Immortal didn't even bother to defend himself properly.
Varian's power bombarded him back to back, from the bits of order and chaos to the chaos of space and time.
Immortal's smile remained when he was sliced into two or was torn asunder by the brutal winds of space.
Varian fully used his artifacts, used his paths in unison and unleashed the power of slivers, leaving no stone behind to shatter Immortal.
"Hahahaha, I like this! I like it a lot!"
Eventually, Immortal started to fight back but his body was already too injured, his condition too bad to actually give Varian proper resistance.
In a matter of minutes, Varian slashed him into pieces, burned every inch of his body and broke his soul.
"Haa! Haa! Haa!"
Through the power of Hortus, he could keenly feel Immortal 'resurrecting' despite the destruction of his soul.
He tried to stop the process using Heaven's Will but it simply did not work.
"You know, I think this world is a bit more special than it seems." Immortal, back in his peak form, commented with a curious smile.
Varian gripped the handle of his sword and looked at him with a vigilant gaze. For an enemy like this, there seemed no other method than sealing him off. It might've it on someone else.
But Immortal could not be sealed. The bastard must've spread his vitality power all over the place and should be able to escape any confinement if push really came to shove.
ƈοm Moreover, the duel wouldn't end if one got sealed. It would end only when one of them gets killed.
'If I can seal him, use that time to improve my proficiency in slivers, I can beat him.'
But doing so would need Hortus to lift its current ban on all 'divine' places—the three forbidden places.
If that happened, chances were that Keman and Yami would call off the match for violating the rules and might even kill him with that excuse.
"Now that I look at it again, this world has an old scent. I've visited some very old synthetic worlds but this…this has a scent of…" Immortal narrowed his eyes and suddenly raised his hand.
The sword Varian threw was caught in his hand with an effortless grip and began to creak as he flooded it with the power of life and death.
Crack!
Immortal's power exploded outward blasting Requiem into pieces and reached Varian before the latter could properly react.
Crack! Crack!
The two other artifacts were deliberately targetted and unfortunately couldn't last against the power of slivers.
Varian clutched his bleeding chest and tried to create some distance.
Heaven's Will was already doing its best to suppress Immortal's powers and knocked him down to 80% of a divine ranker.
But even that was very difficult to face for a 63% like him.
The worst of it all—
"Give up, Varian." Immortal clenched his fist and Varian's arm exploded.
The vitality broken away from that arm was filled with death power and an undead version of Varian was created.
Varian's arm regenerated but with a snap by Immortal, his leg exploded and then his ears and eyes.
One by one, a dozen Undead Varian, none of whom could threaten him individually but could nearly knock him collectively, were formed.
"Give up, give up, give up."
Varian tried to fight off the Undead but Immortal blocked him. He killed Immortal nearly ten times already but he kept coming back to life.
Unlike Immortal, everytime he got injured, another Undead kept rising.
The odds were heavily stacked against him.
Soon, Varian was facing more than a hundred of himself as well as Immortal who controlled them all.
The injuries on his body were severe even though Immortal wasn't giving it his all.
"Do you realize?"
The Undead parted and Immortal stepped forward. Unlike him, this man had no traces of injuries at all.
Heaven's Will kept suppressing Immortal but it was futile when even his confined power was much more than what Varian could handle.
"You might be feeling indignant, after all, if you're given a thousand years, no, even five hundred years, you should be able to beat me.
But you didn't even get a hundred.
The fair battle rules that Aphosis was spouting about?
It's an equal battle, that's all.
From the start, this battle was never fair."
Varian's arms exploded powerlessly and he leaned forward powerlessly, looking like he was about to collapse.
But a smile formed on his face. "Fuck the rules."
Another beam of light fell on Immortal and he dismissed it as one more suppression, the last fight of a despairing Varian.
He couldn't have been more wrong.
"Wha—Stop him!"
Half of the undead jumped at Varian to kill him right away while the remaining half tried to block the beam of light on Immortal.
Varian didn't face them head on and instead used the power of Hortus to teleport himself and Immortal to one end of the world and used Heaven's Will to hide their location.
The beam of light falling from the sky stopped to prevent exposure and instead, the beam came from the ground, capturing Immortal.
"Arghh!" Immortal's screams were blocked off by the sliver barrier laid out and only Varian was able to enjoy the music.
Bit by bit, as the 'sacrifice ritual' ate up the very being of Immortal, the man was broken bit by bit.
He tried to escape but the Heaven Will's suppression along with Varian using his full power kept him immobile.
"Th-This can't be done by a celestial power…this is divine! This world is definitely di—arghh!"
Immortal's body and soul was disintegrated at the same time. And this time, a tiny bit of sliver power was also drawn out. The power of life-death slivers—the source of his Immortality.
Once the extraction of that power started, a fundamental change occured in Immortal.
His regeneration stopped and the mystical aura around him fell.
"No! No, you can't do this! This is a divine power! You ca—mff!"
Varian punched him in the face and cleaned the blood on his fist with a kerchief gifted by Primula.
"Do you think I'm a donkey to accept unfair fight and abide by the rules? I have to win, that's all. Doesn't matter how it is done."
Varian patted the cheek of his dear enemy whose body was fast disintegrating like sand.
"Th-They'll find you! They'll know! They should've already known by now! They're coming! My mother wi—mfff!"
"You really are a cave man without any social interactions." Varian shook his head. "I took care to cover up any suspicious power fluctuations from Hortus. They still think it's just better than average synthetic world.
Aphosis knows it's not. If he speaks up even a little bit, they will want to open this world and watch the battle for the sake of fairness.
But guess what?"
Immortal's eyes widened and his consciousness began to fade.
In the heart of Nexus, Aphosis silently turned to Aridam and conveyed a news in his ever calm voice.
'I put out a few fields to defend Hortus. All the defensive ones were broken by Yami. But the stealth fields, they're still there.
They are aware of what's happening inside but with less accuracy.
As long as direct divine power isn't used, Varian can use Hortus as he pleases.'
Aridam crossed his arms. 'And you call yourself a fair judge by withholding such crucial information?'
'I am a fair judge. So in an unfair battle, I have to be unfair for the sake of fairness.'
Inside Hortus, Immortal struggled to hold onto his consciousness, trying to survive for at least one more second.
"No, no, no…it shouldn't be like this. I am the Hero, I was supposed to…I….arghhh!"
Varian watched with an indifferent gaze as the last bits of 'Immortal' died off.
The sacrifice ritual withdrew and the 'Undead' Varian collapsed right away.
Varian sighed heavily, strengthened the seal on Hortus and stepped out.
The injuries on him healed by the time he reached Nexus and the divine rankers who were waiting for the arrival of Immortal were dumbfounded.
"S-Son, why did you take on the form of that wretched soul?" Yami's trembling voice greeted him.
"Son?" Varian had a strange smile on his face as he gave the woman a mocking glance before raising his arms.
"I am not the son. I am the savior of the alliance, the prophesied hero.
You can kindly refer to me with my Hero Title—call me 'Daddy'."