Marilda stopped around a meter from Jira. She once more questioned the frozen Jira. “Jira, why are you so shocked?”

Jira snapped out of his stupor and started to come up with an excuse. “I was merely surprised at your astuteness, is all. A while back I killed an odd commander who had dared to kill one of my own. He attempted to use an odd technique on me, but it did not work. You must merely be sensing the residual of whatever it was that commander was trying to do. I am perfectly fine, I assure you.”

Jira did his best to allay any concerns. There were guards posted along the hall they and they surely had connections to other captains and even majors. If word got out that Jira was afflicted with something, they would all know! Jira had to down play what had happened and convince even Marilda that he was perfectly fine.

Marilda did not give it a second thought. If Jira thought he had the situation under control, she would leave it to him. If he fell ill and died because he would not seek help, that was his own decision. Marilda turned around and walked back to her seat as she replied: “Very well, you and your horde may rest a day. Tomorrow you will take over the watch position of the portal stele and relieve Captain Heston of his duty. You are dismissed.”

Jira gave another salute as he said: “Yes, Colonel Marilda.”

Jira then led his men out and to a rest area. Truthfully, everyone in the party was strong to the point where they would feel no exhaustion from the journey they just took. Rather, this was a formality formed from the years the commanders had spent as humans. Back then, it was only natural to be given some rest after a long journey. So merely out of habit, Jira and his men were given some rest time before they assumed their duties. There was one thing Jira and the others were looking forward to, though. Colonel Marilda had more access to luxuries such as food, and the commanders were actually able to eat a meal for the first time in many years! Most the time, even Jira could only use death essence to support his body with the rare occasion of receiving a package of food from Marilda for being one of her captains. Food was monopolized by the higher ranks and was one of the few commodities they could use to reward the work of any of their underlings.

Jira left all the ghouls in an area and took his commanders into a smaller hall filled with tables that had an extravagant feast prepared on them. Jira sat himself at the head table, where the highest quality food was. The rest of the commanders organized themselves according to rank and sat down in an orderly fashion. Beyond that, there wasn't any ceremony as everyone immediately dug into the food before them. Adam could hear various commanders commenting on the food: “So good!” “Why can't we eat this all the time?” “I wish our watch duty was longer. We get to eat a feast like this at least once a year!” “Seriously!? This is my first time...”

Everyone was gluttonously eating their fill with some fighting over certain dishes. Adam suddenly noticed something odd. He felt a sensation almost like he was gripping something with his hand. Shatter! At the same moment, the stone mug Jira had been grabbing a hold of shattered! A few of the commanders around Jira looked over in surprise, while the rest did not notice the sound over the noise of the feast. Jira gave a surprised look as well, before covering it over with a laugh: “I guess I got too excited and grabbed the mug too strongly!”

Even as Jira tried to laugh it off, Kalliger, who was sitting by Jira's side, could see a glint of unease in Jira's eyes. Others might not be able to see it, but being Jira's personal aide, Kalliger knew far more about Jira than the others. Kalliger could only wait until the feast was done to ask Jira what exactly happened.

Adam knew there was something going on between that sensation he felt and Jira breaking the mug. The two happened at the exact same time and it was too much to be a simple coincidence. Adam just could not understand what it meant, though.

After the feast was done, Jira and the commanders retired to some private rooms. Jira got his own separate room while the lower ranks would have to share with each other and even share with the ghouls. As Jira entered his room, Kalliger followed. No one would question why Kalliger joined Jira since he was Jira's personal aide. After the door was closed, Kalliger started out: “Sir, about that mug-”

Jira started flashing Kalliger a death glare! Jira was obviously angered that Kalliger had brought this up. Kalliger gulped but continued: “Another in my position may plot continuously against you to attack you and take your position while you are ill, but I have not! I respect your strength and have looked up to you. I saw the unease in your eyes when you broke that mug, just what is going on?”

Jira angrily harrumphed. He realized that Kalliger had been following him for too long and he could no longer hide much from Kalliger. Unfortunately, Jira could not trust anyone besides Kalliger so he could not simply get rid of him. Kalliger still had his uses. Since Kalliger already knew most of it, Jira started talking while looking at his hands: “When I grabbed that mug, I was trying to get a firm grip on it, but the mug broke! Until that point, I have not had any reason to even hold my sword in a very long time. It is only now that I realize... my nerves have started to numb!”

Jira suddenly pulled his sword out and clenched the hilt in his hand. He was obviously using a lot of strength to do so. At the same time, Adam felt the sensation as if he was holding something in his hand again! Jira said: “I am holding onto the hilt of my sword with at least seventy percent of my strength. It is only at this point that I can barely feel that I am actually grabbing something in my hand! I can't even feel the weight of the sword anymore and it is not because I suddenly gained such strength that it feels light to me, but that I simply can't feel anymore!”

