"Maybe it's the one you had to suppress to have the balls to face?" Reinhard said calmly, and the words landed like a blade between the god of war's ribs. The god paused mid-swing, Reinhard's words striking his ego with a precision that no physical attack could match.
But in that moment of hesitation, both of them watched as Reinhard's sword—the compressed wind he had been wielding—began to break apart in his hands, the currents scattering and dissolving, unable to hold their form any longer.
The weapon simply couldn't handle Reinhard's swordsmanship. His technique had grown so refined, so devastatingly sharp through the constant improvement of mid-combat evolution, that the wind itself lacked the structural integrity to serve as a medium for his skills. He was too good for the weapon he was holding—his mastery exceeded what the material could express.
Reinhard's skills were so astronomically high that no conventional weapon could truly allow him to unleash them to their full extent. Every material he touched, every element he shaped into a blade, would eventually shatter under the weight of what he channeled through it.
The god of war moved instantly to exploit this opening, surging forward with his divine blade aimed at the gap left by the disintegrating wind sword. But Reinhard reacted without missing a beat—he reached out and grabbed the light itself, the ambient radiance in the air condensing and solidifying in his grip until it formed a bright golden sword that hummed with concentrated photonic energy. He brought it up and clashed with the god of war before the divine blade could reach him.
The two clashed, and shockingly, the two were about equal. Steel met light, technique met technique, and neither could find a decisive advantage over the other in pure swordsmanship alone. But with every exchange, with every collision that shattered the weapon in Reinhard's hands, he simply grabbed a new element and continued fighting without pause.
He took hold of earth, compressing stone and mineral into a blade harder than diamond. When that broke, he seized the air again, forming a thinner, denser blade than before. When that failed, he grabbed space itself, folding the fabric of reality into an edge so sharp that it cut through dimensions.
He even used shockwaves as weapons, catching the concussive force of their own clashes and shaping it into a cutting instrument mid-swing. Reinhard was able to use anything and everything as a weapon, taking hold of whatever was available in his immediate environment and wielding it in the clash with a mastery that treated all things equally. Even a sound was a weapon he could grab, condensing vibrations into a physical edge and swinging it as naturally as if it were forged steel.
"Impossible!" The god of war said in rage as they continued to clash, his frustration mounting with every exchange. War was his domain—his very identity, the core of his divine existence. He was the peak of combat in all its forms, the absolute pinnacle of every martial discipline that existed across every world and every reality.
Hand-to-hand combat, swordsmanship, spearmanship, archery, grappling—it didn't matter what form battle took. He was the best, without an equal whatsoever across the entirety of the divine pantheon and the mortal realms beneath it… except for the sole exception of Reinhard Pendragon, of course.
Reinhard didn't just match the peak—he went beyond it. That was why the god of war was in a rage that bordered on an existential crisis. Reinhard's skills had reached a level where literally everything in existence was a weapon in his hands, and every weapon he touched became the perfect extension of his will for as long as it could survive the strain.
How was the god of war supposed to rival such a thing? Even light, one of the most powerful and fastest-moving forces in all of creation, broke apart in Reinhard's hands because his skills were simply too high for such a weapon to contain. Light itself wasn't good enough to allow him to show off the full extent of his capabilities. That was an absurdity that the god of war couldn't process, let alone accept.
And now, even with the crippling debuff that Reinhard was forced to endure, even without having a weapon of sufficient quality to help him unleash his full power, even operating at a mere fraction of his true self—Reinhard was slowly getting the upper hand.
The god of war could feel it, could see the trajectory of the battle shifting with each passing second as Reinhard's technique continued to sharpen and refine itself in real time. He refused to believe this. He refused to accept that a mortal—a being that had existed for an eyeblink compared to his own eternal lifespan—could surpass him in the one domain he was supposed to reign supreme over.
"For a god of war, you're pretty laughable," Reinhard said, and then he froze as he felt his strength plummet. He looked down at the magic circle far below, which was suddenly overflowing with power, its patterns blazing with an intensity that dwarfed what it had been producing before.
