SPIRIT SOUL

"The Sprite can speak, and in our language at that?!?" Selene was baffled.

Even Yasmine was a little bit astonished because not understanding one another was one of the biggest difficulties when facing a Sprite.

"How come he is totally unbothered about that fact? It's almost as if he expected it to be able to speak?!" Yasmine mumbled to herself, slightly bothered.

However, Kyle was oblivious to their astonishment. He didn't even question whether the Sprite would be able to speak or not.

Kyle just spoke with it and was lucky that it could speak.

Without hesitation, he lifted his mining pickaxe above his head before he stroke down.

"Aifhahsd" The Sprite exclaimed, thinking that she would feel her mother's pain the moment a piece of the Mana stone was flung through the air.

But there was no pain, nothing at all.

'He was right? I can get closer to mom!!' The Sprite was exhilarated at the thought of getting closer to her mother.

Thus, she jumped on the side of Kyle's shoulder that was not occupied, ignoring Arashi's growling as she exclaimed, 𝑏𝘦𝘥𝑛𝘰𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝑐𝘰𝑚

"Go Go! I want to get closer to my mother! Work hard little slave!"

Kyle knitted his brows when he heard the Sprite's shrill voice right next to his ear but he chose to ignore it.

Instead, he used his wind affinity to continue mining the Mana stones.

It would take quite a while to reach the Essence of the Mana stone deposit, and it was not in Kyle's interest to satisfy the Sprite either.

That was why he worked in the most efficient manner, ignoring the Sprite's voice in his ear.

At the same time, Arashi helped him mining by creating several wind blades every now and then. His Spirit Soul shot the wind blades toward the Mana stone deposit to carve small cuts in it.

This made it a little easier to mine.

While Kyle was working hard, the Sprite kept exclaiming, giving her best to motivate him.

Simultaneously, Selene and Yasmine couldn't help but feel overwhelmed by the fact that Kyle, the Sprite, and Arashi seemed to have gotten best friends.

Arashi was lying on Kyle's left shoulder and the Sprite sat on his right shoulder, moving her arms around enthusiastically.

She was the most motivated to get close to her mother, and the two women would have to lie if they were to say that they weren't affected by the Sprite's emotions.

Thus, they began to work hard as well, ignoring their earlier thought of cultivating.

"Kyle, where is that 'mother' she is talking about?" Yasmine asked, staring intently at Kyle's back.

He turned around, confusion in his eyes.

'How the hell is that important?'

However, instead of asking, he simply pointed at the exact location of the Mana stone deposit's Essence.

"Well her 'mother' is 20 to 25 meters ahead, I guess. I cannot pinpoint the exact meters. Why are you asking? Do you want to mine straight to the Essence?"

When Kyle mentioned 'Essence', Yasmine immediately understood what exactly the 'mother' both Kyle and the Sprite were talking about was.

Her eyes gleamed brightly and she immediately turned to the direction Kyle pointed at before starting to mine.

The Sprite looked at the two women with interest as they started to work hard.

They focused on mining in one particular direction, contrary to Kyle, who was mining the area around him to slim down her mother.

"If they hurt my mother, I will hurt them even more than I promised to hurt you" She whispered in his ear, causing chills to run down Kyle's spine.

However, he knew that both Selene and Yasmine were genuinely trying to help the Sprite, which was contrary to Kyle.

That was why he found it a little bit funny that the Sprite was so harsh against them while it favored him.

She stood by his side and gave him a motivational speech, while her eyes narrowed whenever she glanced at his partners.

'Well she is worried, so it's understandable. Still, it's funny. I expected Sprites to be smarter, or maybe it is just her.' Kyle thought before he returned his focus back on mining Mana stones.

Several days passed in the blink of an eye, each of them got calluses and they had mined tens of thousand of Secur grade Mana stones.

Kyle was quite satisfied with their result, even more so because Arashi had actively collected Mana, converted it to Soul force, and transferred it to him.

This simply meant that Kyle reaped twice the benefits for half the efforts because he created the 7th Soul bead in an extremely short time, while he procured a huge fortune.

On the other hand, Yasmine and Selene had finished mining as well. They had reached the Essence of the Mana stone deposit, which was something the Sprite sensed immediately.

"Mommmm!!" She exclaimed, charging in the straight path Yasmine and Selene had created.

While the Mana stone deposit was a huge blue stone, the Essence was a huge ball of dark blueish mass. It gleamed brightly and had whitish areas where the mana was the purest.

Even if one didn't know the meaning of a Mana stone deposit's Essence, which was something neither of the three, let alone the Sprite, knew, they could tell that it was something magnificent, and valuable.

However, what none of them, including the Sprite, expected to happen was to see a weird reaction the moment the Sprite touched the Mana stone deposit's Essence.

"Whaaat, Mother…. What are you doing?!?!"

The Mana stone deposit's Essence was twice as large as the Sprite. Yet, the moment the Sprite hugged her 'mother', the Essence began to gleam brightly.

Selene and Yasmine were dazzled for quite some time, while Kyle moved to the side.

His sight was now blocked by the Mana stone deposit, yet, he could use the Nurture ability's sight to see more.

'What just happened?' He wondered while looking through the mana stone deposit.

The Essence of the Mana stone deposit had shrunk in size, and it was floating right in front of the Sprite.

At first, nothing else seemed to happen. The dazzling light was still present and it was almost as if time had stopped in their surrounding.

Nobody dared to move, and everyone's attention was on the Sprite and the Marble of the Essence. Both were levitating, and their distance was only a few centimeters.

The Essence Marble slowly approached the Sprite, who tried to free itself from the invisible shackles that seemed to restrict her.

"Nooo, MOther, I don't want to…nooooooo, don't leave me!!!! ARRGGghhghgh" She screamed out. It looked like she was losing her sanity as if everything she had ever wished for was just an illusion, almost as if her lifelong dream to reunite with her mother was but a nightmare.

It happened, she faced her mother. However, it was the moment that ought to be the best in her life that the worst thing possible could happen.

Her mother disappeared in front of her. She shrunk in size and entered her body. The link they had vanished into thin air, and her body began to transform.

While she had been an incomplete Sprite beforehand, an existence that was not even supposed to exist in the first place, right now she had become a pure and full-fledged Spirit.

However, the price she, or rather her mother had to pay was tremendous. They would never share their link again and never would she feel her again.

The bright dazzling light disappeared and the little Sprite was released. Her form hadn't changed, just the energy she released.

Her entire existence seemed to undergo a metamorphosis, as a cocoon covered her entirely.

Streams of mana were suctioned toward her in masses and the cocoon was lifted from the ground, where the Sprite had slumped to.

She had lost consciousness owing to the shock of losing her loved one. Yet, something deep in her tiny heart, that had been enlarged, and changed as well, the Sprite knew that a new chapter in her life was about to begin.

A new path had been unveiled to her, and even if she was unwilling, she could sense that her mother was pushing her forward, forcing her to continue living and to stay strong.

'Mother, you will always stay in my heart. Never leave me ever again.' That were the last words of the sprite before she had entered a deep sleep, light shrouding her.

But how could she know that her words were real and that her 'mother' would always stay by her side? Even death wouldn't part them anymore.

After all, they had always been one existence, just separated through a 25-meter thick wall…