I ignored him and brought the domed structure to my mouth as my free tentacles absorbed the blue beams. I bit into the steel roof. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. I chewed loudly, the screeching metal drowning out the initial screams of the humans.

  I moved around the tear in reality, the Dungeon Rift, keeping my distance. I didn’t feel like entering it now. It made me feel dizzy.

  I swept my hair tentacles across the ground. I snatched up three of the latex-suit men who were firing their pathetic beams at my shins. Their toys did nothing against my hardened scales. I squeezed my tentacles tight.

  Crack.

  Their beam guns shattered in their hands, followed by each of them coughing. One of them coughed up blood.

  Samsara didn't wait. She slithered toward one of the juggernauts that was turning its turret toward us. She grabbed the armored vehicle with her claws. The metal shrieked as she dug into it. With a grunt, she ripped the turrets completely off the sides, tossing them aside. She lifted the heavy vehicle into the air. She could see a few gray-vested humans inside the cockpit through the reinforced glass, their faces pale with terror.

  Aisling dropped her own invisibility. Her massive turtle form rushed towards the second juggernaut. She grabbed it with both hands and tore it open. She shoved the exposed cockpit into her mouth, chewing on the pair of human pilots and another person with a beam gun who had been standing inside of it.

  I looked at the three humans dangling in my tentacles. They were shouting, begging, and making a lot of noise. I dropped [Color Camouflage II] now that there was no longer any threat to us. Each of them panicked even more when they saw me. I savored their fear.

  I threw the first one into my mouth. The latex suit masked the meat's salty taste, but once I began chewing, I hummed in delight as my taste buds savored the salty, metallic flavor of flesh and blood. I licked my lips as I swallowed.

  I then tossed the other two Monster Purifiers in my mouth. They made such a good crunchy noise when I chewed on them.

  Samsara's hair snakes hissed and struck, breaching the cockpit's glass. Each of them pounced on the three humans inside. They bit down, injecting venom while lifting the pilots into the air. As the pilots went limp, the snakes swallowed their prey.

  "That takes care of the guards," I said, licking a bit of blood from my lip.

  I turned toward the two office buildings. They were five stories tall, made of concrete and glass. Natural sunlight allowed me to see what was inside.

  "We should interrogate them," Samsara said telepathically. "We need to know which scientist made the mind control tech."

  "Why?" I asked. "We can just eat them all. That stops the mind control pretty effectively."

  "So we can undo what they did," Samsara insisted. Her eyes darted to the cowering monster girls near the cave entrance. "Look at them, Ramona. They are mindless right now. If we kill the scientists without getting answers, those girls might stay trapped like that forever. And… maybe they know something about brains. Maybe they can help us fix Aisling."

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  I looked at Aisling. She was currently chewing on the remains of the juggernaut.

  "Fine," I agreed. "Fixing Aisling would be nice, so I wouldn’t need to micromanage her. And I guess untangling the brains of the slaves is a good bonus."

  I looked at the group of monster girls. They continued walking in and out of the cave. They dumped their ores into the back of a large truck. Aisling headed over towards them, but Samsara made her stop.

  "I was going to snack on them," I admitted.

  "You can't eat all of them," Samsara said firmly. "Some of them have clothes. They were clearly non-feral before being captured. Someone enslaved them. We should free them." And hopefully, some of them would worship us after that.

  "Fair point," I conceded. “I don’t mind having slavers on the menu.”

  I turned back to the office buildings. I cleared my throat, my voice booming across the outpost.

  "Hey! Humans!" I shouted. "Come out! You have a few minutes before I destroy these buildings. If you stay inside, you get crunched. If you come out… well, we'll see."

  Silence. No movement.

  I waited a solid ten seconds.

  "No one's coming out," I noted.

  My hearing, amplified by our Demiurge status, picked up the localized chaos inside. Dozens of footsteps thundered down stairwells. Voices whispered in panic. They were all heading underground.

  "I can still hear you!" I giggled, leaning down toward the buildings. I couldn’t spot anyone.

  I lashed out with my eight hair tentacles, wrapping them around both office buildings. They began pulling them up. The buildings groaned, pipes burst, spraying water, and steel girders snapped. I lifted both five-story structures clean off their foundations. Beneath them, two rectangular steel slabs lay flush with the ground.

  I brought the buildings to my face. I opened my mouth and bit into the corner of the left one. Crunch. My teeth easily obliterated glass, drywall, carpet, and office chairs.

  There was a lot of manufacturing equipment inside—lathes, presses, assembly arms. The metal tore apart easily in my teeth. I swallowed the rubble.

  Samsara slithered over to the steel slabs.

  "They're under here," she said. She used her claws to dig into the gap between the slab and the earth. With a screech of tearing metal, she ripped the slabs away, exposing the underground bunker.

  Even though there were two slabs, they both led to a single, vast bunker below.

  Huddled in the corner were a couple of dozen men in gray sleeveless vests—mechanics or laborers. Behind them stood a young man in a white lab coat, looking as if he might faint, and a stern-looking woman in a business suit.

