Chapter 1546 Duke Horacio [4]
Damien's strange state of existence confused the entire cosmos.
He had the power of a God. He had the aura of one as well.
However, his actual level hadn't changed much, only being adjusted numerically by the system whenever it noticed that he was too strong for its judgement of him.
Leveling up hadn't affected Damien in many years. In truth, the concept of levels didn't matter to him at all, because he was outside the control of the system.
Damien's Legend was only his to control. It would be enhanced by him and him alone. The system didn't have any place to interfere in the process or aid him.
And if the system couldn't do it, wasn't it natural that the Heavenly Order couldn't either?
Edicts were meant to be granted to people who were acknowledged in their Godhood. They would be manifestations of everything the God stood for, a true coalescence of his self.
But for Damien whose soul and body were unreadable, whose power was Existence itself, how could the Heavenly Order create an Edict?
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The sounds all took place within Damien and Duke Horacio's bodies. Their current environment didn't allow the intrusion of sound.
Spacetime warbled, creating pulses that resonated with each other and spread outward, affecting a large area.
A hundred thousand-kilometer-wide area around the two men had been plunged into chaos.
With the shifting of space, objects and living beings were displaced into random areas. With the shifting of time, life forms aged rapidly and sometimes even aged backward, finding themselves in a completely different state than they were originally in.
If that was the end of it, the problem would be somewhat manageable, but it wasn't even close. The environment itself was subject to the displacement of space and time.
The mountain was sliced into chunks and thrown all around, the forest below aged and died, becoming a barren land. Even the soil went through a myriad of changes, absorbing mana, evolving, and dying all at once.
Still, Damien and Duke Horacio remained unseen, hidden within the folds of spacetime. To an outside observer, this change could only be considered a terrifying disaster caused by a miracle.
Fighting the Duke took a lot of mental concentration.
Ever since the man began inadvertently touching time, his moves had become more dangerous.
BOOM!
Damien got hit in the shoulder. He flew back, cushioning his fall with the spacetime layers around him.
'Necrosis.'
His cells were dying. They rapidly aged, and as if that wasn't enough, the fundamental organelles within were displaced.
Damien's genetic code itself was being changed by Duke Horacio's power. And as he found out, while the necrosis could be dealt with through Transcendent Regeneration, the displacement couldn't.
He had to manually rearrange his cell structures so that he as a person wouldn't be changed into something monstrous or nonliving.
And all the while, he had to dodge the Duke's attacks and counterattack so that this situation wouldn't be prolonged for too long.
Duke Horacio approached again. His fist went out in the form of a punch, but Damien didn't dodge backwards.
Instead, he ducked down, changing his orientation.
It was as Damien predicted. In the last moment, Duke Horacio pulled his arm up, and the spacetime layers on both sides crushed in.
If Damien had dodged in any direction that wasn't up or down, he would've been caught in that move.
'Damn.'
Damien had a lot of fine control over space and time, but Duke Horacio's Edict was more instinctual. It allowed him to mobilize the power of his surroundings far faster.
'The basis is still telekinesis.'
It was just that his power had been transferred to an ethereal level.
Damien pushed his arms out.
BOOM!
An explosion of space and time rocked the Duke, throwing him back.
Damien chased him, sending forth a barrage of concentrated spikes made of the two laws, cutting through the Foreign Noble's body.
Every power that Horacio used, Damien could use as well.
After all, the basis of the Duke's strength was the two laws Damien was most familiar with.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The back and forth between them was unending. With spacetime itself at their command, they worked to destroy each other's bodies and repair their own.
This process was relatively easy for Damien since he only had to worry about half of it, but it was different for the Duke.
Despite using his whole strength, he was being whittled away by the accumulating damage Damien caused.
'More.'
Duke Horacio pushed his power to the limits. The spacetime layers around him began to flow more uniformly, merging into a massive wave of chaotic energy.
VOOOOOOOM!
He threw his arm forward. The entire spacetime tsunami tore towards Damien, threatening to wipe his entire existence away.
Damien's eyes narrowed.
'This…'
He frowned, but it wasn't an expression of discontent.
'I can do this.'
Damien felt like he could take this move easily, despite what his mind told him.
Logically speaking, he would still have to dodge even if he could dissipate the massive wave of spacetime, however…
As he let his arms fly, controlling the spacetime around him, he found it to be smoother than he thought.
For some reason, the difficulty he had with controlling his mana was starting to disappear. It became easier for him to maneuver it however he wanted.
BOOOOOOOOOM!
With one push, Damien recorrected the spacetime layers to their original positions.
The tsunami dissipated as if it had never existed, but the force it contained was still left untouched.
Damien took the force itself under his control, making that intangible force tangible.
And as he slammed his arms to the side, reality itself obeyed, throwing the Duke back into the outside world.
Damien rushed forward, exiting the spacetime layers. He saw the chaos in the surroundings, but he didn't focus on it.
VOOOOOOM!
Damien's mana roared.
Duke Horacio's malakh did the same. He was obviously trying to push Damien back into the place where he held the absolute advantage, but Damien couldn't allow that.
Space solidified around the Duke, blocking his movements.
He tried to bend it back to its normal state and counter, but it didn't work how he expected it to.
This iteration of Space Law was Damien's own creation. It was completely separated from both of their home cosmos, and it would take more than a moment for Duke Horacio to understand and solve it.
'That was…'
Damien looked down at his hands in surprise.
He swept them through the air a few times, wondering if what he was feeling was a lie.
'Isn't this…easy?'
Damien flicked his finger forward. The prison around Duke Horacio changed. The space turned into darkness, and the darkness itself was a reflection of light, of the elements of Yang.
The laws merged and changed so fluidly that it caught Damien off guard. And on top of that, none of those laws he used were similar to the ones he knew.
'Can I alter things this easily?'
Duke Horacio had used an Edict. Since that moment, this battle had become far more difficult for Damien.
However, why did it feel like he was using an Edict now as well?
The Heavenly Order couldn't provide him with one.
The system couldn't do it either.
But something similar to an Edict still blossomed within Damien's soul.
It was born from Existence, but it was more than just Existence.
It made Damien's usage of Existence far easier, but that was only the base effect.
If one was able to take a peek into Damien's soul, one would be able to see something like a cage, a "housing" for power.
It was still in the early stages of formation, but its sheer presence made Damien's power more accessible.
That was exactly the difference he felt.
BOOOOOOOOOM!
The cage Damien created was blown to bits. The energy that kept it together burst into the surrounding area, razing the sky.
'He's free.'
It was nice to have a moment of thought, but this fight was still going.
Though…
Something in Damien's bones told him it would be over soon.
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