While at first, the constant ringing of Angel's voice in his mind did indeed put a smile on Seth's face, it very quickly lost its appeal. It took roughly ten seconds before Seth was already getting irritated by the constant, never ending notifications in his head and thirty seconds before he was wanting to tear off his own ears to make it stop.

Although, even if he did tear off his own ears it wouldn't work, since Angel spoke directly into his mind. If he wanted to silence them with violence, he'd have to bash his head against a wall until his brains were painting it. A prospect that was actually sounding more and more appealing with every new repetition.

Eventually, he managed to convince Angel to just take in the Requitals silently, at least until this battle was over. They seemed just as thankful for that request as Seth did, maybe even more so. Who knows, perhaps it was possible for... whatever kind of AI that Angel was, to become sick of their own voice.

Now that distraction was out of the way, Seth instead pushed his mind towards a different distraction. Well... ever so slightly different. He had been hearing all of those notifications, and it had been tremendously difficult to keep track of just how many Requitals he had been getting.

So, succumbing to the cats most fatal weakness, curiosity, Seth opened up his stat screen intent of inspecting the Requital section. It was an action that very quickly proved itself to be a dreadfully stupid mistake.

His entire vision became filled with nothing but text. It reminded him of the one time he fell asleep after a particularly intense study week and missed a text from his girlfriend at the time, and woke up to find a wall of text just as intimidating and overwhelming at this.

Wait, no... The girlfriend one was actually worse. But the fact that this came a close second was actually a point in its favour.

The text filled every single inch of his vision, making it near impossible to see where he was flying and causing him to blast himself through the body of a feral, Pegasus type creature like he was a bullet.

Against the enhanced body of his most loyal puppet, the Pegasus stood no chance. It was like a bug on a windshield, when his body collided with it simply exploded into a hail of meat, feathers and hooves.

Spitting out his mouthful of pretty white feathers, Seth shook his head to dislodge any that had stuck to his hood and quickly corrected his mistake, dismissing the stats the next second. However, even within that incomprehensible tidal wave of text, Seth had seen one single sentence that made his heart flutter ever so softly.

[Spiritual Score: 1645]

Seeing those numbers, it made everything he went through seem almost worth it. Almost. He still would have preferred not to have gone through that horrid ordeal, trapped in that horrid meadow with no idea when he would be able to escape, if ever. But, at the very least, it was nice to have gotten something out of it regardless.

With constant assaults of countless monsters, of a variety of strengths, it also meant that Seth had plenty of souls to feast upon. And feast he did, like he was at a buffet and had a shovel to scoop the food instead of a spoon. It almost wasn't enough to satisfy his ravenous appetite. Almost.

Nonetheless, even if he came out battered, broken and once more rushing to the edge of the mortal coil with reckless abandon, Seth had still come out of that endless meadow stronger than ever.

Not only had his soul power increased, but his biology had as well, leaving him with a score of 870.

Feasting on nothing but monster meat to survive had its benefits, after all.

Astra was no doubt the same, in fact he had a feeling she might be much closer to maxing out her transcendent total than he was, if she hadn't done so already. His body, once it was back to fill strength, would be absolutely brimming with new found power.

If he had to face off against that dwarf now, or when he was back at full strength, there was no doubt he would easily be on equal footing and would be able to trade blow for blow with it. It was just a shame that, in the meadow, he never got a true chance to test the extent of his newfound power.

Between constant fights with hordes of wannabe invaders, some of which were on a transcendent level, and his ever growing exhaustion from those fights. Neither one of the trapped pair had been at full strength long enough to fully test out their new capabilities.

However, while he was unable to flex his newly increased muscles, Seth was immediately able to see the effects of his increase in soul power. While it had increased his reserves of mana deeply, allowing him to generate more and therefore increase his physical attributes by more for longer periods of time, that was not all it was responsible for.

The main benefit of his soul power, was what it did for his puppets.

