“No, we don’t have to do it this way,” Samsara said. Her voice echoed in my head, heavy with disapproval.

  “We were progressing just fine earlier,” she continued, mental images of our previous hunts flashing between us. “We ate feral creatures. We ate those mechs. We leveled an outpost. We can get plenty of souls and mana that way without… this.”

  “But this way is faster,” I argued, my tentacles tightening just a fraction around Halinka and Eivor’s small waists. “Don’t you want to get stronger quickly?”

  “It makes me uncomfortable,” Samsara said, her tone firming up. “Please stop. I don’t like ruling through fear. We can still get stronger by hunting feral Kaiju and those Monster Purifiers. We don’t need to be monsters to the people we’re supposed to be saving.”

  “We are monster girls, though,” I pointed out. “It’s literally in the name.”

  “That’s just a label humans put on us,” she retorted instantly. “It does not need to have any bearing on how we act. We can be better than that label. Now, release Halinka and Eivor. And apologize.”

  I groaned internally. “Really? Apologize? They were about to kick us out just a couple of days ago.”

  “Ramona.”

  “Fine,” I grumbled in her mind.

  I carefully lowered my hair tentacles. Halinka and Eivor ran away as I released them onto the ground. They looked up at me, terror written over their faces.

  “Sorry for being so rough,” I said, putting my hands on my lap. “I got carried away.”

  “Ramona can be a bit aggressive,” Samsara added smoothly, taking over the conversation. She offered them a sheepish smile. “I should have stepped in sooner. We didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Halinka straightened her clothes, looking between the two of us and the towering, motionless form of Aisling behind us.

  “It’s… fine,” Halinka stammered, nodding quickly. “We understand. Just… high emotions. We will still let you control the village, of course, whatever you say. Right, Eivor?”

  “Right,” she simply replied.

  “See?” I told Samsara. “They’re totally on board.”

  “They’re terrified,” Samsara shot back. “Of course they would be on board with everything.”

  I glanced down at the others. Nara was looking up at Aisling’s puppeted face with pure adoration, but Irene looked skeptical. The falcon girl had taken a step back, her eyes narrowed at me.

  “I trust Aisling on this matter,” Nara chirped, oblivious to the tension. “If she thinks you should lead, then I do too!”

  “I don’t know,” Irene muttered, shifting her wings nervously. “Ramona seemed… really scary just now. Like she was going to eat them, I thought she took over my body by mistake before. But now I’m not so sure.” If I were going to eat them, I would have. Nobody here could have stopped me.

  Samsara nudged me mentally. “See what you did? Irene just worshiped us and is now doubting us. Fix it.”

  I sighed, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Look, I apologize,” I forced out, looking at Irene. “My emotions got the better of me. It won’t happen again.”

  “See?” Samsara said, patting my arm with her hand. “She’s usually very kind.”

  “This is humiliating,” I grumbled in the privacy of our mind link. “I’m a Kaiju and a Demiurge, and I’m apologizing to small monster girls.”

  “It isn’t humiliating,” Samsara corrected gently. “You are just making up for the bad things you did. It’s called taking responsibility.”

  “You’re acting like my mom now,” I remarked.

  I felt her mental sigh resonate through my entire nervous system. “Sometimes it really does feel like you are a child I need to look after,” Samsara thought.

  “I’m older than you by like a day,” I reminded her.

  “Maturity isn’t about age,” she replied.

  “When did maturity come into this conversation?” I asked. “I didn’t bring it up.”

  “It was implied,” Samsara said, poking my cheek. Damn. Now, Samsara was the one playing word games with me. “Hey, I’m just learning from you.”

  As I was about to come up with a playful retort, Nara’s stomach rumbled. We looked down at her.

  Nara clutched her stomach, her face turning a vibrant shade of lime green.

  “Oh, you all could hear that?” she squeaked. “Um. I guess it’s a good time to eat lunch?”

  Samsara tilted her head. “Do you guys have enough food? We can help out if you don’t have enough.”

  “We are running kind of low,” Nara admitted, looking at Halinka. “Since the hunters haven’t been allowed to go out.” Did Halinka ban them from going outside the village while we were gone?

  “We’ll go hunt for food for you,” Samsara announced immediately. She waved a hand dismissively. “We’ll bring back enough for the whole village.”

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  I raised an eyebrow. “We will?”

  “Yes. We will.” She looked at Eivor and Halinka. “Hopefully, this will make up for how crass Ramona was acting earlier.”

  Eivor blinked, clearly surprised by the sudden shift from ‘hostile takeover’ to ‘community service.’

  “We would greatly appreciate that,” Eivor said, a look of relief washing over her face. “If you two are going to do all the hunting, that means the rest of us don’t have to risk leaving the valley. It solves a lot of problems.”

  “Great,” I noted mentally. “We are being used as free labor. At least I got paid when I was a garbage collector.”

  “This is to make up for your previous behavior,” Samsara lectured. “Consider it community service. Besides, money is worthless to us now. What are you going to buy? A Kaiju-sized purse?”

  “Maybe,” I retorted. “I’d give it to you. You’d look cute with it.”

  “Oh,” Samsara thought. Her cheeks turned pink. “Thanks.”

  Nara looked up at the unmoving Aisling. “Aisling should go on a hunt too! As a Kaiju, she can bring back so much more food now! And she’s way stronger and bigger too.”

  “What do you think?” I asked Samsara. “Should we bring Aisling with us or leave her at the village?”

  “We should bring her with us,” Samsara said. “It’ll be safer that way for Lateo. In case any of us get distracted on the hunt, I’d rather Aisling target us than the villagers.” Not sure if I agreed with that.

