Chapter 2389 Formless (2)

The first few cuts across Sylas' body should have annoyed him, yet the moment warm blood slid down his forearm and another thin line opened across his ribs, the exact opposite happened.

Something inside him that had been quiet for too long finally stirred, and the reason he had been excited from the beginning returned with enough force that his blood seemed to heat beneath his skin.

What Sylas feared more than pain, more than death, was reaching a point where there was nothing left capable of forcing him to grow.

Tomoe was doing exactly that.

Worse, or perhaps better, she wasn't remaining still while he adapted to her. Every exchange stripped another layer of rust from her movements, every clash awakened something else that had gone dormant.

Looking at her started to feel uncomfortably familiar. It was like staring into a mirror.

The realization only made Sylas' grin grow wider, not warm or amused, but sharp with the same bloodthirsty anticipation now burning in Tomoe's eyes. If she was waking up, then so was he, and the moment that flame settled properly into his chest, the way Sylas fought began to change.

To an outside observer, his style became wilder. In reality, it became far more calculated.

His mind opened like a flower under sunlight, countless possible paths spreading from every movement Tomoe made until the battlefield became a web of deviations only he seemed able to read.

He no longer looked at the Runes and Wills around him as simple structures to manipulate, but as things carrying emotion, hesitation, excitement, resistance, and habits that changed depending on how often they were tested.

A current of Sword Will that reacted one way on the third exchange wouldn't necessarily react the same way on the hundred and third.

Sylas began reading those differences.

He could feel when Tomoe's Will anticipated resistance and when it expected him to retreat, when a Rune in the surrounding space leaned toward her influence and when it recoiled from being forcefully sharpened into something it had never been meant to become.

The battlefield became a living conversation where every piece revealed something about what it wanted to do next, what it would experience next, how it would react next.

Then Sylas' mind seemed to form a domain around him.

His fist came from beneath Tomoe's sword instead of meeting it head-on, grazing through a weak angle in the pressure before twisting into a shoulder strike that forced her blade several degrees off course.

The missed attack became his opening to shift one foot forward, that step became the setup for a counter, and the counter itself altered Tomoe's momentum enough that Sylas could slip past the next cut without wasting a single movement.

Every action fed the next.

His dodges stopped looking like retreats and became changes in positioning, while his attacks stopped existing only to deal damage and instead began shaping the next several exchanges. One fist redirected Tomoe's wrist, another forced her weight onto the wrong foot, and a slight turn of Sylas' shoulder made her next slash carry too far before he came back with an elbow aimed toward her ribs.

Tomoe laughed as the strike forced her away.

Then her blade danced.

The skies howled around her as Sword Will tore through cloud, space, and even the faint distortions of time left behind by their speed. Every cut carried enough weight to split mountains and empty rivers, yet the sword itself flicked from Tomoe's wrist with the ease of someone drawing lazy circles through the air.

Those circles quickly became a sphere.

The Executioner's Blade moved so perfectly around her that defense and attack stopped being separate concepts, every angle protected by a strike that could become lethal the moment Sylas entered its range. Her Sword Will extended the sphere farther still, turning the air itself into sharpened territory where even approaching her required Sylas to tear through layer after layer of hostile intent.

Sylas strode forward with confident strides nonetheless.

His fist stopped centimeters from the blade. Then Tomoe's edge stopped centimeters from his throat.

The distance between them was disappearing with every passing clash, a race for who would connect force weaving back and forth between them in an undying dance.

Every exchange brought flesh and steel closer together as both of them adapted, until what had begun as a battle of distant Will clashes slowly became something far more direct. Sylas could feel Tomoe's excitement rising with his own, and the World of Spirits around them paid the price for every increase.

Mountains cracked without being touched. Rivers vanished into mist after a single passing slash. Entire stretches of forest folded flat beneath Sylas' fists, only for Tomoe's returning sword pressure to carve those flattened plains into hundreds of deep trenches.

More people had begun entering the realm by then.

Every one of them had accumulated at least a thousand kills, meaning there were no ordinary participants among them, only geniuses who had carved their way through armies and survived long enough to qualify. Yet as they appeared across distant parts of the World of Spirits and felt the fluctuations rolling through the sky, their expressions became heavy almost immediately.

This didn't feel like a battle between C-tiers. Technically, Tomoe wasn't a C-tier at all. And yet...

BOOM.

Her hair exploded outward.

The strands doubled in length in an instant, each individual hair sharpening until it became indistinguishable from a blade before piercing into the surrounding world. They sank through trees, soil, stone, water, and even the air itself, while Formless Will poured through them and began devouring everything nearby.

The vibrant forest within several kilometers dulled to grey, then black, as Aether was ripped from the world and dragged into Tomoe. Leaves crumbled into ash, streams dried into cracked trenches, and the radiant colors that had made the World of Spirits look half-real vanished until the land around her resembled something dead.

Tomoe's sword grew heavier.

Sylas felt the change just before it reached him.

The Executioner's Blade came down, and for the first time, his Eternal Will failed to hold cleanly.

The protection around his forearm split apart.

Will tore into ribbons beneath the strike, opening enough space for the blade pressure to crash into Sylas' body and send him flying backward through the ruined forest. Trees exploded behind him one after another, stone shattered beneath his feet when he finally forced himself to stop, and blood ran freely down his arm where Tomoe's attack had broken through.

His arm lay in nothing but a broken mess of flesh torn to ribbons.

She stood in the center of the wasteland with her hair spread around her like countless floating swords, her grin so wide and hungry that there was nothing remotely sane left in it.

"More!" Sword Will screamed around her. "Show me more!"