For the alien being, the entire events of the last few seconds appeared right out of a fever dream, so bizarre and unexpected that it was unable to make heads or tails of anything.
In fact, it did not even realize that it had accidentally set off an explosive rune, thus resulting in its sorry state.
This was because despite its formidable powers, it had little foundational knowledge of magic.
This was because it had no practical use for it- if it wanted to become stronger, it could simply eat the various beasts and men around.
Similarly, its use of spells and abilities came to it as a sort of natural instinct, very much like breathing, walking and balancing to us.
It was so easy that if the tentacles had told this to the thirteen mages besieging this, they would have probably died from sheer jealousy.
The only side effect of this easy path was due to how voracious the tentacle was, gobbling everything up in one bite, it resulted in a mass of such fractured and disjointed memories that it was of very little use to 'it'.
All of the thoughts and ideas got mashed and mixed together in a chaotic swirl until they all lost their individual coherence and simply became background noise.
It was almost like mixing all the colors in the world together… you would only get a black puddle, with no rhyme or rhythm to its original constituents.
The tentacle was only able to filter a set of very simple memories it really needed from them- such as information about the local topography, the strengths of the surrounding forces, the location of the largest settlements and their number, possible obstacles along the way, etc.
Information that was quite rudimentary and easily verifiable.
Even this ability came from the fact that it was created as a foraging scout unit, so it was specialized in eating its victims and using their memories to find the location of even more prey.
Built to be small, stealthy and efficient, these beings were usually sent out in enormous waves all over space, with only one job- to find if there was any food nearby.
It had no ability to analyse anything more complex.
For instance, technical skills and valuable knowledge like figuring out complex military doctrine or sophisticated human technology were beyond its job description … just like how complex orbital mechanics calculations are beyond a simple pocket calculator's.
Determining things like whether it was worth getting that food and how to do so was up to a completely different part of the hive.
Hence when it was presented with all these unknown memories regarding magic and its mechanism, even if they had not been corrupted, everything would have simply been too hard for it to discern.
And given it was able to easily use magic regardless, the tentacles were not even interested in this 'confused garbage' in the first place.
….
Unfortunately, although this very logical decision let it breeze through many challenges that would have proved insurmountable for many men, it had also led it to do something extremely illogical at the very last critical moment in its life…. and now it was paying the price dearly for it.
Vaporised into only a sliver of consciousness, the alien being first roared out with indignation in a manner it had never done its life,
"Fuck! What the hell is the origin of this kid? Who the heck is trying to kill him? And how is that idiot so bad at it? Bastard! How shit do you have to be in your job that you can't even kill a brat that shits himself in bed! Arghhhhh!"
It was probably the first time in the tentacle's life that it expressed such human like emotion, cursing the Iudex and his fourteen generations by grinding its teeth and bleeding eyes.
All the gathered sadness and despair seemed to have turned into unbridled fury for 'it' right one and if the tentacle could have met the man responsible, no matter their difference in power, it could have surely given him a tongue lashing, calling him 'completely incompetent' and blaming him for bringing 'it' between a fight it had absolutely no interest it.
"When Mother comes, I will find the bastard and personally tear him limb from limb!" It solemnly vowed.
But before it could fulfill that promise, the tentacle turned its focus to its more imminent concern- surviving the current ordeal.
Being burnt to only a sliver of consciousness, its soul was heavily injured and dying.
At any other time, it might have been able to just rapidly regenerate itself to survive.
The problem was, it had spent all its mana on simply trying to withstand the blast, and now the gas tank was totally empty. It had no fuel for its growth.
In addition, this alien being was also not the best in such soul repair, having a constitution that favored the physical form more.
Whatever it knew about the soul, spirit and mana simply came from its instinct, through some vague memories from its prey diffusing into its subconscious.
Hence injured and enraged, and seeing itself rapidly dissipating, the alien decided to follow its instinct too.
It dove towards Adonis's much more intact soul, intending to swallow it whole, and thus restore itself.
"Darn brat! If I had known you were such a cursed star, I would have never touched you with a ten feet pole! To think I wasted so much mana protecting you not once but twice. Fuck! My head must have been kicked to shit by those donkey mages!"
The malice and regret contained in those words were palpable, as the menacing consciousness let its ravenous hunger take hold and dove towards the blue ethereal ball like a comet, crashing into it with such force that it appeared as if it wished to shatter the soul to bits.
"Waaah! Waahhh! Waaahh!"
While facing this foreign attack, Adonis's soul instinctively reacted, thrashing out in desperation with streaks of blue and white light, desperately trying to reject the alien being.
Now normally this would have been like a gentle ripple in the water for the tentacle, utterly harmless and inconsequential. It could have swallowed the boy whole as easily as breathing.
However these were not normal times, and the extraordinary circumstances made even Adonis's infantile attacks quite effective.
If before the boy and the tentacle were like a grasshopper and elephant, well now, the contest seemed to be between an ant and a mosquito respectively.
And if one looked at it closely, Adonis actually had the upper hand.
Thus even after multiple tries, the Protanyd tentacle found itself unable to absorb the injured soul. In fact, it found it had actually lost more energy in all these attacks than it had gained from the occasional nibbles it took.
"No! This cannot go on! I cannot break through! Darn brat! Ungrateful brat! Ahhhh…" Thus the being cried with agony, cursing its heart out, "Why are you struggling? You are going to die anyway, boy! Your soul is too damaged! Ahhhh… so why take both of us? Let me eat you! And I promise I will find the person who did this to you!"
In its desperation, this alien being then began to try and negotiate.
And this might have had the slightest chance of working if it had been conversing with someone of intelligence. Perhaps there might have been a man who wished to drag his hateful enemy down to hell with him regardless of everything, even if it meant shaking hands with a malicious, extremely untrustworthy alien organism.
However Adonis was so young that he had virtually no concept of such things. Everything he did was simply out of instinct, and in his mind, this malicious force had first captured and caged him, burnt half of his soul away and now was trying to eat him.
Like hell was going to listen to anything it said.
Thus when he heard the sound of that hateful voice, his body actually thrashed even more wildly, fighting back.
Yet despite this venomous reaction, the alien being continued to try to negotiate for some time, wasting more and more of its precious time and energy on a lost cause..
It simply could not understand the reason behind the boy's futile death throes.
This was because it fundamentally lacked a good understanding of human society and how they grew up. It thought human babies were just smaller human adults, with the same, if not at least similar cognitive abilities. They were just encased in a smaller 'shell'.
It thought like so because it was created as such- hatching out of an amniotic bubble, this Protanyd as ready from the word go.
It was also because its soul was so heavily damaged that it lacked the faculties to sense the flaw in its flow.
It just continued to mindlessly make the same mistake over and over again, appearing very foolish and vanishing more and more.