Even Adam was surprised about the sudden revelation of Jira's new symptom. What was weirder was that when Jira was gripping the the sword hilt, Adam felt as if he was also holding something in his hand! “Just what does this mean?”

Kalliger suddenly voiced: “Why don't you go to Colonel Marilda and ask for help after all?”

Adam's heart plummeted at this comment. Would Jira go back to Marilda?

Jira turned angry again: “Are you truly an idiot? I already told her everything is fine! If I go back to her now, I would be revealing that I had lied to her about my condition! Lying to the Colonel in such a way would show that I have no respect for her. There is no excuse for outright lying to the Colonel. In order to prevent others from learning of my illness, I had to tell Colonel Marilda I was alright. In doing so, I have forsaken any attempt to get her help in this matter!”

Adam began to slightly relax. He considered Marilda to be the bane of his existence right now and was greatly relieved that Jira would not be able to seek her help. He found it odd that the hated commanders of ghouls had such an emphasis on respect within the spirit army. Then again, those who managed to join the army were the best of the best. To show respect to those in a higher position would give you their favor and allow you to gain more strength through serving them. To sneer at them and besmirch their name, you are simply asking to be killed.

Jira was not in the mood to talk any further with Kalliger and sent him out of the room. Jira stood alone, clenching his fists in both fear and anger. He mumbled to himself: “I would be a fool to not think that this is all somehow connected to that commander! Just what did he do to me? In the end... will this be the death of me?”

Commanders were never one to die of old age. They would rarely get sick either. The only time a commander would get sick was if a large amount of a different type of spirit essence than they were corrupted with entered their body. It could disrupt the natural flow of the spirit essence that was sustaining them and kill them in a matter of hours! The 'illness' Jira was inflicted with was a different matter, however. Jira had always expected to die on a glorious battle field, if at all. To die to a slow coming sickness and not even be allowed a final battle... to Jira, this was a silent torture and he wasn't sure how much longer he could endure it. He had thought that he had escaped from the strange illness to only now find that it had been with him the entire time and was getting worse!

Adam was left to his own thoughts to speculate what Jira's new symptom meant for Adam. Just what exactly would make it so that Jira started losing feeling in his body and Adam start to feel through Jira's body instead? Adam could not find an answer, no matter how he raked his brain. He didn't put much stress on finding the answer, however. There was still plenty of time before Adam felt he had enough control over Jira's soul to fully rend it to pieces and ensure Jira's death.

Sometime later, it seemed the time Jira and his commanders had to rest was over. They left their rooms and organized themselves in a relatively orderly fashion, though the ghouls still mingled about, destroying any attempts of having a perfect formation. Jira marched his men to another building inside the compound. This building was large and served a single purpose: to house the portal stele! The building was large enough to hold well over ten thousand people comfortably. Currently, though, it was occupied so Jira had his men set up a formation around the building. He entered the building to speak with Captain Heston and relieve him of duty. The inside of the building was completely open and only had support structures to hold the building up. In the center, was a gigantic stone stele that stood around five meters tall. As soon as Jira entered, he was approached by a rather brazen commander. “Jira! Have you finally come to relieve us of the watch?”

Jira curtly replied: “Yes.”

The brazen commander, who was Captain Heston, shouted out: “Hear that boys!? It is time to leave! Our gracious Colonel Marilda will have a feast prepared for us before we depart. Let us go eat our fill!”

The commanders in the area gave a cheer as they spurred their ghouls out of the building. After a small amount of time, the building was emptied of Heston's horde and Jira led his own horde to take up defensive positions around the stone stele as they prepared to continuously watch over it until they were finally relieved of duty. Jira strode forward to the stone stele. Jira looked intently at it, keeping his thoughts to himself. “If only I could activate this portal stele! Perhaps I could achieve a glorious death on the other side instead of this slow tedious death! Why is that only Marilda can open it!”

As Jira was thinking his own thoughts, Adam was shocked! He couldn't see the whole portal stele, but he could tell it was a gigantic version of the totem Emery used to open the portal at Sagan Wall! Adam thought to himself: “If this portal was activated... would it lead me home?”

