Leon felt both hearts beating simultaneously for the first ti.
Not in rhythm. Not in harmony.
In a challenge.
His body shivered involuntarily—an automatic, biological response to sothing it had no frawork for experiencing. Two distinct rhythms occupying the sa chest cavity, each pressing outward with its own tempo and character, each absolutely certain of its own authority.
Then they stopped waiting.
From his Divinordial heart, holy energy burst forward through his body like a pressurized cannon discharging—a thick golden beam of concentrated divine force traveling through his internal pathways faster than thought.
From the Primordial Void Heart, mana responded in kind—darker than any mana Leon had felt before, a deep shade of blue that bordered on purple, vastly more refined and dense than what he’d been able to generate previously, moving with equal speed and absolute conviction.
They collided directly between the two hearts.
The explosion was small by external standards. By internal standards, it was catastrophic.
The shockwave traveled through every layer of his body simultaneously—muscle, bone, organ, blood vessel—all of it absorbing force that had nowhere else to go. His muscles convulsed in an involuntary sequence from his core outward. The taste of blood arrived imdiately, copper flooding his mouth as sothing small and internal gave way under the pressure.
Leon sat with it for a mont, assessing.
Less damage than I expected, he acknowledged, genuinely surprised. My body handled that better than it should have.
The physical change from the rge had clearly done sothing to his structural resilience. Beyond that, his mind felt different—clearer than usual, with a quality of sharpness that he associated with exceptionally well-rested mornings but amplified significantly. And his sense of his own mana capacity felt... larger. Substantially larger.
He was Level 46, carrying just over ten thousand mana under normal circumstances. Right now, the internal sense of his own reservoir felt like it had nearly doubled, though he had absolutely no ti to examine his status panel and verify anything.
His physical strength had also increased—he’d expected that from the rge—but the mana capacity and ntal clarity had caught him off guard.
Those observations lasted approximately one second before the second exchange fired.
Then the third.
Then they ca so quickly that the individual instances stopped being distinguishable.
Every millisecond, shots were being fired from both sides. The energy levels weren’t constant—they escalated with each exchange, each heart apparently treating the confrontation as a contest of escalation rather than a asured engagent.
The Divinordial heart has so much stored, Leon thought, monitoring the situation as best he could while his insides were being periodically demolished and healed. If it truly cuts loose, I won’t just be injured. I’ll be vapor.
The Primordial Void Heart was drawing on mana with the throughput of a river—pulling in reserves and imdiately converting them to firepower—but Leon understood with uncomfortable clarity that this approach had a ceiling. His Divinordial heart had accumulated holy energy over subjective years multiplied by ti dilation.
The Primordial Void Heart was operating on whatever mana it could access right now. Eventually, without intervention, it would exhaust itself and be overwheld.
And I don’t know what happens if one heart destroys the other inside . Does the destroyed one simply stop existing? Do I revert to what I was? But why did the 99% death rate exist?
He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to find out empirically.
More imdiately, he had beco considerably stronger after the rge. He had no desire to lose any part of what had just been added to him.
Support the Primordial Void Heart. Keep it in the fight.
He activated Elental Surge without hesitation, all affinities rising to Rank 8, and redirected his absorption capability to maximum. Mana from the arena’s atmosphere flooded into him through every pore—faster than before, noticeably faster, which he attributed to the doubled mana capacity creating a larger draw.
Twice the absorption rate. That’s new.
He channeled everything incoming directly to the Primordial Void Heart, supplenting its supply while simultaneously using holy energy to repair the continuous internal damage both hearts were creating.
The arrangent worked—imperfectly, painfully, but functionally. Mana flowed in, got converted to ammunition, was fired at the Divinordial heart, was largely absorbed or deflected, and the cycle continued. Leon vomited blood twice in the first minute. Cried out involuntarily on several occasions—not full screams, but sharp sounds forced through clenched teeth by impacts to bone and muscle that exceeded even his elevated pain threshold.
Several ribs cracked. Healed. Cracked again. Healed again.
This is actually working. I’m holding it.
The thought arrived with genuine relief. He was battered but maintaining. The Primordial Void Heart was sustaining itself with his support, and the Divinordial Heart—while clearly the more powerful combatant—hadn’t been able to simply overwhelm it.
Then he felt the fluctuation.
Deep in his chest, from the golden heart, a gathering that was qualitatively different from everything that had co before. Not another exchange in the ongoing rhythm. Sothing was building toward a release of an entirely different magnitude.
Oh no. No no no.
He threw everything he had at absorbing mana. Every technique available, every ability focused on intake and conversion. Even at a doubled absorption rate, the incoming supply felt like trying to fill an ocean with a garden hose in the ti available.
The Divinordial heart released.
The beam of golden holy energy that traveled through his body was ten tis more powerful than anything that had been fired in the preceding minutes of continuous combat. Leon felt it as a physical pressure that preceded the actual damage—like standing in front of sothing that displaced the air with its approach before it arrived.
When it hit, the damage was extensive. His body absorbed what it could. The rest simply destroyed what it encountered.
He vomited blood onto the arena floor—not a trickle, a mouthful.
He opened his mouth to say sothing, and nothing ca out for a mont.
Am I going to die here?
The question was calm and genuine.
Then, from the floor directly beneath him, the array that had never deactivated surged.
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