Defiance of the Fall

Zac was confused by the mottled mixture of truths he sensed within Kator's attack. They had been fused so tightly into a singular force that Zac couldn't even make out their components, but the situation didn't allow for a deeper analysis. He felt a prickling pain in his right arm, and he realized he'd have to push [Conviction of Eoz] into a self-harming state if he wanted to fully block the strike.

Kator's attack was not only faster than his but heavier too? Zac's instincts told him it was too early to unleash his upgraded node and transitioned into a deflecting blow instead of competing in power. His free arm redirected the chains to target Kator's limbs, playing the fetters like an instrument. The chains could move independently, but manipulating them with his hand made their turns sharper and more unpredictable.

The six chains had already formed a domain around his target, striking from every angle. They were fast, strong, and naturally moved in adherence with his Inexorable Stance, where Dao elevated them beyond their normal state. Kator didn't back down. He forged ahead, somehow unleashing haymaker after haymaker without exposing any openings. Zac gave as good as he got, and ominous shrieks joined the rattle of chains as [Death's Duality] tore at the impervious reaver.

Soon, two battles raged in the vast coliseum. One was in the physical realm, where axe clashed against mace while shield and chains worked to shift the duel in their favor. The opening exchange proved that both approached conflict the same way—where offense was the best defense and retreat was surrender. It was forceful, overbearing, and suffocating, leaving the opponent in despair.

The second war was hidden from the naked eye but just as intense. It was a clash of the spirit where Dao was pitted against Dao as two opposing paths collided. Zac had become a representation of the inexorability of Death and cultivation's end. He was judge and executioner, shaping fate through the swings of his axe.

Yet Kator refused to be contained, denied Zac the authority of adjudication. He broke through real and metaphorical chains, subverting Zac's truth to impose his own. Even the Remoulded World Lord had been forced into a passive state by the armament's relentless pressure, letting Zac direct the fight like a puppet master while advancing for a final strike. Yet the reaver wasn't ruffled at all, countering many of Zac's techniques without missing a step.

Against most enemies, Zac could target their eyes or throat, forcing them to avoid or respond. Something like this was simply impossible with an Izh'Rak Reaver who didn't have organs or even a brain. Of course, Izh'Rak Reavers were difficult to deal with, but they weren't invulnerable. For one, using one's Warbones was apparently extremely taxing, more than most War Regalia. It also drained their Vigor, which was an important reason all reavers were Body Refiners.

Secondly, their consciousness was spread through their skeletons, which meant any damage to their bones could damage their souls. Even a strong enough hit to their extremities could shock their mind and briefly scatter their thoughts. And while their consciousness was spread through their skeleton, much was still gathered in their head. Destroying it wouldn't outright kill them, but they'd be half-dead and easy to finish off.

His chains didn't have that kind of raw power even after their upgrade. Kator ultimately was an elite at the precipice of Late Hegemony, and his Warbones were extremely strong even when his Attributes were restricted. Zac could probably slap the chains against Kator's skeletal plating all day without it changing much of anything.

That didn't mean the chains were useless. Targeting obvious weaknesses was only one of the strategies the Inexorable Stance could deploy—it wasn't even central to the way Zac used his armament. It was simply a method to speed up his fights against weaker or unskilled opponents, but he'd never planned on fully relying on those tactics when facing real elites.

Cultivators who had glaring weak spots didn't get far on the road of cultivation, and the further Zac progressed, the more fallbacks his enemies would have. Some could even survive having their head split open. Others were like Kator, using thick hide or War Regalia to block everything but the strongest strikes.

The Inexorable Stance was a technique of restriction and suffocation, and the fundamental way to use his chains was to literally bind his target. And as a fallback, he could position his chains so that some movements would capture the opponent's limbs or weapons, forcing them to approach another way.

If Alea had still been E-grade, it would have been impossible. Now, the links had enough power to restrict even Kator for short windows. They'd eventually snap, but Alea had already assured him it didn't matter. There were miles of chains hidden within the subspace of [Love's Bond], and Alea could always produce more by feeding her materials or recovering the broken links.

Chains snaked toward limbs and torso like nimble Boa constrictors, aiming to seal Kator in a tomb of death and metal. Yet it felt as though Zac was punching the air. Kator was slippery like an eel, weaving through the seemingly impassable web to continue his furious attacks. Zac found himself narrowly avoiding a crushing blow to his chest when Kator's arm should have been restrained.

The reaver's style lacked the flexibility of armament, but his technique had its own method of controlling the battlefield. It wasn't that the White Sky Phalanx scion used brute force or speed to open a path—it would be a fatal mistake to interpret Kator's deceptively wild swings as the signs of a barbaric fighter. Exquisite control hid within the wide movements, and Zac wasn't even close to exploiting those gaps.

