Sovereign of the Karmic System

"I want to see you heal.. after I leave nothing of you.." Said the oni as his hair kept growing until they reached the back of his knees, and his horns split into two. At the same time, one of the lines that divided his abdominal muscles split open, revealing a hidden mouth in his stomach filled with thorn-like teeth.

This, was his true demonic form.

The moment the demon assumed his true form, Daniel felt once again that feeling from before.. The visceral warning of imminent death that heightened his senses, and screamed at him to run as far away as he possibly could.

At the state the demon was in right now, Daniel did not dare to let himself be hit despite of the regenerating powers he had discovered, but even with his fastest speed, he was unable to react in time and avoid the club that crashed against him completely.

As the dust caused by the blow settled, Daniel's figure became visible once again. He was kneeling in pain a few meters away from the area that had received the most impact. One of his arms was missing due to his lack in reaction speed, but was quickly growing back.

The crazed oni had no intention of letting Daniel recover, and sent more and more attacks in his direction. His speed was beyond what his size suggested was possible, and every blow came with a sonic boom which threatened to burst Daniel's ear drums.

Using the speed he was capable of to escape this onslaught of deadly blows was out of the question, as it was not only Daniel's speed that lacked in comparison, but his reflexes as well. If not for the comprehension he had of the surrounding elements, he wouldn't have been able to feel the slightest movements of the demon in time to avoid the first few attacks.

Left with no choice, he decided to use short range teleportation instead.

The fight went on for a few seconds, and in that time, Daniel had avoided hundreds of attacks which arrived as fast as he teleported.. However, keeping on teleporting out of the way was not a good way to win this fight, so he decided to change strategy.

The club was truly massive, and swinging it required immense strength, but that did not seem to apply for the oni, who appeared to possess an infinite amount of it, and was able to swing it with as much ease it would take to swing a stick.

Nevertheless, all weapons had weak spots, and the weak spots of such massive weapons, was that they required enough distance from the target to be used.

Instead of teleporting out of the way by a distance that the demon was able to compensate in mere fractions of an instant, Daniel teleported on his blind spot. His hands were in the shape of swords, who in turn, emanated spatial essence.

With a speed invisible to the eye he slashed towards the tendon of the large oni, but his sword bounced back as if it had met an immovable object.

It is important to understand that the spatial essence emanated by Daniel's swords was shaped into such a thin layer, that it would be able to cut in between the atoms of which a body was made of.. but the atoms that formed the bodies of cultivators were linked with their own power, and supported them so that they could toughen the skin, and resist against the attacks. The fact that the oni had resisted Daniel's attack meant that his natural essence was so strong, that Daniel's sword was unable to cut through the power that linked the atoms.

This unexpected result came to a shock for Daniel, whom the oni tried to hit by waving his free hand.

In response to this attack, Daniel changed the type of essence that formed the air around the oni's body into metal, in an attempt to either stop him, or slow him down enough to teleport to safety. However, the strength of the blow was so powerful that before the skin of the oni could touch it, the sheer power he was emanating corroded the metal essence controlled by Daniel into nothingness.

Daniel tried to use the fraction of a moment he had gained to teleport away, but he was too close. The power emanated by the oni was affecting the surrounding mana, which he was unable to gain control of to perform a teleportation.. So instead of taking the blow head on he jumped lightly.. Allowing himself to accompany the blow.

The backhand slap of the demon hit him squarely, sending a shockwave through his entire body. The immortal essence that connected Daniel's molecules was trembling frantically, and partially turning into healing essence so that his body could resist the blow's strength.

This happened while Daniel's body flew deep into the ground for hundreds of meters.

The oni observed the hole in the ground in anger. Being so close to his target had decreased the strength of his blow greatly, but it was still a direct hit. By logic, he should have been vaporized.

As clarity slowly began to reappear in the oni's mind, a circle appeared in the fine sand a few hundreds meters deeper into the canyon. The sand within this circle was caving in, as if a passage that lead to an underground cave had been opened, and the sand above it was filtering through. However, the increasingly shinier red light that seeped through the grains of sand suggested that it was not disappearing into an underground pocket of air, but was being molten.

This went on until a magma pool formed on the ground.

The humidity contained in the ground was heated by the liquid stone, and immediately turned into vapor that forced its way to the pool's surface in the form of a large bubble of scorching hot humidity.

