GREED: ALL FOR WHAT?



"Then get on with it. Just watch out for her tricks. She can take control of phantom weapons." Salvin warned him.

Salvin shook his head and spoke confidently. "She can't take control of my phantom weapons. No one can."

He began making his way toward the dreaded 1st ring. The people in the 2nd ring made way for him. They recognized him and his sister. The two of them are from the lineage of sages. Their bloodline might not be purely that of the first sage but they are powerful. They stepped back and decided to watch. Everyone wants to see if Litori has finally met her match. Salvin stopped at the edge of the 1st ring. He didn't step into Litori's domain. 

His confidence in winning this battle comes from the limit of her domain. She is suppressed in body and mind just like everyone else. She can't extend her domain farther than 100 meters meanwhile his phantom weapons have a farther reach. He has a farther reach due to the collaboration between his eyes and his divine sense. His eyes and divine sense work hand in hand to create his ability. So his phantom weapons can attack up to 110 meters away from him. It is a very small difference but it is enough.

He began creating phantom weapons. Blades, arrows, knives, spears, javelins, and many more began to pop out from his eyes. They come out small and enlarge when they are outside his eyes. More of them came pouring out of his two silver eyes. He sent a sizeable amount of the grey phantom weapons to attack Litori while he continued to make more.

Litori became vigilant immediately after she saw him. She was prepared for his attack before he stepped forward to attack her. He also took a lot of time preparing to attack her. He didn't say that he was going to attack but she didn't need him to announce his intentions. She can see enough to know that she has a challenger. So she was ready for him when he finally attacked. 

Some dry white ashy matter was already in her hands by the time the phantom weapons shot towards her. She calls it psionic matter. It is harvested from the spirits of people. The people that she got it from don't need to be killed by her. She can harvest the spirit of those who die as long as they are close to her when they die.

Her bloodline awakened when she became a mana entity. At first, she could attack others with her ephemeral flame. It is a flame that burns from within her target as long as she ignites it with a spiritual attack. The attack comes out from her eyes. Her eyes became able to see spirits after she became a transcendent. Kayla was the first spirit that she harvested to create psionic matter.

The psionic matter when sprinkled on things, helps her to override the spiritual control of those things. The things that she can override can either be real weapons or phantom weapons. Anything being controlled with the divine sense is susceptible to her usurpation. 

She sprinkled some psionic matter now at the approaching phantom weapons. They turned into motes of glittering dust that blew onto them. They fell on them but the phantom weapons continued towards her. They wobbled but they resisted her control and remained under the control of Salvin. She had to dodge them or risk being torn to shreds. 

She ran around evading the phantom weapons and continued sprinkling more of the psionic matter on them. She would sometimes use the whip in her hand to block some. It was very tough to evade the phantom weapons due to Salvin's excellent control. She had to change her position a lot and even moved far away from the Zeroth position. She struggled to evade at first but it became easier and easier for her to protect herself from the onslaught of the phantom weapons.

Salvin feels like a hammer is hitting his mind. This particularly uncomfortable phenomenon started when Litori sprinkled that white dust on his phantom weapons. He didn't lose control of his phantom weapons but he began to lose his concentration. 

The battlefield became two and both demanded his attention. One is the physical battlefield that he is winning and the other is the spiritual battlefield that he is also winning. The problem is that he shouldn't be fighting on two battlefields at the same time. There's only so much his mind can take.

He needs his mind to create phantom weapons and control them. That has been all he ever needed his mind for. A third need suddenly appeared, one that he is not especially versed in. He needs to task his mind to maintain control of his phantom weapons now. It has never happened that someone wants to wrestle his weapons away from him. This sudden, third need is uncomfortable and distracting. It is making him sloppy at performing the other two needs.

The first major impact apart from the sudden headache is the drastic reduction in the number of phantom weapons he can create. He has to fight tooth and nail to keep control of the ones he has created and Litori is still bombarding them with more psionic matter. He has a feeling that creating more phantom weapons will give her more avenues of attacks and open his mind to more stress.

His hesitation to produce more phantom weapons didn't discourage Litori from focusing on the ones he has produced though. She kept sprinkling the psionic matter on them and they began to slow down. The battlefield shifted then. 

The second impact of the spiritual stress is that his control over the phantom weapons that he has already created became bad. The phantom weapons are wobbling too much now and they have slowed down in speed. They are of little threat to Litori. He is still winning the spiritual battlefield. But he is losing the physical battlefield.