His attacks were too fast, too forceful, and Zac had no choice but to continuously reposition while looking for an opening. One moment they were exchanging strikes on the ground, the next in the air. The constant shifts had a mysterious cadence that disturbed Zac's rhythm and broke his containment. Chains that should have caught a leg only found air; others seemingly veered right into Kator's shield when they aimed for his arm.

And there was a constant sense of discrepancy between reality and Zac's ingrained muscle memory. The feeling was similar to trying to run in your nightmares, where you moved in slow motion or were locked in place. Zac felt like he'd entered an invisible quagmire formed by Kator's technique. And the more he struggled, the more the swamp pulled him in.

Zac relied on his wealth of experience to wrest back the initiative, yet the sense of suffocation only grew. No clear winner had emerged after a minute of battle and hundreds of exchanges, but the reaver held an undeniable advantage. He flipped the script every time Zac created a small chance, almost turning opportunity into calamity. If not for his fine-tuned instincts and heavily augmented Danger Sense, Zac would have taken a hit already.

The reaver's mace was everywhere, each swing containing a force that couldn't be shrugged off. Forget seizing the momentum; Zac rather felt himself slowly being herded toward a cliff. And try as he might, he couldn't find a road to salvation. Unless something changed, Kator would take the first point within the next five minutes.

The difference couldn't be explained by the level of their techniques. Kator had stronger Daos, but he was only at Middle Integration, just like himself. He couldn't infuse much more of his comprehension into his technique than Zac, and the array nullified most of the other advantages of stronger Daos.

Neither was it attributes—Zac had to admit he had been given an advantage there. The combat array had reduced Kator's Attribute Pool to Zac's level but didn't fully account for Zac's higher Attribute Efficiency. His effective Strength, in particular, was above Kator's, yet he failed to leverage it into anything substantial.

One of the issues was inherent advantages. While Zac enjoyed higher raw power, Kator had other advantages the rules of the duel didn't prohibit. Few could compete with Zac regarding the number of Hidden Nodes, and he had two bloodlines and an external constitution that boosted the fundamental quality of his body.

However, all these unique strengths meant very little under the current restrictions. Zac had no Cultivation Manual, his Specialty Core added nothing to his combat ability, and his Bloodline Talents didn't empower his technique. Out of eight Hidden Nodes, only [Conviction of Eoz] and [Adamance of Eoz] helped.

The former let Zac push his body beyond the bounds of his attributes, while the latter let him fight at full strength. Kator's aura was growing stronger by the second, and it had already reached a level of oppression where it formed an attack or restrictive domain. It exerted a tangible pressure on Zac's body, like when Pavina unleashed the weight of her Inner World.

Zac's aura or Killing Intent could not do anything to the effect—it felt more like an attack on his Dao Heart. There was no way Kator was cheating with four Monarchs observing, which meant the effect was caused by the reaver's own Bloodline, Hidden Nodes, or Miracle Bones. And that was likely just the tip of the iceberg.

For Kator to emerge at the top of the generation within a warlike race like the Izh'Rak Reavers had to mean his hidden advantages were geared toward combat. It might be seen as unfair within the scope of the match, but it was impossible to create a completely fair duel. No matter what you restricted or allowed, one party would come out slightly ahead.

Zac could essentially ignore the oppressive domain thanks to his Eoz Bloodline, but he was still filled with misgivings as he held on. Zac's instincts told him that Kator was still holding onto even stronger methods, waiting for a moment of weakness to strike. Meanwhile, he hadn't even figured out what Daos Kator cultivated.

Only a fool would openly show their hand, but Zac had never encountered a situation like this before. A couple of clashes would always leak some clues. For example, there was no way Kator didn't understand his Inexorable Stance was based on the Daos of Death and Conflict by this point. Yet Kator was like a black hole, where an event horizon obscured the inner workings of his technique.

How was Zac supposed to anticipate Kator's moves when he couldn't tell which Daos they were based on? Fundamental mastery and Dao were the base components of technique, but experience was needed to make the most of it. A decade of struggle inside the Perennial Vastness had vastly improved Zac's adaptability, but the accumulated experience proved largely unusable.

Rather, it became a weapon pointed back at him when instincts and memories clashed. The discrepancy constantly caught him off guard and made it nigh impossible to take charge of the battle. Every second was spent at the precipice of disaster, where one small miscalculation would spell disaster.

Zac still hadn't released all his power, even if it was only a matter of time before his defenses were broken through. They were still sounding each other out, but it felt like he was exposed in the open while Kator hid in the dark. He needed to pry open the black box of Kator's technique if he wanted to find the route to victory.

Dealing with the unknown was a skill on its own, and Zac had found multiple ways to accomplish the goal. Zac knew he'd have to pay the price for knowledge with a powerful enemy like Kator, no matter the approach, but he still shifted his goal from landing a hit to forcing him to expose more aspects of his technique.

