Myriad Rivers to the Sea

The third layer of the Void was a place devoid of color and sound. It was an endless, churning ocean of absolute nothingness where chaotic spatial storms could effortlessly strip the flesh in a fraction of a second. To exist here required a deep understanding of the void.

With a deafening roar that vibrated entirely through spiritual pressure rather than sound, Terris unleashed his boundless Qi. He did not just summon roots or vines; he birthed a localized island. A massive, floating island of petrified dark earth and indestructible ironwood exploded outward from his body. This created a platform of solid ground in the middle of the void.

Terris stood at the center of his newly formed domain. He was using it to protect himself inside the void. His massive, tree-like limbs were crackling with earthen power.

A few hundred yards away and floating effortlessly in the nothingness, was Demon Lord Malos.

Malos did not summon a grand domain like Terris did. In his right hand, he held the iron sword his son had forged for him. This did not go unnoticed by Terris.

"You bring a mortal's toy to a Sovereign's duel, Malos?" Terris sneered as his voice echoed across the petrified continent he had created. "Your parlor tricks of prediction will not save you here! There is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide!"

"I do not need to hide from a dead man," Malos replied. His voice was no longer the boisterous and cheerful tone that Li Yu had grown to know. It was flat, cold and carried the terrifying certainty of a predetermined truth.

Terris bellowed in rage. He slammed his petrified fists into the ground.

World Crushing Ironwood!

The entire floating continent shuddered. Millions of massive and jagged spikes of ironwood, each the size of a warship and possessing the density of star metal, erupted from the surface. They shot across the void toward Malos like a localized meteor shower. They were weaving and intertwining to form an inescapable crushing cage of earth and wood laws.

Malos didn't blink. He didn't even raise his sword to defend himself. He simply took a step forward. When this battle had first begun he was thinking that it would be a thrill to fight without his foresight. However, with the death of his friend, Malos was now furious and was using his full powers. Within this layer of the void, Li Yu’s interference wasn’t here even with him alive.

The Lord of Foresight did not fight in the present; he fought seconds in the future. As the apocalyptic storm of ironwood crashed down upon him, Malos walked. He tilted his head a fraction of an inch to the left and a massive spike missed his ear by a hair's breadth. He paused for exactly one tenth of a second and allowed two intertwining roots to slam into each other right where his chest had been a moment before.

He casually strolled through the devastating bombardment as if he were taking a leisurely walk through a light spring rain. Not a single splinter of wood, not a single speck of petrified dust had touched his crimson cloak.

Terris’s eyes widened in sheer disbelief. He didn’t think this level of foresight was possible but he didn’t realize that Malos had been able to take a break from using his abilities for so long. Since he was able to rest it, he was able to push it to its very maximum right now. This wasn’t a level that Malos had ever reached before. The combination of resting his power and his own rage had pushed into a new level.

Terris pushed more of his massive Qi reserves into the assault and was causing the ironwood to splinter and detonate like shrapnel. It was filling every conceivable inch of space with lethal projectiles. Malos stepped out of the barrage and was still perfectly unharmed. He was now standing only thirty paces away from the Lord of the Ironwood.

"You fight like a blind, panicked beast, Terris," Malos said quietly, raising the Qi-wrapped sword. "You throw mountains because you do not know where to place a single stone. It is a pathetic display. You will die today."

"Die!" Terris roared back and abandoned his ranged assault. He lunged forward and his entire body coated itself in a layer of impenetrable diamond like armor. He threw a punch directly at Malos's head.

Malos sidestepped the blow a fraction of a second before Terris even flexed his shoulder. As the massive, diamond coated fist sailed harmlessly past him, Malos swung Tuwark’s sword.

The blade itself never touched Terris. The Sovereign’s Qi extended from the edge of the weapon and passed through the Demon Lord’s massive arm. It bypassed the diamond armor completely. It seemed to ignore the physical density entirely and cleanly severed the underlying laws holding Terris’s foundation together.

Terris froze, a look of uncomprehending shock freezing on his face.

His right arm simply detached from his shoulder and floated away into the void. There was no blood. The wound was perfectly smooth and instantly sealed by the law of Malos's strike.

"You..." Terris gasped and was stumbling backward. He thought that he could match a fellow Demon Lord’s strength. His supreme confidence shattering in an instant. The gap in their power wasn't just wide; it was insurmountable. Malos hadn't even unleashed a grand technique and he was still dismantling him. He didn’t realize that Malos was unleashing his grandest technique on him, his foresight used to its maximum capabilities.

"You and your human whore dropped a city wiping soul strike on my head," Malos stated with his black eyes narrowing as he took another slow and deliberate step forward. "You forced my children to look death in the face."