Adam did not know how much time passed as he gained more control over Jira's soul, while his own soul sunk deeper in. Jira was constantly watching over the portal stele during this time. Adam naturally sought some form of distraction to pass this time by. One of these days, Adam was silently trying to compose some flute music. As he composed, he would form imaginary fingers in his mind and used them to play an imaginary flute. By chance, Adam noticed that Jira's fingers were slightly twitching. This made Adam curious, as Jira was not really a twitchy fellow. Easy to anger, sure, but not twitchy. Adam stopped composing to observe what was happening. As soon as he did though, Jira's fingers stopped twitching. After a moment of observation with no change in Jira, Adam started to compose again. Quickly, though, Adam noticed that Jira's fingers were twitching again! When Adam once again stopped composing, Jira's fingers once again stopped twitching. A thought suddenly dawned on Adam as he began moving his imaginary fingers like he was playing a flute again. This time, he wasn't trying to compose a song but trying to see if this somehow had an effect on Jira. It did! Jira's fingers were actually twitching in a similar manner as Adam's imaginary fingers! The implications of this could be big! Adam started thinking: “Could this mean...” before stopping himself. Adam did not want to get his hopes up, but this could possibly mean that as Adam took over Jira's soul he could take control of Jira's body!

If we talked about it in percentages, Adam would currently be in control of around thirty percent of Jira's soul! Adam felt that he would need to control at least fifty percent in order to break apart Jira's soul to kill him. Now, another thought came to mind. If Adam came to control Jira's entire soul, Adam's own soul would sink down to the center of Jira's. From there, if Adam pushed Jira's true soul out.... would Adam then have full control of Jira's body? Jira's body was that of a demonic beast and was full of death essence. If Adam went this route, he would have to bear the full consequences of such a body. As it was, Jira's soul was the one being primarily influenced by the death essence in his body. If Adam tried to take control of Jira's body in this manner, would Adam be able to withstand all the death essence?

The consequences could be severe and Adam wasn't even sure it was possible, so he didn't want to put any hope in this plan. However, he simply couldn't help but hope that it would succeed! Right before Adam stood a portal stele, if he could take control of Jira's body and activate the stele he could finally go home! Though, it would be with Jira's body. Adam would not dare to stay around others for long with a body full of death essence, so he would most likely never be able to live with Helen or his mother ever again after this. Still, Adam wanted to see them again. It would be far better to tell them his current condition and live an entire separate life from them, than to leave them hanging on his disappearance. As much as he didn't want to, Adam desperately hoped for this plan to succeed!

With a new goal in mind, Adam continued to take over Jira's soul. As Adam controlled more of Jira's soul, his own soul sunk deeper in and he also gained more control over Jira's body. Jira himself started moving around less and less as it became harder to even move! The other commanders started to notice something was wrong with Jira but did not openly talk about it. To do so would likely mean death!

As Adam was taking over Jira's soul and body, he was trying to figure out another part of his hopeful plan. How would he activate the portal stele? Even if he did activate it, where would it connect? Would it be completely random? Would it open next to a city? Was it truly worth the risk of endangering the lives of others just so he could make it back home? Adam debated over these things many times. Besides trying to figure out how he would activate the portal, he threw the rest of the questions to the side for now. Those questions would only really need to be answered if he really was able to gain full control of Jira's body. There was no telling what would happen when Adam removed Jira's true soul. Would the portion of Jira's soul that Adam controlled disperse without the presence of the true soul that originally controlled it? There were so many questions and worries that could not be answered until Adam actually accomplished the task.

Over time, Adam manged to formulate a plan for the portal stele. Emery caused a large amount of spirit essence to condense into his totem in order to open the portal at Sagan Wall. Adam would have to do the same here. Adam had never used the spirit essence gathering formation since he entered the death plane as it was too risky. However, Adam was willing to risk it for this! Emery had also set up a formation that continuously drew in spirit essence and Adam thought that this was what kept the portal open for a time. For Adam, though, as soon as he stepped through the portal he would be taking the spirit essence gathering formation in his mind with him. Adam believed that this would cause the portal to close right after he went through it!

In Adam's mind right now, killing Jira would be his primary goal. He could take revenge for his death and throw the commanders into a little disarray when Jira's influence disappears from the spirit army. Even if the disarray would only be momentary, Adam felt it would still be a small victory. Everything else would be a bonus whether it worked out or not.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity to Adam, he had control of over ninety percent of Jira's soul! At this point, Jira couldn't even move! Jira wanted to call out to anyone to help him, to kill him, but he could do nothing! Everyone else could see there was something wrong with Jira, but did not dare to speak up, not even Kalliger. Kalliger was certain that if he brought this up to Jira in front of the rest of the commanders, Jira would strike him dead where he stood no matter how weak Jira currently was. Little did Kalliger know that there was currently no way Jira could even lift a finger against him! Jira could only stand there doing nothing as Adam kept him from moving his body.

