Eishath looked at Namaah coldly.

"Is that all?" She said not bothering to capitalize on Namaah's shock.

But she was very quick to recover. Within a moment she realized that her opponent had hardened her stomach to withstand her blow. This was a massive waste of essence in her opinion, dodging would have been far more efficient.

But this gave her a new idea. If Eishath was going to use shock value and then not take advantage of it then Namaah would.

Using a bit of her fire essence, she infused it into her legs and used this to bounce off giving Eishath a good kick as she did so.

"[Flare kick]!"

As she did so a small localized explosion went off from where she was in contact with Eishath. The force was enough to knock her off her feet.

The crowd did a cheer at the explosive visuals and sounds.

"Uggh!" Eishath shouted as flew a couple of feet but did not fall on her face as mid-way she found her footing and gingerly landed on her feet. But she spat out a bit of blood as her eyes were blazing in heated fury.

"Now you have angered this disciple!" She shouted as wave after wave of yellow red essence wafted off her like smoke.

Namaah's eyes widened at the show of force. Even the crowd was awed at the show. Mortals could not see essence under normal circumstances, but in this form, they could and to them, it meant she had an immense amount of essence. Though it was possible to create it in the form of a parlor trick, in this case, their awe was well-earned.

It was not that she was alarmed by Eishath's increase in power. If anything, Namaah was still more powerful but the problem lay in the fact that she simply did not have the essence to spare for such a show. As a being unable to generate their own essence and unable to directly take it from the world around them, even if she had enough essence she would not waste it on such a show.

"[Flame Grasp]!" Eishath shouted and a massive hand of pure fire sprouted from around Namaah and attempted to grab her.

The cast was very very quick, but Namaah was both fast enough and aware enough to jump up and out of its reach but not fast enough for the explosion that followed.

Pain erupted from all over her body as she was hit with the

She was flung high up in the air and given she had no flying ability in her current form she was a sitting duck if she did not do anything. Thankfully she could do something.

"[Dark Chains]!"

A chain of pure shadow shot out from Namaah's palm and near instantly covered the 50 feet or so between her and Eishath. It hit the center of Eishath's chest who was still channeling her essence to create another massive spell.

There was a hushed gasp from the crowd at her use of dark essence. Dark essence, although not illegal to practice even in righteous sects was frowned upon by mortals. It came from superstitions made because of the dark essence's natural qualities. This included draining, something she was about to abuse.

"[Drain-Fire essence]!"

As she shouted, essence flooded the chains using Eishath's body as the battery.

Namaah loved this technique and was one of the many aces up her sleeve. However, this was one of the lesser-used ones because of the reactions it tended to garner from the general public.

But Namaah was royally pissed off at Eishath's dismissive and reckless behavior. Normally, the bitch was very shrewd which she could respect. But right now, the whore was being needlessly arrogant and wasteful, and Namaah knew it was to get a rise out of her.

Well, if that were the case, Eishath would not mind if Namaah helped herself with the essence.

This technique was usually very complicated, as consuming someone else's essence could have dire consequences if not processed properly. That was a very big part of why sperm and breast milk were used as the medium of choice as they were intrinsically infused with very malleable life essence that could have any other essences turned malleable when infused into it.

But for beings like her who specialized in consuming the essence of other beings, the technique lost much of its complexity, so much so that it was often overlooked because they could do something similar from birth.

But situations like the one right now were a reminder that every skill has its uses.

She licked her lips as the bitch let out a surprised gasp as the essence was sucked into the chains.

What happened next though threw her for a loop. The essence should have been traveling inside the chains and so have no visual feedback.

But what she saw were extremely bright yellow cracks forming all along the lines of the chains as the essence rapidly traveled up to her.

Namaah's gut wanted to shut off the technique upon witnessing this. But a larger perpetually hungry part of her noticed could feel the viscosity of the essence coming up to her and could not resist.

For anyone familiar with Samuel's essence the next sequence of events was very predictable. The mythical reality-bending essence found a new host and started getting to work.

Now. What happened to the ones that never consumed this essence before?

If you guessed loss of consciousness due to the surge of pleasure brought about by its transformative quality you would be right.

Namaah crashed into the ground, her whole body convulsing as Samuel's essence 'ravaged' her body. Even second-hand the power of a mythic destiny was formidable.

Thus, the fight ended in a very anti-climactic matter in Eishath's victory.

Not even Eishath was happy with the sudden win and the crowd was also left utterly confused.

Neither she nor Namaah had gotten serious yet. Eishath had just been dicking around showing off her currently massive reserves and Namaah was about to drain it from her.

That was about to be the turning point when both parties were about to bring their full power to bear, Eishath could feel that in her bones and she wanted to let loose without having to worry about saving essence.

In the end, however, a win was a win and she would take this.

Maybe even gain a new essence-addicted ally in the process.

Who knew what the future held?