Chapter 2390 Formless (3)

Sylas didn't look at the blood running down his arm, nor did he spare any attention for the deeper tear Tomoe's last attack had left through the flesh beneath it.

His telekinesis was already thrumming through his body, sinking past the ordinary boundary between external force and internal control until his Will began pressing into every Rune, strand of Aether, Gene, and piece of matter that composed him.

The distinctions between those things blurred beneath his perception, not enough that they became identical, but enough that Sylas could feel how easily one could become the foundation for another if his Will dictated the change.

The dead landscape Tomoe had created reacted before his body did.

Thin cracks spread through the world of grey and black like fracture lines racing across a mosaic, and through those tiny separations came sudden flashes of green, blue, violet, and colors that didn't belong to the ordinary visible spectrum.

As those slivers of life returned to the world around him, Sylas' ruined arm reconstructed itself so quickly that blood still hung in the air after the skin beneath it had already become whole.

Tomoe's explosive laughter cut off in the middle of a breath, her grin freezing while her eyes widened with a mixture of shock and something much hotter. She understood almost instantly what Sylas had done, and that understanding only made the fire in her expression burn brighter.

He had watched her turn the world into Sword Will and use that Will to sharpen her injuries away, then taken the same principle and removed a step from the process entirely.

Sylas didn't need to convert the world into Sword Will himself before using it. His Will already contained the blueprint.

He had been capable of reconstructing his body from Will ever since stepping into Fathomless Rune Creation, but until now, the energy required for that reconstruction had still come primarily from his own reserves.

Tomoe had shown him how to reach outward, pull power from the surrounding world, and use that external foundation to rebuild what his Will already knew should exist. The difference looked small on the surface, yet it changed the cost of the ability so completely that Sylas could already see dozens of applications unfolding behind it.

Tomoe seemed to see the same potential. Her head snapped back as a sound tore out of her, something caught between a scream, a roar, and a moan, so raw that it felt less like a noise produced by her throat and more like the deepest part of her soul had finally been given a voice.

The grey and black domain around her surged outward in response, swallowing several more kilometers of the World of Spirits while black cracks began spreading from the corners of her eyes.

Her sclera flooded red and a swirling mass of black condensed at the center of each pupil.

Sylas' gaze sharpened as the nature of the power feeding her shifted, since Tomoe was no longer drawing strength from the Real Plane alone. Demonic Will rushed into her at the same time, and the two halves of her existence seemed to recognize one another with disturbing ease.

Her body changed under that union. Her hips filled out beneath the white gown, her chest rounded further, and the pale tone of her skin shifted toward a faint grey as sharp canines pushed down past her lips.

The blade-like strands of her hair whipped through the air around her, each one drinking from the world until even the remaining patches of color nearby began to wither into ash.

The strangest change came from the Sword Will itself.

It no longer sounded like lifeless steel scraping across steel. The howling blades around Tomoe cried out with her. They shrieked, whooped, and sang with something disturbingly close to joy, as though every fragment of Sword Will she had ever cultivated had been waiting for this exact moment, waiting for the woman they belonged to to finally stop holding herself back.

Sylas could feel that emotion spilling through the battlefield, and instead of recoiling from it, something inside him answered.

His blood began to boil harder. This was why he had been excited in the first place.

Sylas feared very few things, but the possibility of eventually reaching a point where nothing could challenge him had always sat somewhere deeper than he cared to admit.

Tomoe wasn't merely strong enough to threaten him, she was still improving while they fought, stripping away layers of dormancy and revealing more of herself every time Sylas forced her to adapt.

Now she had shown him something new again.

BANG.

Their Wills collided, and Sylas was sent flying before his fist could fully cross the distance between them. His heels struck the ruined ground and carved trenches hundreds of meters long before he finally arrested his momentum, but the instant his body stopped moving backward, he drove himself forward again.

Tomoe met him halfway.

Her sword descended in an arc that seemed casual until the sky behind Sylas split open, a line stretching across the clouds and continuing into a distant mountain range where several peaks silently separated from their bases.

Sylas dipped under the edge by centimeters and drove a fist toward her ribs, only for Tomoe to rotate her blade flat and receive the pressure through the side of the weapon.

The impact spun her through the air.

She used that rotation instead of resisting it. Her heel came around toward Sylas' temple, and he raised his shoulder into the strike rather than wasting the position required to retreat.

Bone cracked beneath the impact, yet his Will reconstructed the damage almost as quickly as it formed, allowing Sylas to use the force of her kick to shift his footing and release another punch from an angle that should have carried almost no power.

Tomoe's eyes brightened as she barely caught it with her sword.

The resulting shockwave blasted her across the ruined lake.

Water erupted several kilometers into the sky, but Tomoe's Will caught it before gravity could reclaim it, stretching every droplet into a glittering blade. A heartbeat later, she tore back through that storm with her sword raised and the entire sky following her like an army.

Sylas entered the storm willingly as every exchange became faster than the last.