It wasn't as clear when it was the puppeteered corpses, who didn't last long under his control, but it was for the puppets like the Unkindly Guards or Corvus himself, who had been bound to his soul for months, including the time in the endless meadow.

As soon as Seth had stepped back through that portal, and could feel his connection to these puppets get reestablished, the rush of increased soul power flowed into the puppets like a tsunami.

Even if he couldn't feel the puppets when he was trapped there, the link still existed. His [Resonant Threads] was still siphoning drops of power out of his soul every moment of every day of his imprisonment. The barrier of space between them simply acted as a dam, blocking the drizzle of soul energy seeping out of him, the drops meant to steadily reinforce the puppets connected to him.

As his soul increased in power, those droplets of power increased in size along with it. Yet still they were blocked. Growing and growing as they pushed against the dam, desperate to be released and find their true home once more.

So when he finally stepped back through the portal, the dam was busted open and those months of built up power, as well as his increase, poured into every single puppet and every single Spirit Animal all at once.

It flooded their artificial bodies with so much power, that some of them nearly burst like an over inflated balloon. The puppets bodies increased in durability and strength tenfold, turning harrowing battles into utter slaughters, while the Spirit Animals became sharper, faster and better able to multi-task.

It was for these reasons, that Seth had no doubt in his mind that his Unkindly Guards, and the citizens fighting alongside them, would have no trouble repelling the invaders for much longer. All he had to take care of was how they were arriving.

Even if they were strong, they couldn't fight an endless invasion. Seth and Astra had proven that themselves with their own blood and broken bodies. But luckily, he had the perfect solution to that.

Turning his flight into a dive, Seth plummeted towards the ground, smokey tendrils of shadows billowing behind him giving him the look of a meteor falling from the heavens above.

Unlike a meteor, however, he had a bit more grace when he landed. When he drew close to the ground, he flipped in the air before rapidly accelerating in the opposite direction to slow himself down, like a rocket touching down at the sight of his true bodies arrival.

Corvus' boots planted against the ground, his body sinking into a shallow crouch, as the ground beneath him cracked ever so slightly. Mist-like shadows exploded outwards from the momentum, covering the surrounding area and pouring over peoples feet, before rapidly retreating back into his cloak as he straightened himself up.

Perhaps not entirely graceful, and could definitely do with a bit more braking next time, but it was better than a few of his previous flight attempts, especially now that he could actually fly instead of just fall in a stylish manner.

Casting his gaze over the situation, even though he already knew everything that had transpired, Seth put on Corvus' rumbling voice and made sure it had plenty of confidence, as well as a slightly withering tone of irritation, as he spoke.

"Was this really necessary?"

He lowered his gaze to the still twitching body of Tiff, drool dribbling from the corner of her lips and mixing with blood before it hit the ground beneath her, then raised it back up to look at Astra.

He couldn't help but notice the way she glanced at his real body out of the corner of her eye, before straightening up and answering with an equally withering tone, glaring at him darkly.

"Yes."

Ouch. Clearly she was not happy with him, although what he had done wrong Seth had absolutely no idea. He spared Tiff another glance, noticing that her chest was still rising and falling with trembling, shallow breathes. Still alive, it seems. He didn't know if that was good or not, but now that she was incapacitated at the least, he could deal with it.

Although, as he was inspecting her vital signs, he couldn't help but feel the glare from Astra intensifying to an almost murderous degree.

She grumbled softly, before brushing her hair out of her face again. The teleporter, Lee, flinched as she quickly raised her hand and pointed a finger at him.

"You. Come with me. Now."

Lee stuttered slightly, desperately trying to formulate any semblance of a sentence, but Astra quickly grabbed him by the shoulder with a vice like grip and dragged him along with her, leaving the young man to look back towards Corvus with a pleading expression on his face.

Seth simply looked between the departing Astra, before exchanging confused looks with his real body.

'Wonder what's up with her.'