The instant his body crossed the boundary, everything stopped.
His forward montum died as if he had slamd into invisible stone. His four arms froze mid-stride. "What-"
He never finished the thought when sothing pulled from within him.
A violent wrench tore through his existence, and his vision inverted.
One mont he was inside his body.
The next, he was standing outside it.
His physical form remained suspended at the edge of the domain, eyes wide and lifeless, while his soul was dragged fully into the crucible. His soul form flickered into existence-smaller, far weaker than the two titans already fighting, its outline unstable and trembling.
The four-ard warrior scread.
Inside the domain, the rules were absolute.
The Rank Four Amazari turned first.
His eyes lit up.
Another participant.
Another source.
He struck without rcy, but he wasn't the only one as Beginning also sent out a punch.
A compressed air blade tore through the four-ard warrior's soul, splitting it nearly in half with a gigantic punch finishing it off.
The scream cut off abruptly as the soul convulsed.
And power surged.
The Amazari shuddered as strength flooded into him, his soul expanding, stabilizing further. He understood instantly.
This domain rewarded violence indiscriminately.
Beginning felt it too.
The mont the other soul was wounded, fragnts of refined essence scattered through the domain. So were drawn to the Amazari.
Others flowed into Beginning.
The titan roared, his soul flaring brighter as stolen strength reinforced his crumbling form.
Beginning did not waste the opening.
The four-ard warrior's soul collapsed into fragnts.
So surged into the Amazari.
But a larger portion was swallowed by Beginning.
The Amazari sensed it and reacted instantly.
He snapped his hand forward.
A ring of compressed air spun into a wheel and slamd into Beginning's soul shoulder, shearing off a chunk the size of a cart. The severed essence burst into shining dust.
The Amazari inhaled sharply as the dust rushed into him and fed him with power.
His soul presence expanded, bronze light hardening at the edges.
Beginning answered with raw brutality.
He stepped into the blade storm, letting it cut him again just to get closer. Each slice tore lines into his soul. Each line beca a stream of fuel for the Amazari.
But the titan's fist landed.
Beginning's soul hand smashed into the Amazari's chest and caved it inward. The bronze-skinned man staggered, rings of air faltering for half a breath.
Beginning leaned in and bit.
A section of the Amazari's soul, the size of a limb, was torn free and
dragged into Beginning.
The Amazari scread.
And Beginning grew stronger.
The Amazari tried to retreat.
Beginning followed, wounded and burning, but now faster.
The Amazari unleashed a full burst.
"Gale Burial!"
Air rings detonated outward, turning into a grinding sphere that
shredded Beginning's soul from the waist up. The titan's upper half
beca fragnts.
The Amazari devoured those fragnts and surged again.
But the mont he surged, Beginning surged too.
Because in the sa instant the air sphere had shredded him,
Beginning's remaining lower half slamd forward and took another
bite.
A shoulder.
An arm.
A strip of spine.
Each swallowed piece fed Beginning more strength, and each
increase in strength made the next swallow easier.
The Amazari's eyes widened in terror as he watched himself get devoured.
Outside the domain, the battlefield had gone unnaturally quiet.
When the four-ard warrior charged, so of the watching races felt a brief surge of hope. That hope lasted less than a second. The instant his body froze at the boundary, several Rank Three elites felt it through their instincts alone. Their spines went cold. "That domain..." soone whispered. "Anyone that enters becos a participant."
When the four-ard warrior's soul was ripped free, gasps rippled through the assembled races as they watched the essence of the warrior flow into the titan and the Amazari.
Only when Beginning started winning did their negative feelings reduce a bit, but the fear in them did not go.
Beginning's soul burned brighter.
The mont the last fragnt of the Rank Four Amazari's essence
was torn free, his existence was stripped down to its most refined state and pulled apart by the domain without rcy.
There was no one left to receive it.
So it all went to Beginning.
Beginning stood alone.
His soul form swelled massively, no longer jagged or torn, but whole
and overwhelming.
Outside the domain, his physical body responded in kind. Muscles thickened. Bones deepened. His forty-ter fra grew denser, heavier, and seed to be even growing taller.
There were no challengers left.
The Law of Brutal Rebirth delivered its judgnt.
Inside the darkened domain, the last traces of the four-ard warrior's physical body began to react. His frozen corpse, still
suspended at the boundary where he had first crossed, cracked like dry clay. Veins of dull light seeped out of it, pulled by an irresistible
force toward the center of the domain.
The four-ard body did not resist.
It had no will left.
Its flesh collapsed inward, muscles unraveling into raw essence,
bones dissolving into streams of pale force. In seconds, the entire body was stripped down to nothing and drawn into Beginning's physical form like smoke into a furnace. The titan's body pulsed as the energy was absorbed.
That devouring was fast because the four-ard warrior was weak.
Compared to what ca next.
At the center of the domain, the Rank Four Amazari's physical body
still stood.
It hovered upright, bronze skin unbroken, eyes empty, unmoving. Though his soul had been erased completely, the body itself had not collapsed. Rank Four existence was not sothing that vanished easily. Even without a soul, the body remained saturated with law and accumulated power that had been refined over centuries.
And now, the domain turned its attention to it.
The Amazari's corpse began to glow faintly.
Threads of condensed essence peeled away from the bronze skin,
slowly at first, then faster.
Unlike the four-ard warrior, this was not a clean process.
The Amazari's body still had too much.
Each fragnt that flowed into Beginning made the titan's body
tremble violently. His muscles expanded and compressed in cycles. His bones groaned, reforging themselves again and again to handle the incoming power. Cracks appeared along his skin, sealing almost instantly as the rebirth chanism forced his form to adapt.
Beginning grew.
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