I Can Copy And Evolve Talents

Chapter 1171: The King of Cuts

The cuts on Northern’s—both Northerns’—bodies weren’t healing normally. Even as Infinite Iteration tried to repair them, they resisted, leaving marks that throbbed with phantom pain. These weren’t just wounds. They were Bairan’s presence carved into Northern’s very essence.

The clones merged back into one. Too much strain to maintain both while fighting with wounds that refused to heal.

’Let’s hope this will somehow weaken it.’

[Oblivion’s Mark - Nullify has been activated]

A passive aura expanded outward—a zone of negation that weakened supernatural phenomena. The lightning crackling along Bairan’s odachi dimmed slightly, its electric fury muted within Northern’s influence.𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

Bairan’s eyes flared, golden yellow light seeping from them. Cold. Calculating. As if he was already processing the new variable without hesitation.

Then he shifted, adjusted his technique to account for the weakened lightning. The blade became faster instead—raw speed compensating for reduced magical potency. The Sword King didn’t rely on any single advantage.

They clashed again. And again. And again.

Northern threw everything he had into the exchange. Wind blades. Shadow tendrils. Lightning-fast strikes augmented by every speed enhancement he possessed. His blade became a storm of silver impossibility, attacking from angles that defied geometry, existing in states that defied logic.

Bairan’s odachi met every single strike.

Not through superior speed—through superior understanding. The Sword King read Northern like an open book, his glowing eyes processing every micro-expression, every shift in weight, every hint of intent before Northern himself fully committed to the action.

They blazed across the desert, hurling themselves toward the ruin of the empire. Northern was shocked—he thought he could see the most with his eyes.

Bairan didn’t have any ocular abilities, at least none that Northern knew of. His game of analysis was just insane. Impossible.

He was using every movement of Northern’s body to read what Northern was thinking. If Northern thought he was two, three steps ahead of the Sword King, the Sword King was at those three steps too—simply by reading hints across his body. But he was using superior knowledge and understanding to beat Northern at his own game.

So much so that Northern had to consider the possibility of the Sword King regaining all of his memories.

Bairan was a powerful man who had achieved pinnacle in his youth. Perhaps that was the man Northern was fighting right now.

He chuckled slightly as he fled from the Sword King’s pursuit.

’Crap, isn’t this unfair? These guys were slaying Titans in their prime.’

Either way, if he’d have any chance at beating the Sword King, then he himself had to be as innovative and cunning as possible. He already had the perfect repertoire—now he just had to test the limits of his own intelligence.

[Soul Thread - Thread Flow has been activated]

Northern layered his Demon Eyes over the Soul Thread perception.

Then his eyes saw something beautiful—the invisible connections between cause and effect, the threads that linked Bairan’s intent to his actions, the causal chains that made the Sword King’s defense seemingly perfect.

Northern’s eyes traced the golden threads weaving through the air between them—intricate patterns of causality that connected Bairan’s every movement to its inevitable outcome. It was dauntingly beautiful.

Bairan’s counter-rhythm pulsed with steady frequency, each defensive motion synchronized to something fundamental. Not just his heartbeat—something deeper. The rhythm of existence itself.

’If I can’t disrupt the connection... maybe I can redirect it.’

[Soul Thread - Binding Weave has been activated]

Northern didn’t try to cut the threads this time. Instead, he wove his own soul threads through Bairan’s causal network—parasitic connections that followed the Sword King’s perfect patterns without disrupting them. He was learning the language of Bairan’s technique, one thread at a time.

The Sword King’s pursuit didn’t slow. If anything, it accelerated. The odachi came around in a diagonal slash that would have taken Northern’s head off if he hadn’t ducked into a forward roll.

[Eclipsing Dread - Eclipse Step has been activated]

Northern vanished into his own shadow mid-roll, emerged from a shadow twenty feet to the left. His blade was already cutting toward Bairan’s exposed flank—an attack the Sword King couldn’t have seen coming.

Bairan’s odachi was already there.

