Titan King: Ascension of the Giant

Chapter 1518: Tasting Death Again

"Boy, your weapon’s got the spine of a wet noodle. It looks like it’s about to snap."

The warping of the War Scythe hadn’t escaped Rhydan’s eyes. As a High Lord of this realm, he would have been blind to miss it.

Orion frowned, sheathing the scythe and drawing the greatsword, Doomscourge, from his hip.

It was baffling. By all rights, Doomscourge was a tier below the War Scythe in raw power. The Scythe was an ancient relic; the sword, while legendary, was merely a weapon of war. Yet, Doomscourge held its form perfectly against the pressure of this world, while the relic had buckled.

Orion couldn’t fathom why the artifact’s quality had degraded, but the middle of a duel was no place for contemplation.

"I have other steel," Orion said.

He leveled the greatsword, adopting a thrusting stance. In his hands, the blade would serve as his spear. Once a warrior mastered the essence of combat, the specific tool became secondary; the lethality lay in the wielder, not the iron.

"Hah! A spear is a spear, and a sword is a sword!" Rhydan roared, hefting his twin axes. "If your shaft is limp, your blade will be dull!"

The bandit king charged, a whirlwind of violence.

Orion’s expression remained flat. One exchange had been enough to gauge the man’s depth. Rhydan was powerful—a newly ascended High Lord—but he was the gatekeeper of the outermost layer of the Death-Soul forbidden grounds. He was the baseline.

The axes spun, tearing through the air with explosive force. Orion didn’t retreat. He thrust Doomscourge forward to meet the onslaught.

Triggered by the clash, Doomfire erupted from the blade. The black flames surged, coalescing into the spectral form of a Doomsday Guardian. The avatar of fire roared past the spinning axes and slammed directly into Rhydan’s chest.

BOOM.

The axes shattered. Rhydan was blasted backward, crashing into his stone throne with enough force to send spiderweb cracks racing through the masonry.

Orion sheathed his sword, not bothering to check for a pulse. The gap in their strength was a canyon. That single strike had been Rhydan’s limit. Moreover, the Doomfire was now clinging to the bandit’s flesh—an unquenchable, necrotic flame. The outcome was certain.

What puzzled Orion was the feedback from the strike.

This mysterious space seemed to operate under a crushing set of laws that dampened transcendent power. He could feel it in his bones—his output was being stifled. It wasn’t a targeted curse; it was environmental. The suppression weighed on Rhydan just as heavily.

The laws here condense force, Orion mused. In the outside world, that thrust would have torn the fabric of space. Here, the walls of reality are too thick. It feels like I’ve grown weaker, but it’s the world that has grown stronger.

The barrier was incredibly dense. He realized that even a cross-realm teleportation array would fail to breach this isolation.

"Hahahaha! I tastes death once again!"

Orion’s attention snapped back to the throne. Rhydan was laughing maniacally as he burned. Having failed to pat out the Doomfire, the bandit had given up. He slumped back against the cracked stone, letting the flames consume him.

Orion felt a strange shiver. It almost looked like Rhydan was enjoying it.

Within fifteen minutes, the bandit king was reduced to bleached bone, and then to a pile of ash.

Just as Orion exhaled, a pillar of blinding light descended from the featureless sky, striking the empty throne. When the radiance faded, Orion’s eyes went wide.

Rhydan sat there, whole and unblemished, wearing an expression of utter serenity.

"Dreamer, you have defeated me. You have passed the trial of the First Stratum."

Rhydan stood, his voice losing its rough edge. "But as a warrior, how can you allow your weapon to bend in the heat of battle?"

Before Orion could speak, Rhydan beckoned. The War Scythe flew from Orion’s sheath into the bandit’s grip. Orion could have stopped it, but instinct told him to hold still. This was the Dreamlands; the reward phase had begun.

"I’m a poor man. I don’t have trinkets or gold," Rhydan grunted. "So, you get these."

He kicked the fragments of his shattered axes into the air. Before they could hit the ground, the metal dissolved, liquefying into a swirling sphere of silvery essence. The molten iron orb hovered for a moment before plunging into the War Scythe.

The relic shuddered. The degradation reversed, its aura sharpening, growing more predatory and robust. The fusion process took hours, the weapon drinking in the essence of the Dreamlands’ steel.

"Go now," Rhydan said, tossing the reforged scythe back to Orion. "Give the loser some time to weep in peace."

With a wave of his hand, a bubble of air materialized around Orion. Before he could ask a single question, the bubble surged upward, carrying him toward the unseen cloud layer above.

Rhydan watched the speck disappear into the sky, his face falling into a mask of profound loneliness.

"You moving to the next layer means I have failed again," he whispered to the silence. "Am I truly so weak compared to the others?"

The World of Eldoria — Temple of Terminus

"Brother, how did it go?"

The atmospheric anomalies that had plagued the sky for half a month had finally settled. Orion’s Divine Kingdom had successfully extended the roots of its World Tree, grafting them deep into the metaphysical soil of Eldoria.

It had felt like an organ transplant that the body finally accepted. The rejection tremors vanished, leaving the integration seamless and undetectable. Seeing the world stabilize, Leonidas finally felt safe enough to enter the Temple of Terminus.

"Smoother than I could have imagined," Orion replied.

He opened his eyes on the throne, raising a hand. Hovering above his palm was a segment of a World Tree root—invisible to the naked eye.

Leonidas couldn’t see it, but the miniature world inside his own body resonated with it, confirming its presence.

"And the effect?" Leonidas asked, his eyes gleaming. He flashed to Orion’s side in a blur of motion, his hands landing on Orion’s shoulders to massage them with exaggerated care.

"Bro, is this really necessary?" Orion asked, shifting uncomfortably under the sudden pampering.

"What? We’re brothers. You’ve been doing the heavy lifting, taking all the risks," Leonidas said, grinning shamelessly. "Can’t a big brother show a little appreciation for his kin?"

He winked, his expression screaming, Don’t treat me like an outsider.

Orion shook his head, offering a wry smile. He accepted the massage and began to recount the process of the parasitic grafting in detail, sharing his theories about the Void and the nature of the cosmos.

"The Zeythan Dreadfin—those beasts from the abyss—they can’t sense the roots," Orion explained. "I suspect it has to do with the origin of the world that spawned them. Furthermore," he added thoughtfully, "I believe World Trees have a natural repulsion toward one another. That will be our edge."