Chapter 215: Chapter 215

Espr knew what they were doing—

(“ Everything is going as expected ”)

—That was what they liked to tell themself.

Everything had become cold and detached. The ice-based monsters were receiving a boon to their power, unintentionally.

Fighting between Spiritual Beings happened so infrequently. The only place where it was feasibly possible was in the layer of Existence that they should definitely not fight in. There were options that allowed them to come into conflict on the opposite plane, but very few took that opportunity. The ones that did were the few that liked to actively fight and had actively worked together to create a stage where they could stress their power.

Outside of that, there were some who liked the idea of proxy battles. Forces from opposing sides clash while being controlled by a Spiritual Being. Some even saw the event with Dominous Hood as another example of such, but the influence of Spiritual Beings in that conflict was less than one would expect.

The decades-long conflict brought entertainment for many of the Spiritual Beings, but it was easy to say Espoiramissa was not one who found much joy from this play of human malice and greed. Maybe at the beginning, when she first had a tinge of involvement in the conflict. They got to watch the little flame fight against the dark as it came at her from every direction; even as the shadows ate the embers, it still fought on.

However, that flame got so deeply hurt. Each fight ate more away than the last. That should’ve been a good outcome, each fight meaning that spark was ever closer to its grasp.

The spark never went out… It never gave up or gave in to Espr’s control. Then it was nearly completely extinguished.

It kept losing brightness after every fight.

When its family was hurt, the planet saw it as an opportunity.

When it kept fighting, the planet watched on excitedly as the planet’s influence grew.

When… she was injured fighting beings beyond the realm and people with so many tricks to injure her, the planet grew worried but felt hopeful it just meant it would only be a little more time for its influence to completely fill the spark. It couldn’t heal the beautiful flame until then anyway, so… it was a preordained conclusion?

But it kept fighting, showing no signs of giving in to everything. Then… Ceella was even more deeply injured, and Espoiramissa could do nothing but wait.

In the end… Ceella managed to stride through the pains and universe that was pulling her down, but Espr felt as if they had lost something in the process. The predetermined outcome had been overturned.

Espr watched as Ceella flew across the ground with burning flames and streams of light following her.

Any Spiritual Being who fought in another’s domain would face restrictions similar to that of the ones applied by the Existence of Expansion. This was only similar to the restriction, which meant if hypothetically a Spiritual Being did appear on a Dungeon Planet, whose domain was their world, then they would be restricted by both forces. However, the restriction that Existence applied to complete Dungeon Planets was a bit different. At the end of the day, they were only planets, not beings that could fly around and cause mass devastation, which meant they had the leeway of facing no direct limitation on/within their body. The main limitation itself came to be what Dungeon Planets were: living worlds; their power was mostly directed into creation and not sheer abilities like other Spiritual Beings.

However, Ceella was unaffected by such restrictions and was fighting at a capacity higher than she was previously against the faux Spiritual Being.

(“ She is unaffected by my restriction ”)

Espoiramissa tried to be surprised by such a revelation, but the truth was something they had been expecting.

Ceella, a Spiritual Being who was brought into existence by, in part, consuming a potion of Espoiramissa's power, led to an interesting predicament. Such an event wasn’t possible simply by intaking another Spiritual Being’s power; no, it had to be used as one of the core components of the evolution process. So it was safe to say this had never happened before, and the other Spiritual Beings watching this conflict must’ve been deeply curious about these events. None of the other Spiritual Beings was able to watch what happened while Ceella was on the other side of Existence. The only one who knew what happened and where Ceella’s domain was located was Espoiramissa.

A dying world wasn’t exactly unusual, but the one that Ceella landed on was unique in how long it survived after it should’ve died.

The other Spiritual Beings were trying to watch the events unfold, but Espoiramissa did their best to block said viewing. Annoyingly, there was an amount they could see even with the inferences Espr was applying, and there were a few that got permission to see what was happening on the surface of the planet as payment. That didn’t mean Espoiramissa was happy about that outcome, but at least there was no way for them to see what would happen if the fight went underground, which in all likelihood it would eventually reach if Ceella didn’t collapse from exhaustion.

The situation was too perfect. Ceella weakened by her fight with a faux Spiritual Being—

“Hahah! Is that the best you’ve got!? Come on, Espr! It’s going to take a lot more than this to keep me down!”

Flames consumed the land and flesh that stood upon it. The fiery star would not stand down for mere threats.

—would stand no chance against Espoiramissa’s full power.

However, it was proven that the power differences wouldn’t be enough to make her surrender. Ceella was never going to give up just because she held the disadvantage. She was far too used to that for it to ever be a concern she would plague herself over. She would need to find her advantages and destroy her opponent.

And once again, she was proving that fact. Beautiful, destroying the life that Espoiramissa had created with her young Spiritual Being abilities.

During this parade of destruction.

The biggest question Espoiramissa had for itself.

Why did it ask for Ceella to surrender? It knew Ceella would never do that; even if she obeyed Espr, it would be on her own terms. Oh, how regretful Espr was; if it only understood Ceella more, it could’ve created an arrangement that had Ceella willingly come to it in the end.

The original deal was particularly guaranteed to end in its favour, but in a way, because the deal was sure to be successful, Ceella had… dissatisfaction with it. There were ways to get what it wanted from the start if they didn’t mess it up from the beginning.

Espoiramissa's thoughts could track hundreds of different topics with ease, like many Spiritual Beings, but whenever it thought about how it would redo its introduction and early interactions with Ceella, everything felt like it slowed down. Perhaps they could’ve properly held the Witch who loved the stars instead of the parasitical connection they started with.

(“ Nothing can be done now. It will only end with one of us as the victor ”)

And the other as the loser.