Chapter 530: The Limit Of Form
The cloaked man stood frozen, pearls of sweat rolling down his face. The wind had somehow managed to take down the hood of his cloak, gently brushing against his matte blonde hair.
The windswept hair conjured a hopeless visage with his thin maroon eyeballs. His mouth was slightly open, despair slowly contorting his face.
Northern, however, just stared with cold indifference, the point of his sword slightly touching the wooden ground of the ship's deck.
Silence wafted tensely between the two of them as the man was not sure what to do.
His mind screamed in utter disarray,
'No, no, no, no, no, this was not how this was supposed to go. We had planned this for days; this was only supposed to be a preliminary stage of what is to come. How could things go so wrong? I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, he's going to kill me.'
An even stronger despair began to rise in his head. One that seemed to totally consume the one Northern had inflicted upon him.
His eyes slowly contorted and began to find their flames again; the flames this time were madder, burning with rage.
"What have you done?!" The man screamed, grabbing his cloak and swiping it off his body with a single flip of his hand.
In his right hand, a silvery shower of sparks was already swirling.
Northern observed the man and his hand before taking one hand, using his pinky finger to clean off the dirt on his face with an irritated expression.
Then he straightened his hand as a sleek, midnight black greatsword with a shimmering silver edge manifested into it.
The hilt of the sword was dark, with subtle engravings that seemed to shift, almost as though they were alive, reacting to the mental state of its holder.
Before Northern's eyes, there was almost a stark resemblance that it bore to the living wood of the soul vessel. Like a living metal.
Northern narrowed his eyes and lazily extended the Dark Mortal forward.
"Like I said when I first arrived. You have only one sin, which is attacking a ship that I am on. Now, I don't care who you work for or what you and your folks were staging. But curse your fates that you happened to cross paths with me."
He paused a second, his eyes radiating a cold wickedness as he evaluated the man.
"Sometimes, coincidences can be quite brutal on plans." He shook his head in pity towards the man and swung his sword to one side before getting into stance, getting ready to give the man his own fair share of... death.
The man gritted his teeth, his face folded by a searing hot rage. He swung his sword to the side horizontally and dashed at Northern.
Northern's eyes widened the moment the man moved. Contrary to what one would have thought...
'Oh? He's fast.'
If it wasn't Northern, any other person would probably have not seen him coming and lost their reaction time.
But Northern was not like any other person.
Although he didn't see the cloaked man's dash unfold before the actual movement-chaos, after all, did not mean every movement. It was just in the thick of it.
Northern, however, could observe with his keen eyes every shift of the man's muscles, the slight twitch in his feet as he pivoted, the faint tightening of his grip around the greatsword -it all played out in slow motion through Northern's Chaos Eyes.
And from such keen and intense observation, Northern, thanks to his past battles, had been able to build a reaction time that could be considered insane.
He was used to fast opponents, which was why fighting the hijackers just seemed so slow, but this man... this man was different.
The speed, the precision, it excited Northern in a way he hadn't felt in a long time.
It amused Northern for a moment.
And the next moment, the greatsword came crashing down toward him, a blur of shimmering silver in the stormy air.
It wasn't just fast; it carried with it an immense force, enough to cleave the deck in two if Northern didn't react.
And react he did.
In a smooth, almost lazy movement, Northern sidestepped, the blade missing him by mere inches.
The gust of wind that followed it was sharp, and the deck beneath their feet trembled from the power.
"Impressive," Northern murmured, his tone one of genuine intrigue.
Dark Mortal remained at his side, unhurried.
The cloaked man growled in frustration and swung again, this time a horizontal arc aimed at Northern's midsection. Northern didn't retreat.
Instead, he stepped forward, weaving around the blade with the precision of a dancer, letting it pass harmlessly behind him.
As he moved, he raised his hand and drove the pommel of the Dark Mortal Blade into the man's side with a sharp, cracking force.
The man let out a grunt of pain but didn't falter.
He twisted, ignoring the blow, and brought his greatsword up in a sweeping upward strike.
Northern leaned back, following with intrigued eyes as the tip of the living metal passed in front of his face.
It was almost playful-the way Northern danced around each attack with minimal effort, his movements relaxed, fluid.
But Northern's mind was far from idle. As the clash continued, he was learning.
The cloaked man's movements were not just raw power; they were calculated.
Each attack carried weight, but it wasn't mindless.
There was a rhythm to his strikes, a pattern that Northern was slowly unraveling.
The man was fast, yes, but predictable-his attacks followed through in traditional arcs.
It was powerful swordsmanship, but Northern realized that power could be the man's
weakness.
A smirk tugged at Northern's lips as he realized something from the man's attack pattern.
'It has a form.'
This man, despite his rage and desperation, was bound by the structure of his form. Northern, however, could be anything-he could be nothing.
If the man's attack pattern wasn't based on a form, Northern felt the man would have been more of an opponent to him.
But was it possible to create an attack pattern without form? A combat style that is ever- bending, ever-changing, ever-flexible, ever-evolving?
Although Northern never allowed himself to be tied down by the rigidity of traditional techniques, his movements, guided by instinct and Chaos Footwork, were ever-changing.
But it wasn't enough!
Somehow, his mind for some reason drifted towards the formless attribute.
He remembered his encounter with Hao and how he had used formless to copy the attack
pattern of the devil corpse eater.
But he wasn't interested in copying his opponent's attack patterns.
His opponent's combat style was weak and useless against him for a reason; he wanted
something more.
What more could formless do that he was not thinking about?