GREED: ALL FOR WHAT?

That means he was attacking the soul prowler, retrieving the soul fragments, brainwashing the soul fragments, and grafting the soul fragments into himself at the same time.

If he didn't do that then this fight would be a waste of time. The nether water will eat everything and make it so that it is not worthwhile to fight another soul prowler.

"This spiritual dimension is too wicked." He complained as he chopped up the soul prowler trying to flee.

"Soul prowlers can die trying to live by hunting." He said as the soul prowler shrieked and wasted more soul essence.

"This is not the survival of the fittest. This is the survival of no one."

More of the soul prowler disappeared as Nether water ate them.

He complained again, "At least leave something behind for the victor. Don't be so greedy."

He is complaining of wastage when he is not at any risk of death. The soul prowler he is butchering has greater concerns than that. After all, it is not leaking soul essence because it wanted to.

Not only is the soul prowler losing its soul essence to attack, it is losing them to the nether waters and also to the enemy cutting it. It is triple trouble for it which is not a wonder why it screamed shrilly in pain and tried to escape.

But Legion-7 didn't let the soul prowler escape. It was easy to do. The soul prowler is mostly blind and he is faster than it. So all he had to do is keep the soul prowler running about in circles as he whittled it down.

The soul prowler couldn't maintain its consciousness under the constant attack of Legion-7 and the nether water. It was quickly broken apart.

He sighed in relief. "Finally."

The fight has ended. It ended in his victory and he gained a lot from it. He is still happy even though he has to work hard to steal the loot from the nether water and enjoy it.

The difficulty in enjoying his loot is because the soul fragments he cut out from the soul prowler are not unaware. They have sentience and they resisted the brainwashing. But he has a larger memory potential than the individual soul fragments so his memories flowed into them no matter how they resisted.

Soon they were saying, "I am Gehaldirah Oakstein. I want to achieve perfection. I want to eliminate all my weaknesses. I want to acquire all the divine abilities in the world and be without weakness."

He said to himself, "They are a little mad but they will do."

Then he grafted them to the mass around his soul. He gained both knowledge and soul essence from them.

"The soul essence is just 60% of the entire soul prowler. That's with my best efforts." He complained. "I don't like this spiritual dimension at all. I don't like it one bit."

He lost 40% of the soul prowler to the nether waters after doing his best to preserve his loot. Others will be lucky to gain 40% of the loot but he is not satisfied with 60%. That is after they have lost about 20% of themselves during the fight. So their profit will be even less. The spiritual dimension makes it so that any victory is a pyrrhic victory.

What's worse is that the spiritual dimension has made it uncertain that victory will strengthen the victor. But soul prowlers have to fight. If they don't fight for food, then they might relegate in strength and be digested by the world.

"What could the spiritual dimension be digesting the souls for?" He asked himself as he grafted the last batch of the soul prowler.

"Is it a natural process aimed at eliminating remnants? Or could it all be for the resurrection of Origin gods? Or is there something else that needs a massive amount of energy in the void universe?"

He considered the last possibility. "It is possible but there might be other reasons why the nether water is bent on destroying everything apart from Origin gods. After all, there is a lot we don't know about the void universe. But it has to be a good reason or the 40% that it stole from me would have been for nothing."

He is complaining despite the fact that his size has increased by 5 times because the loss means he could have become 6 or 7 times bigger. So this is more than his hatred for wastage. The nether water is literally an enemy preventing him from growing stronger and that's the kind of enemy he hates the most.

His strength has also increased by 0.01%. That is an increase of 100,000 points. It seems small only because he has a soul with 1,000,000,000 stats. So this harvest is pretty large. It is more than a thousand times better than the soul fragment he ate earlier.

He chuckled and said, "10,000 more of this and I will double my strength. It seems small but the knowledge might be more useful to me."

10,000 fights just to double one's strength seems like an inefficient endeavor but he also gains knowledge from the soul prowlers which might make up for the effort he put in.

If there is anything that is more precious than soul essence, it is knowledge. The best way to gain it is from others. He will need to hunt at least 10,000 of the same soul prowler that he just killed to become twice as strong as when he just entered the spiritual dimension. But a single piece of knowledge can empower him more than two times.

It is just like the knowledge he gained from the soul fragment of the great mother. The techniques he gained changed how he used soul force and enriched his understanding of the spiritual dimension. That increased his survivability more than the little strength he gained from the soul fragment.