Leon regarded the cloaked figure across the thirty ters of burning sky between them.
Dangerous. Undeniably so.
But he wasn’t feeling dread. Not even close.
He had already dealt with an Ethereal Initiate before—even if that victory had relied heavily on luck and circumstances, and even if he’d been significantly weaker at the ti. Just from this first direct confrontation, Leon could already feel the fundantal difference. His physical prowess held a clear advantage. Speed, raw strength, and likely several other categories as well—his growth since that previous encounter had been unilateral, advancing across every single area simultaneously rather than in isolated spikes.
His mana was different now. More refined, thicker, denser—each point carrying more destructive potential than before. Every skill and technique he possessed had been improved automatically. The physical enhancent skills he’d relied on for so long were now operating at levels that would have seed impossible to his previous self.
The sa techniques. Dramatically different results.
He still couldn’t integrate his holy energy and mana into a true combined output—he wasn’t even certain that was possible yet, sothing he’d only discover by attempting it. But he could use both simultaneously, running parallel streams rather than a fused one, and that alone provided a substantial boost that most opponents wouldn’t know how to account for.
His mana was progressing toward a level where it could genuinely contend with holy energy—drawing closer to that threshold—but it wasn’t there yet. Holy energy’s real advantage wasn’t refinent or technique. It was its universal nature, operating as an all-round force unlike a single elental affinity, and its quantity—the sheer volu of it he could generate and sustain was difficult to match through conventional mana alone.
But he didn’t need parity. He needed enough.
In his empty left hand, a sword materialized from pure condensed holy energy—solid, blazing, a physical shape ford from divine force that humd with quiet, absolute threat. In his right hand sat his epic-ranked sword, buzzing with multiple different Auras intertwined in that characteristic unstable spiral. Not fully integrated—Space, Lightning, Ice, and Wind still clashing against each other rather than rging—but stable enough that Leon could manage them effortlessly now. His ntal strength was in a completely different league than before, making what had once required exhausting concentration feel like maintaining a casual grip.
Both hands. Both streams. Running simultaneously.
Multicasting has also beco aningfully more accessible. Previously, deploying a powerful skill left a millisecond gap before he could execute a second—imperceptible to most, but enormous at the combat level where he now operated. That gap had closed. Casting two techniques nearly simultaneously was within his capability now, in a way it genuinely hadn’t been before.
Both figures assessed each other across the burning sky.
The figure’s staff was held ready. Its posture had shifted from that earlier casualness into sothing more guarded, more alert—the posture of sothing that had just been reminded that underestimation carries a price.
Then Leon vanished.
FWOOSH!
Space distorted where he’d been standing—a visible ripple, like light bending through heated glass—and he was already behind the cloaked figure, mouth opening, a single word leaving his lips.
Not loudly. Not shouted.
But it landed like a thunderclap.
"FREEZE."
Leximancy detonated through the air in a wave of absolute authority.
The cloaked figure locked mid-motion. Its body stopped completely—limbs arrested, mana flow severed, every attempt at resistance eting a wall that simply didn’t negotiate. To its horror, it couldn’t move. Couldn’t circulate energy. Couldn’t access anything it might have used to counter or escape.
Complete. Total. Helpless.
Leon registered the effect with quiet satisfaction—and sothing else. The power output he’d used to achieve this was only within the threshold where he’d sustain no personal injury. It’s all, but the safe version of his all. If he pushed into the range where he accepted damage as a cost, the Leximancy would be two or three tis stronger—he wasn’t certain of the exact multiplier.
It’s gotten significantly stronger. That’s what matters right now.
He hadn’t even fully cataloged the upgrades yet. The most obvious contributors were his dramatically increased physical strength and his substantial growth in ntal acuity and intelligence, both of which fed directly into Leximancy’s output. But there were likely other factors he’d discover later.
The cloaked figure experienced every microsecond of what ca next with horrifying clarity.
It could see the two swords. It could calculate their trajectories. It could feel exactly what would happen when they arrived.
And it could do absolutely nothing.
Leon executed Skybreaker Draw with both blades simultaneously.
The holy energy sword was slightly awkward in the technique—the skill had been developed for conventional blades, and holy energy responded differently to the required motion—but it was the sa fundantal structure, and the lethality increased considerably because of it. Both attacks launched on converging vectors aid at tearing the cloaked figure apart.
