Chapter 42: Plentiful Rewards
"This is going to be painful," Vlad thought grimly, as darkness surged from the Eclipseborn’s ruined eye and rushed at him, clinging to him like a parasite, seeping into his flesh.
The Eclipseborn was dead, but the spirit that had possessed the bear remained, and if it could take over a beast, it could certainly try to claim him.
So while the battle was over, its struggle was not.
Vlad immediately ceased the spirit convergence. In his current state, any pain he felt was shared with Vel, and though their union granted him greater mind resistance, still, there was no reason for her to endure unnecessary agony when he could easily handle it.
As the maddened spirit rampaged within him, the boons granted by their brief union flickered out and vanished. The strength, the changes, the clarity, they left him in an instant.
Pain followed like a tidal wave. It engulfed his mind, raw and blinding, but Vlad had braced for this, at least as much as he could.
Vlad knew he had won this battle because the spirit would fail to possess him, although the failed possession would bring him a great deal of pain.
Vlad knew that if he were to fight against a spirit, he would either have to have a defensive charm that could protect him when the spirit attacked, which would cost a great sum of gold, or suffer great pain as the spirit tried to take over his body, only to fail.
The reason why a spirit couldn’t stay in the physical plane for long was because every second spent without a host was one of extreme agony, which only grew with time, either forcing them to flee or driving them mad, turning them into mindless wraiths.
The only way to stay safe was to find a host, but spirits can’t just take anyone’s body with force. To succeed, they needed to find a body that was as close in nature to them as possible, having the same affinity for mana, species, and even gender.
A rat spirit couldn’t possess a squirrel, no matter how similar they seemed.