Terris was too cornered to process what Malos had just said. That Malos had children here. He was thinking of getting out of here and away from this man. He tried to retreat. To desperately try and summon more ironwood to form a shield but his connection to the earth laws was faltering. The void was acting to isolate him and as he was burning through his Qi, his connection to the outside world weakened further.

"But worst of all," Malos whispered as he raised the sword high above his head. The starlit Qi flaring into a massive blade of darkness. "You killed my traveling companion. A man who asked for nothing and sacrificed everything. This execution is to honor my friend. Serve him in your next life. Die!"

Malos brought the sword down.

Terris screamed and attempted to detonate his own body to take Malos down with him but he was far too slow. The starlit blade cleaved cleanly through the center of Terris's massive form. It bisected the Demon Lord from the crown of his head to the base of his spine. The Lord of the Ironwood’s soul was instantly extinguished.

The floating island of petrified earth immediately began to crumble and dissolve without its master's Qi to sustain it. Malos stood in the void and was completely unbothered by the collapsing destruction around him.

He reached out and casually caught Terris’s storage ring and the emeraldgreen Sovereign core that floated up from the disintegrating corpse. Malos looked down at the sword in his hand. The bone hilt was perfectly intact, the deep-earth iron blade completely unblemished. He smiled softly, carefully sheathing the weapon.

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"A flawless blade, Tuwark," Malos murmured proudly. He had finished his task and avenged his friend. The friend that sacrificed his life so they could win this battle and protected his children. It was time to return.

Hundreds of miles away from The Eternal Crucible, the sky was tearing itself apart. The jagged horizon was a chaotic and apocalyptic blur of flashing steel, howling hurricanes and roaring, acidic tides. Sovereign Morven and Lord Jareth were locked in a duel of unfettered violence.

Where Malos’s fight had been a display of surgical and untouchable precision, this battle was a brutal meat grinder of attrition.

Lord Jareth, the Human Pillar of the Sword, was a blur of motion. He rode the violent thermal currents of the region and his wind laws propelling him at speeds that defied comprehension. Behind him floated his Martial Spirit: The Astral Zephyr, a multi-winged entity composed entirely of sharp, cutting gales.

Jareth swung his unadorned greatsword and was unleashing hundreds of crescent shaped wind blades that shrieked through the air. Each one of those blades was capable of slicing a mountain range in half. They were imbued with his understanding into the laws of the Sword and Wind.

Sovereign Morven did not bother dodging. The Lord of the Violet Deep stood his ground on the ravaged earth. He roared while thrusting his trident forward.

A localized ocean of highly concentrated and violet colored acidic water erupted from the ground beneath him. It quickly formed a massive and churning tidal wave that swallowed Jareth’s wind blades. The acid hissed violently as it dissolved the condensed wind Qi and turned the battlefield into a toxic fog.

"You are too slow, Morven!" Jareth taunted him. His voice was echoing from everywhere at once as he rode the gale force winds in a massive circle around the Demon Lord. "You hit like a leviathan but you cannot strike what you cannot catch!"

"I don't need to catch you, human!" Morven bellowed as he slammed the butt of his trident into the ground. "I just need to drown you!"

Morven pushed his Sovereign Qi to the absolute limit. The toxic fog instantly condensed and turned into millions of suspended, needle-like droplets of Abyssal Toxicity. With a flex of his will, Morven commanded the needles to explode outward in an omnidirectional and inescapable sphere of death.

Jareth cursed aloud. He realized he couldn't outrun a blast that covered every conceivable angle of escape. He commanded his Martial Spirit to fold its massive wings of wind around him and form a hyper dense hurricane shield.

The toxic needles slammed into the wind shield and while it didn’t break it, it was beginning to melt the defensive Qi. Jareth’s feral eyes narrowed. He was going to lose the war of attrition with this brute. The acidic tide was too potent. He needed to end the fight with a single and decisive strike.

"Let's see how much punishment that thick hide can take!" Jareth roared.

He intentionally dropped his hurricane shield. The toxic needles instantly pierced his physical defenses and was melting through his armor and searing his flesh. Jareth screamed in agony but he used the momentary gap in the omnidirectional blast to launch himself forward. He channeled every ounce of his Qi, along with the full power of the Astral Zephyr, into his greatsword.

He became a literal streak of cutting wind. Morven saw the desperate and suicidal charge. He brought his massive trident up to block the attack. He stepped heavily into his stance to brace for the impact. But Jareth was a master of the sword. At the absolute last second, he violently shifted his trajectory. He sacrificed his footing to completely bypass the shaft of the trident.

The massive greatsword blurred past Morven's guard.

SHHHHKK.

The sound of parting flesh was sickeningly loud. Sovereign Morven let out a thunderous and earth shaking roar of pain. His left arm was severed cleanly at the shoulder. It flew through the air and landed heavily in a pool of acidic mud.

