Farthest Night:
[Though it may look as one, the patches of night exist in lots.
Begining from the nearest to the farthest, those before were ones truly blessed.
Yet the sounds blow from them to the ends of creation and back to scream echoes of a promise— a summary of all their greatness.
You wield the leftovers.
Do what you wish with that.]
———
Evil spirits stored spiritual essence within their crystals, while Prophets stored theirs in their Marks of virtue. For spirits, the more crystals they had, the more essence they could utilise, while Prophets had to strengthen their Virtues to be able to have a good amount of spiritual essence reserves. Still, on top of this, Prophets had to figure out how to use that spiritual essence they have reserved, or they would be worth the same as those with lesser reserves.
Nonetheless, despite the Mark grade and ignoring the hierarchy, the Kailash could tell how much spiritual essence any being that existed within it could manifest. There was no reason to believe it had failed now... Was there?
Could a person with the poor ability to use his essence destroy a three-crystal spirit with one blow? Was his Virtues just that powerful? One could only think that the amber-eyed man had a powerful Virtue trait, but was bad at utilising the high spiritual essence reserve that it possessed. Still, Rick hadn't seen a virtue this potent on a rookie Seer.
But he also didn't know that Ikky's accursed body had its own way of working. It was vein to measure it by human standards.
Rick stared at the head of the hooded man, not being able to see how he shook off murky black blood from his hand and swallow the spirit's essence crystals. To Rick, Ikky looked like he was just licking blood off his fingers.
The remaining spirits stampeded towards him as he crunched hungrily at the crystal, spitting out the leftover black blood.
Amongst them, some of the fastest reached him. A moose the size of an elephant slammed its horns directly at the hooded man, but it's head crashed into the dead bear spirit Ikky stood on instead.
Without grace and his arms bulging with power as he leapt onto the restless spirit, the amber-eyed man slammed the tip of his sword into the moose's neck from above. He shifted the blade to the side, expecting it to take a while before he could completely slice through the spirit. But it cut surprisingly well, relieving the spirit of a few more seconds of torture before it fell lifelessly on the ground.
Ikky quickly slid out of the way of an approaching wildebeest spirit and flung his sword up at a falcon hiding in the fog above.
"Nice."
The spirit was dead, but then the nearby Prophets could only watch as he stood unarmed amidst titans, despite his weapon being meters away.
But the amber-eyed man didn't fret. Readying himself as the previous wildebeest turned around to run him over once again, he sidestepped the spirit and grabbed onto its thick fur, getting pulled along like a kite.
Gritting his teeth in pain as the beast's rush jacked one of his shoulder joints, he opened his mouth and then tore off a fat chunk of hide on the spirit's neck with his bare teeth before plunging his sharp finger nails into that wound.
And even with another spirit suddenly shooting out of the ground towards him, Ikky managed to get one of his hands into the creature's neck and rip out it's throat.
Leaving the convulsing wildebeest to die, he slid down the seal that had previously tried to knock him off the dying spirit.
Cleaning off some of the mucus he had scratched off the seal, he quickly reached his sword. He dodged the tail swipe of the roaring seal, and plunged the blade into its mouth before swinging it up with full force and slicing the spirit's head in two.
A crystal had flown out of the seal, which Ikky then grabbed and ate.
There were no particular tastes to the crystals he ate, but for the brief moments of bliss Ikky got as they broke into his throat, he could stand for one more, over and over again.
Alas, the time he had for his mind to wander was short. The other spirits had soon caught up.
"That... That must be a believer!" One of the group of eight who were the original prey to the spirits guessed.
And with their fear subsiding into relief on Ikky's arrival, Harrith stepped forward with a frown. "Well whoever he is, we can't let him have all the essence crystals. They would have fallen to us anyway."
Obviously they wouldn't have.
However as soon as they watched the mysterious man stab his hand into a spirit's neck and brutally rip out it's throat, Harris and his group were taken aback.
From the distance, they could also swear that he had drunk the blood of another spirit he just murdered. It was quite confusing to tell whether there was any human up ahead within the messy expanse of blood littered snow, or just wild spirits fighting eachother.
With a good memorable look, the greed finally blew out of the group's eyes as their sights laid upon the expanse of snow.
Only one man had jumped amidst four wild spirits and laid them to complete waste, bathing himself and the snow around him in black blood.
"C– come on. Let's get out of here."
The group could let this man have his way for now. It was their fault for luring more spirits than they were prepared for anyway.
But as Harrith's eyes drifted over his shoulder back at the battlefield, the harshness of the cold wind bit further into his body, causing the hair on his skin to rise.
With his pale white hair hanging messily down his hood to cover his face, and his amber eyes burning through the rising fogs of chaos, the mysterious man stretched his arms out to something strange lurking within a patch of darkness, unfazed by the rushing white snow.
———
Ikky had no real knowledge of how his Totem worked, but again, that was why he was here— to find out.
Yaga flew gracefully off his shoulder, before her body scattered into darkness, forming an irregularly shaped portal.
Ikky stared in awe at the deep, swallowing darkness, only to be interrupted by a reaching hand stretching out from within it. His palm moved atop the reaching hand and wrapped around it gently; it was cold, colder than anything Ikky had ever touched, yet it felt comfortable.
And as he held out his other hand to embrace the sinister being within the shapeless portal, a wild spirit suddenly crushed his body down to dust.
[... You wield the leftovers. Do what you wish with that.]