Telmus had fought many battles in his life, and he had never known defeat, but he had been wounded. In fact, he had been injured only twice in his life when in battle. The first ti was when he raised his sword against his mother as a child, and she had shattered every bone in his body as she laughed at him. The last ti was against the God King, Golgoth, who attacked his only weakness as a mortal, which was his soul.
One thing was clear to him: every ti he had been wounded, it was because he had let his guard down and chosen to trust his opponents’ honor.
He had not expected his mother to crush him as a child who first held a sword; likewise, with Golgoth, Telmus had not seen that soul attack coming. If Telmus wanted to fight dirty against the Gods of Trion, he could have targeted their temples and believers; he was powerful enough to sweep across the entire surface of Trion and erase all life, but he had chosen to fight the gods directly in an honorable display where the most powerful would prevail.
And for his folly, he had been cut down.
As if he had not learned his mistake, Telmus had allowed the voice of the demon to remain in his heart as a sign of his honor. He was willing to fight for the chance to reclaim his life, even given the conditions placed before him.
If he wanted, Telmus could have broken the hold of the Primordial Demon in his soul, but he did not. Even if he were going to fight the Primordial, he would do it directly; he would announce his intentions, wait for Xylos to prepare himself, before he would attack.
This was his spirit born from the sheer confidence he had in his abilities, yet once again, he had been burned by those who had no honor.
Telmus was in pain, but this pain of the flesh was nothing before the rage in his heart. For one, he had accepted that Primordial Demon would betray him, the sa way that Golgoth did, yet there was still a bit of hope that for sothing so ancient, there must be a part of them that still knew honor; obviously, he was wrong.
Still, what caused Telmus to rage was the corruption of his opponents. In the monts before the seven mysterious figures were to manifest, Telmus had felt his bloodline ripple, and he sensed the connection he had with them.
This was the first ti he had felt sothing like this in his life, a sense of connection that equaled and was showing signs of exceeding the connection he had with his family and Telmus was eager to share with them and understand them in the language he knew best, which was using battle, but this damned demon... this fucking demon may have stolen this opportunity away from him!
His body was covered with intense lightning that should have turned him to ash a trillion tis over, but Telmus Will was unbreakable and covered his flesh with a thin film that blocked every act of destruction from touching him.
However, the force from the blow was continuously pushing him through the air like a shooting star, and if this battle were happening in Reality, Telmus’s body would have crossed half of it by now.
A roar that shook the entire Arena burst out from Telmus,
"Xylos!!! For this betrayal, I shall FUCKING KILL YOU....AAHHH...."
His body, which had been shooting into the distance with speeds many tis faster than light, suddenly halted as Telmus’s Will commanded his body to stop.
A massive shockwave burst out of his surroundings that caused the Arena to shake and weaker immortals watching it to fall from their seats. Telmus’s understanding of Will was still imperfect, and when he halted his montum, he had not allocated for the excess energy he was carrying, or he did not just care, and all this energy, having nowhere to go, was released from his body as a frightening shockwave.
Telmus’ eyes closed, and everything around him went still. From extre motion to standing still and from extre rage to a calm clarity, it happened nearly instantaneously.
He threw away his anger and rage, for they would not serve him here. This battle had transford, and Telmus could no longer slowly learn to comprehend his Will in battle; instead, he had to hurriedly master his abilities because he was going to be killing Primordials.
His mind returned to the monts of his youth, when he first held a blade and watched the demonstration of the simple sword forms. Telmus had been captivated by this, and from that mont, he learnt all of his combat arts from referencing these first simple sword forms.
The corrupted fusion of bloodlines stood still for a mont; its form was a statent that all things, no matter their nature, could be broken and remade into a tool of consumption and destruction.
It took a step and then began to run, its body blurred across the distance. The white disc of the Arena scread as its massive body, heavier than a hundred dinsions, crossed through space.
Every ti its multi-natured feet touched the ground, the Arena did not crack, but dissolved, as it was consud by a dozen different entropies at once.
"BEHOLD THE FINAL ARGUNT," its voice was the grinding of tectonic plates, the howl of a blizzard, the crackle of a forest fire, all woven into a single, devastating thought that hamred into Telmus’s mind, as it arrived over Telmus, set to pounce on its target.
"THE UNITY OF PURPOSE. CONSUMPTION!"
Telmus did not wait for it to finish its proclamation. To wait was to be annihilated by the conceptual weight of its existence.
His blade of Will had been destroyed by that first punch, and so he did not resummon his sword. He beca it.
His will, hardened in the obsidian prison, tempered by mory and sharpened by the nihilistic whetstone of Xylos, solidified in his hand. It was not a weapon of light or tal. It was a shard of pure intention given form. It was a length of absolute darkness, but a darkness that cut, a negation that defined itself by what it severed. It had no crossguard, no poml. It was simply an edge, a line drawn against the chaos. This was the Sword of Telmus. An extension of his soul.
The titan’s icy arm swung first. It was not a punch; it was a glacier calving. The air froze solid in its wake, creating a jagged, trailing landscape of instantaneous ice that followed the fist’s trajectory. The sheer cold was a physical force, seeking to flash-freeze Telmus’s blood, lock his joints, and still his heart.
Telmus moved. He did not block. You cannot block a glacier. He flowed.
His body beca a whisper, a ghost of motion. He used the frozen air itself as a stepping stone, his feet touching the erging ice spikes and using their brief existence to propel himself upwards.
His martial arts had many forms, and one of its foundations was built on adaptability, of using
an opponent’s strength against them. He beca the wind that slips through the frozen trees.
As the icy fist obliterated the space where he’d stood, Telmus was already in the air, his trajectory a perfect arc that brought him down toward the titan’s granite wrist. His sword, the embodint of his focused will, drew a line of nothingness across the frozen limb.
There was no sound of impact. There was only a silent, perfect severance. A section of the murky ice-arm, large enough to crush a house, sheared away and vanished into the absolute edge of his will-blade, consud by its negation.
The titan roared, a sound of grinding rock and splitting ice. It was not pain, but outrage. The stolen essence of Yuleti began imdiately to regenerate the limb, the cold swirling back into form, but it was slower now. Telmus’s cut had not just removed mass; it had negated a portion of the concept itself.
Its other arm, the fist of granite and magma, ca around in a backhand that could level a mountain range. This attack was accompanied by a shockwave of pure heat and concussive force. The leaves on its back sharpened and shot toward Telmus like a billion poisoned daggers, while the spore-cloud around its head condensed into a seeking, corrosive missile.
Telmus was surrounded, enveloped in a storm of elental fury.
He t the storm with a single, unwavering point: his sword.
He did not try to evade all of it. That was impossible. He found the center. The root.
His body beca a vortex of precise, economic motion. His sword was no longer a blade; it was the needle of a compass, always finding true north in the chaos. He spun, his form a blur of white hair and onyx skin against the apocalyptic backdrop.
In the depths of Telmus’s mind, his control over his Will reached a threshold, and everything clicked into place as he rediscovered the first form of his sword technique.
Unfolding Lotus.
His sword moved around him in a series of impossibly fast, concentric circles. Each circle was a perfect cut, a barrier of negation. The billion leaf-daggers did not strike him; they t the edge of his will and ceased to exist, each tiny annihilation making no sound, simply vanishing into the totality of his defense. The corrosive spore-cloud t the unfolding lotus and was unmade, the complex life-death cycle severed at its root.
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