High in the air, the two giant creatures clashed without pause. Thomas's monster used the lower half of its body to pin the stone giant in place while its upper body continued to hammer down relentless blows.
The stone giant began to rotate its entire body in midair, turning slowly until its back faced the ground. Its movements were heavy but controlled, as if preparing something deliberate.
In front of it, the other monster kept throwing punch after punch, never slowing.
Behind the stone giant, the massive arc of light shifted upward and aligned with its target. White and red mist gathered at the center of the arc, thickening as the colors fused into a single point of blinding brightness. The light intensified over several seconds, condensing into a concentrated beam.
Then it fired.
A straight line of pure light tore forward and struck the monster head on. The creature released a deep, distorted scream as the beam pushed through it and continued upward, piercing the sky and vanishing above the clouds.
…
Arthur hovered beneath a relentless waterfall of void pouring down from the sky. The pressure forced him lower with each second, and he felt his strength slipping away.
Then the clouds beneath him vanished in a surge of pure yellow light. A narrow line of radiance shot upward and washed over his body.
The void above him vaporized. The rupture in the sky sealed shut. At the same time, his wings began to glow again, light spreading across their surface in steady pulses.
Arthur understood he had one chance left.
He raised his hand. High above him, light gathered and compressed into a single point. The glow stretched and hardened into the shape of a massive sword. The weapon drew power from Arthur, but it also pulled in the rising light from below the clouds, feeding on the energy flooding the sky.
A wave of brilliance rolled outward as the sword's form stabilized. Its radiance burned like a second sun. Wherever the light touched, the cracks in the sky closed and vanished.
Arthur gripped the air beneath the weapon and spoke, his voice carrying an otherworldly edge.
"This sword will be your end."
…
Near the borders of the Shadowland, the scattered remains of Iralian dissolved into strands of void and pulled back together. The fragments merged, reforming her body piece by piece.
"As long as that portal stays open, we can't get rid of her," Alexia said.
"Then I'll close it. Protect me," Bernal replied as he flew forward.
Two streams of dark liquid flowed from his hand and stretched toward the portal, each one anchoring itself to a side of the swirling opening. The moment they connected, the portal began to tremble.
Across the ground, loose void matter rushed toward him as Iralian's form had fully taken shape. It sensed the danger to the portal and lunged at Bernal in a desperate charge.
Before her hand could reach him, a punch struck her from the side and knocked her dozens of meters away.
She hadn't even stopped sliding when dirt and stone lifted from the ground and wrapped around her body. The debris clung to her as if drawn by a magnet, sealing her inside a growing mass of rock. Before she could scream, the sound caught in her throat as the stone thickened around her.
A pulse of void burst from within. The stone shell exploded outward.
Iralian stepped through the debris, anger clear on her face.
Alexia and Paul stood between her and Bernal, ready to defend him while he worked on the portal.
…
Two glowing marks lit up on Leo's hand as he moved. Afterimages trailed behind him as he closed the distance in an instant.
Nikolaus answered the charge. A gap opened in front of him, and he stepped into it. He vanished and reappeared directly in Leo's path.
Leo with Thorn in his hand met his charge head on. The two swords collided with a sharp impact. Nikolaus slipped back into another gap and disappeared again. He came out from a different angle, but Leo was already there, waiting.
With both marks active, Leo matched the speed of the fastest S-rank and surpassed him in raw strength and mana. Each time their blades met, they vanished from one spot and reappeared somewhere else, trading positions across the battlefield faster than the eye could follow.
Watching the exchange, Aerwyna chose to intervene.
The last time they fought, Leo had used his domain to block her sight. He could do it again but this time he faced three opponents.
Her skin darkened, and two horns pushed out from her forehead. It was the same transformation she had used before, but now her body did not grow larger or more demonic. She closed her eyes. A surge of power rolled outward from her in a silent wave.
Her mind linked with the other two S-ranks. Leo might be able to block her view of the future, but the moment he committed to an action, she could still see it. One or two seconds before each strike, the outcome appeared in her mind.
Through the connection she had formed, she shared that knowledge with Nikolaus and Iason at the same time.
…
Leo felt the surge of power at once. Nikolaus's movements changed, sharper, more certain. It took Leo only a moment to understand. Nikolaus could almost predict his strikes.
But prediction and defense were not the same.
Leo charged again, Thorn wrapped in a thin layer of blood that clung to the blade like a living edge. Nikolaus blocked the incoming blows, yet each clash forced him backward. The impacts sent visible tremors through his arms.
At that moment, a small vial flew toward Nikolaus. It didn't shatter on contact. Its surface turned soft and jelly like, then spilled over him as a glowing liquid.
Leo's next strike met Nikolaus's sword, and stopped far more easily than before.
An S-rank alchemist's buff, Leo realized.
Nikolaus stepped into a gap and vanished. He reappeared on Leo's right side and slashed. Leo blocked the attack without effort.
Before the gap behind Nikolaus could close, a beam shot through it from another angle and struck Leo in the face.
Nikolaus jumped back, clearly surprised by the timing of the hit.
Leo didn't move. Thin smoke rose from his head. When it cleared, his calm gaze settled on Aerwyna.
She couldn't see Leo's future clearly, but she could see Nikolaus's and Iason's without obstruction. By combining those visions, she had created a perfectly timed attack.
For most, that coordinated strike would have been terrifying but Leo found it interesting.
Nikolaus's aura shifted. His outline blurred, and the space around him bent out of shape. Fractures appeared in the air at several points, spreading like cracks across glass.
Leo narrowed his eyes. A domain.