The battle grew increasingly frantic as Zac fought seemingly at random. His swings followed no rhyme or reason except for his desire to introduce disruptions to the battle and let chaos take hold. Doing so took him in and out of his Inexorable Stance, but it also pushed Kator off-balance. And whenever he regained his balance, Zac would extract a nugget of truth from behind the curtain.

The manic approach left Zac covered in shallow cuts after just thirty seconds, but he had managed to avoid anything beyond grazing strikes. Kator wasn't interested in bending the rules to claim victory after some surface wounds. He understood what Zac was doing and clearly wanted to crush him fair and square. Zac knew he couldn't skirt death forever, but he was close to an answer.

The feeling of walking a tightrope turned into acute impending doom as Zac used his smaller frame to squeeze beneath Kator's mace in the wake of his herculean swing. Zac was seemingly risking it all to strike at the reaver's chest, but the lethal shield was already moving toward his temple. A chain pulled him aside, but strands of severed silver hair dancing in the air showed how close he'd just been. But he'd managed to confirm his hunch from the way the shield moved to intercept.

It was hidden behind layers of misdirects and supporting Daos, but Kator was a Temporal Cultivator.

The Dao of Time was even rarer than the Dao of Space, and there weren't many cultivators he'd fought walking this path. Zac's obfuscated memories from the Perennial Vastness left him with some experience dealing with the Dao, but it was mostly how to force his way through temporal anomalies rather than fighting Temporal Cultivators.

The most memorable experience dealing with the Dao of Time was the betrayal of Leviala Cartava back in the Research Base. However, she wasn't actually a Temporal Cultivator. Her mysterious eyes let her forcibly swim against the river of time at a tremendous cost, but she didn't seem to have grasped the Dao for herself.

Kator obviously wouldn't use his Dao in a way that broke the taboo of altering the past—Zac doubted he was even able to. He'd instead infused his comprehension of Time into his technique, reminiscent of how Void's Disciple had fought using his comprehension of space. However, Adcarkas was only an E-grade talent moving toward Integration. Kator's application was light-years ahead.

It wasn't that Kator was faster or stronger than him or even that he was using a limit-increasing method similar to [Conviction of Eoz]. His attacks messed with temporal flow and perception so subtly that it took Zac three minutes to figure it out. What looked like a hasty jab was a full-powered swing, and his openings felt like traps because they were. There were two parallel timelines running, one real and another that Kator showed him.

Even after realizing the truth, Zac had difficulty figuring out which opportunities were real and which had already passed.

The situation was well outside Zac's expectations, but his heart beat with excitement. The misgivings that had plagued him for days were giving way to the addictive sense of discovery. Every response was a clue, every movement a revelation. Getting a hold of the Dao of Time was like finding a loose thread in a piece of fabric. He'd eventually unravel the whole thing as long as he kept pulling.

Exposing Kator's secret was the first step to his counter-attack. It didn't weaken Kator's technique, but it let Zac more naturally adapt to the disjointed time flow of the reaver's attacks. He was still on the losing end, but it wasn't quite as desperate as before. [Death's Duality] struck high and low, and the chains moved as though they had a mind of their own.

The rhythms were constantly broken and reborn over the next minute, as though Zac had forced his opponent into an endless cycle of reincarnation. Every exchange was a Death, leaving his path slightly wider as he continued deciphering the mystery of Kator's Daos.

"Since you're so curious, have a taste!" Kator suddenly roared as primordial runes appeared on the ridge atop his head.

Zac knew there was trouble when an opalescent shimmer spread across the Reaver's Warbones, and he was immediately proven right as the shield swiped at him with redoubled speed. Zac urgently leaned away, but the temporal quagmire he'd been struggling against the whole fight had come at him with redoubled force. In a split second, Zac entered thousands of timelines, all leading to suffering.

A roar from the depths of his heart broke him free from the mysterious state, and he ignored the false future and followed his instincts. Chains stormed forward to form a sacrificial wall, narrowly saving Zac from having his throat slit. But the brutal mace was already rising to meet him. Zac furiously fought back, but knowing about the Dao of Time was useless when it flooded the surroundings.

It was like Kator had become an avatar of the Peak of Continuum, meting out judgment at the mortals who tried to steal its secrets. It was as though his role as judge over death had been usurped. Zac knew he had to disengage and regroup but found no way out of the swamp. He helplessly found himself being submerged. The only path out was to shut down the Dao, but could he really use [Void Zone] like this?

A kick landed square in his chest before he could decide. [Love's Bond]'s protective haze couldn't absorb the force. Zac felt like his heart had been crushed, and he was launched into the air like a ragdoll. His mind was a mess, and he failed to gain control over his flight until he was caught by the protective barrier at the arena's edge. Zac barely managed to land on his feet, his whole body shivering as it worked to dispel the furious mix of Dao that had been shoved into his chest.

Kator remained floating at the arena's center, looking down at him like a god of war.

"That's one, Draugr."

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