At the same moment that Terug noticed that punch, he used his trump card and World Qi burst from his body reducing the damage from the punch and barely managing to repel the Essence Slayer Sword.
The World Qi was wasted extremely quickly in that state, and there was even risk of suffering a temporal decrease of strength after bursting it in that way, but since the effects would be nullified, Terug decided to go all out, or the previous attack would have damaged even his soul.
"You had just shot, and before I noticed it, you were already at my back. Since I didn't detect any space ripples, you must have combined the Space Essence with the Time Essence, but I didn't notice the Time Essence either, which meant that your control over it vastly surpasses mine..."
Terug's shock only increased as the battle advanced, but at the same time, he was happy because Yale was his friend and not his enemy. Having strong friends was a blessing.
Leaving alone Yale's background, just his fighting prowess was enough to make World Gods unable to ignore him.
Terug was sure that Yale was the strongest Essence God. He hadn't heard of any other Essence God who could push to that extreme a Tier 8 World God.
"Even with your vast knowledge, I doubt that you can understand how profound my control of time is."
Yale thought that his previous strategy would have ended with a victory, but he underestimated Terug's capabilities.
Nevertheless, Terug was still injured, and once his burst of World Qi ended, he would be defeated automatically.
In that situation, the best option was to stall for time and let the opponent exhaust the burst of energy. In a normal situation, the World God would just stop the burst quickly, but Terug couldn't, or his injuries would be enough to leave him powerless
However, Yale didn't plan to act like that since he wanted to test an improvement from his previous attack.
"This will be my last attack. I killed a Tier 8 World God when I was just a Tier 9 World God by using it. If you can endure it, this is my loss. I won't be able to endure more in this state."
Terug was conscious of his state, but he didn't feel that would be shameful even if he were to lose against Yale. In his eyes, Yale was a monster like the Battle God and could skip levels easily.
Terug gathered all the World Qi that wasn't serving to sustain his body into the axe despite knowing that it would break as the previous attacks had weakened it.
However, he was betting everything to his last attack, and the results would be nullified anyway, so he didn't mind if it broke.
If that were a real battle, Terug wouldn't doubt to discard a weapon in exchange for his life. The weapon was very valuable, but it was useless for a dead man, it was better risking it all that letting his opponent steal the weapon after killing him.
Of course, there wasn't any need to reach those extremes in a spar, but Terug wanted to see Yale's limits.
Terug was sure that in the future a lot of people would want to spar with Yale like happened with the Battle God who had uncountable challenges form experts wishing to fight with him.
If he didn't give his all, he was sure that he would regret it in the future.
While Terug was preparing for his last hit, Yale started to create a formation with his weapons using the Essence Slayer Sword as the center.
Yale wasn't wielding the Essence Slayer Sword but had it floating above his head.
The bow was stored away as it wasn't useful for him in his next plan, but the rest of weapons were floating around the Essence Slayer sword with only the gloves remaining in Yale's hands.
Excluding the Archery Essence, each of the weapons was infused with one of the battle-focused Essences and one elemental Essence.
After that, he also infused the Archery Essence to all the weapons except the gloves.
"This is more stable than before thanks to the Essence Slayer Sword, and the Elemental Essences combine well, but it is a pity that I have no way to add the Archery Essence in an independent way instead of merging with the others, or it would be even better."
Yale thought that while sighing. There were eight battle-focused Essences while only seven elemental Essences, so it was difficult to balance them together.
Except for the gloves that only had two Essences, and the Essence Slayer Sword that had all the essences except the ones for crafting, the rest of weapons had three Essences each one.
Yale rushed towards Terug at the same time that Terug charged against Yale.
Yale's fits clashed with Terug's weapon, and the rest of weapons hit the axe at the same time.
Terug was using all his strength, so he wasn't thrown back in an instant, but he felt immense pressure from Yale's attack.
However, the World Qi wasn't something to be underestimated when a World God didn't mind what would happen afterward, so Yale was also feeling the pressure. If it weren't because all the weapons focused on stop the axe, although the weapons would have defeated Terug, Yale would have also been defeated ending in a draw.
The Essence Slayer Sword was acting as a nucleus for the formation, so it hadn't moved from above Yale's head, but at that moment, the sword started to shine with energy that Yale recognized very well.
"How did the pure energy end up in the sword?"
Yale was shocked in his mind, but he didn't have time to ponder about it.
The Essence Slayer Sword was soul-bonded to Yale, and the pure energy was from a universe that had also formed a soul-bind with Yale, so although Yale didn't know it, it was possible for the Essence Slayer Sword to use the pure energy without needing Yale to control it.
When Yale needed to use more strength, the Essence Slayer Sword and the pure energy automatically collaborated to launch a full force strike to Terug.
Not even Yale imagined that the formation would end up having that kind of effect. The Essence Slayer Sword and the pure energy were two things that he couldn't understand completely yet, but they seemed extremely compatible.
Yale had wished for more power, so the sword and the pure energy activated together, but it wasn't a conscious control of them.
Terug's body was blown off, and his soul destroyed at the same instant.
The whole training camp disappeared leaving a huge hole under Yale's feet, which was stopped by the barrier that also covered underground.
However, Yale was completely unharmed and seemed to have fallen into enlightenment.
The barrier had been barely enough to endure the shock, but after the clash ended and Yale fell into enlightenment, the barrier started to crack.
The Absolute Protection activated restoring the training camp and Terug.
Terug didn't have any injury, but he still was unable to understand how he died. Before being instantly destroyed, he felt a power that vastly oppressed him, but before he couldn't think about it, he was killed, and the next he remembered was being in the restored training ground.
"Even the barrier suffered damages. I need to fix it later."
Terug sighed, but he wasn't depressed for his loss. He wasn't sure of how powerful Yale's last attack was, but in his opinion, it should have been at least of the same power of an ordinary Tier 6 World God.
Seeing that Yale seemed to be enlightened, Terug sighed again envying Yale's talent and walked outside the training camp.
"You can laugh if you want, but I am really unable to beat Yale."
Terug said that, but no one laughed. Lina and the rest were also vastly shocked by Yale's prowess in that battle.
They saw the pure energy, so they guessed that it was the reason, but they understood they would be unable to beak Yale if he used that battle-style against them.
Of course, no one dared to ask Terug for a battle after that because regardless of their results they would be outshined by Yale's previous fight.
After fifteen minutes, Yale woke up from enlightenment and his face was full smiles.
That enlightenment had been regarding his new Path, and he felt that he only needed to solve an additional problem to perfect it and create a weakened version that could be used without the pure energy.
Of course, he would only perfect it without the crafting-related Essences. He still needed to work into improving it to that point, but as long he solved that remaining problem, he was confident that his Path would be far better than the Origin Path.
"Terug, thank you for letting me battle against you. I made a significant improvement in my custom Path thanks to you."
Yale was truly grateful to Terug because he had found the way to advance thanks to that battle. The remaining problem was still difficult to resolve, but it was only one. As for the crafting-related Essence, Yale needed to first learn them all before worrying about them.
Yale's body shined, and a ray of pure energy shot towards Terug whose strength increased to Tier 7 in an instant.
Yale didn't understand what happened, let alone Terug who opened his mouth in disbelief.