Damien was an idiot. He didn't know how he'd failed to realize it, what with all the clues littered like trash around him. But now that he did, he cursed himself all the more.

  As he battled the three monster lords arraigned against him, he cursed himself for failing to realize the truth of this place right up until it had almost ended.

  There was a whistle and a flurry of needles rose to meet him, flying through the air with blistering speed. Damien focused and then punched down. He focused all the kinetic energy that would have gone into a static target into a wide-range cone, like an upside down tornado, and watched the wall of kinetic energy came down on the swarm of rising needles like a whirlpool, drowning them in sheer power and plunging them from the sky.

  By the time what remained of the energy made landfall, it was so weakened it was barely more than a powerful breeze to the mid tier monsters below.

  The misty sky roiled in agitation, thunder rumbling and booming, and dark purple lightning spidering through the sky like the tiny branches of a tree as Damien's tier-up reached its climax. He could feel the energy flooding through his chest, into his body, and down his limbs. In his mind's eye, his astral image took on a deeper hue; its formerly grey coloring took on a more human tone, similar to Damien's current complexion.

  Vividly, he could feel his soul space expand, like an actively stretching elastic. The borders of his soul space began receding farther and farther, its walls growing taller and thicker. It expanded until Damien felt his soul space could sufficiently hold a city's worth of population, and then it slowed, eventually coming to a stop. He marveled at the finished product, realizing that the only reason he could see the edges of his soul space was because of the grey titanic walls that met the ceiling of roiling grey energy. His soul space was massive.

  While his soul expanded inwardly, on a metaphysical level, Damien felt his body ballooning up, growing fatter and stretching wider. He knew it wasn't his body that was expanding but his soul, but that didn't stop the creeping fear that he was going to explode soon from an overdose of power. His already powerful muscles became taut, flooded with so much power that he felt it like warm streams running down his veins. It made him feel like he could one-punch a mountain into rubble.

  A strange thought intruded on his mind at that and he looked toward the three mountains before him, but soon changed his mind afterwards. He'd test his curiosity another time. He had a battle to win.

  As his physical power grew, so did that of his mental. In a quantifiable manner, Damien felt his mind grow and expand. He felt his perception stretch till it had covered all of three miles, and when it did, like a boot that had suddenly been lifted off his throat, Damien felt the unknown pressure that had been subtly pressing down on his mind ever since he got into this place lose hold, pushed back by the sudden empowerment of his mental power.

  This realization firmed up the theory that had slowly been building up in his mind ever since that ant queen intruded into his mind: this place wasn't real. Both Vanis and Gray did say it after all: it was a proto space made specifically to train the minds of Spirit lords. Why entertain a physical method when the real method of solving the puzzle was a mental one? Damien didn't know what happened to those who failed to solve the mystery of this place, and he was thankful that he wasn't going to be one of them.

  Finding nowhere else to move to avoid the wall of warping invisible energy that rose against him, Damien willed, and the cloak draped over the shoulders of his astral image swirled, moving to surround his hovering body like a curtain.

  Damien felt it both physically and mentally as the warping energy impacted the essence-made cloak. He barely grimaced at the mental toll it took from him, but the cloak ruffled at the power of the attack.

  When it pulled back, he was rewarded to the sight of the three monster lords, rising into the sky with a thunderous sound, each of them brimming with power equivalent to an image-enhanced Spirit lord.

  Honestly, this would have made for a truly intimidating sight, and Damien knew that while he would be able to defeat them eventually, it wouldn't be an easy battle. No being rose to peak tier Spirit lord by being a pushover.

  But he knew the secret of this place, and he was done playing the game of whatever ruled this place.

  The three creatures barely had time to react before Damien acted. He moved backward, putting space between him and the fast-approaching creatures, and while he did that, he singled out one, the centipede, because he felt it would be the one to give him the most problems, physically.

  Damien angled his fall just as the creatures reached him; the scorpion soared through the air with its pincer curled and lunging at Damien. Next to it was the ant, curved blade-like forelegs or arms, In its case, scything through the air to bisect him in two while its abdomen curled forward to deliver whatever toxins were stewing within it. But it was the Centipede Damien targeted.

  The rest would have injured him physically, one way or the other, but the centipede curled into a circle like the tires of a cart. Its interlocking carapace pulled out with loud metallic clangs into multiple sections of blade-like protrusions, and Damien knew this thing wouldn't only crush him, it would tear him to pieces. So he acted.

  The essence of mind, when paired against that of destruction, was powerless. Add an outside influence and that could change quickly.

  Damien didn't have the level of willpower capable of affecting this place on a significant scale — he could barely shove off its influence over him — but what he couldn't do on a large scale, he could do very well on a small local section.

  One would have thought that a place like this, secluded from the outside world and filled with an overwhelming amount of the essence of mind, would have no other essence in its ambiance, but that wasn't true. They were barely detectable, their influence little, but they were here. Other essences. And Damien, through his recent battles, had just granted that of destruction a significant boost.

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  Damien's intent, powered by his willpower, landed on the swirling centipede, and a ball of crimson energy, crackling with lightning-like tendrils, appeared around the centipede, surrounding it.

  Damien willed again, draining a more significant amount of willpower, and with the lightning cage as a catalyst, he cut off the centipede from the rest of the world, both physically and spiritually.

  One minute, the Centipede was there, physically struggling to escape from its cage; the next, it was gone, turned into smoke. There wasn't even an explosion.

  I guess whatever powered its existence wasn't enough for an explosion, he thought.

  Damien felt the shock and surprise from the remaining monster lords, or more likely, whatever it was that powered them. Controlled them. Its response was swift.

  They ran.

