Jade’s mind was transported to a large grey world and his figure materialized seemingly made of grey dust. Some hundreds of meters in front of him a humongous rat, as large as a flat, was formed out of the same grey dust.

The rat had a very human expression on its face as Jade could sense it looking at him in ridicule. The rat’s grey dust body hardened until it became like metal, promising to be impossible to break. Jade’s body on the other hand didn’t harden, remaining in the grey dust form.

This wasn’t the first time the rat was in this place, this empty soul realm was where it lived so it wasn’t averse to what was about to happen. It knew it had a natural advantage over other creatures in this space with its large and hard soul body. It felt Jade was stupid and hopeless; he thought he was special but he was just another meal for the rat, one of many. The rat smiled at Jade showing its crystal like teeth.

Two bizarre hieroglyphs as large as a phone’s screen, made of dark grey sand that was almost black, appeared and hovered around Jade. Jade instantly knew what they were even if he had never seen them before; they were Soul Glyphs. He couldn’t understand what they were completely but he knew which one was his Space and Dread-Smith Soul Glyph as he could sense a part of what they could do and what they were.

Jade looked at the rat and noticed that it had no Soul Glyph, the ridiculing expression it had, had given way to a bit of confusion. It said “What they hell is that? Soul abilities only have physical effects!’ with a voice that seemed to be a combination of many voices speaking one after another.

Jade didn’t let this statement ease him as he knew it could be hiding its own Soul Glyphs. It was a monster that specialized in soul manipulation; it could have abilities that he didn’t know of.

The Soul Parasite stayed in place, adopting a watch-and-see strategy. Jade stretch his left hand forward and pulled his right hand backward over his head as if he was preparing to swing something downward.

He swung his arm, the Dread-Smith Soul Glyph vibrated, Jade felt the existential pain of losing part of himself, and a giant axe made of the grey matter in this soul realm formed in his hand as he swung down. The axe was 20 times larger than Jade and it looked extremely solid compared to his sand like form. The Soul Parasite watched in awe as Jade swung the giant axe like it was just a twig.

Jade curled the finger of his left hand and the Soul Parasite lost sight of the Axe as it saw just the empty grey space: Jade had teleported it to stand before him with the trembling Space Soul Glyph, this action caused him to feel the pain of losing part of himself again but he was very much used to it as he had been going through it for months now.

With a bang and a screech the axe lodged itself inside the head of the Soul Parasite and it screamed with different voices at the pain it felt. The Space Soul Glyph stopped vibrating and space returned to its normal state in the soul realm with some changes.

The Soul Parasite, which was now writhing in pain a few hundred meters in front of Jade, had an axe stuck to its head. Grey sand, similar to the ones that made up Jade’s figure, escaped from the cut, floated through the empty space toward Jade and assimilated with his figure.

Jade felt his figure becoming sturdier as the grey sand united with it and understood how the fight was supposed to proceed. He thought ‘I’m supposed to attack it until I absorb everything that makes it up’.

The loss of the grey sand didn’t help alleviate the pain of losing part of itself that the Soul Parasite felt, it instead worsened it as it twitched wildly without even trying to pull away the large axe that had dug half way through were its brain was supposed to be. The Parasite was still fine even though such a wound would have been the end of any biological rat.

Jade didn’t give the rat time to recover and used both of his Soul Glyphs again to repeat what he did to the Parasite previously, this time with a spear. Jade was trying to see which construct would give him the highest amount of grey sand per attack.

An unknown amount of time passed with Jade teleporting and assaulting the rat, he learnt that the amount of grey sand he got wasn’t determined by the weapon size or shape. As long as he made it by sacrificing a part of himself to the Glyph and used it to attack, even if he created a butter knife it would give him an amount of grey sand that was dependent on how much grey sand he had collected.

Jade continued this series of exchanges with more conviction and the grey sand he had accumulated had become so much that his figure and Soul Glyphs became much larger and rocky. The Parasite had lost so much grey sand that cracks appeared in its metallic grey body, it became more brittle and it had lost a few pounds.

At this point the tables were turning to the Parasites favor. Although it was losing grey rocks now that Jade’s figure was made of grey rock, it had gotten more used to the pain of losing a part of itself. Jade’s attacks also became less frequent as the pain of loss was getting more intense for him as he got more grey sand so using the Soul Glyphs had become more of an ordeal.

To balance this Jade had created a gun and he used the Dread-Smith Glyph to make bullets. They all cost him the same amount of pain so his attack frequency had decreased so that he could stock pile some bullets, weapons and armor for the next stage of the fight. He no longer used the Space Glyph and just shot the bullets from a comfortable distance.

The battle reached a stalemate when the Parasite was lucid enough to dodge a bullet. The speed of the bullets was honestly subpar as they were just as fast as him running. Everything in this realm had the same moderate speed and the only reason why Jade’s bullets were hitting before was because of the pain that clouded the Parasite’s mind.

The Parasite was still impaled with many weapons but it pulled as many of them as it could pull out and even held two them with its front paws. It obviously planned on using Jade’s weapons against him. It could not pull out the bullets since they were too small compared to its large body.

The pain of loss Jade felt whenever he used his Soul Glyphs was now enough to partially cloud his mind but he knew his Soul Glyphs gave him advantages since he could create extremely solid weapons that were even more solid than the rats body at the beginning. Now after giving so much of himself to the Dread-Smith Glyph, his weapons were so solid they looked crystalline and he was armed to the teeth with them.

He and the Parasite were now about the same size, they stared at each other menacingly. They were now on par; they felt an amount of pain that equally distracted them when they lost a part of themselves; whether to injury or glyphs. Jade wasn’t willing to lose part of himself when the Parasite would just dodge his bullets and the Parasite was now ready and capable of fighting back and gaining ground.

The Parasite was livid but it was happy and smiled as it stood on upright on its hind legs, showing that it was more than just a simple rat but a soul creature specialized in soul battles. The fight had gotten to the part it was used to and it was going to taste what it was like to eat a soul with Soul Glyphs. Jade was smiling as he recounted all his plans and backup plans that the Parasite wouldn’t see coming since it clearly wasn’t used to fighting anyone with Soul Glyphs.

The tension in the empty soul realm reached new heights as the two contenders eyed their opponents as prey that didn’t know what was coming for them.

“LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Jade shouted with a single voice as he anticipated paying back the Soul Parasite with even more pain for all it had caused him.

“REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” The Soul Parasite lifted its head and shouted with different unnaturally overlapping voices as it anticipated punishing Jade for bringing it so much pain and the amount of power it would get after killing him.

Both parties ran towards each other brandishing their weapons to begin the next stage of the battle: The Brawl.