Chapter 55: The Queen of Fear

Feeling the emotional shifts within the mental world of this phoenix, Hermione couldn't help but sigh with emotion:
"The fundamental power of the 'Visionary' pathway..."
This power to subtly manipulate other living creatures made Hermione feel a slight sense of intoxication, but it also instantly stirred her vigilance:
"No matter why every 'Manipulator' must understand how to restrain themselves and respect others. Even though one can rely on the abilities of the 'Hanged Man' to stubbornly resist depraved and filthy mental imprints, indulging in this desire for manipulation will gradually lead to madness without one even realizing it."
"Of course, this does not mean one shouldn't dare to use this power of mental manipulation, but rather that one must avoid becoming addicted to it."
Hermione let out a soft breath, her figure slowly fading away from the "isolated island," but just as she intended to truly withdraw from the collective unconscious ocean of this region, a towering giant phantom suddenly rose abruptly from a deep, gloomy corner.
The corner of the giant phantom's mouth held a bloody human thigh.
A massive, vertical, single eye stared at Hermione, and reaching out with a rotting giant hand, it grabbed toward her.
This giant phantom was not a true living creature, but rather the manifestation of the mental imprint: "Giants eat humans."
A mental imprint is not only the precipitation of the collective will of the current region.
Once such precipitation becomes an imprint, it will also inversely affect the same kind of creatures in the surrounding area, becoming their shared, ancient "memory" carved into their bloodlines!
"To have manifested to this extent, the giant race... Heh."
Hermione's gaze turned icy; she did not fight it head-on, dodging it with light, effortless grace.
Yet as she dodged, the gloomy profile etched upon her cheek opened its eyes.
The heavy cloak draped over Hermione's back unraveled simultaneously as the gloomy profile opened its eyes, transforming into flowing, foul, bubbling black water that surged toward the giant phantom!
Although this black water and the giant phantom were both mental imprints precipitated within this ocean of the collective unconscious, once the giant phantom was submerged in the black water, its movements inevitably became stiff and sluggish—different mental imprints cannot merge with one another.
Looking at the beast-like roaring giant phantom before her, Hermione's expression darkened slightly. The giant phantom posed no real danger to her.
Yet through this giant phantom, she perceived that within this region, the act of "giants eating humans" was actually taking place!
She saw that the giants, who ought to have been protecting their vassal races, not only turned a blind eye to the ravages of that phoenix, but instead captured and tasted humans who ventured out to scout, all while joyfully watching from the sidelines as that phoenix toyed with the creatures of the wilderness.
No matter how rational she was, Hermione still found it difficult to suppress the emotions surging in her heart at this moment.
She was unwilling to even let the lingering mental imprint of this "giant eating humans" remain within this ocean of the collective unconscious, even though the giant phantom before her was merely the tip of the iceberg precipitated here.
She wanted to truly annihilate this giant phantom.
Hermione did not possess the ability to purify mental imprints, but the "Three-Faced Sanctuary" possessed the authority to bear depravity!