Jareth skidded to a halt fifty paces away and was panting heavily. His body was covered in horrific and smoking burns from the toxic needles. He turned around with a bloody but triumphant smirk on his face. He had crippled the Lord of the Violet Deep. Even though he was injured and tired, Morven was in much worse shape.

But Jareth had severely miscalculated the nature of a Demon Lord’s wrath.

Morven did not fall to his knees as expected from the damage. He did not clutch his bleeding stump. He turned to face the human and his pale eyes glowed with a terrifying madness.

"My turn!" Morven growled.

The blood violently spraying from Morven’s severed shoulder did not hit the ground. Morven seized control of his own lifeblood and infused it with the most concentrated essence of his Abyssal Toxicity. The blood turned a sickening, luminescent black.

Before Jareth could even raise his sword to defend himself, Morven thrust his remaining hand forward. The black, toxic blood shot across the battlefield like a high pressure geyser and struck Jareth directly in the chest.

The impact knocked Jareth off his feet and sent him crashing into the rocky earth. The Human Pillar shrieked. A sound of unadulterated agony. The supreme toxicity didn't just burn; it actively devoured his flesh. It was melting his armor into slag and aggressively rotting the meridians in his chest. His Martial Spirit wavered and violently dispersed. It was unable to maintain its form as its master's foundation was actively eaten alive.

Jareth thrashed on the ground and was desperately trying to use his wind laws to purge the poison from his body but the abyssal rot was too deep, too potent. He was rapidly losing the ability to fight.

Morven wasn’t much better. He was breathing heavily and bleeding profusely from his missing arm. He couldn’t close the wounds due to the residual laws and Qi from Jareth’s attack. He began to walk slowly toward the writhing swordsman and lifted his trident with his right hand.

"I will mount your head on the gates of the capital! How dare you ruin one of the happiest events of my life!" Morven bellowed.

Suddenly, the shadows cast by the jagged rocks around Jareth stretched unnaturally.

Thorne stepped out of the darkness. Thorne did not hesitate. He clapped his hands together and the shadows beneath Jareth instantly solidified into thick and unyielding chains of dark metal. The chains wrapped violently around Jareth’s arms, legs and throat. It completely paralyzed the poisoned and screaming swordsman and locked his remaining Qi down tight.

Thorne looked up at the one-armed Demon Lord.

"He is defeated, Morven," Thorne said with a calm voice. "Do not kill him. I have already secured Elara. We need answers. We need to know the true depths of their betrayal. I hope you can understand."

Morven stopped ten paces away. He looked at Thorne, then down at the chained and melting form of Lord Jareth. The Demon Lord's chest heaved as he fought the overwhelming urge to thrust his trident through his skull.

Slowly Morven lowered the tip of his weapon. He was too wounded to fight against Thorne right now and he had to go check on Ignis.

"I will grant you this, Thorne of the Shadows," Morven spat. His voice was still trembling with unchecked fury. "I will let you bind him. I will let you pull the treacherous secrets from his rotting mind."

Morven took a step closer and was towering over the chained Jareth.

"But hear my words, human!" Morven roared while throwing his head back and screaming at the chaotic, burning sky. "When you have taken what you need, his life belongs to the Violet Deep! I will personally execute him! I will grind his soul to dust to avenge my sworn brother, Li Yu! For the sacrifice he made today, this traitor will scream for an eternity!"

Thorne, who had been maintaining the heavy iron chains, suddenly froze. The old farmer blinked, his hollow eyes widening in confusion. He looked up at the bleeding and enraged Demon Lord.

"Sworn brother?" Thorne repeated. His voice barely above a whisper. "The young human wanderer? Li Yu is your sworn brother?"

Morven glared at Thorne. "He took the attack that would have turned this into a disaster! Your arrival also helped to shift the balance. For that I thank you. "

Thorne stared at Morven and was completely stunned. He had known Li Yu was exceptionally talented. He had known the boy was resourceful, cautious, possessed a ridiculously solid foundation and endless potential.

But to learn that this pragmatic, low profile wanderer had somehow managed to become the formally recognized sworn brother of an apex Demon Lord. That he had apparently sacrificed his life to save the demon capital was a revelation that shook Thorne to his core. He had wondered where the boy was but had just figured he had escaped after sending the message.

Thorne looked down at the ground and a respectful awe settled over him.

"He truly was a remarkable young man," Thorne murmured softly while also mourning the loss of a cultivator who had seemingly managed to bridge the impossible gap between the races.

If Thorne only knew that the "martyred" sworn brother was currently hovering above The Eternal Crucible and casually raining javelins onto the heads of his enemies, the old farmer might have laughed. But for now, the tragedy of the war hung heavy over the jagged horizon.