Rowan knew his attack would not take long so he unleashed Eruption without holding back, and the Eternal Flower made an awful shriek of pain, as its petals began to bleed.
Rowan took another step forward.
No longer was he using the strict form passed down from the Berserker Aspect, what he fought with was the culmination of every battle he had ever been into, and every technique he had ever observed, all the methods of application of power came into one in his hands, and grew to become something… else.
He did not have a soul but Rowan still shivered as a fresh wave of enlightenment washed through his mind and then Rowan began to make…art.
The first attack he made perfectly cut through Dao Ma's defense made from twirling his whip.
The whip which was traveling at so much speed the barrier it made was almost solid, and it could even block out light, but Rowan made a million minuscule movements with his Axe in a fraction of a second and sliced off Dao Ma's hand.
Envy had gone through the barrier as if it was not solid, a barrier that would even stop light!
He turned his Axe a little to the left and blocked the incoming strike of the short spear with the hilt of his Axe, and he followed it with a punch to the god's elbow.
At the angle he placed the punch, the joint in Dao Ma's hand moved in the opposite direction with a sickening crunch, but this sound was still hanging in the air, for Rowan's current speed seemed to be breaking the limits imposed by the Eternal Flower.
Flowing with his motion as if it was all a dance, his Axe went through another pass and took out Dao Ma's left leg at the knee, what came next was a punch under the sternum to keep his body from falling to the ground.
This blow crushed every bone in Dao Ma's torso, his Axe blurred along and removed the broken hand of the god as he sliced through his biceps and in the same motion, passed through his body from the chest to the waist.
Before the god could even understand what was happening to him, Rowan had already made five more slices with Envy, each of the slices was symmetrical and every blow was a statement.
He held Dao Ma's decapitated head by his purple hair. The eyes of the god widened as he saw his body fall into neat little pieces, that resembled a blooming rose, even his spine was arranged around the rose, and it resembled its thorns.
This vicious work of art could not be admired for long before the Ouroboros Serpent roared and devoured the flesh of the god and they began to expand while flying into space.
All this happened in less than a fraction of a second. Rowan selected the precise move he needed to make to tear apart the god's defense and with Knowledge Well anticipated every move that Dao Ma might take.
"You… how did… I understand now, that you have elevated my Battle Art to the ultimate form that I have been searching for all these years. You saw all my flaws. You have perfected it" the resigned voice of the god sounded, but Rowan frowned instead.
"This is not perfection, it's just the beginning."
His Ouroboros Serpents sliced down from space, all six of them coiling around each other as they descended like mountain ranges made from living gold. They reached the statue of Dao Ma and opening their massive maws, they began to consume it with gusto reveling in the great amount of energy.
There were billions of red particles around the severed neck of Dao Ma that were shining like blood with the appearance of squirming maggots. It was a horrible sight to look at, but this was Rowan's Berserker Intent acting on the injury of the god, preventing him from healing.
Rowan had gained so much in such a short time, as every god he defeated was like an endless feast he had to settle for a long while to properly digest.
Rowan flew down to the chest of Dao Ma, where the gate still spewed blood but it was slowing down. Dao Ma had used a lot of his Essence when he attempted to ascend, and Eva had quietly drained most of them, plus he was fighting another serious battle with the World Seed and he was on the verge of losing.
The Statue of Dao Ma began to slant to the side, as an overenthusiastic Serpent took a huge chunk out of the leg. Rowan sighed, something told him he knew which of his children would do that.
Even amongst all the Ouroboros Serpents, it was the greediest.
Rowan was before the gate, observing the fluctuating lights around it, there were millions of tiny Runes swirling around the gate that he was memorizing, the Runes had many changes and were mysterious, it did not take long for him to finish memorizing the Runes and he began stepping through the gate while holding the still living head of Dao Ma.
Gods were impossible to kill unless you destroyed their Divine Spark, even after that, they could still be resurrected after a long span of time had gone by. Their souls after all are immortal, and even though they would sustain grievous damages at their death, over time they would heal themselves.
This process could be faster if the god still had firm believers, who followed their laid down rites and traditions, such an act would stabilize the shattered immortal soul of the god and allow them to escape the jaws of death.
This process may take a short time like a few decades or a few centuries or an extremely long time like millions of years, or even billions. Some unlucky gods would not resurrect for trillions of years only to wake up at the end of an Era, which was the death of the universe, and only then would they die a true death.
All these were normal for a god that was killed, but in the case of Rowan, it was different. He came here precisely for the Immortal Souls of the gods, for only souls of this level could quench his thirst, and the so-called immortality of the gods was nothing before his bloodlines.
