Third Eye

After a few generations, a new type of demon beast may be born, one that may eventually give birth to a demon beast that could aspire to the heavens itself. This was the blessing Minos had just afforded this little ant, and it wasn't even aware of it.

Of course such a future was far and may never come to fruition, and Minos was instead more interested in the present.

With a thought, Minos felt himself appear within the small ant's body, his vision completely different as he experienced things from the ants point of view.

At the same time, he was given access to a completely new sense, the two antennas on his head twitching as he felt the chemicals in his surroundings.

Crawling around, he climbed all over his hand, experiencing what it was like to be able to cling onto surfaces, which was actually quite fun.

After a bit of playing around, Minos returned control back to the little ant, the little bug unable to even comprehend what had just happened to it, just running off ignorantly.

Not yet done testing, Minos immediately sent a command to the ant's soul, causing the ant to immediately freeze in place.

With another command, the ant turned around and walked back towards Minos, crawling up his finger without any fear.

This was another ability he had, which allowed him to manipulate beings via their souls, even the ones he hadn't turned into an extension of himself.

Of course the first was much harder than the latter, but with how weak insects' souls were, it made no difference to Minos either way.

Hence with a single thought, he commanded all the insects within the room to gather, soon having dozens of small bugs standing in line on the ground in front of him.

With another thought, Minos extinguished one soul, the bug connected to it instantly collapsing lifelessly.

Curious, he proceeded to manipulate another soul, taking it from one insect and depositing it into the corpse of the other.

Like that, the dead bug seemed to come back to life, standing back up and running around chaotically.

However it only ran for a bit before the soul and the body began rejecting each other, the rejection resulting in the soul's death, the bug once again collapsing.

'I knew it wouldn't be that simple…' Minos thought to himself.

Not ready to give up yet, Minos gathered another soul, but this time he baptized it with his golden light, turning it into another extension of himself.

Placing back into the corpse of the little insect, it once again came to life, but this time the body didn't reject it, accepting the soul as if it was its own.

'Interesting… It seems my golden souls have the innate ability to perfectly meld into anything, not suffering rejection.'

Wanting to see how far he could push such a thing, Minos took the two golden souls he currently had under control and fused them together into one.

The two souls expanded in size as they combined, not rejecting each other like regular souls would, instead fusing with no problems.

However as Minos placed the soul back into the ant's body, it seemed a little confused, running around chaotically as if two beings were trying to control it at the same time.

'Souls really are miraculous…'

Pulling the golden soul from the ant's body, Minos separated them and sent them back into their original bodies, the insects acting like normal again.

While he still wanted to play around with this ability some more, he still had other things to test, so with thought, Minos's golden pupil blinked, this time re-opening to reveal a purple pupil.

The soul vision from before vanished, instead the world turning into one of numbers and words.

Everything had a unit attached to it, from its weight, to length, to height, to age, to strength, seemingly covering everything.

This was an even more evolved version of his Omniscient Eyes, which didn't give him such a precise understanding of the world.

Though this was far from the purple eye's only ability, instead just like the golden pupil, it similarly afforded him extraordinary powers.

Grabbing another ant, Minos took in its information, more specifically its age, which was currently only six months.

As he focused deeply, the six months began shaking slightly, the number blurring before reappearing, though no longer as six months.

Instead, it now read five years, and these words seemed to have an incredible effect on the ant itself, causing it to age rapidly.

At the same time, Minos noticed an extremely small portion of his Nux had vanished completely, as if it had never even existed in the first place.

'Like I thought, this power comes at a price, and a hefty one at that…' Minos thought, refocusing his attention back on the ant.

Given this ant species could only live for around two years, by the time the ant was less than half way through its transformation, it already died, having passed from old age.

Flipping back over to his golden pupil, which he called Soul Vision, Minos found that the ant's soul was still alive, though without its body to support it, it would soon dissipate.

His purple pupil, which he called True Vision, could only act on the physical, unable to manipulate souls in the way his Soul Vision could.

Switching back to his True Vision, Minos once again manipulated information about the ant's age, returning it back to six months.

As he did so, the ant's corpse was quickly rejuvenated, its grayish husk of a body rapidly returning to a shiny-black as it stood back up, unaware of what just happened to it.

In this way, Minos had just killed a creature and returned it to life, which was a power only gods had access to.

Of course Minos hadn't really killed it, just destroyed the body it called home, after all even he couldn't return a soul back to life if it was completely destroyed.

Still this was amazing enough for Minos, not to mention manipulating age was just a small part of his True Vision's power.

Controlling his Abyss Flame to appear in his hand, Minos looked towards the information about its temperature, which was incredibly high.

With a grunt, he tried to raise it higher, but he found doing so was impossible, at least he couldn't alternate it permanently, such a thing costing too much.

However, while a permanent change was impossible, Minos's power could also make temporary one's, which not only cost less, but also wouldn't permanently erase his Nux, instead coming at the cost of his stamina.

Hence he doubled the Abyss Flame's temperature, though even then he felt incredibly exhausted, and the change only lasted a few seconds.

Still, in those few seconds the Abyss Flame roared with power far beyond its norm, which if used properly, would allow him to explode with power much greater than usual.

Returning the Abyss Flame back into his body, Minos decided to activate the final ability of his True Vision, the one he was most excited about.

With a deep breath, he triggered it, causing the entire world to suddenly split, as if two images were overlaid on top of one another.

In one image, the world was frozen in place, yet in the other it overlapped, things were moving as usual.

Standing up, Minos also moved around, though he noticed his 'original' body was still sitting cross-legged on his body, unmoving.

The ants on the floor were similarly running around while their 'original' copies remained in the exact same place they were when Minos activated his ability.

Curious, Minos began walking around, noticing he could still interact with the world completely normally, as if nothing had changed.

After around a minute of such, the world suddenly snapped, Minos feeling his entire vision snatched back to when he was sitting cross-legged on his bed.

Shocked and amazed, he looked down at the little instincts on the floor, immediately realizing they were moving in the exact same pattern as they did in that other world.

'Future vision… What an incredible ability!'

That's right, what Minos had just experienced was the future, and not only could he see it, he could even interact with it, which was even more amazing!

This was the ability he had gained after absorbing the blood of the Jiphrox, something even he had never expected to happen.

This third-eye seemed to be the ultimate fusion of all his abilities, and its potential was truly infinite!

All his Aptus's had evolved, not only retaining their original powers, but also going one step further.

For example, his Omniscient Eyes now gained the ability to directly manipulate information via his True Vision.

As for his Eternal Flame, Minos could now extend his eternity to other souls, granting them the same power he has, of course he could also retract this immortality if he wanted.

Beyond that, since those souls were considered extensions of his own, as long as they didn't die out, he would similarly retain his eternal status, extending his reach from just flames to even other souls!

Of course such an extension had a limit, and Minos could only encompass as many souls as would equal his own soul's strength.

However, given how incredibly powerful his soul was, that upper-limit was still huge, not to mention he was only getting stronger.

With both his True Vision and Soul Vision, Minos had truly reached a baffling level, a height he quite honestly would have never thought he'd reach.