Reinhard suddenly became a hundred times weaker than his peak self—his muscles losing their explosive force, his reflexes dulling to a crawl, his senses dimming as though someone had thrown a heavy blanket over every faculty he possessed.
The god of war took this opening almost instantly, recognizing the moment for what it was, and cut toward Reinhard's face with a strike that carried every ounce of his divinely amplified speed and power behind it.
Reinhard, who should have been far too slow to react at his current level of suppression, suddenly avoided the sword slash entirely. His body moved in a blur that shouldn't have been possible given how weakened he was, sidestepping the divine blade by a margin so thin that it shaved a strand of his red hair from his head.
In that same motion, his fist connected with the god of war's helmet—a single, devastating punch that landed with a crack that echoed across the sky. The god of war was sent shooting toward the ground like a falling star, his body trailing a streak of light and displaced air as he plummeted at terminal velocity.
The god of war hit the ground with a heavy explosion that carved a crater into the earth and caused an earthquake that was felt for miles in every direction. Buildings shook, walls cracked, and people across the region stumbled as the tremor rippled outward from the point of impact. Reinhard stood in the air far above, looking down at the god of war who lay at the bottom of the crater, motionless for a long moment.
'He is more of a god of war than I am,' the god of war thought, staring upward at Reinhard, who stood in the sky like a silhouette carved against the sun. What had happened? Reinhard had been too slow to react to his attack—his suppressed body simply didn't have the speed to dodge at that level of weakening. But light was fast enough.
Reinhard had taken hold of light itself in that critical instant and had it become his armor, wrapping photonic energy around his body like a second skin. The light-armor boosted his speed beyond what his physical body could achieve on its own, allowing him to move at the speed of light for just long enough to avoid the slash and land a blow against the god of war.
This had happened entirely on instinct. Reinhard didn't even think—there hadn't been time for conscious thought. His body had simply acted on its own, reaching for the nearest available resource and using it to solve the problem before his mind could even begin to process what was happening. He had bypassed the limitations of his own suppressed cognition entirely, his combat instincts operating independently of his conscious awareness to keep him alive and fighting.
"Your ability to adapt mid-combat is impressive. I dare say, at your full power, we would not be able to defeat you." The god of lightning said calmly, hovering at a safe distance from Reinhard as he assessed the situation with the analytical detachment of someone who understood exactly how dangerous the being before him truly was.
Indeed, Reinhard was improving as he fought, growing sharper and more capable with every exchange, closing gaps in his technique that shouldn't have been possible to close in the middle of active combat. And this had nothing to do with the Authority of Adaptation—Reinhard wasn't even using it.
He had deliberately left his supernatural adaptation dormant throughout this entire battle. Everything Reinhard was displaying right now, every improvement, every evolution, every impossible feat of mid-combat growth, was pure talent. Raw, unenhanced, natural genius operating at a level that even the gods themselves had never witnessed before.
Reinhard held out his hands before him, and to the god of lightning's shock, Reinhard grabbed the air as if a sword were floating right there, waiting for him to take hold of it. But that wasn't what shocked the god—it was what happened next.
Reinhard didn't grab the air, or light, or any other element to compress into a weapon the way he had been doing throughout the fight. This time, he did something fundamentally different. He imagined a sword worthy of his skills—a blade that existed only in his mind, a weapon that had never been forged because no forge in existence could produce it—and he poured the entirety of his swordsmanship into that vision.
He projected his mastery outward, using his skill itself as the material, using his understanding of what a perfect blade should be as the blueprint, and willing it into physical reality through nothing but the sheer weight of his expertise.
The god of lightning moved immediately, not wanting Reinhard to complete whatever he was doing. He could feel the shift in the air, could sense that something unprecedented was taking shape between those hands, and every divine instinct he possessed screamed at him to stop it before it was finished.
But he was forced away before he could close the distance, thrown backward as Reinhard's swordsmanship exploded outward in a spherical wave of cutting force, a dome of pure lethal intent that expanded from his body and erased everything that dared to get near him from existence. The air itself was severed, the clouds were bisected, and space cracked in hairline fractures around the epicenter of the blast.