With how weird the situation was between Jira and the other commanders, Adam didn't want to wait to gain full control of Jira's soul. There was no telling when one of the commanders would finally work up the courage to speak out. Adam's threads had spread throughout Jira's soul and he was now firmly anchored down. Adam had even threaded them through parts of Jira's body so that he could hold the part of Jira's soul he was in control of in Jira's body. Through these threads, he could even summon a small amount of death essence from Jira's body, enough to perform the soul technique!

With all his preparations made, Adam cast the soul technique on Jira. Jira had virtually no way to fight back as Adam shoved him out. There was only a little resistance when Jira's true soul was still inside the area of his soul that he still controlled, but as soon as he was pushed into the area Adam controlled, it was all too easy to push Jira's true soul out of his body!

As soon as Jira's true soul was pushed out and started to dissipate, Jira's body shuddered and started to fall down. Adam momentarily lost control and was barely able to make it so that he fell onto one knee. The parts of Jira's soul that Adam controlled started to pull against Adam's threads to escape control as Adam was also suddenly flooded by a vast amount of death essence from Jira's body! The cocoon wrapped around Adam's soul prevented the death essence from hurting him, but he was still stunned by the sudden impact of the death essence. Quickly, Adam regained control over the body. To Adam now, he could numbly feel and move Jira's body. At this point, Adam could tell that the bodies flow of death essence had been disrupted and would quickly die if he didn't control it! Adam quickly used his threads of death essence to circulate through the body in the same manner death essence had circulated through his original body. Finally, things seemed to stabilize and Adam was able to stand up again.

All the commanders were looking at Adam. To them, Jira had just fallen to a knee and when he got back up, he had an entirely different demeanor! Kalliger stepped forward: “Captain Jira...”

While Kalliger was at a loss of words on how to tactfully ask if Jira was alright, Adam started stepping forward. Even though Adam could control Jira's body and even feel through it, he could not see through Jira's eyes. Considering the significant amount of numbness he felt from Jira's body, it was likely that since Adam was hijacking Jira's body and not fully connected to it as Jira was, Adam could not use the full body's senses. Because of this, Adam had been keeping track of where Jira was relative to the portal stele so he could make his way quickly there. As Adam walked forward, everyone stepped out of his way. Before the portal stele, Adam put his hand on it as he spread threads of death essence to connect to the stele and began to hum in order to form the spirit essence gathering formation.

The commanders were now all very confused. This behavior was entirely unlike Jira! Kalliger whispered to another: “Quickly, go inform Colonel Marilda!”

Adam ignored everyone as he hummed since he needed his full concentration. Just as Adam thought, the spirit essence gathering formation was gathering a large of death essence and trying to force it into his own soul! It didn't do much to effect the portion of Jira's soul that remained under Adam's control, but it wanted to go through Adam's cocoon and invade his soul! Adam used the threads of death essence that made up the cocoon to direct the death essence that was being gathered away from his soul and to to the portal stele. Adam stood there for a good fifteen minutes while everyone uncomfortably watched what was going on.

Marilda's voice suddenly penetrated the air: “Captain Jira, one of your commanders has come to me with a concern and I feel a flux of death essence near the portal stele, what's going on?... Answer me Jira!”

Adam didn't even respond to the voice of Colonel Marilda. Before anything else could be said, there was a sudden fwish followed by a large BOOM! The area surrounding the portal stele suddenly turned into a gaping maw as it sucked in death essence from the air like a drain. Marilda's voice could be heard shouting: “JIRA, WHO THE HELL OPENED THE PORTAL!? THE DECLARACTION OF WAR HAS NOT BEEN GIVEN YET!”

It was too late to stop Adam. He had been in the immediate area around the stele when it opened and was directly sucked through. As soon as he had gone through, what was powering the stele had suddenly disappeared and the gaping maw of the portal quickly started to shrink. The commanders were unsure if they were supposed to follow Jira or not and the portal quickly closed before anyone could come to a decision.

In a dark room made of sturdy solid stone, there stood a lone stone stele. In this room, there was a sudden fwish followed by a large BOOM! Massive amounts of death essence suddenly swelled into the room with such a large amount of pure death essence coming into the world, it appeared like flames as it exploded out into the world. This was the true source of the black flames that Adam saw the night Fort Erich was attacked. They were not truly flames, but pure death essence exploding out into the world.

A figure suddenly materialized through a distortion in the flames before the black flames quickly started to go out! Adam stumbled as he had gone through the portal too suddenly. With the cocoon protecting his soul still, Adam could only see three meters around him. The room was a little larger than that so he could not make much out. There was one thing he could tell, from the make of the floor to what was swirling in the air, there were a multitude of spirit essence types! Adam couldn't help but shout: “It worked! I'm back!”

[AN: I may have bitten off more than I could chew for some parts of this plane of death arc, but we are finally at the end!]