  “Well, you’ll still be able to restrain her, and we won’t risk losing any of our worshipers,” Samsara said. “Plus, Nara would be happy for Aisling to hunt.”

  “I definitely feel stronger,” I made Aisling say. She smiled at Nara. “I’ll make sure to bring back a lifetime supply of food, that way Lateo will never get hungry.”

  Nara clapped her hands, beaming. “That’s amazing! Be safe, okay?”

  “Are you kidding?” Aisling asked. “I’m a Kaiju. I’m super safe.”

  Nara giggled.

  Samsara, Aisling, and I waved goodbye before heading out into the Wild Lands.

  “I hate how you still have to control Aisling,” Samsara said as the village disappeared behind us. “At least we’re making Nara happy. Hopefully, we can find a cure for her soon.”

  I peeked over at Aisling. She was shorter than us, coming up to only our chests. She was probably 120 to 130 meters tall if I had to guess. A distinct improvement over her previous turtle girl size, but she was still the little one in this group.

  If I included the turtle girl lure she now had, she was about 130-140 meters tall.

  The sun beat down on the tall yellow grass. It was peaceful out here, aside from the earth-shaking thuds of our footsteps. Well, technically, Samsara didn’t have footsteps; she just slithered. However, her scaled tail left deep impressions in the dirt.

  “We can let Aisling go free when there are feral monster girls,” Samsara suggested.

  I kept a portion of my mind clamped down on Aisling’s nervous system, forcing her to match our stride. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” Samsara said. “You shouldn’t exert willpower trying to control her when it’s unnecessary. It still feels wrong when it’s done, plus it diverts your focus.”

  “Fair point,” I conceded. Puppeting a second colossal body was a bit taxing.

  We crested a low hill. In the distance, the plains stretched out indefinitely into the horizon.

  “There,” I thought, spotting movement. After minutes of walking, we had finally come across a horde of monster girls. There was a horde of feral deer girls. Each one had antlers jutting from its head. None of them wore clothes, revealing their reddish-brown fur. Each one had a small tail.

  Three of them stood out. They were way larger than the rest of the group. Kaijus. They seemed shorter than we were, so they must have only gone through one evolution.

  I had seen this before. Sometimes, a member of a monster girl horde would evolve into a Kaiju. It meant I couldn’t risk picking off any of their members; otherwise, the Kaiju would come after me. But now? That Kaiju was just prey to the rest of us.

  All three Kaijus looked at us. I could hear their growls from hundreds of meters away. Before we got into battle, I [Tracked] our souls. We had 4,003. That made sense. Before we resurrected Aisling, we had 3,227 souls. Since she worshipped us, we gained 776 souls in addition to the 10 we already had from her previous worship.

  Each of the tiny deer girls ahead hid behind their Kaiju-sized sisters.

  Samsara looked at the unmoving form of Aisling. “Aisling should eat first to make up for you having to control her. And to also make her stronger,”

  I sent Aisling ahead of us. “Sure. I’m releasing her.” Hopefully, she doesn’t turn on us right away.

  “Releasing control in three, two, one…”

  I withdrew my will.

  Aisling stood there for a few seconds.

  She didn’t move. Her chest heaved, but she just stared. The Kaiju deer girls stared back, their growls getting louder. Aisling growled back. Then she turned towards us.

  I was about to retake control of her if she made any sudden movements toward us. But she didn’t attack us. She turned around and rushed towards the smaller Kaiju.

  “Wait, what just happened?” Samsara asked. “She looked at us and didn’t attack.”

  “Hmm, I’m not sure,” I replied. “Perhaps the Kaiju fish girl Core we gave her increased her intelligence. The Kaiju fish girls did spend their time waiting for prey to attack the lure.”

  “Wait a minute,” Samsara said. “I know we have been describing all these monster girls and Kaijus as feral, but what if they are capable of being trained to be nice and calm?”

  “You mean like how humans kept pets before monster girls existed?” I asked. Mom had told me that her great-grandmother used to have a dog. It was kind of crazy since nobody wanted to keep animals anymore after they could transform into monster girls.

  “Yeah,” Samsara said. “Or maybe they could become even smarter than that. Just like how humans gave us the monster girl label, maybe we were wrong to use the ‘feral’ label on others.”

  Samsara did raise a good point. I had only used the word feral since I had gotten it from other non-feral monster girls. And then I passed the word on to Samsara. But had any of them tried to interact nicely with the ‘feral’ monster girls?

  Clearly, some of them were capable of complex thoughts instead of just attacking, like the deer girls. The tiny ones hid behind the Kaijus as the Kaijus pathetically tried to attack Aisling.

  Aisling pounced on one of the deer girls. The other two tried attacking Aisling’s shell. Their attacks felt ticklish. Huh, I could feel it when their paws hit Aisling’s shell. Did it have nerves?

  Aisling’s drool dripped on the Kaiju deer girl she pounced on. Her saliva burned the Kaiju deer girl, causing her to scream and writhe. But Aisling kept a firm grip. She began eating the Kaiju deer girl.

  Since our senses were shared, it was like I was eating the deer girl myself. She tasted sweet and citrusy, as if someone had combined oranges with vanilla ice cream. The blood tasted like mint. Aisling chewed on the deer girl’s head, consuming it in a handful of bites.

  She moved onto the neck and the arms. As she was eating, a pink light flashed in our eyes. No wait, just Aisling’s eyes.

  After the flash, an entity like Devotio appeared. Except this one was pink. And it had two eyes. Each one had a heart for its pupil.

  [Hello again. It is I, Misericordia, and it seems that you have enough excess mana (3,000) to trigger a new mutation. I can help guide the mana into one of two paths–wait, when did you become a Kaiju?]