In between these large bubbles, was a sphere of space essence that emerged from the pool's surface. Inside this sphere, was something inhuman. Daniel's current state was closer to a sack of pasty flesh and grounded bones than an actual human, and yet, the impressive immortal essence that he emanated, was keeping him alive.

The grains of shattered bones moved back in position before fusing back together, the muscles turned into chunks that one by one formed muscular bundles, and the watery like substance which once were his organs began to move around before finally solidifying back into their original state.

The oni looked at the event with disgust and horror. One thing was to possess regenerative abilities that would defy logic, but this was a whole other thing. He had felt Daniel's very existence shake the very moment the back of his hand had crashed against his body.. In the state he was in, nothing should have survived.

What Daniel was going through had not only been possible thanks to his newly obtained regenerative abilities, but thanks to the other ability he had gained when becoming a high immortal.

When Daniel was cultivating, his intense consumption of mental ability, immortal essence, and and healing essence, had caused the three major factors that made an individual, merge into one. While all other immortal cultivators were beings made out of a merged flesh and spirit, and guided by a consciousness.. Daniel had surpassed that.

His mind had merged with his body, and his mental power had merged with his immortal essence. As of now, Daniel was a being of flesh, spirit and mind, who fought using a mixture of three different powers.. He had become what he had decided to call 'the first True Immortal' cultivator in history.

After coming out of his cultivation, Daniel had decided to store Sewah back into his mind.. But when he found himself unable to, he realized what had happened. His mind had fused with his body, and that meant that Sewah would never be able to take control over it.

At first Daniel had felt panic after realizing this.. A panic which only disappeared after seeing that his system was still there. Finding out about this, caused Danie to have an epiphany regarding something extremely important..

Contrary to what Sewah's actions had lead him to believe, the gift that came from Iewah was not stored in the consciousness of Iewah's children, but in the host's body. That was the reason why Sewah had never considered moving on to another body.. He needed the power that was branded in Daniel's body, otherwise he would have been a sole consciousness just like any other.

By merging his mind to his body, Daniel had in fact reached a state which he had believed Sewah to be. He had merged his mind to his body, and by extension, to the Karmic system he possessed.

This mixture of three powers had changed Daniel's nature, and in the state he was in, destroying his body was not enough to kill him anymore. In order to truly die, at least two of the three powers of which he was made of needed to be destroyed.

The destruction of his spirit would turn him into an emotionless cultivator, the destruction of his body would turn him into a ghost, and the destruction of his mind would send him into a vegetative state.. But no matter which of the three factors would be destroyed, due to them being merged to the remaining two, they would eventually regenerate with time.

The Oni leader's entire power revolved around physical strength, and his only other attacks were in the form of intimidation based on the impressiveness of his physical power.. So for him, killing Daniel was as impossible as it was for Daniel to kill him.

This time the oni did not attack Daniel, and instead observed as Daniel regenerated completely.

The sack of broken bones and liquid organs slowly took a human shape, until Daniel's appearance became noticeable once again.

Daniel looked at his body in satisfaction. He already suspected that losing his body was not enough for him to die anymore, but he would have never dared to test this theory by himself. Luckily, this theory was based on reality, or he would have been dead by now.

Now in the clearer state the oni had been in in the past tens of thousands of years, he looked at Daniel with a stern expression and said with a deep voice "We demons must look like monsters to you humans.. I wonder where that stereotype started. There is only one monsters between us."

The spatial shield that surrounded Daniel's body slowly disappeared, and he slowly landed on the pool of molten stone and metal. The moment the tip of his foot touched the pool, it solidified instantly, creating a solid surface for him to stand on.

"From someone that hits as hard as you, I'll take it as a compliment." Said Daniel while putting on a pair of pants he took from within his spatial ring. "Shall we?" he then asked while turning to look at the oni straight in the eyes.

"HAHA!" the oni burst out laughing, then added "You might be the oddest being I have ever met, but you are far from being able to leave a scratch on my skin. I was wrong.. I will catch you, and test how finely I have to beat you to kill you once and for all."

"I am also curious about that." responded Daniel as his hands became as dark as a starless night. The slow waving caused for dark tails to appear before dissipating in the surrounding air.

The oni looked at Daniel with what one would believe to be satisfaction, as opposed to the boredom he had felt during the days that followed his last fight with his lifelong enemy. However, he had now found someone else who he was excited about fighting.. So he slowly grabbed his massive his large club with eagerness.

At the same time, the two black holes that appeared in Daniel's hands began to absorb the surrounding essence, pulling anything physical and abstract in them, and causing for the area to fall into darkness.