"Impossible!" The god of lightning was shocked, his composure breaking for the first time since he had descended to this world. He watched, unable to look away, as a sword began to form from the absolute void of nothingness within Reinhard's hands. Not from an element, not from mana, not from any existing material or force—from nothing.
The blade materialized slowly, emerging from that void one molecule at a time, and what took shape was a katana—an extremely sharp sword whose edge was so fine, so impossibly keen, that it cut through reality simply by moving.
Even the lightest shift of the blade in Reinhard's grip left faint scars in the fabric of the world around it, thin lines where spacetime had been separated and struggled to knit itself back together. A sheath slowly formed around the sword a moment later, encasing the blade and preventing the world from suffering further damage from its edge simply being exposed to open air.
[Name: The Sword of Primordial Chaos
Description: This sword was forged by Reinhard from nothingness. A sword worthy of his skills was born from the void, called into existence by mastery alone. The sword can only be drawn from its sheath against opponents it deems worthy of being used against. It is the strongest, the sharpest, and the most beautiful sword in the world, with the power to grow alongside Reinhard, ensuring it would always be his perfect weapon—never outgrown, never outpaced.
Both the blade and sheath are indestructible and cannot be harmed, no matter what force is brought to bear against them. They are eternal and would outlive time, realities, and even concepts themselves.
While only worthy foes may witness its blade, it is also unable to be drawn by any being other than Reinhard; even if lost from his hands, the sword, even at the furthest point in reality and beyond, shall answer his call and appear within his grip instantly. Once the sword has been unsheathed, defeat is no longer a possibility; only defeat stands before the one who faces this blade.]
"Well… let me test what my best sword swing can offer," Reinhard said, reaching toward the sheath with his right hand. But his fingers stopped short as he felt resistance—the sword was unwilling to be unleashed against such weaklings. It refused to emerge for opponents it deemed unworthy of witnessing its edge. Reinhard's face went blank for a second, caught off guard by the fact that his own weapon was rejecting his command.
"Don't you want to unleash your power and announce to the world that you are born?" Reinhard asked, speaking directly to the blade as though it were a living thing—because it was. After a moment of consideration, as if the sword had weighed Reinhard's words and found merit in them, the blade was unleashed from its sheath.
The katana emerged into the open air, and the moment it cleared the sheath's edge, it burned with a dark red aura—the aura of primordial chaos, an energy that predated creation itself, older than the gods, older than reality, older than the very concept of existence.
As Reinhard moved the sword through the air in a slow arc, the world around him was not cut. Not a single thing was harmed by the blade's passage, despite the fact that its mere existence had been scarring reality moments ago while unsheathed. Because a true swordsman only cuts what he wants to cut—and Reinhard wanted to cut nothing but his target.
He looked at the god of lightning, who was flying backward with visible unease for the first time since descending to this world, the distance between them growing rapidly as the god retreated from something that every fiber of his divine being was telling him to fear.
"I shall reward you with the chance of being the first person to face the sword of primordial chaos. Are you ready?" Reinhard called out, and the dark red aura surrounding the sword exploded with newfound power, flaring outward in waves of energy so dense that they were visible to the naked eye.
As Reinhard channeled his own aura into the blade, along with the mana from the world around him, the mana in the world disappeared. Every trace of ambient energy in the atmosphere, across the land, for as far as the eye could see and beyond—all of it was consumed in an instant, drawn into the sword and converted into something far more primal and far more destructive than mere mana had ever been.
[A/N: MC is currently suffering a 100x debuff. The gods are stronger than a 9th rank.
The god of war, during his clash with MC, was improving as he fought. But MC improved faster.
When MC used light to buff his speed, he pushed himself to the limit. Although a 9th rank can reach light speed and beyond, they are cheating. They pretty much warp space and time to reach that speed. If one truly reaches the speed of light, time stops. For that moment, MC used light; time stopped for him. If he had pushed forward, he would have moved faster than light, causing time to flow backwards
This is the image of the sword I had in mind.]