The two were mixed together in a way Leon had genuinely never encountered before, creating sothing greater and more versatile than either component could achieve alone.
I’ve been at Level 4 aura in ice, thunder, and wind for a while now. Level 5 has been an absolute wall no matter what I’ve attempted.
But watching this creature work... I think I understand sothing now that I didn’t before entering this fight. Not the destination—but the direction I need to walk toward.
Not that understanding a direction ant imdiately arriving at the destination. He couldn’t will himself into Level 5 aura mastery in the middle of an active battle against an Ethereal-ranked opponent. Comprehension and achievent were entirely different things.
But the seed had been planted. That alone made this trial valuable beyond whatever rewards the system might eventually provide.
Sothing to pursue seriously when I return.
More urgently—Leon had been carefully concealing his single remaining trump card throughout the entire extended exchange. Waiting. asuring. Looking for the precise conditions he needed.
Not yet. Still not right.
If he revealed it prematurely and the creature recognized the threat, it would adapt its defensive positioning and Leon would forfeit his only realistic path to a killing blow. To defeat sothing at this fundantal power level, he needed a window of genuine vulnerability—not just a montary gap, but complete defenselessness, however brief.
One opening. That’s all. But it has to be real.
Then, without adequate warning, an enormous blow connected with his chest from the front.
The last thing Leon registered clearly was the creature’s crackling, gleeful laughter—kehehehehe—high-pitched and utterly delighted—and the sight of that impossibly wide smile stretched across pale features.
The impact was at least ten percent more powerful than anything it had deployed previously during their entire fight. As if it had been deliberately hoarding that reserve of force for this specific mont.
Leon’s holy armor shattered completely from the full direct connection—a sound like a cathedral window exploding—the first ti during the entire fight that his divine protection had been comprehensively stripped away.
His body hit the arena wall with a trendous impact, stone caving inward around him with a deep, resonant crunch, dust and fragnts raining down around his suspended form. He hung there against the deford wall for a mont, chest visibly caved in, blood flowing freely from the corner of his mouth.
And sothing else.
A purplish hue spreading slowly across patches of his exposed skin—visible now that the armor was gone, spreading outward from his core like slow ink diffusing through water.
He rapidly reford the holy armor around himself—he genuinely couldn’t afford even monts of complete exposure—the divine energy condensing around him with a soft, sustained hum.
Focus. Understand what just happened.
Since the very beginning of the match, he’d been peripherally aware of a faint, invasive energy attempting to work its way into his body. Previously it had registered as barely noticeable prickling across his skin—annoying but seemingly minor enough that his holy energy and Divinordial constitution had been neutralizing it passively without requiring conscious direction.
But with his defenses montarily shattered and his active systems montarily disrupted, the accumulated substance had flooded inward aggressively, reaching concentrations his passive defenses couldn’t imdiately process.
This purple energy has been building the entire fight. I wasn’t taking it seriously enough. Fundantal mistake.
He directed the full purging capacity of his holy energy toward systematically eliminating every trace of the invasive substance from his system, feeling it burn away under concentrated divine force with a faint internal sensation like warmth cutting through cold.
Eliminated. Now I know exactly what it is and how it operates. It won’t catch again.
His body was still shaking visibly. The trembling wasn’t entirely from injury—the accumulated physical damage from the extended fight combined with the sudden aggressive purge of the poison was placing genuine strain on his recovery systems simultaneously.
The creature was already approaching before Leon had fully straightened from the impact point against the wall, moving with unhurried, absolute confidence now that it believed its invisible weapon had achieved sufficient accumulation to be decisive.
Even through blurred vision and the real physical strain pressing down on him, Leon studied the creature’s approach with everything he had left, searching for any exploitable gap.
Nothing obvious. No visible weakness in its guard. It’s completely composed.
But then—a subtle shift in its posture. A fractional relaxation in its defensive configuration as it registered Leon’s visibly struggling form and drew what seed like an obvious conclusion about his current state.
There. That micro-relaxation. That’s what I’ve been waiting for.
Leon made a deliberate choice.
He let his body language communicate what the creature wanted to believe—what it had already concluded was true. His knees trembled with slightly more visibility. His sword hand dropped a degree lower than necessary. His breathing beca audible, heavier, more labored.
All of it technically real and accurate—just not as catastrophically complete as he was allowing it to appear. The suffering was genuine. The incapacitation was exaggerated.
This is the gamble. Everything riding on this single mont.
The creature paused a short distance away, those glowing red eyes practically shimring with barely restrained anticipation as they studied the apparently crumbling human before them.
This genius who pushed to actually engage properly—what an extraordinary offering this will make, it thought, its excitent building to sothing almost overwhelming. Ascendant rank mounting this level of fight against an Ethereal initiate... Even I genuinely don’t know if the demon lords themselves were this dangerous at a comparable stage of their developnt.
The honest answer leaned toward no, which was a remarkable acknowledgnt—even if the lofty images of demon lords that filled its imagination made definitive judgnt difficult.
The heart of a being possessing this regenerative capability and this level of talent would be extraordinarily valuable presented to the right authorities. Proof of what it had encountered and eliminated here would generate rewards surpassing everything it had been patiently accumulating toward for years.
All that waiting, and the answer simply walked through the door to find .
It raised one arm slowly, almost ceremonially—the limb now covered in thick, compressed magma condensed to near-diamond density, pulsating with intense internal heat that made the air around it shimr and distort. At the fingertips, elongated purple nails of crystallized abyssal energy extended like natural weapons, each one honed to a sharpness that could penetrate virtually any material at sufficient force.
One clean strike. Through the chest. The heart was the singular objective.
Delicious.
The arm moved.
It crossed the distance between them with the speed of a lightning flash—a sound like tearing air, sharp and clean—aid with precise surgical accuracy directly at Leon’s chest, the magma-armored fist and those terrible purple nails converging on the spot where his heart beat steadily beneath reford holy armor.
Leon’s head was angled slightly downward, eyes not tracking the approach—
But those eyes were gleaming with pure, concentrated golden light that had nothing whatsoever to do with defeat.
Every fractional asure of his remaining focus had narrowed down to this single mont, this single point in ti, this single opportunity he had engineered through patience and calculated endurance.
Not yet.
Almost.
Now.
User Comments
0 comments from readers