Mind Demon's Path of Domination

Mark was on the couch, Dona's weight pressing down on him from the side. He held a cicada in his hand, and he looked at its eyes. It had brown, slim wings and was numerous in number. Cicadas were such a nice species of insect.

How curious it was that something from Earth would also be here, all the way in a different world. He looked at its stats.

_

[Cicada]

[𝐓𝐢𝐞𝐫 𝟎]

[𝐏𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐪𝐮𝐞: 0.01]

[Mind: 0.01]

[Resistances: None.]

[Hunter Ability: None.]

_

Mark looked at it seriously for a second. Earlier, he had used a lot of his energy on Choi Sung, but a sip from the bottle of black water revitalized him. Thankfully, that had made things much more convenient.

His goal today was to make the Cicada loyal to him first and then plant Dungeon Heart Seeds inside it. For a Seed to be planted—like he did with Dona—the creature he is planting the seed into has to be loyal to him in heart.

Only then would the Dungeon Heart Seed ability work. His goal was to plant the seeds in all the cicadas and slowly spread them throughout the world. One by one, they should reach every part of this world, and all of it should become… his Dungeon.

Anywhere a Cicada was, he would be safe from the World Will's burning influence.

He just had to spread them throughout the country, and his major mission in this World would be over. He would even be able to gain the best benefits possible in this world if he turned the entire thing into his own Dungeon.

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Indeed, he didn't see anything wrong with the idea.

Heart Input!

He entered the insect's mind without a hint of resistance and felt the heart of the cicada. Survival and reproduction were all there was to this creature's mindset.

It wouldn't go against those basic principles for anything, but other than that, nothing truly mattered to it. Mark planted its very first thought into the creature, "You are loyal to any red-colored demons."

He took his time and tried to instill many thoughts into the creature's nonexistent brain. In the end, though, no matter how many loyal thoughts he indoctrinated into the creature, the Dungeon Heart Seed didn't work on it.

Mark couldn't help but be discouraged.

"So, what are you trying?" Yuri, seated on a stool to the side, looked at him curiously. "I can't tell just by looking. Believe me, tell me, and I can help you—I am pretty smart."

Mark didn't relent and tried to do it a bunch more times. He tried different sorts of commands.

You like to survive by listening to orders from others.

You like to be loyal to everyone.

Even he could see he was trying something dumb. The insects were too brainless to comprehend even their own thoughts. They worked on instincts.

"…" He sighed. This was a failure.

Asking Yuri was not a bad idea, but he didn't want to let her know that he had the ability to add thoughts to other people's minds. The main reason they followed the thoughts he inputted was that they believed it was their own thought.

"I have a weird ability," he said. "I can control insects by making them recognize me as their leader. I can enter their minds and give them commands to follow, but this insect doesn't do what I say at all. Demon World insects would listen to everything I say, though…"

The Scientist's eyes shimmered. "No wonder you wanted insects!"

She stood up and walked near a laptop. With some clicks, a projector turned on, and it showed the image of a cicada. "I can guess why it doesn't work, though."

She smiled, took a potato chip from a packet by the side, and ate it. She had a lot of food around.

Mark blinked at her enthusiasm. "Why doesn't it work?"

"Of course. Your commands must need to be understood by the insect, but cicadas work on primary instincts and they absolutely can't comprehend anything beyond that level—their structure just doesn't allow it. Your command and a random noise would be the same for them."

"I see." Mark nodded in thought.

"If we stretch this path to its limits, rather than instilling loyalty, you might be able to influence the cicada's simple navigational decisions or maybe… trigger its emergence from the soil. But these actions would still be within the scope of the cicada's instinctual behaviors and not a result of loyalty or emotional connection to you."

Mark stood up and walked closer to see some of the files she was sorting. She opened a particular one and flipped it to a certain page.

"So, any other way? I want it to feel emotionally loyal towards me."

"For your purpose, you would likely want to choose an insect with the ability to learn and adapt its behavior based on experience, which would make it a more versatile and useful subject for control anyway." She showed some images of other insects. "Social insects like ants, bees, or termites could be candidates due to their complex behaviors and social structures.

However, even among these, an insect with a more developed capacity for learning would be preferable, in my opinion."

Mark stared at it a bit dumbly. Then asked, "Explain."

She smirked, her ruby black eyes having turned psychic and sharp. Science—fascinating science—she was about to see it. Her life was going to see some fire again.

Ah!

Insects were going to learn to do more things than they were supposed ever to be capable of. It was going to break natural order, and she would be the catalyst to see it in action. Science. Fabulous groundbreaking magical science.

She typed something on the nearby lap with the speed of a god level typer and the most interesting parts of it were displayed into the projected screen on the wall.

Mark looked at it with curiosity. This woman sure had turned intense so quickly.

Honeybees: Highly social insects. They have complex communication systems, including the waggle dance, which they use to convey information about the location of food sources. They also demonstrate the ability to learn and remember locations and can be trained to associate certain colors or shapes with food rewards.

"If you can make them believe you are its queen and spend some time with them, slowly, very, very slowly, add more and more complex thought processes into its tiny mind, you can manipulate it to have emotions."

"As in?"

"No insect actually feels emotional. Honeybees are genetically created to prioritize their own hive over anything else—it's a sheer instinct game. They would die for their hive. They would seem loyal to the queen because they would protect her just the same, but they are not that emotional—they just see value in the queen being alive to the hive more than they being alive."

"I see."

"But since they can understand some things, you can make them understand more things. And maybe generate artificial emotions in their brain by gaslighting them into believing they love you. They will be loyal then."

Mark rubbed his chin.

"These are also very solid options," Yuri said.

Ants: Some ant species also have intricate social structures and the ability to learn. For instance, they can find the shortest paths to food sources and communicate this information to their colony mates. Also, certain species of ants engage in agriculture, such as leafcutter ants that cultivate fungus.

Wasps: Some wasps exhibit complex behaviors, including the use of tools and the ability to recognize individual faces, which suggests a level of cognitive processing that could be interesting under the control of an insect-mind-influencer.

Mark sighed. "That's some good thinking. Maybe those would be good options indeed."

But he had understood something very vital. It would be a lot of effort and seemed like something that would take a lot of time to get working. There were better options. He had told Yuri that his power only worked on insects, but it worked on animals, too.

Dogs were very emotional, loyal creatures, for example. He could turn them into loyal dogs and implant the Dungeon Seed in them before he let them out into the world. But they wouldn't be enough to make the entire world his Dungeon.

But they would still be enough to make one Nation his.

Indeed, he had to get some dogs. He also had to remove the 5-meter-away-from-Dona-is-death weakness around this city. Dona would be harmed in a battle of his level, and she would hold him back.

Whereas, if he didn't have to worry about the distance from her, she could act as a support from the side. Her fire could be deadly even for him, just like to his enemies.

Maybe it would be better to max out Dona's stats in Tier 0, too, since he couldn't use the Soul Spheres in his hand anyway. It wouldn't be that hard anyway to get that many Soul Spheres.

She would be way more helpful then.

Can he even use the Soul Spheres in his Soul Space on others?