Ning arrived inside a house with bright rooms despite the time of the night. Everyone should have been sleeping at this point, but 3 men sat by the hearth, talking amongst themselves in hushed conversation.

“… the third wanted more money actually, but they accepted with just 1000 in the end.” Bass was in the middle, speaking to the two others by his side.

“They’ve done their job well in the past,” the man on the right with long black hair spoke.

“They have, and it should be noted that they have never failed us,” the other man said. “They will do this job and be back soon. It’s a long travel from here, so it will take some time for the news to get to—”

Ning walked in without trying to sneak in.

The men who heard his footsteps seemed happy at the sound and turned around with great expectation clear on their faces. However, the moment they saw Ning, their expression changed from a look of hope to a look of dread.

“You!” Bass stood up immediately, pointing at Ning with a tobacco pipe in his hand. “What are you doing in my house?”

Ning looked at Bass and smiled. “The same thing you sent people to do at my house,” he said.

The fire at the hearth suddenly grew wild, billowing orange flames outside the hearth, reaching the woven tapestries and wooden furniture that was in the room. Some caught on fire and from there it would grow.

“No!” Bass shouted, immediately creating a ball of water to throw at the fire. However, before he could shoot it out, a wave of Essence flew out of Ning, covering the entire room in an instant.

The other two men who were starting to use their Essence too suddenly found that they could not access it at all. When they brought it out, they found their Essence to dissipate all of a sudden.

All 3 seemed confused, but the man with the black hair seemed to realize what was happening.

“Void!” he screamed all of a sudden. “He’s using Void Essence!”

Ning smiled. “You’re right,” he said.

“How?” Bass questioned. He couldn’t believe what he was feeling. He was in the Low Essence Soul realm. How was he being stopped by someone who was in the Essence Manipulation realm?

There was supposed to be a gap.

The crackling of the fire took over the silence and smoke filled the room soon enough. The other man realized that he couldn’t use Essence while Ning was using his technique, so he jumped over his seat and swiftly made his way to Ning.

An Earth dagger appeared from his waist, the blade moving directly toward Ning’s heart. Ning stood where he was and let the dagger fall on his chest. The dagger cut through his cloth and shattered on his chest, throwing large shards of rock all around as the dagger turned back to what it had been made up.

The blast sent the man stumbling backward, falling to the ground with a rock trapping him. He had fallen unconscious from the attack.

Ning stepped forward, moving closer to the two other men. He could see fear in their eyes.

* * * * * *

Lord of the Skies flew behind Randal, sending out blasts of spatial anomalies, striking at Umbra.

Randal made the space around him break, expand, and collapse, all at the same time, creating pockets of anomalies in space that would destroy anything that came across it.

Umbra struck back with her own control over the space, constantly moving herself and diverting the attack elsewhere. She had realized that in some ways the man in front of her was far stronger than anyone she had met when it came to simply Essence. Even the Stellar Harmony realm girl she remembered first meeting along with Ning and Emma was not as strong as this man was, if not in Essence, then in combat prowess.

Umbra disappeared once again, appearing behind the young man, swinging her claws at the young man.

Randal spun around, sending a blade of space tearing past the air, into the beast in front of him. The space blade cut into Umbra, cutting her in half, and… Umbra disappeared into a puff of black smoke.

“Distraction,” the young man realized, instantly turning around while using his Essence to do something.

Sprays of black spikes fell toward him from the distance, coming at him at an incredible speed. However, the closer they got to him, the slower they got. Randal had managed to create and compress a large amount of space at a moment’s notice, allowing himself ample time to move out of the way.

While to anyone else those spikes would look as though they had slowed down, but Randal knew that was not the case. They were merely moving through a denser space. That did not make them slow down their speed but only took a longer time to get through it all.

Once they were out of the compressed space, the speed would return to those spikes.

Randal moved out of the way and looked in the distance where he thought he saw the beast. With moving shadows all around him, it was a difficult task to keep track of the beast that seemed to meld into the shadows.

The only way for him to sense the beast would be when it was using its Essence.

He focused incredible senses around and sensed something approaching from behind him. Without his need for turning, the Lord of the Skies struck with its claws, tearing space itself and destroying another copy of the beast.

Two more arrived from the side and both he and his Soul Essence moved at the same time to strike at the two. ᴛhis chapter is ᴜpdated by NovlFire(.)nt

Randal spun, throwing another attack behind him at another copy made out of shadows. He started frowning. This was not what he had expected to have to go through.

He was also angry that he couldn’t find the beast here at all. He wanted to be done with this fight without any aid, but it seemed he would require aid.

“System!” he spoke softly. “Maps.”