The Primordial Record

Rowan continued stabbing and slashing at the regenerating body of Thenos mechanically, inside the Wooden Fortress, the corrupted titan's essence could not escape and if Thenos did not take a corporeal form, his stores of energy would be consumed faster than normal, because this fortress also drained energy from Thenos and only in his corporeal form could he fight against this drain to a certain extent.

There were many complicated moves Rowan could have used that would damage Thenos far more quickly, but in this situation, simple attacks were the best strategy to use, and if he knew Thenos, then he was most likely hiding the greatest of his weapons until he was desperate.

If Thenos had been against any other individual, then holding back would be his best shot, because simply powering a fortress that could hold an eighth-dimensional entity for long like Thenos was extremely expensive, and few immortals would have the energy capacity to do such a thing. Yet he was against Rowan, and every moment Thenos was holding back was bringing him closer to his grave.

Rowan could afford to wait and slowly drain Thenos of all his energy even if he was spending a hundred times more energy than Thenos with every moment that passes. His dimensional soul had as much energy capacity as his dimensional flesh, and Rowan was not scared of running out any time soon.

Using simple moves with his weapons was the best way to get Thenos to that point of desperation when he unleashed all his potential without revealing too much of his hand.

Rowan was actively monitoring the energy expenditure of Thenos, by now the corrupted titan should have burned through all the energy he had collected from Berrion, and then some. The problem was that Rowan had no way of ascertaining how much energy Nemesis contained but it should not exceed those of Berrion by much.

He was using Bleeding Edge for the slashing attacks and the Destroyer for the piercing attacks, and his body was moving almost automatically at this point, while he focused on other tasks, even now he was monitoring the events of his dimensional flesh and he frowned a bit at the risk he was taking and the unexpected changes ongoing in his dimension, as they triggered memories that he did not expect to still have any relevance to him at this point.

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Destroying Thenos one more time with a sweeping attack with Bleeding Edge that turned every piece of his flesh to ash using green undying flames seemed to have been the point where this titan could no longer endure the loss of energy as this space suddenly quaked, and Rowan's heart shook when with a loud groan the Wooden Fortress was stressed to its limits and if not for the rapid infusion of energy by him and Eva in addition to the massive preparation they made to make this prison nearly impregnable, Thenos would have torn out of it.

Rowan's eyes shone with a predatory light, "So you have reached your fucking limits… took you long enough."

When Thenos discovered that he could not tear himself out of this space with this unexpected burst of power, he cried out, his voice no longer ringing in a double-layered pattern, but more like the sound of multitudes. It was as if a million voices were crying out as one.

The sound was so astonishingly powerful that Rowan was blown back until he slammed against the edge of the fortress, and the energy expenditure of keeping the fortress viable multiplied almost exponentially, nearly reaching Rowan's energy-generating capacity and even faintly exceeding it.

Rowan was also deeply surprised that the World Stele who was countless dimensions from here could hear this cry. There must be a connection between Thenos and his Singularity that even distance could not break.

A vast storm erupted inside this space and the power levels he was sensing from Thenos shot upwards and soon broke all limits that Rowan had assigned to this titan, reaching ridiculous heights and this seemed like it was just the start. Crazed laughter as if from a crowd of trillions emerged from the storm, stirring something primal inside of Rowan.

The storm rushed towards him as if it wanted to devour him and Rowan swept the Destroyer to the side in a clear arc as if he wanted to slice the space in front of him in two and a massive blast of solar wind blasted the storm apart to reveal an abomination.
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Thenos still had the shape of an infant, but now he had crouched on all four like a beast. He had reduced his size until his overall volume was similar to that of a small moon, and his bulbous head had transformed, no longer in the shape of bleeding muscles chaotically jam-packed in a single mass, now there were a thousand faces staring at Rowan, all of them strange and different, and now and then a face would sink into his head and a new one would emerge.

Some of these faces were dull, their features lacking proper definition. Rowan spotted the face of Nemesis having the same characteristics, and others were properly defined. With this hint, Rowan inferred that those dull faces on Nemesis' head were the immortals whose talents had not been fully stolen, and those clear faces were those whom Thenos had taken everything.

A million voices roared at Rowan, all of them speaking different languages but their words all meant the same thing, "Eat… Eat… Eat…"

Space nearly exploded as Thenos charged at Rowan.

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Always suspicious that Thenos was not displaying his full range of abilities, Rowan had also been holding back, and when inside the souls of the helpless people in the world they had just left, he heard Thenos speaking with the voices of Nemesis and Berrion, this became one of the evidence that had clearly shown that Thenos could steal more than energy with the first blink of his eyes.

However, there was one specific clue that Rowan did not miss on the first encounter with this titan. When Thenos's Memories left the Great Desert, he had brushed past Nemesis and acquired his energy, and at that time the titan was nothing but a Memory. He had no flesh and blood and had not inhabited his corporeal body.

This detail was extremely important because it showed that the talent of Thenos was not tied to his flesh alone, but also to his Memories, and if that were to be the case, how much power would Thenos have stolen from the one place in all of reality that housed some of the most powerful and dangerous higher dimensional immortals in all of reality?

This notion was extremely frightening to consider, plus Thenos was smart enough to keep his powers under wraps, but if there was one party that was responsible for making Rowan more cautious about this titan was the World Stele itself who despite knowing of a portion of Rowan's ability, still believed that Thenos still had more potential than him, and the only reason the Singularity would stand by this idea was that it knew that over the many eons inside the Great Desert, Thenos must have gathered a ridiculous amount of abilities.

There was only one single issue that was holding back Thenos and that was energy. Inside the Great Desert he had access to bloodlines and abilities, but what he did not have access to was Aether and Essence to fuel these stolen gifts.

His talents no matter how ridiculous had to follow certain guidelines and one of the bases for that was the fuel to power his multiple bloodlines and abilities he had stolen. One of the reasons the World Stele had been so insistent on collecting Rowan's abilities was because of his ridiculous energy stores.

Rowan's Aether and Essence were so ridiculously massive that no immortal in existence could match. He was a living dimension after all, and that meant he had more energy than he would ever need. This was one of the reasons he could fight far past his level since he could power up his simplest abilities with nearly infinite energy.

The combination of Rowan's energy stores and Thenos's talent would shake all of existence.

"Boom!"

Thenos slammed into Rowan but was stopped by a glowing shield that appeared in front of him. Rowan smiled and the weapons he was holding vanished, they were sent to his dimensional flesh, because he did not need them.

As a dimensional soul, Rowan preferred battling with spells.

Behind him, reality exploded with multicolored lights as Rowan called upon the powers of creation and destruction.