The creation of his first sword move meant Telmus had taken a massive step towards the completion of his Destiny and fully mastering his Will.
Unlike most immortals in existence, Telmus Will was incredibly strange because it aligned with his Destiny. His Will was also Endless Victory, and it meant everything he possessed, every thought he had, every action he made was for one purpose only, and that was to achieve victory in everything he sought to conquer.
He had only a singular Will, but that was more than enough for him because the fusion of his Will and his Destiny created a result that exceeded the imagination of most immortals.
In addition to the fact that Telmus’s body and bloodline had been transformed by the power of Primordial Time, Memory, Demon, Light, and Life to become the perfect Throne whose potential was nearly infinite, this made his progress accelerate at a frightening pace.
Creating his first sword form, Unfolding Lotus, took Telmus to the peak of Old Ones, with his powers equaling to weaker Thrones like the Adjudicator, but his opponent was a Titan whose bloodline had been corrupted by the hunger of Primordial Demon. Despite the power of this attack, Telmus could not put him down as its mountain-crushing fist was still blasting towards him.
The leaves swirling around the arm of the titan, each powerful enough to tear a universe in two, were rapidly vanishing under the strokes of Telmus’s sword, and as the last of the leaves disappeared, Telmus’s form shifted. The unfolding lotus tightened, condensing all its energy into a single, thrusting point.
In the space between the application of his first sword form, which had taken Telmus to the level of a weak Throne, he had derived the second form of his sword.
The name of it, naturally, slid into his consciousness. Telmus called it River-Cutting Stroke. A move that was a hundred times stronger than his first sword form!
He did not aim for the fist itself, which was getting increasingly closer to his body; instead, Telmus aimed for the space the fist occupied. He thrust his will-blade forward to define a line that the fist could not cross.
The result was a cataclysm of stopped momentum. The titan’s fist slammed into the invisible, infinitely sharp edge of Telmus’s thrust, and impossible momentum met absolute negation.
"CRACK-BOOM!"
The sound was a deafening roar that shook the very dimensions of the arena. The fist stopped dead, its concussive force rebounding back up the arm, shattering its own stony structure into a million fragments. Magma burst forth, spraying into the arena like a bloody wound.
The audience, who had first been confused at the direction of the battle, was soon lost in the gloriousness of combat, the moment Telmus and the titan had begun to fight.
When the clash that sprayed the blood of the titan into the air for thousands of light-years across, the audience in their trillions cheered.
Just the first series of clashes had shown them a height of power that could hardly be imagined, and it seems that this was just the beginning.
The cries of the titan were equaled by the cheers from the crowd, but Telmus was not untouched. The shockwave of the arrested blow, the sheer kinetic energy that his will-blade could not completely negate, hit him like a physical wall.
He was flung backward, a doll in a hurricane, his body screaming in protest. He hit the white disc and skipped across it like a stone on a lake, each impact a jarring explosion of pain. He came to a stop a thousand light-years away, one knee on the ground, his sword still held firm in his hand, his chest heaving, but his eyes were focused.
The titan looked at its shattered arm. The magma within bubbled, already pulling the stone fragments back together, fusing them anew. The lightning in its veins pulsed faster, angry. The frozen half of its face seemed to glare with deeper cold.
The Titan spoke, but Telmus could discern that underneath the voice was the corruption of Primordial Demon, and this made him grip his blade more firmly, causing the flesh of his palm to crack.
"YOUR WILL IS A NEEDLE. MY POWER IS THE OCEAN. YOU MAY DODGE A WAVE. YOU MAY EVEN CUT ONE. BUT THE TIDE IS INEXORABLE. YOU WILL DROWN."
It stomped a foot. The disc trembled, not from impact, but from the essence of Truiplop that infused its legs. From the point of impact, a forest of colossal, blackened, thorned trees erupted from the white stone, growing to full, monstrous height in a single second.
They did not just seek to impale him; their branches whipped like scorpion tails, their thorns fired like ballista bolts, and the entire forest moved, a tidal wave of violent, corrupted growth rushing to consume him.
Telmus rose. He could not outrun a forest. He could not cut down every tree. To try would be to be overwhelmed, snared, consumed.
The distance between them was nothing to immortals of their level, but it gave him enough time to push his powers further.
So he became the fire.
Bringing his blade in front of him, Telmus exhaled and created the third sword form, Scarlet Sunset Whirlwind.
He did not wait for the forest to reach him. He charged into it. His sword became a constant, swirling extension of his body.
Telmus was not cutting down trees; he was moving through the forest like a wind that everything in its path. His blade did not meet the wood; it passed through it, each touch erasing a branch, trunk, and thorn from existence. He was a vortex of negation, a moving sphere of nothingness that advanced through the corrupt woods.
He moved with breathtaking speed and precision, a dancer in a labyrinth of death. His footwork was impeccable, each step placing him exactly where he needed to be to avoid the most crushing blows, his blade always in motion to erase the rest. He was not fighting the forest; he was navigating it, his will-blade carving a perfect, ever-changing path through the chaos.
Flames of negation surrounded him, swirling in a profound vortex with proportions reaching dimensions impossible to describe, making Telmus appear like a thing from the myth that immortals could only dream of.
But the titan was not idle. As Telmus carved his path through the forest, the titan raised its regenerated arms. The icy fist and the granite fist slammed together.
The fusion of absolute cold and volcanic heat created a storm. A superheated blast of steam, filled with shrapnel of ice and stone, exploded outward, engulfing the entire forest, and Telmus with it.

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