"The Self," "Depravity," and "Purity"—the positions of the three faces shifted in accordance with Hermione's intent.
That gloomy-looking side face covered her own visage; though their features were completely identical, this gloomy face wore an expression of bitter sorrow, representing Hermione's "depraved self-nature"!
The gloomy Hermione lowered her head, and the giant phantom before her rapidly dissolved amidst a bizarre gravitational pull, transforming into black mist that drifted toward Hermione's body.
As the black mist drew closer, the imprints of the depraved ones carried upon Hermione's person came alive, howling in unison.
A cathedral of bones faintly manifested behind Hermione.
Within the cathedral, statues of the hanged god resembling Hermione absorbed all of the drifting black mist in one go.
Meanwhile, Hermione's other, holy visage also opened its eyes, her illusory lips parting and closing as she devoutly chanted.
While bearing this mental imprint of "giants eating humans" through a state of self-sacrifice, Hermione also split a portion of her mind to link with Amanises's mental world.
With Hermione's current mental power, it was not enough to forcefully infiltrate Amanises's subconscious.
Yet under their tacit understanding, Amanises, stirred by her mental touch, voluntarily lowered her mental defenses against her.
The moment her consciousness connected with Amanises, Hermione transmitted everything she had arranged within the phoenix's subconscious, the location of the man-eating giant obtained from the giant phantom, and the coordinates of the two humans who had yet to meet a tragic fate, all straight into Amanises's subconscious.
The rampaging phoenix, the spectator giants enjoying the spectacle, the human lives in imminent danger...
Amanises, standing guard beside Hermione, received this information while simultaneously sensing the boiling anger and murderous intent surging deep within Hermione's heart.
At that very instant, the phoenix whose subconscious had been tampered with "opened the door" and arrived, running head-on into Amanises, who had transformed into a demonic wolf.
The moment it saw the demonic wolf, the phoenix—which had been spurred by its subconscious to a state of burning eagerness—was slightly stunned.
Yet when it attempted to flee, the pale flames flickering across the surface of its body were wiped away out of thin air as if being erased!
The eight-legged demonic wolf, in her most violent posture, directly tore apart its wings, and the all-corrupting, berserk spirit shattered its astral form, preventing it from even casting a near-instantaneous blink.
And then, it no longer needed to cast any abilities...
Having instantly slaughtered this divine phoenix, the massive demonic wolf directly grabbed the still-warm corpse of the phoenix and used spirit world travel to arrive at the location Hermione had transmitted to her.

...
The ashen-blue giant, its mouth stained with blood and filth, reached out to grab the female hunter and her companion.
Though the giant possessed a colossal physique, it moved with astonishing agility, leaving the two women with no time to evade at all.
Just as the female hunter and her companion fell into utter despair, an eight-legged demonic wolf, its sharp claws clutching the corpse of the phoenix, suddenly materialized and plummeted from mid-air. The tossed corpse of the phoenix smashed heavily against the ashen-blue giant, splashing countless droplets of blood and pus.

A dawn-like radiance erupted upon the giant's blood-stained, berserk body.
"A demonic wolf!"
When that massive vertical pupil swept toward Amanises's demonic wolf form, a profound terror surged from the demonic wolf's pitch-black eyes, causing the giant to tremble violently, its protective divine barrier collapsing and shattering instantly!
At this moment, Amanises was not displaying her mythical creature form, but rather her demonic wolf transformation.
Even so, the power of terror she wielded frightened the giant before her to death on the spot.
Having slaughtered the phoenix and frightened the giant to death, Amanises cast a sideways glance at the two female humans trembling and collapsing in a nearby corner.
The extra limbs extending from her flanks dragged the corpses of the phoenix and the giant respectively, brutally gouging two deep trenches into the ground.
Dragging these two colossal corpses with her even more gargantuan physique, Amanises deliberately passed right by a slightly distant human tribe.
With footsteps like an earthquake, the miserable corpses of the once-peerless phoenix and giant, coupled with the terror aura intentionally emanating from Amanises, left the humans of the tribe with a day dominated by fear that they would never forget.
Just as she was about to vanish from the extreme limits of human vision, Amanises's body gradually straightened, transforming into a female half-wolf, half-human form that towered even taller than a giant.

...
When Hermione saw Amanises return dragging the two corpses, she sighed softly: "You ended up running this errand for nothing."
Hermione had originally intended for Amanises to slay the phoenix in the guise of a human demigod, and then use the event to preach her faith to the nearby human tribe.
Yet all of this had vanished into thin air due to her obsessive desire to slay the giant—Amanises, having killed the giant, could no longer expose her identity as a human demigod.
Hearing this, Amanises chuckled lightly: "Preaching... is essentially an extension of power. I certainly didn't run this errand in vain."
At the edge of Amanises's ears came numerous newborn, illusory sounds of prayer.
They fanatically revered her as their faith, addressing her as:
"The Queen of Terror."