Ithelisemou watched as Iustus's disembodied head rolled to his feet without much of an expression on his face, it was to be expected after all, the virtuous hero was a failure, he couldn't stand up to the old Gluttony for even a second once he was reborn.
The first blow had destroyed the empty shell and allowed the ancient sin's soul to fully merge with the entirety of the desert as he had originally wished.
This would have been an insane power up by itself but it wasn't all, even if it wasn't visible with the naked eye, the convergence had already started.
In fact, the very act of attempting this fusion with the lands he had conquered had been a sign of it, it had only been put on pause due to his decrepit state.
Ithelisemou slightly nudged the head, making it roll to its body, as the decapitated head made contact with the back of Iustus's corpse, all of it was engulfed in his virtuous mana.
The state that had previously allowed him to come back from the dead, it wouldn't work this time however, although the power up would be useful to force the convergence to progress some more.
And since he was dead for real this time, to get his corpse out of this state, one would need to hit it with tremendous power to hope to cancel it.
The body and head now reunited together, the young hero's figure was a brilliant white as the edges of his silhouette weren't exactly clear.
Moving forward in the blink of an eye, two of the old Gluttony's arms were thrust forward, stopped by the brilliant hero but very quickly, he was assailed by the other two, the body was visibly torn apart with ease but it just went back together, kicking the ancient sin away and raising both of its arms at the insect overlord.
Iustus was holding his own much better after his brain had actually stopped functioning, no longer was he pulling himself down.
Still, he only managed to get hits in because the old Gluttony had tried to quickly shred him and stopped moving to do it, once he realised the virtuous mass of mana wasn't going to go down easily though bruteforce, the insect put his superior agility to use.
Literally flying through the virtuous corpse at piercing speeds, liquifying the hero over and over without granting Iustus any chance to actually strike back.
Unlike when he was alive however, the dead hero was clearly progressing as the fight went on, it was incredibly subtle, almost imperceptible but he was actually getting less messed up with every strike he received.
It wasn't much but it was still way ahead of his past feats, he had been defeated by Occult and now was enduring consecutive hits from the ancient Gluttony.
Theli was just standing a bit further away, calmly overlooking the fight as he made sure that whatever might happen, no one would notice what was going on in this desert.
The concept of convergence wasn't something he wanted Pride to somehow learn about, she might get some ideas.
For hours, the slugfest went on without stop, thankfully Theli had also made sure to make the desert have its own version of time, Theli could handle ancient beings of doom and heroes but explaining his absence to an audience of his wives wasn't something he was willing to do, again.
At long last, after hours of taking hits and learning, the virtuous hero managed to guess where the sin would strike and reinforced that area specifically, knocking the claws back and giving him a window of action, which he used to uppercut the insectoid.
The old Gluttony crumbled into a pile of sand and the corpse of virtue was left without a target, by striking down this feeble sculpture of sand, he had accidentally allowed the great locust to gain more insight into his new condition.
Immediately understanding the true power he had granted himself by becoming on with his conquered lands, four grains of sand suddenly jumped up from the ground, the virtuous body only sensed the imminent danger and jumped back, unknowingly backing off right against one of them.
Each of the four grains, turned into full-sized, full-powered old Gluttony with one of them appearing with his claws already piercing the virtuous shape and ripping him apart vertically.
The corpse went back together as it took in the new information presented to it without any stress or fear.
Each of the grain, each of the small things that constituted this gigantic desert had the capacity to become the old Gluttony, each at the same power and sharing the same mind as the original.
And since the ancient sin and the desert were now one and the same, there was no such thing as a main body, every one of them was the main body in their own rights.
Instead of a slugfest, it looked more like the virtuous hero was getting brutally jumped this time around, as the sinful locust figured how to make more and more of himself using what was essentially nothing for most.
Ithelisemou shook his head, even with this hyper slowed time it would take to long for the remains of the hero to actually manage to put up the semblance of a fight, this would never be enough to trigger the convergence of the rest in the old Gluttony.
Thankfully, Theli was there in person, he could give the hero, whose corpse was being puppeteered by his own powers, a little boost.
"It pains me to have to use a powered down version to avoid erasing you but beggars can't be choosers, j'imagine" said Theli to absolutely no one as he casted his best strengthening spell on the flesh puppet.
"Übermensch" he simply said after a lengthy chant, to make it work, even to a miniscule extent, lots of preparations were necessary since this spell wasn't actually quite completed yet and thus, hadn't been put under scrutiny to upgrade it.
As if struck by lightning, the virtous figure shined even more brillantly and saw a great increase to his power and everything that he could know about himself, he had simply become better in every way.