Chapter 2388: Formless (1)

The Will spilling out of Tomoe no longer behaved like anything Sylas had ever experienced before, and for the first time since his own breakthrough, Eternal Will no longer felt so all encompassing.

What spread from her did not carry the same sense of overwhelming permanence that his own Will did, nor did it feel like some greater quantity simply pressing down from above. Instead, it seemed to lose the need for defined boundaries altogether.

Formless Will.

The moment Sylas understood the name, he understood at least a portion of what made it different. It seemed to exist everywhere and nowhere at once, its presence impossible to isolate into a clean edge, yet somehow able to embody whatever space it occupied so completely that separating it from the surroundings became almost meaningless.

Eternal Will endured, while Formless Will seemed to remove the distinction between itself and the world it was trying to influence.

That explained why Tomoe could invade foreign Aether so easily.

The Sword Will surrounding her didn’t need to crash into the Aether of the World of Spirits and overpower it directly. It slipped into every gap, blurred the boundaries between what belonged to her and what didn’t, then forcefully reinterpreted the result until trees, water, air, and even the light itself became extensions of Sword Will.

Sylas watched the process happen in real time and felt his interest sharpen despite the obvious danger.

Tomoe rolled her shoulder once, the newly healed flesh carrying no sign of the injury Sylas had given her earlier. Her grin hadn’t disappeared either, and the more her Will spread through the lake and forest, the more alive she seemed to become.

"Tomoe."

Sylas met her gaze.

"That’s my name." She lifted the Executioner’s Blade until its edge rested across her shoulder, her eyes narrowing with open anticipation. "I hope you can satisfy my bloodlust."

Then she moved.

The lake vanished beneath her first step.

Water exploded outward in a perfect circle, but before a single drop could rise more than a few meters, each one stretched into a shining blade under the influence of her Formless Will. Thousands of liquid swords swept toward Sylas from every direction while Tomoe crossed the distance between them at the same time, her real blade cutting through the center of that storm.

Sylas stepped forward instead of retreating.

His fist moved.

The strike didn’t touch Tomoe’s blade, yet the space between them collapsed under the clash of their Wills and detonated outward with enough force to flatten the closest section of forest. Trees several hundred meters tall bent away from the lake before their trunks split, rainbow leaves tearing free and scattering into the sky like fragments of colored glass.

Tomoe laughed.

Her sword changed direction halfway through its arc, slicing diagonally upward while the thousands of water blades adjusted with it. Sylas twisted his body and drove an elbow through the Sword Will gathering near his ribs, his Eternal Will crushing a path through the attack before it ever reached his flesh.

Another shockwave erupted.

The lake split from shore to shore.

A canyon of empty space appeared through its center as water rose into walls on both sides, each surface trembling under the opposing Wills fighting for control. Tomoe’s Formless Will crawled into those walls almost instantly and converted them into Sword Will, while Sylas pressed outward and erased the transformation anywhere within several meters of himself.

They disappeared from the center of the lake.

The next clash happened above the forest.

Sylas drove a punch downward while Tomoe swept her sword horizontally beneath it, neither attack physically touching the other before the air between them screamed and collapsed. Everything below was driven into the ground by Sylas’ pressure at the same time that Tomoe’s Sword Will sliced outward, leaving hundreds of thin cuts stretching across the flattened forest.

Tomoe’s laughter followed them through the destruction.

"This is good."

She twisted in the air and cut again, her blade moving too quickly for the sound to keep up. Sylas shifted his shoulder, allowing the edge to pass within centimeters of his chest while his fist came forward toward her face, only for Tomoe’s Formless Will to invade the surrounding Aether and turn the space itself into a shield of intersecting sword edges.

Sylas punched through it.

The sword barrier shattered into millions of fragments of Will, each one scattering through the surrounding forest before Tomoe recalled them with a thought. They converged behind Sylas and attacked his back, yet his Will spread without him needing to turn, and every blade stopped several centimeters short before dissolving.

Tomoe’s eyes brightened.

"You really can keep up with me."

The excitement in her voice sounded almost inappropriate.

Half the lake had evaporated beneath repeated clashes, the remaining water carving into separate basins separated by invisible cuts, and entire sections of the forest had become fields of stumps and shattered stone.

Sylas didn’t reply, his mind moving at impossible speeds.

Formless Will was stronger than Eternal Will in the hierarchy, but hierarchy alone wasn’t enough to decide their battle. Tomoe had reached higher, yet Sylas’ Will carried a density and control that allowed it to meet hers without immediately collapsing, and every clash taught him more about how her Formless state invaded the spaces around it.

And most importantly... his Charisma was far more potent.

Tomoe seemed to notice the same thing and her grin widened again.

"I don’t remember the last time someone a full level beneath me could do this."

She vanished.

This time Sylas barely moved his head before a sword edge passed where his neck had been, and his palm struck forward toward Tomoe’s sternum. The contact still didn’t happen, since her Sword Will thickened between them at the last possible instant, but the pressure from Sylas’ strike blasted her backward through three distant mountains.

The peaks erupted one after another.

Tomoe tore out of the final explosion laughing.

Something had changed. No... something was in the process of still changing.

The Sword Will surrounding her was becoming cleaner, not larger in any obvious sense, but sharper in a way that made Sylas think of rust falling from an old blade after years inside its sheath.

Each movement stripped away another layer, and the more she fought, the more her body seemed to remember what it had once been capable of.

Her Charisma began climbing with it.

At first the change was small enough that Sylas only noticed it through the way the surrounding world responded to her, but within a dozen exchanges, the gap between them had started closing fast.

Tomoe no longer needed as much time to force the Aether around Sylas into Sword Will, and the reach of her Formless Will began slipping closer to his body before his own Will pushed it back.

A thin line opened across Sylas’ forearm and blood welled from the cut.

Tomoe’s eyes sharpened the instant she saw it, and another burst of laughter escaped her as she attacked again.

Sylas blocked with his Will and drove a fist toward her shoulder, but this time two more cuts appeared across his side before the clash forced them apart. They were shallow enough to mean nothing, yet their existence changed the nature of the battle.

Tomoe was getting closer.

Every exchange stripped away more rust, her Sword Will becoming faster, denser, and more invasive while her Charisma continued rising toward Sylas’ own. By the time they collided above the ruined lake again, thin red lines had begun appearing across Sylas’ body often enough that even Yamero could see them from high above.

Tomoe raised her blade, her hair whipping wildly behind her while the entire World of Spirits seemed to sharpen in response.

Her grin widened once more.

But this time, Sylas grinned back.