  Damien blinked in surprise, not expecting the sudden change in behavior. He stared at the two fleeing monsters, both speedily making their way far deeper into the proto space, past the mountains that had previously been their abode, and into the deserted land beyond.

  Damien gave chase, blistering through the middle of two mountains and dislodging dozens of creatures from the side with the shockwaves of his passing.

  He targeted the ant first, which was blitzing through the air with nigh invisible wings, visible only because of its Crimson hue, which formed a sort of red screen around it. The scorpion had already landed on the ground, dug a hole through into what Damien suspected was an underground tunnel. He'd catch that one eventually.

  The ant cracked through the air at a breakneck pace, leaving a series of thunderous booms behind, which Damien mirrored once he upped his pace, digging through the air with enough speed that he felt a loud shrill whistle in his ears. But no matter how much he sped up, he didn't feel himself getting closer to his quarry. On the contrary, he felt it getting farther. If something didn't change soon in, he was going to lose one of the keys to getting out of this place. He could feel it.

  A layer of crimson energy appeared, descending at his behest. With the layer of destruction essence wrapped around him, Damien denied the essence of space authority over him. He felt reality warp as both grand essences fought for supremacy, but ultimately, destruction won.

  Damien felt his thoughts turn to mush as his world slowed to a crawl. The occasional purple grass peaking out of the earthy bed below stilled, and even his widely ruffling hair came to a stop. The concussive booms that had been constantly cracking through the air disappeared. All of it disappeared, leaving an empty, unmoving world, with Damien the only witness to it all.

  Though stuck in mid-air, or so he thought, Damien felt the distance between himself and his quarry dwindle with shocking speed. It was like the ant was reversing itself at the same speed as it was when it was fleeing him.

  Damien didn't know how long it took; he simply felt the world slow down, and in the next instant, the ant was within reach. That was when it all went to shit.

  In the background, like a tsunami, Damien felt the will of another rise up against him. It dwarfed him with unimaginable proportions, like a tiny candle flame before a full forest fire, and he knew deep within him that if the full brunt of it crashed onto him, there wouldn't be a fight, he'd simply be turned to mush. Thankfully, it couldn't.

  The mental power rising against him stopped, as if encountering something more powerful that hindered it. And though the full brunt didn't crash on him, a small fragment managed to slip past whatever was obstructing it, enough that Damien instinctively knew would interfere with his attack.

  But it was already too late.

  Like its cousin before it, the ant found itself wrapped in a ball of crimson energy. The creature turned towards him and released a powerful sound attack, but it fizzled out in contact with the crackling cage. Another flex of his will and the ant itself fizzled out into smoke, disappearing a moment later. Barely waiting past the moment of its death, Damien dived.

  The air crackled and burned as he made his way towards the ground, leaving a white, smokey trail in his wake. With his will spread wide, Damien pinpointed where he wanted, and with barely a pause, he threw his spear like a javelin down before him.

  At a location just at the edge of his perception, his spear landed, boring past the thickened earth with a mighty explosion that rocked the world. When the white light and mushroom dust cloud finally dispersed, it was with the view of his other quarry—the scorpion— pinned to the ground with a spear through its carapace.

  The mental incarnation struggled in an effort to escape the spear's hold on it, its multiple legs scratching into the earth as it sought to dig itself another hole. But alongside the spear that pinned it, Destruction energy ran through its body, inflicting more injury beyond what was visible.

  Seeing its struggling form, Damien willed again, and another dose of destruction energy poured into the body of the creature. Its body twitched once, twice, and then went slack.

  He knew it was alive, it just didn't have enough strength to move.

  Damien touched down on the earth, and had to take a second to keep himself from stumbling. As soon as he righted himself, he moved for his quarry, his will rising from within to power his intent—

  The attack came with zero warning. One minute Damien was walking, slowly approaching the downed scorpion monster lord, the next he was on his knees, hands raised to his temples in a bid to stave off the mental equivalent of a sledgehammer that'd just crashed into him.

  "Open your mind."

  He groaned and his vision dimmed as another mental attack came again, and again, and like a water soaked blanket, it began suffocating him.

  "Welcome me in."

  Damien's thought slowed and turned sluggish as he felt his mind slowly suffocated. The pain was a mild throbbing one but he still grunted nonetheless.

  In the presence of the titanic mind approaching his, Damien felt the wards around his mind crack.

  "Become one of us." Through blurry eyes, he made out the shadowy outlets of multiple figures descending around him.

  No!

  He struggled, summoning the remaining of his will to fight back, but it was like a child with tiny meaty hands railing against a fully grown athletic man. His attack brushed off the surface of whatever was intruding on his mind like water to a rock.

  He pushed and pushed, all to no avail, and then the outer layered wards of his mind crumbled, and Damien was consumed in a sea of agony.

  In the now expanded soul space, a figure resembling the mentally attacked Damien sat, balanced imperiously on a gaudy throne of great magnificence.

  Daimen smiled, almost laughing as he watched the current event unfold on the outside. Behind him, he felt a chink in one of his chains crack, and his smile turned into a full blown maniacal laughter.

  At this rate, if this continued, it wouldn't be long before he was free.

  With sudden swiftness, his smile turned into a frown, and his lips curled in disdain.

  "Do not mistake my inactiveness for weakness," he said casually to the consciousness that stared right back at him. "I allowed you permission to temper him, not to intrude on the presence of your betters. Now leave, before I teach you more pain than little Damien here."

  Daimen's will rose to the fore, like an ocean, a cataclysm, an apocalypse. The creature retreated instantly, fleeing what it knew was a greater will, but his mood had already been soured. Had it not been currently useful, he would have stepped out himself and torn it to shreds.

  The sound of something metallic falling to the ground sounded, and his smile ignited once more, and Daimen watched with measured happiness as his freedom drew nearer.