Chapter 2391 Formless (4)

Tomoe's blade no longer seemed attached to her wrist in any meaningful way, appearing wherever her desire to cut became strongest, while Sylas' fists began moving through paths that looked crude only until the purpose behind them became clear.

A missed punch changed the angle of his hips, that shift altered the placement of his feet, and the new stance became the foundation for a counter before Tomoe had finished recovering from the attack he had supposedly failed to land.

The battle felt like instinct clashing with intelligence, a maelstrom of technique and dancing Wills forming a storm of blades and fists.

Sylas could feel Tomoe's excitement every time she forced him back.

And she could feel his every time he returned stronger.

A sword edge opened Sylas' shoulder, another cut across his thigh, and Tomoe laughed as blood sprayed through the air, but Sylas stepped through both injuries without hesitation and drove his fist into the sphere of Sword Will surrounding her.

The defensive shell rippled beneath the impact while Tomoe's hair pierced the ground around him and drained even more strength from the world.

Sylas healed.

Tomoe sharpened.

Then they crashed together again.

Her Charisma continued rising, and with every increase the Real and Demonic Planes bent toward her more completely. What had once been a gap between them was disappearing quickly, and Sylas could feel her Will invading closer to his body with every exchange.

A thin cut opened beneath his eye, and another traced across his chest. Then Tomoe's blade finally crossed the protection around his fist and split the skin down to bone.

Sylas was losing ground, and everyone watching could see it.

Yamero could see the difference from high above, while the geniuses entering the World of Spirits from distant regions slowed the moment they felt the pressure rolling out from the battlefield.

Each new clash pushed Sylas farther backward, each exchange left more blood across the ruined landscape, and Tomoe's control over the world only seemed to grow stronger.

Yet Sylas' expression never darkened. His eyes only burned brighter.

The emerald Runes rotating through his irises accelerated with every injury, and the more Tomoe overwhelmed him, the more of her Will he seemed to understand.

Every cut taught him something, every collision exposed another relationship between Real Will and Demonic Will, and every failure stripped away one more limitation from the way he had been viewing his own power.

By the time another sword strike sent him tearing through a shattered ridge, his emerald irises no longer looked like ordinary eyes. They looked like two burning torches.

By this point, Sylas' mind felt like a chain reaction of electrical impulses, a wild mixture of buzzing bees and fluttering butterflies that somehow still moved with perfect purpose.

His heart sang with the want for challenge, and every exchange with Tomoe felt like something deep inside of him was being yanked out further, something he hadn't realized had gone dormant until now. The feeling only made his blood boil hotter as he launched himself forward again.

Tomoe's blade came down fast enough to turn the air white, but Sylas twisted through it and drove a fist toward her shoulder. The sword still caught him across the ribs, sending blood flying in an endless stream, yet the droplets barely traveled before they burst apart into currents of Runes that spiraled back toward his body.

Red mixed with cascading gold and emerald around him as the wound reforged itself into healed flesh almost as quickly as it had appeared.

Tomoe's grin widened as her blade moved faster.

Every strike became more forceful and more effective than the last, almost as though she was learning the perfect resonance needed to rend Sylas apart.

A slash that had only cut skin ten exchanges ago now slipped deeper, while another that had failed against his Will before found a new angle and forced him to shift his protection at the final moment.

Sylas was doing the same. His fists came from increasingly strange angles, yet none of the movements were wasted, and his body seemed to flow from one exchange into the next without ever fully resetting.

If Tomoe pushed him backward, he used the momentum to change his footing, and if her blade forced him to twist away, that same motion became the beginning of his next counter.

Their battle became a continuous push and pull.

One improved, then the other followed.

Tomoe's Sword Will spread farther with every attack, drawing more out of the world while Sylas' own Will became increasingly difficult to define against his body, the surrounding Aether, and the Runes flowing through both.

Before long, their battle seemed to have left the realm of ordinary reason entirely, with pieces of the forest vanishing beneath their clashes while distant mountains split from attacks that had never seemed to have been aimed at them in the first place.

Tomoe cut through the air and the sky screamed.

Sylas answered with a punch that didn't touch her, yet the pressure around her sword buckled enough to redirect the edge several degrees. That tiny change sent the slash past his throat instead of through it, and Sylas stepped inside the opening before Tomoe could recover, driving his fist into the Sword Will around her and blasting both of them in opposite directions.

Neither stayed away for long.

They crashed together again almost immediately, blood, Runes, Sword Will, and shattered light filling the space between them.

Far beyond the worst of the destruction, Januar had arrived without drawing either of their attention.

The young man stood with his backwards cap tilted low, his trench coat shifting in the wind while he watched Sylas and Tomoe tear apart the World of Spirits around them.

His expression remained completely flat despite the increasingly ridiculous battle unfolding in front of him, though the words leaving his mouth said something very different.

"I guess my Grand Master did give me a gift after all."