"Aghhh! No! I am dissapating. Darn it! Darn it! Ahhh… is that my only last option?"
Amidst the infighting, Adonis's much larger soul was eventually able to back the alien tentacle into a corner, pressing its back so much against the wall that it threatened to become one with it.
It felt like it was going to mix into the air any second.
Thus seeing no other way, the alien Protanyd let out one last huge indignant roar before making a suicidal dive straight towards Adonis's soul.
However this time, it did not do so with the intent to attack.
Rather, its intention was to try and heal its target!
Yes! That is right.
Thus, approaching the comatose boy, a thick blue, colored mist began to spray out from the tiny consciousness, encasing the tiny wounded soul before swiftly beginning to repair it.
At the same time, the infant soul also instinctively stopped resisting upon sensing the beneficial effects, letting the friendly mana and psychic power do its job. This unexpected treatment was an unfettered blessing for it and it rejoiced just like how the broken, cracked, dry earth rejoices at the first raindrops after a drought.
Adonis's soul thus swiftly became nourished and healthy, the shimmering glow stabilizing and then even starting to get brighter.
On the opposite side, the already emaciated alien soul turned even more cadaverous.
If it had a human physical form, its soul would have looked exactly like those pictures of malnourished, starving people affected by severe famine- just skin and bone, almost glued to each other so that they looked more skeleton than alive.
What the alien tentacle was doing here was exactly what it had wanted to do to Adonis, but in reverse. Instead of eating the boy's soul to nourish his recovery, it was eating itself to nourish the boy. Its soul was on a much higher level than Adonis's, so despite the size difference, it still could do this.
As for the reason behind this madness….
Using the cover of the healing mist, the 'harmless looking' alien soul was able to slip past the infant's lulled defenses and into its core area… the most vulnerable area of the entire place.
There were virtually no defenses here.
This was the grand prize it had been fighting for so long, and now it was all within its grasp. The fully restored, shimmering mana sea particularly made the organism drool.
Yet unfortunately for it, all this had come too little, too late. By now its soul was sapped of almost all its strength, while the other side used that every strength to become even stronger.
Or else, the tentacle being could have tried this method from the get go. Why go through all the extra pain in the first place?
Thus currently the state of the alien soul was like a starving man dying from starvation, but at the same time, too weak to even eat the bread given to him… because his digestive system did not even have the energy to break the food down into glucose and energy. If he tried to take the bread, he would die as the food would clog up his insides and rot!
Similarly the alien soul could only look at all the delicious food around it and bleed tears of regret.
"Curses! To become latched to this cursed brat! Aghhhh! I was so close, I was so close. No, no, of Great Mother, I have failed you, I have failed you! Execution! I deserve execution through a thousand cuts!"
Letting out this one last cry of indignation, it wasted no more time and 'jumped' into Adonis's mana sea, sinking deep, deep down, until it reached the very rock bottom, where it then anchored itself.
This was the only thing it could think of to try and save itself.
Latching onto the boy's soul like a parasite and trying to slowly heal by siphoning a part of his self generating mana reserves, in the meantime subsisting through the use of many of Adonis's soul facilities as replacements for its own missing ones.
The plan was relatively simple and 'it' seemed to have even succeeded.
However just from the word 'parasite' we can also infer there were great drawbacks to this 'brilliant' plan.
First and foremost, the alien being was no longer in control of the Adonis, letting the boy become an individual self on his own. He had complete free will and would not need to obey 'it' if he did not want to.
This obviously made calling the 'Great mother' a lot more tricky, if not impossible. Because the task would have Adonis basically sacrifice himself to produce that powerful all piercing 'psychic scream'.
Secondly, this arrangement very much limited how much mana the alien soul could have. The capacity of the channels available for the siphon was very limited, and given Adonis was a mere infant, the mana he converted from food was something that was left to be highly desired.
Given its current rate, the alien soul calculated it would take decades for it to even become equivalent to a Tier-1 acolyte, forget becoming a mage. Right now that seemed like a complete pipe dream.
And speaking of pipe dreams, the third and undoubtedly the biggest hurdle also appeared like one, and this one was far bigger and more demanding.
Because it involved the matter of caring for the boy! More specifically, given his current state, how was the infant to survive?
The precious artifact built by his father for exactly this purpose had been shattered while his 'new caretaker' was now a 'leech'. It was even more helpless than him.
Hence Adonis seemed destined to die from starvation, if not even before that from exposure and hypothermia.
Most tragic of all, it was not even like the Protanyd unit had not foreseen this. It very well did.
That was exactly why it had cried about 'failing the mother' and 'deserving death' before 'jumping'.
It was just that when given the choice to die a bit sooner and to die a bit later, its natural preservation instinct had kicked in and so it made this last ditch effort even though it knew it would probably not matter in the end.
'I survived for so long… through so much. Who knows, perhaps another miracle will happen. Oh Great Mother, bless me!'
Needless to say, this alien being was never religious. Perhaps even the concept of religion might not exist for it. However right now, in its last moments, it could not help but imitate some of what it had seen the humans had done.
It let out this uncharacteristic prayer before slowly closing its exhausted eyes, shutting off all its senses and going into a very deep hibernation sleep.
It wished to preserve as much energy as possible, hoping even if Adonis died, it could still live by feeding off his 'carcass'.
Who knows, perhaps it might even be able to recover enough to make one last attempt at sending the message.