Death... and me

"A Death Spirit there?" Roan tried to remember if he knew someone who fit the description. For a Death Spirit to be alive on the other side until now, he must be at least in the Space-Time Realm, where one's lifespan doesn't matter anymore. Yet, he couldn't think about anyone.

Kafan just shook his head. "I only said perhaps. Chances are you will never see each other since that guy doesn't really come out to play with the other powers of the other side of the Universe. Even all the events going on there right now weren't enough to make him show himself."

"No wonder I've never heard about this Death Spirit then," said Roan.

"Another thing," Roan decided to ask more about the past. "You said you kept your Death Spirits in your Pocket Dimensional Realm. However, except for Death Spirits at the Space-Time and Divinity Realm, all of them should have disappeared by now for running out of lifespans, right? Still, you said your race still had a few tens of thousands when you came out of hiding."

"Oh! Isn't that obvious?" Kafan asked back. "Our Death Spirit Race's Lifespan... or death span, if you prefer, is several times higher than the other races. In general, races have different lifespans to start with. Take your human race, for example. Because humans can reproduce so fast, they have an equivalent low life span. Death Spirits, being that rare and cultivating that slowly, has an equivalent higher lifespan to make up for it. The laws of the Universe always balance things. The thirty thousand years we spent hiding wasn't much at all."

Because Roan was a Death Spirit copy, he didn't really have a cultivation level. That said, he couldn't use his own life...deathspan to compare with real Death Spirits like Kafan. Thus, he asked about it. "I understand. Well, with so many dead souls in the Universe now, sure you found a lot of Death Spirits as well, right? Your numbers should have increased a lot after this."

"I wish!" Kafan immediately denied it. "At the same time that we Death Spirits are not Soul Devils, we are still fighting for the exactly same resource. Let me ask you. Death Spirits cultivate really slowly, while Soul Devils, even while they are in their crazy state, cultivate at a frightening pace. What do you think happened to the Death Spirits near the places with so many dead souls? Also, Death Spirits and Soul Devils are very sensitive to each other's presence."

Roan bitterly smiled. "The Death Spirits that were born were quickly killed by Soul Devils before they even had a chance to understand what they had become."

Kafan didn't look very happy while thinking about it. "It's a shame, but it is true. It's not like Soul Devils can appear all the time. They are also somewhat rare, even with the right conditions. Nonetheless, compared to our Death Spirit Race birth rate, we are truly nothing compared to them. By the time a Death Spirit appeared somewhere with a good amount of Dead Souls, it probably already had a Soul Devil devouring the dead souls of the place."

"Of course," Kafan continued. "There were Death Spirits who were lucky enough to evolve from dead souls in places where there were no Soul Devils. It's just that they were even rarer than before the Universe Splitting event. Besides... we are talking here about a half-universe size. It's not like I could go around looking for them; so many more probably died without even understanding what they were or what they needed to do to cultivate. I took in the ones I found, but it wasn't enough to increase my Death Spirit Race's number by even half." 

"That brings us to the next issue," Kafan switched back to the Soul Devils. "My Death Spirit Race had the advantage in cultivation compared to the new Soul Devils appearing around. Still, the Soul Devils would absolutely surpass us in time."

Roan saw the problem. "You had the power to kill them... but only the ones you could find. Half a Universe is a ridiculous size. With only a few tens of thousands of Death Spirits to do the job, it was simply impossible to get rid of the Soul Devils. In anything, there would be more of them appearing than what you could get rid of. It was a lost battle from the very start."

"Precisely," Kafan agreed with Roan. "That's why we needed to come up with a plan. But then again, only we, Death Spirits, still had the power to cultivate in this side of the Universe. There wasn't anyone else to help us. Well, the Soul Devils could cultivate, too. But they were the ones we wanted to eliminate before they wiped out all living beings on this side of the Universe."

Kafan then narrowed his eyes. "For a few thousands of years, my Death Spirit Race would go around killing Soul Devils. Not that we wanted to do it since we knew it was meaningless. Instead, for us to cultivate, we needed dead souls. Soul Devils also needed it, so we would often find them in places with a big concentration of dead souls."

"The only way for us to guarantee our survival was to continue to increase our cultivation level while taking in any Death Spirits we found on the way. Yet, we also knew this plan was limited due to the huge difference between the cultivation speed between us and Soul Devils."

"I even considered simply taking all the Death Spirits into my pocket Dimensional Realm and hiding forever, but that was way too much for everyone. None of them accepted to continue in that state and to be honest, I also was very unwilling to do so."

Kafan sighed. "Time continued to pass. More Soul Devils with singular consciences began to appear, and they were closer and closer to our levels. However, it wasn't like we weren't doing anything. Other than traveling, killing Soul Devils, and cultivating, our race was focused on finding a solution. It was then that we understood we were thinking about it the wrong way. The main problem wasn't the Soul Devils... It was the eternally vagrant dead souls!"