At the same time, Iason's presence changed. Mana poured from his body as transparent vials formed in the air around him. Liquids of different colors streamed out of them and began to rotate in a wide circle, creating a strange, almost artistic pattern around him.
Aerwyna already stood in her transformed state. Now all three of them had unleashed their full power.
Leo had only a moment to take it in before Nikolaus vanished again.
He reappeared in front of Leo, his sword rising in a sharp upward slash.
Leo brought Thorn across to block.
The blade passed through Thorn as if it weren't there and cut into Leo's chest. Blood spilled down his torso.
Before Leo could process what had happened, Iason was already moving. He raised his hand toward Leo and whispered a short phrase.
Leo's spilled blood ignited at once. Fire burst outward from his own chest and exploded in front of him with enough force to stagger even him.
Leo pushed himself backward to gain distance, but the moment he stopped, gaps opened in the air around him. From each one, a focused beam from Aerwyna shot through and struck his head in rapid succession.
Flames and smoke swallowed the area.
A few seconds later, a figure stepped out from within the haze and brushed it aside. Leo emerged. The deep cut across his chest and dark burn marks covering parts of his body had already begun to heal. He showed no sign of panic. He smiled instead.
He looked toward Nikolaus. The man's power level had not increased, but his control over space had become absolute. Leo could not yet see the limits of that ability.
Then he glanced at Iason. The alchemist now fought like a master of matter itself.
White and red mist began to coil around Leo. His smile widened. His red eyes shone brighter as the marks of Leviathan and Zahhak flared across his body.
"You think you can stop my blade without Alad's power?" Nikolaus said.
He moved instantly. In the blink of an eye, he was in front of Leo. His sword warped as it moved, distorting the space around it as if reality itself bent along its edge. He brought it down in a slashing strike.
Leo lifted his own blade to meet it.
Ding.
Metal rang out sharply.
Nikolaus's eyes widened. His blade had stopped.
Leo still smiled. His sword was wrapped in blood and a transparent violet mana that shimmered like fractured glass. The air around it vibrated with unstable pressure. He had used Fracture, but instead of releasing it, he had forced it to remain contained within the blade itself.
Fracture was a spell that could cut through space itself and now Leo was using it in a new way. That compression let him interfere with Nikolaus's warped space, allowing him to block attacks that should not have been blockable.
Nikolaus changed tactics. He stopped fighting in straight lines and began moving through gaps in space, appearing from different directions with every strike. Each time, his sword came from an angle that should have been impossible to predict. Yet every attack still met Leo's defense.
Aerwyna responded next. She raised her hand and began firing dark beams directly into the gaps Nikolaus used to move through space, trying to trap Leo in a collapsing network of spatial attacks.
Leo shifted through them without slowing. He twisted, stepped, and deflected, slipping between the beams as they carved through the air around him.
But Aerwyna did not stop there.
Her will spread outward, and small stones began to form across the battlefield in midair. They launched forward in a coordinated barrage toward Leo.
The moment they reached him, Iason altered them. Each stone compressed and transformed into a dense fire bomb. The explosions that followed were controlled but powerful, each one carrying enough force to break Leo's rhythm and force him further back.
Under the combined pressure, Leo began to retreat while still blocking and dodging from all sides.
Steel clashed again as his blade locked with Nikolaus's. At that moment, Leviathan's mark on Leo's body flared with a deeper glow.
A cold wind burst outward from him. The temperature dropped instantly. Frost spread across the ground in widening circles. Within seconds, ice began to form everywhere, climbing the earth and rising into towering frozen spikes that surged up into the sky.
…
Aerwyna watched the battlefield shift, her expression tightening for the first time. She couldn't immediately understand what Leo was doing, until it hit her.
The ice wasn't just freezing the area. It was bending time and space within it.
Her future sight flickered. Then it failed entirely inside the frozen space.
Iason also notice that. He lifted his hand and triggered his countermeasure. Sections of the ice warped instantly, turning into compressed fire charges. Explosions erupted across the frozen field, fire tearing through the white surface and melting large portions of it.
But the moment one section melted, another rose to replace it. The ice regenerated faster than they could destroy it.
Iason clicked his tongue and intensified his control. The battlefield became a violent collision of fire and ice, one side melting, the other reforming, neither gaining full control.
Seeing her vision suppressed, Aerwyna finally moved.
She rushed forward herself.
Her body cut through the air as she coordinated with Nikolaus, aiming to break Leo's rhythm from both space and prediction. Nikolaus appeared through a gap directly ahead, while Aerwyna approached from an angle that avoided the densest ice fields.
Together, they struck in sync aiming to shatter Leo's frozen territory and force an opening in his defense.
Leo was forced back a step.
Then another.
For the first time, his stance began to break under the combined pressure. His sword stayed up, still meeting Nikolaus's blade, but his balance shifted.
Then something inside his chest changed.
A section of his torso bulged outward, glowing a deep orange beneath his skin. The heat intensified in an instant, then it detonated in a sharp, concentrated blast.
The explosion didn't spread outward randomly. It tore through him in a straight, brutal line.
A massive burst of force erupted from his chest.
Across the battlefield, Iason laughed loudly. "Did you really think I couldn't use my power on your flesh?" he called out. "Even if you have mana like a true god, if I compress everything into a single point, I can pierce through it. And that single point was Nikolaus's blade."
What he had done was convert Leo's heart into a living bomb.
When the smoke cleared, Leo was still standing.
A clean hole had been torn through his chest where his heart should have been. His breathing didn't falter. His grip on the sword remained steady, but the light in his marks had faded. Leviathan and Zahhak's glow had dimmed, almost completely gone.
The ice around him cracked, then began to melt.