A shadow erupted from beneath the figure.
Not a random Archon-rank undead from the army below. Sothing different—a thin, black, ferocious shape that erged from the figure’s own shadow with the speed and intent of a genuine trump card being played in the final mont before disaster.
It was the corpse of a Shadow Beast. Ethereal rank. Controlled undead belonging to the figure itself—sothing it had acquired at high cost, held in reserve for exactly this kind of mont. Shadow Beasts of that rank were renowned for several things: their ferocity, their physical resilience, and most crucially, their near-invulnerability to physical attacks.
Against most opponents, throwing it into the path of two incoming blades would have bought the necessary fraction of a second.
The blades didn’t stop.
They cut through it like it wasn’t there.
SLASH! RIIIP! CRACK!
The Shadow Beast ca apart—not slowly, not with the resistance its nature should have guaranteed, but completely and imdiately, as though the concept of its physical invulnerability had been presented to these particular weapons and politely declined.
The cloaked figure couldn’t process what it was seeing.
That Shadow Beast had required extraordinary effort to obtain. A high price paid. It had served as the figure’s most reliable escape chanism across countless dangerous situations—not because it could win every fight, but because sothing one step below Ethereal Lord, combined with the Shadow Beast’s invulnerability to physical damage, could always survive long enough to retreat. That one step between Ethereal Initiate and Ethereal Lord was a chasm that took years to cross, and until it was crossed, the Shadow Beast was what bridged the gap between dangerous situations and survival.
It had died like a common enemy.
What the figure didn’t know—couldn’t know—was why.
Leon’s holy energy sword was, to a Shadow Beast, functionally a direct counter. Holy energy’s relationship with shadow-elent entities wasn’t rely effective damage—it was sothing closer to fundantal incompatibility. The Shadow Beast’s invulnerability was physical in nature. Holy energy wasn’t physical in the conventional sense. It passed through that defense the way sunlight passes through the concept of darkness rather than competing with it.
Add to that the light elent and lightning elent woven through Leon’s conventional blade, both of which carried their own degrees of counter-property against shadow-based creatures.
The Shadow Beast hadn’t been destroyed. It had been erased by sothing it had no frawork to resist.
Even sacrificing its most valuable trump card hadn’t bought the figure enough ti.
As the Shadow Beast ca apart and the figure’s last line of defense dissolved into nothing, it tried to move—tried to throw itself out of the trajectories with whatever fractional mobility it could force through the Leximancy’s grip.
It wasn’t enough.
CRAAAAAACK! SLASH! BOOM!
The figure was caught.
Its body was launched through the sky like sothing struck by a divine force rather than a sword—tumbling, trailing pieces of itself, blood and fragnts of bone and torn flesh scattering in its wake as it carved an arc through the air above the burning battlefield.
WHOOOOSH! THUD! CRAAASH!
The sound it made wasn’t a scream. It was sothing rawer than that—the involuntary sound of a body experiencing catastrophic damage faster than the mind can process the event.
It ca to rest hundreds of ters away, held up by nothing except whatever autonomous function kept an Ethereal Realm cultivator’s body from simply ceasing.
Far below, the battle hadn’t paused—it couldn’t. The army of Archon-rank undead pressed on with mindless persistence. But sothing had changed in the quality of the pressure. A subtle shift, like a conductor suddenly absent from an orchestra that had been playing with terrifying precision. The coordination remained, but the perfect timing of those small, decisive interventions—the restraints on the dragon, the counters to Vyra’s attacks—had stopped.
Archon Vyra felt it imdiately.
RRRROOOOAAARRR!
The Red Dragon felt it too. And it did not waste the opening.
Leon descended from the sky toward where the figure had landed, his twin blades still active, his expression unchanged from the cold, analytical calm he’d worn since stepping through the portal.
Still alive. Ethereal Realm doesn’t die from that alone.
But the shape of this fight has changed.
He landed thirty ters from the figure’s position, regarding what remained of the incarnation’s carefully maintained composure.
Bones visible. Blood pooling. The cloak was torn beyond recognition.
But the eyes—whatever passed for eyes beneath that hood—were still open. Still looking at him.
Still processing.
Good, Leon thought. I want you to understand exactly what happened before this ends.
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