His vitality that was previously being slowly sapped away, now drained at a faster pace.

Looking down at the hands of Alia and Hadrian, they were turning grey and flaky, peeling off.

It wasn't painful, but that only made the harrowing fear he was feeling in his heart more intense.

If he wasn't careful, he wouldn't even know when death came for him.

He let out a cold mist breath as he felt his bodies in freezing cold.

So, this is rank three essence. There's truly a qualitative change!

Hadrian didn't stop the call, he substituted this state to the small brown furried hair creatures, relieving The Hadrian and Alia vessels, while doubling the rate of decay on the small creatures.

He swapped the call to his other orange haired monkey that was in the opposite direction of the fiend, just to confuse it.

The fiend turned its bald skinny head.

Due to that invisible barrier that surrounded essence channeling beings, Hadrian couldn't simply control earth from beneath the fiend to stab its chest or mould around it to immobilize it like with the regular humans in that house or the small furried creatures.

This isn't good.

While it was true the fiend had depleted some of its essence while hunting for what it had been feasting on, Hadrian's progress was still bad, and he would not be able to turn it into a vessel in time.

The decaying effect had already destroyed most of his small brown furried creatures, and was already starting to manifest on the Hadrian and Alia vessels.

At this rate, with the number of vessels I have, my substitution won't be able to keep up, and I'll surely die.

Cursing, Hadrian smiled.

It's fine, knowledge and your cores will still be a good enough gain.

Substituting that state from Alia and Hadrian to now some of the orange haired monkeys, Alia channeled the last remaining of the elemental essence that had been used up a lot in the fight, and formed a large rock spear.

Placing his left hand on it, Hadrian channeled force path essence, augmenting it.

Substituting the decaying effect to the essence calling vessel from his other vessels, Hadrian snapped his fingers and the large rock spear next to him and Alia disappeared.

Swapping space path and elemental path essence channeling on the essence calling vessel, it flicked its right wrist and the large rock spear appeared next to it.

With one last swing of its arm as it took the burden of the decay with it, the now grey furred monkey shot the rock spear at the fiend that was charging at him.

It had withstood most of his other attacks, seeming to ignore them, so, this time, Hadrian aimed at its head.

The rock spear shot forward, passing through the fiend's left eye and obliterating its left face side, sending it back three metres.

Hadrian and Alia went to their knees, panting, as he'd lost most of his vessels, left with only two orange haired monkeys.

Before he could relax, the body of the fiend twitched and its wings moved as it rose once more.

Hadrian's throat tightened.

As he watched the body of the fiend stand on its limbs with most of its head missing, he laughed a self deprecating laugh.

What did I expect from a death path fiend?

The black blood from its now bluish black remaining piece of head and flesh dripped down its body, creating a horrific site but other than that, it didn't seem to affect it like it did with the ground and other objects.

Even denser black gas spewed from its mutilated head.

Hadrian peered into its essence sea, but didn't call at its essence, since the result would be the same, and he didn't have that many vessels that he could substitute its effects onto.

It can survive even such fatal wounds.

Hadrian, channeling some of the space path essence that wasn't as used up as the other paths, created some distance from the spreading black gas.

But it looks to be even more mindless than it was when it had its head.

Since their fight had been close to one of the large trees, the black gas coalesced around the stem.

A minute later, the entire tree began groaning.

With thundering creaks, the enormous tree leaned to one side.

Hadrian, at a safe distance, observed this with wonder.

He watched as the ancient tree groaned and collapsed to one side, like a mythical giant.

Even with his ears covered with moulded flesh, Hadrian could still feel the reverberations through his body.

It fell onto other gigantic trees, but its fate was its alone, and it slid off the other trees, breaking off their branches.

The ground shook beneath Hadrian's feet, and enormous dust clouds rose as the tree touched the ground.

This all seemed to happen in slowed motion.

Birds flapped their wings filling the sky with their calls, escaping the chaos.

Hadrian looked up from the laying tree where he could now see the sky, and sunlight shone down the large corridor created for it.

Just like that, nature was set.

All the chaos died down and it looked like this had always been the state for centuries.

It was a pitiful, yet majestic sight that made Hadrian catch his breath.

He'd forgotten all about the fiend observing this.

Hadrian looked back to the spot of dense black gas.

Climbing up another tree, he crossed his legs as he sat on a branch and waited patiently.

That death aura must have kept other creatures from approaching.

The Alia vessel to his right on the wide branch lay down and closed her eyes as she drifted to sleep for both of them.

It was a strange thing, Hadrian didn't get to dream this way, but his body and mind exhaustion got to be lifted.

I suppose that's the most important thing.

The sun dimmed and hours passed before the black gas began subsiding.

Hadrian, who'd been in deep thought, and though he didn't realize it, he'd been in a half slumber detached state, shook his head as his eyes blinked rapidly.

The Alia vessel shuffled awake.

He wanted to go down and approach the body of the fiend, when suddenly his haired monkey vessels who'd been on the opposite side, sensed figures approaching from their spatial sense.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.