The golden light in his eyes intensified. He’d read something—the angle of Northern’s roll, the direction of his momentum, the instinctive preference Northern had for left-side attacks. Extrapolated from micro-data and met the strike before it fully manifested.

’He’s reading my habits. My patterns. Everything I do teaches him more about how I think.’

The realization sent ice through Northern’s veins. Every exchange was making Bairan’s defense stronger because the Sword King was building a complete psychological profile through combat analysis.

Northern had to become unpredictable. Had to fight in ways that contradicted his own instincts.

[Phantom Strike - 7th Fragment has been activated]

Six strikes. Each one deliberate, each one following Northern’s natural attack patterns. Bairan’s odachi deflected them with minimal effort, the Sword King’s enlightened mind cataloging each movement, refining his understanding.

The seventh strike came from the opposite angle Northern’s body language suggested. His weight was shifting right—his blade came from the left. His shoulders indicated a high slash—the cut came low. Every physical tell was a lie.

The blade ignored all defenses and struck directly at Bairan’s core.

The Sword King’s eyes widened fractionally—the first hint of any emotion Northern had seen. It made him grin proudly.

But the next moment, Bairan became partially intangible at the instant of contact. The blade passed through him like smoke, but not before carving a shallow line across his ribs. First blood. Barely a scratch, but blood.

The golden light in Bairan’s eyes dimmed, then blazed twice as bright.

Northern felt the shift immediately. The pressure emanating from the Sword King doubled. The air itself grew heavy, pressing down with the weight of ages.

[Some restraint has partially been released]

Reality strained. Northern’s legs buckled slightly under the sudden exhaustion that flooded his body—not physical tiredness, but the accumulated weariness of centuries compressed into a single moment. His movements slowed, his reactions dulled, as if he’d aged a hundred years in a heartbeat.

’Ehh? Restraint? This bastard has been holding back on me all along.’

[Infinite Iteration fights against temporal exhaustion]

Northern’s cells iterated backward, trying to restore themselves to an undamaged, unaggravated state. But the exhaustion wasn’t physical—it was existential. The weight of Bairan’s ancient presence crushing against Northern’s relatively young soul.

The Sword King closed the distance in three steps. Not running. Just walking. But each step covered impossible ground, the space between them collapsing as if reality itself was bending to accommodate Bairan’s intent.

[Moonlit Whisper - First Whisper: Moon Drinks Shadow initiates]

Northern’s eyes widened in milliseconds.

’It’s different!’

The odachi never left its guard position. But somehow, it was already cutting. Northern didn’t see the draw—couldn’t see it, because it happened in the space between perception and reality. The blade existed in the sheath and in the cutting motion simultaneously.

Northern’s instincts screamed. He threw himself backward, blade coming up in a desperate guard.

Too slow.

The cut passed through his defenses, carved a line across his chest. Not deep—Bairan was still teaching, still calibrating—but absolute. The wound appeared before the blade arrived, during the cut, and after it passed, existing in all states of the slash at once.

[Infinite Iteration attempts regeneration]

The wound refused to close. Bairan had just unleashed a cut that existed outside of normal causality. Northern’s healing ability recognized the damage but couldn’t undo something that existed in multiple temporal states simultaneously.

Northern staggered back, pressed his free hand against the wound. Blood seeped between his fingers—not flowing quickly, but flowing constantly, as if the cut was perpetually fresh.

’Two wounds that won’t heal. If this keeps up...’

[Soul Thread - Thread Severance has been activated]

Desperate, Northern lashed out with invisible soul threads, trying to sever the temporal connection between the wound and its various states of existence. His blade phased invisible, became a conduit for the thread-cutting technique.

Bairan’s odachi moved in a simple horizontal slash. But the blade cut more than air—it severed the concept of Northern’s technique itself. The soul threads unraveled, their connection to Northern’s intent dissolved, the ability simply stopped working.

Northern’s eyes widened.

’What? He can even cut my talent ability? What the hell?!’