The Primordial Record

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.

The steam was beyond scalding, the shrapnel could shred dimensions, and the pressure was immense, equalling and exceeding the power that Telmus was creating, utterly crushing him inside the immensity of its scope.

Telmus was caught in the heart of it. There was no time to think, only to react. His will was his armor.

His roar of rage and defiance shook the Arena as he created his fourth sword form, Mountain Root Unmoved.

He planted his feet, grounding himself not in the disc, but in his own resolve. He became still. His sword moved in a blindingly fast, intricate pattern before him, a shield of pure negation.

Telmus might have infinite potential, but even this potential needed time and space to grow. His techniques could be refined without limits, but his overall energy was not limitless. He could not simply match this Titan in power, but there were many paths to victory.

The scalding steam hit the edge of his blade and vanished, unmade. The shrapnel of ice and stone met the same fate, ceasing to exist the moment they touched the perimeter of his defense.

But the pressure remained. The sheer force of the blast pushed against him, a physical weight trying to crush him, to grind him down. He held, muscles straining, teeth gritted, his every ounce of being focused on maintaining the integrity of his will-blade.

The white disc beneath his feet began to crack under the strain, not from attack, but from the immense concentration of power he was exerting to simply hold his ground. This Arena was meant to hold powers that reached the Primordial Level, and the cracking across its surface had shown that the level of power now being unleashed had firmly reached the rank of Origin!

The storm abated. The forest was gone, replaced by a blasted, steaming landscape of pitted stone.

Telmus stood, panting, steam rising from his body. His defense had been perfect. Not a single drop of steam, not a single shard of rock, had touched him.

But the cost was immense. The mental and spiritual effort of maintaining such a perfect, prolonged negation was exhausting. His will, though unbroken, was strained.

The titan was already moving. It learned. It adapted. It saw that overwhelming, singular attacks could be negated, but that the act of negation itself drained its tiny opponent.

It closed the distance with shocking speed for its size, its multi-natured legs eating up the ground. It did not throw a massive punch. It jabbed with its icy fist, a precise, spearing thrust aimed directly at Telmus's center mass, meant to test his defense, to force him to expend more energy.

Telmus parried. A clean, sharp movement that met the icy spear-point with the edge of his will-blade. Another silent severance. The tip of the ice fist vanished.

But instantly, the granite fist followed, a hammer-blow from above.

Telmus shifted, bringing his blade up in a diagonal cut—Fifth sword form, Sky-Rending Divide—meeting the descending fist and shearing off a corner of it.

Before the shards of granite could even hit the ground, the titan's thorned mouth opened, and a stream of concentrated lightning—Hekaton's essence, focused into a blinding, white-hot lance—shot out.

Telmus was already moving, his body a blur of evasion. The lightning lance scorched past him, vaporizing a trench in the disc behind him. But the titan tracked him, the lightning stream sweeping horizontally, forcing Telmus into a relentless dance.

He leapt, twisted, rolled, each movement millimetrically precise, the lightning searing the air where he had just been. He could not negate a continuous stream of that magnitude; it would require a constant, equal output of will that would burn him out in seconds.

He was on the defensive—pure, utter defense. The titan pressed its advantage, a master of a hundred elements, each attack flowing into the next, giving him no respite, no opening. A whip of thorned vines from its leg. A localized blizzard from its icy eye. A rain of magma droplets from its stony fist. A cloud of sleep-inducing pollen from its rotting flowers.

Telmus was a ghost in a hurricane. His sword was a constant flicker, a silverfish of negation in a storm of color and destruction. He parried, he severed, he negated. A vine would lash out and cease to exist. A shard of ice would vanish against his edge. A glob of magma would be unmade before it could spatter.

But he was being pushed back, step by step. Each negation was a tiny drain, each evasion a tax on his stamina. The primordial's power was indeed an ocean, and he was a man trying to hold it back with a bucket made of his own soul.

A particularly clever attack nearly ended him. As he negated a wave of freezing air, he didn't see the disc itself change beneath his feet. The essence of Metagei and Anthesterion worked in tandem. The stone turned to clinging, sucking mud that seized his ankle, while instantly, a grotesque, flower-like mouth bloomed from the mud, snapping at his leg.

He severed the flower and the mud with a desperate, downward stab, but the distraction cost him. The titan's full, regenerated icy fist connected with a glancing blow to his side.

It did not feel like being hit by something solid. It felt like being touched by nothingness. The cold was so absolute it didn't feel cold; it felt like the cessation of all feeling, all energy, all life. His skin blackened and died instantly. His ribs screamed as they flash-froze, becoming brittle. The shock of it was agony and numbness combined.

Telmus cried out, a raw, guttural sound of pain, and was thrown sideways, his body skidding across the disc, trailing a smear of frostbitten blood. He clutched his side, his breath coming in ragged, painful gasps. The cold was burrowing inward, seeking his heart.

He focused his will inward, fighting the invasion, forcing the heat of his own life, the memory of the sun of Trion, to push back against the absolute cold. It was a battle within a battle, and he was losing.

The titan loomed over him, its shadow engulfing him. It raised its granite fist, magma dripping between its fingers like eager saliva.

"THE NEEDLE BREAKS," it intoned. "THE OCEAN PREVAILS. YOUR MEANING IS ERASED."

The fist began its descent, a meteor of certain death.

Lying broken on the ground, Telmus looked up. Not at the fist, but past it, at the swirling, impossible cosmos of the arena, at the silent, watching gods. He thought of his wife, Seri. He thought of her smile, not as a memory, but as a fact. A truth. He thought of the sunblossoms at the foot of his statue. Meaning was not a shield. It was not a weapon. It was a foundation.

He thought of his daughter and her stupid name, Staff, and Telmus smiled as he realized that his will was not breaking. It was being compacted. Forged in this moment of ultimate pressure.

It was almost effortless the way it appeared, his sixth sword form, Unbreaking Stone, Unmoving Heart.