The Primordial Record

Chapter 1793: The Dance of Final Silence

Rowan had been in many battles, and he knew how rare it was for him to find opponents who could push him past his previous limits. Every fight he had been in was a chance to grow stronger, and Primordial Demon was causing Rowan to evolve almost as fast as he did when fighting Primordial Soul.

In this battle, he had restricted himself, not using his weapons or armor, and except for allowing his other Wills and abilities to run under the surface of his skin, he only allowed himself to use the power of Time in an overt manner. Meaning that all the abilities he was going to be unleashing outside his body must be related to time.

All of the Origins in his body were bubbling and heading towards completion more quickly than if he had simply meditated, and he knew if he wanted, he could bring several lesser laws to Origin.

All of this, however, was pushed to the side as Rowan focused on his prey ahead. They were now falling up through the collapsing architecture of the Abyss, tearing through several levels until they slammed into an especially powerful level where their forceful passage halted.

The next level was the Ocean of Liquid Silence. It was a sea of black, viscous fluid that absorbed all energy and motion and was one of the favourite levels of Primordial Demon due to the great number of beings who had drowned in this ocean.

Primordial Demon landed on its surface and used his hand like a blade, chopping down to part the sea itself, creating a canyon of dry land for him to stand on. Rowan landed on the surface of the sea and found his movements slowed, as if trapped in amber, before an unearthly force dragged him under the ocean.

Laughing aloud, Primordial Demon swam through the silence of the deep like a shark arriving before Rowan and using a rapid-fire series of pressure-point strikes aimed at the points on Rowan’s body that governed the flow of essence throughout his being.

If he could disrupt Rowan’s internal rhythm, he could win. Rowan slowed, took the hits. He felt his connection to his Will, Essence, and Ether stutter. Seeing an opening, the Demon’s hands expanded like pythons, wrapping around Rowan and squeezing, trying to implode him with the pressure of the entire ocean.

Any being less sturdy than Rowan would be squeezed into nothingness, and Rowan could feel his bones shattering to powder and his Origin Land quaking as cracks ran all throughout its length.

In that suffocating grip, Rowan made a decision. He stopped fighting the pressure. He embraced it. Calling upon the power of Time Origin, he used Absolute Stasis on himself.

For one complete second, he became a fixed point in time, immutable and infinitely dense. The Demon’s embrace shattered against him like waves on a cliff. In that second of the Demon’s shock, Rowan broke the stasis and exploded outward with the Big Bang Burst, which was a state where Rowan released all the energy accumulated in his body in an instant.

The energy released vaporized the entire Ocean of Liquid Silence, sending a steam explosion tearing through the next several dozens of levels. Primordial Demon screamed as his body was vaporized and regenerated millions of times.

To estimate how much power was being generated by Rowan at this point was nearly impossible, and when he chose to release all that power at once, only a being like a Primordial could withstand it. However, the Demon had paid a price and had lost several units of Origin Force

All Primordials had several units of Origin Force in their bodies. Destroying a Primordial was almost impossible, but when it happened, they could simply burn their Origin Force to regenerate back to their optimal form. Newest update provided by novęlfire.net

Rowan had the capability to destroy a Primordial, but not totally, and so he had to make them burn through their Origin Force.

They landed in a hellscape of jagged, bleeding rock: the Peaks of Eternal Agony. Primordial Demon, infuriated from the agony of having his Origin degraded, tore a mountain peak from its roots and hurled it towards his target using a unique technique that caused hallucinations.

Rowan sidestepped it, but the Demon was already there, having ridden the projectile unnoticed, and delivered a knee to Rowan’s face. Rowan’s head snapped back, his jaw fracturing. He spat a tooth of solidified time that punched through the rock behind him.

Demon roared, and his attacks grew more powerful and frenzied, causing Rowan’s store of energy to begin running down extremely quickly.

Like the Primordials, Rowan could also be killed, but that required exhausting all his energy stores, so his laws and origins would be left defenseless. At that time, a being like a Primordial would be able to easily snuff out his life. However, knowing how to kill him was the easy part; the ability and the capacity to kill him were another affair entirely.

They dueled on the peaks, their movements becoming even more brutal and direct. The Demon used a technique called the Bone-Shattering Lotus, a hold that twisted three of Rowan’s limbs into impossible angles before he could rewind the damage.

Rowan answered with the Epoch-Sundering Headbutt, a blow that carried the collective impact of every extinction event in history. It split the Demon’s brow, and the blood that flowed was black fire.

The Demon roared in rage. Rowan could have used another technique here that was more effective, but he had chosen to headbutt him to prove to the Demon that he was not only going to match him in martial techniques, but he was also going to exceed him.

Down they went, through the Forest of Lamentations filled with trees that screamed and grabbed, but this level was cleared by the Whirlwind of power as Primordial Demon and Rowan’s passage turned them to dust.

They fell through the River of Flowing Screams, which the Demon boiled dry with a heated palm, and Rowan froze solid with a breath.

As their battle raged, a portion of Rowan’s consciousness that was busy with understanding and deciphering the flow of battle suddenly clicked, and everything began falling into place, and then Rowan began to laugh.

The Demon was technique perfected, but Rowan was the accumulation of all experience. He was learning. He began to anticipate not just the next move, but the next five.

He started introducing flaws into the Demon’s rhythm. He would take a minor blow to create an opening for a major one. He used a feint, making the Demon block an attack that never came, leaving him open to a real one from a different angle.

On the Plains of Forgotten Hope, a vast, grey wasteland, the Demon was tiring. His perfect form was now marred, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Rowan was bleeding from a dozen wounds, his body a testament to the Demon’s skill, but his will was undimmed.

“You… adapt,” the Demon snarled, his voice ragged. “But you have no art! No soul!”

’How amusing,’ Rowan thought, ’My soul is currently split within the Origin of Soul and the Origin of Imagination, and I am here with only my body. But there is no need to tell Demon that he is partly right, is there? Let me continue with this game, my prey.’

“Soul is why I’m here,” Rowan smiled, “She laid the foundation for your extinction.”

Primordial Demon, seeing the smile on Rowan’s face, finally calmed down, putting aside his rage, and he spoke slowly,

“If you can survive my Dance of Final Silence, then you have the right to speak of my extinction. If not, you shall perish here.”

The Demon, in a final, desperate gambit, unleashed his ultimate technique. He began the Dance of the Final Silence. It was a nine-part kata, each movement more complex and devastating than the last.

In the creation of his technique, Telmus had called upon his talents, but one of the roots of his abilities was with Primordial Demon, and that was the genesis of his martial talent.

Primordial Demon had also created his own killing technique after countless Eras roaming Limbo, although this portion of himself inside Reality could not use the full might of this technique, it should be enough to kill anything inside Reality.

Rowan felt the entire Abyss freeze in place, and he readied himself for what was to come. Internally, he had forty percent of his energy stores left, and those were rapidly regenerating.

’Let me see how far you can take me, Demon.’