(anwhile, within the Ti Stilled World, isolated training grounds, Leo's POV)
Leo had a faint idea about the move he wanted to create, and yet, he wasn't sure about how exactly he could get there.
Having observed both the Tiless Assassin and Soron's [Seconds Walk] closely, he knew what kind of a move he needed to create to achieve combat supremacy against Gods, and thanks to his
knowledge about the laws of the universe, he even had a foundation on how to do so.
However, the only problem was converting the theory into practice, as although he knew the core concepts that made the [Seconds Walk] possible, what he did not know was the fine tuning that he needed to do to make it a reality.
"I know that the [Seconds Walk] is connected to the divergence in the ti stream.
The montary anomaly where the ti stream splits into two, before rging again, however, what I don't know is how to induce that anomaly purposefully?
And how to affect which of the two streams takes hold, after the re-rger occurs?"
Leo wondered, as he stroked his chin and tried to think about how he wanted to make this impossible theory into a practical move.
"I know divine essence is probably the solution to this.
However, I'll need to fiddle around a lot with it to understand how precisely to control the ti stream..."
"Also, I need to ask myself if that's all I want from my move?
Or like the Tiless Assassin's Projection said, do I try for sothing even greater?"
Leo asked himself, as he thought about an interesting theory that seed extrely appealing, at least on paper.
Because if he was going to spend months, or maybe years, trying to forge a move worthy of becoming the foundation of his future combat style, then creating a lesser imitation of the [Seconds Walk] felt wasteful.
A copy seed to be bare minimum, as it would be sothing that had a proven track record against the universe's finest.
However, Leo did not want to bet on track record alone, as what he needed was a move that fit his own body, his own temperant and his own grasp of the laws.
The first pillar had to be ti.
That much was obvious.
If he could force a divergence in the ti stream, then for that brief instant, two simultaneous outcos could coexist, as one version of him could be struck while another simply was not there.
And if he could influence which stream beca real when the two rged back together, then in practical terms, enemy attacks would keep losing their target without understanding why.
That alone would already be monstrous in battle.
Because to an outside observer, it would look as though Leo had
slipped through attacks that should have landed, as though causality
itself refused to pin him down.
However, Leo understood that ti alone would not be enough to make this a complete move.
Dodging attacks through temporal divergence was excellent for survival, yet survival was only one half of combat supremacy, as eventually he still needed a way to turn that advantage into pressure, and pressure into death.
That was where the law of space ca in.
If the law of ti gave him the window in which two outcos could coexist, then the law of space could decide where he reappeared after the re-rger, as it would allow him to convert evasion into sudden displacent.
In other words, he would not simply be avoiding attacks.
He would be vanishing from one point in battle and reasserting himself from another, as the split in ti would deny the enemy certainty, while the bend in space would deny them orientation.
That combination alone was already terrifying.
Because if an enemy could neither confirm whether Leo truly
occupied a given point in ti, nor predict where he would re-enter space once the split collapsed, then every exchange against him
would beco a gamble.
And gambling against a superior fighter was the fastest path to death.
Still, Leo was not satisfied.
Because even that only solved mobility and survival, and while mobility and survival ford the skeleton of an excellent divine movent technique, they did not yet give it enough bite.
So the third pillar had to be creation and destruction.
Arguably, it was the hardest law to integrate elegantly, because unlike
ti and space, which naturally complented movent, creation and destruction could easily beco clumsy if applied without
restraint.
Yet Leo saw a path for it.
If ti divergence made the enemy uncertain, and spatial
displacent made him hard to pin down, then creation and
destruction could be used to poison the battlefield itself, as he could leave behind unstable phenona at the points where the split
occurred.
For example, if he vanished from one stream and reappeared from
another, then the "false" location he seed to occupy could be seeded with a destructive construct, sothing compact and heavy that ford through divine essence and collapsed a mont later.
A gravity sphere, perhaps.
A compressed ball of distortive force that dragged at everything around it for a heartbeat before bursting outward.
That sort of phenonon would be perfect.
Because the enemy would be forced to react twice.
First, to his uncertain location.
Second, to the destructive anomaly left behind by the point where
reality failed to keep him anchored.
That was what truly appealed to him.
A move that was not rely evasive, but oppressive.
A move that turned confusion into positional control, and positional control into forced error, as the enemy would be dragged, displaced, destabilized, and punished just for trying to keep up.
And the more Leo thought about it, the more beautiful the idea
beca.
"If I really want to make sothing worthwhile, then this is it...."
Leo muttered, as just imagining it in actual combat gave him chills.
He could see it, a God swinging at him, as he himself entered a mont of divergence, where one stream held him in place and the other did not.
As at that mont, while he manipulated the rger through divine
essence...
One stream collapsed while the other stabilized, as the version of him that had already been struck ceased to exist while the untouched
version carried forward.
Space followed imdiately after, bending just enough for his position to shift at an angle that would be impossible under normal movent, as his presence slipped away from the original line of attack without resistance.
At the point where he had originally stood, a dense gravitational construct ford under extre compression, as the surrounding space warped inward and pulled at the enemy's footing, dragging their body slightly off balance at a critical mont.
While at the end, the construct detonated an instant later, releasing that pressure outward in a controlled burst, as the disruption forced a lapse in the opponent's awareness at the exact mont it mattered most, giving him the chance to attack from behind and behead the
enemy.
*Goosebumps*
He could see it clearly now...
The vision of the ultimate move he wanted to create.
"It's worth aiming for...."
He muttered, as he understood that he was not a drear sitting in a
library anymore.
He was a warrior trying to build sothing real, and real moves were
not born from beautiful ideas alone, as they had to withstand the brutality of repetition, testing, failure, and correction.
Which ant this problem had to be approached in the only way that made sense.
One piece at a ti.
He could not create the full move in a single leap. There were too many moving parts, too many unknowns, and too
many layers of interaction between the three laws for that to be
realistic.
So instead, he needed to isolate each minor problem and solve them one by one.
First, he had to determine how to even sense the divergence in the
ti stream reliably enough to act around it, because if he could not identify the anomaly at will, then everything else was aningless. After that, he needed to understand how divine essence influenced
the rger, because sensing a split and controlling a split were two entirely different levels of mastery.
Then, once that was stable, he needed to test how spatial relocation behaved during and after the rger, because forcing displacent too early or too late could collapse the sequence entirely.
And only after those pieces were working would it make sense to
layer in creation and destruction, as trying to attach battlefield constructs to an unstable movent technique too soon would only create chaos without purpose.
Leo understood all this clearly.
Which was why, despite how grand the end goal looked in his mind, he did not allow himself to beco intoxicated by it.
He respected the scale of what he was trying to do, as he knew that divine techniques worthy of legends were not built through excitent, but through discipline.
One minor problem solved today.
Another tomorrow. And then another after that.
If he kept moving that way, steadily and without losing sight of the
final shape he wanted the move to take, then eventually the pieces
would begin to fit together.
And when they did, what erged would not be the Tiless
Assassin's [Seconds Walk].
It would be his own.
A grand move forged from his understanding of battle, his instincts
developed over his lifespan, and sothing that would complent his style of battle, allowing him, Leo Skyshard, to stand before hostile Gods and make them question whether they were truly safe from death or not?
User Comments
0 comments from readers