The elf felt a shiver go down his spine when he looked into Gideon's uncaring eyes. He realized that Gideon wasn't putting up a strong front or anything like that. He truly didn't care about the life of the man in front of him and only saw him as a test subject.
The man saw that things were going down hill very fast and decided to try and plead for mercy, but he was completely paralyzed and could only move his eyes. He couldn't even move his eyelids.
The man begged Gideon through his gaze hoping that he would notice since he needed to perform the mental attack through looking into the person's eyes. But to his dismay, Gideon didn't even flinch under his gaze and continued what he was doing.
In fact, Gideon didn't even notice and was more interested on how he would guide his astral energy into not the guy's cerebral cortex. He knew that if he screwed it up, the astral energy would become chaotic and probably kill the man.
'I doubt Lin can just mass produce these guys, so I'll need to be extra careful.' Gideon thought. If the man knew that Gideon didn't want to kill him simply because 'test subjects' like him were difficult to come across, he'd probably cough up several liters of blood.
Victoria on the other hand was having a harder time as even though the man was bound by wind, he was still able to control his face. So he kept closing his eyes and turning his head to the side.
Eventually, Victoria snapped and grabbed the guys head from the top and began squeezing.
"You're expendable, so don't think I won't hesitate to kill you." Her small voice was oddly menacing and the elf broke out in cold sweat as he realized that Victoria's words were correct. If she killed him, it really wouldn't matter.
'It's not like this so called mental attack k is killing me, it's just going to be some pain before I pass out.' The elf thought as he felt the pressure on his skull increase and eventually decided to open his eyes.
"Good." She nodded approvingly before she began pondering.
'Since the cerebral cortex is is pretty much just the front part of the brain, then reaching it shouldn't be too difficult.' She concluded before looking at the elf straight in the eyes.
Her purple eyes glowed brightly as a stream aquafire particles slowly left them and approached the man's own eyes.
She took it slow as making the energy go fast would probably just create a lot of mistakes and make things much harder.
The man became pale as he felt the scorching energy glide over his eyes and enter his skull.
It felt extremely uncomfortable causing the man to squirm in his restrictions.
Victoria focused and felt the inside of the man's skull with her energy, constantly probing to make sure she was where she wanted to be.
After making sure that she was indeed touching his Cerebral cortex, she immediately caused the energy to become violent.
"AAARGH." The man howled as the turbulent astral energy wreaked havoc in the man's skull, causing him unearthly levels of pain. It wasn't long until his eyes rolled back.
Seeing the development, Victoria's eyes widened with joy.
"Wow, first try!" She exclaimed.
"Hm?" Lin suddenly appeared right next to the man's body and tilted her head.
"The attack was successful, but could you tone it down the next time?" Lin asked causing Victoria and Gideon who was looking from a distance to look at her questioningly.
"Why?" Victoria asked back.
"Oh, yeah you killed him." Lin answered plainly.
"Huh?" Victoria exclaimed and immediately looked at the elf and saw that his eyes had turned full and lifeless and he was no longer breathing.
She paled slightly and felt a wave a nausea hit her. Gideon immediately saw the development and went to her and started rubbing her back.
"Don't overthink it, he deserved to die. And Lin was probably going to kill them anyway. Think of it as avenging all the poor people that fell to him. You did a good deed." Gideon comforted.
"Mm." Victoria made a small sound as Gideon's words made her feel a bit better.
She may have endured the mental torture. But seeing someone get killed and then killing someone yourself were two completely different things. And there's the fact that Victoria is just a bit over ten years old.
Gideon sighed. He knew his sister had a naturally good heart despite how she was treated by their parents. He was different as since his childhood was filled with nothing but pain and abuse, so he to some extent no longer had much feelings to the sentiments of intelligent beings, that's why he was so nonchalant about the elf's death, though, he would still help people if he could and wouldn't watch innocent people die or be in the same situation he was at the time. That's why he was doing this training in the first place.
It took a bit of time before Victoria eventually calmed down, but Lin didn't press and waited patiently.
When she was okay to continue, Gideon went back to his 'test subject' and continued to observe him.
'Victoria seemed to have either sent too much energy or made it too violent. I need to make sure that I don't do any of that.' Gideon thought before looking into the elf's eyes.
The elf's eyes were filled with utter terror as even though he couldn't move, he heard his companion's screams and heard when Lin pronounced him dead.
'He's learning the technique and is probably a beginner, of course he'll make a mistake!' The elf shouted in his mind as Gideon's eyes glowed before sending a trickle of astral energy towards the guy.
There really wasn't any way to measure how much astral energy one sent, so he used hus discretion and stopped when he felt that it was enough.
Already, the elf was feeling a strong headache and found it difficult to focus as Gideon was attacking the part of the brain that was responsible for thinking and processing.
When Gideon made sure that he was indeed touching the cerebral cortex, he began to make the astral energy into tiny energy needles before pricking the cerebral cortex over and over again.
The man was immediately in a horrid amount of pain, but since he was paralyzed, he didn't even scream. One would only know that he was in pain due to the tears mixed with blood falling down the sides of his head as well of the blood coming out of his nose.
After a minute, guy passed out. And to Gideon's joy, he was still alive.
"Well done. Though he's probably going to have some brain damage when he wakes up. So now you just need to get proficient at it." Lin said and Gideon nodded before turning his gaze towards the other elves who immediately broke out in cold sweat.