  They looked up at us, paralyzed.

  Samsara learned down, her massive face filling their view.

  "Is the scientist down there responsible for turning the monster girls into servants?" she demanded. Her voice was cold.

  The men in vests immediately scrambled away from the young man in the lab coat, pointing at him.

  "It's him!" one of them shouted. "He does all the mind stuff!"

  The young man trembled. He pushed his glasses up his nose, but they slid right back down on his sweat. "I… yes… it's my research," he stammered. "Mind rewiring. But I was just following orders! I—"

  "Grab him," Samsara told me.

  I sent a single hair tentacle down. It wrapped around his waist and yanked him into the air. He shrieked, kicking his legs helplessly.

  "Don't eat me! Please!" he wailed.

  "Now for the rest," I thought. I sent my other tentacles into the bunker. They scooped up the vest-wearing men and the woman in the suit. They screamed as I tossed them into my mouth. Their screams were cut off as I began to chew.

  “Do you want me to feed your hair snakes again?” I asked Samsara in her mind as I swallowed. “I can also cut them up for you.”

  “Just feed my hair snakes,” Samsara said. “I don’t want to force you to be my personal chef.”

  “Aww, I missed being your chef,” I said, poking her cheek. “But I will accept being your personal hair snake feeder.”

  Samsara had her hair snakes push my finger away.

  “Traitors!” I playfully called out. We both giggled.

  My hair tentacles began grabbing the workers and bringing them up to Samsara’s hair snakes. I dangled them above their mouths, and they each dashed towards their prey, engulfing them. Meanwhile, I also tossed a few of the vested humans into my mouth and began to chew.

  I let out a contented sigh as I finished the last vested worker.

  The scientist dangling in my tentacle watched in horror. "You… you just ate them! You ate my coworkers!"

  "They were turning monster girls into slaves," Samsara said, anger seeping into her voice. "They deserved to be eaten. Why do you think turning them into slaves is okay?"

  "I was just trying to make them docile!" the scientist yelled, tears streaming down his face. “If they aren’t docile, then we need to kill them! I was saving them! Making them useful!”

  "That's a load of bullshit," I commented to Samsara.

  "I know," Samsara replied. "But we keep him alive so he can undo this mess. And maybe he can fix Aisling."

  “Agreed.”

  "You're going to fix them," Samsara told him out loud. "And you're going to fix our friend that your people destroyed."

  “Fix?” he asked.

  Suddenly, the scientist gasped. His body convulsed in my grip. His skin began to ripple as his lab coat tore at the shoulders, and beautiful, bright blue feathers burst through the fabric.

  The Dungeon Rift is transforming him.

  "No… no, no, no!" he screamed, his voice pitching higher.

  His legs snapped and reshaped, forcing his shoes to explode off his feet. Large, taloned bird feet replaced them.

  But the most significant change was behind him. From his lower back, massive, iridescent tail feathers erupted, fanning out in a shimmering display of greens and blues. Each feather had a large, unblinking eye pattern on it.

  He, or rather she, shrank a few centimeters. She was a peacock monster girl.

  "This can't be happening!" she shrieked, looking down at her feathered hands. "I'm supposed to be human! I'm supposed to be a man!"

  "You'll get over it," I said dismissively. "We used to be human too."

  "I had a life!" she cried. "I’m a respected neuroscientist! I’m a man!"

  "Hey, we became girls too," I said with a sly grin. “Truthfully, it didn’t make too much of a difference. The only thing we had to worry about was the Monster Purifiers.”

  “That’s because you were a nobody!” she cried out. “My life is full of prestige! And now, it’s ruined!”

  “First, of all we were kids,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Of course, we would be a nobody. But look at where we are now at 20 years old. We’re a Kaiju chimera. You’ll get used to being a monster girl while working on undoing the damage you’ve done.”

  "My name is Lucius!" she protested. "I am Lucius!"

  "Lucius is a boy's name," I noted. "That won't fit you anymore. Look at you. You're pretty now."

  "I don't want to be pretty!"

  "Too bad," I said. "I'm going to call you Lucia. It's close enough."

  "That's not my name!" she wailed. "My life is ruined!"

  "Your life is only ruined if I eat you," I pointed out. "Which I will do if you don't stop whining." Of course, I wasn’t actually going to eat her. But I didn’t want to listen to Lucia’s whining on the way back.

  Samsara moved closer, looking at the newly transformed bird girl. "You can fix your life," she said. "By fixing the rest of the monster girls. And by fixing our friend. If you do that, maybe we won't eat you."

  Lucia hyperventilated. “Please don’t eat me! I’ll…”

  Before she could finish, a sound cut through the air.

  It was a low, mournful wail. We spun around.

  Something was emerging from the Dungeon Rift.

  A hand gripped the edge of the tear. It wasn't made of flesh. It looked like polished white marble, smooth and cold.

  With a heave, the entity pulled itself out of the kaleidoscope void.

  https://discord.gg/yJMtfvTDuB