Three minutes thirty four seconds.
That was all it took Leo to kill the 122,000 soldiers stationed on this military base, for although the act unfolded with brutal speed, it never required him to draw even a fraction of his true strength.
Once his aura settled over the enemies, their will to fight back crumbled, and by the ti he moved through their ranks, the resistance they should have offered collapsed into sothing soft and barely perceptible.
Their deaths arrived almost on their own, as if the universe itself had decided the outco long before he perford the final, simple motions that removed them.
Yet even with a kill ti this quick, even with an entire ard compound erased in a span barely longer than a passing conversation, Leo felt no sense of progress towards the far greater figure he carried as his ultimate goal, for two billion still remained distant enough to feel untouched by monts like this.
"I see... I can't achieve it at this rate."
The realization ca quietly, for the problem he faced now was no longer the speed at which he could kill opponents, since once his aura neutralized them, clearing thousands required only a few effortless seconds.
But rather the problem now arose from how to locate them together, since his concern shifted away from enemy strength and now circled towards the more troubleso question of how tightly were the enemies gathered in one place.
'It does not matter if I face one hundred thousand enemies or ten million.
Regardless of the number, the outco stays the sa as long as they are all Transcendents and below.
The challenge is finding them clustered as one.
For unless I strike a major urban city, where millions of civilians remain packed together, I gain no real progress, as killing at this agre speed will an I will miss my window to save Veyr!
He concluded, for just by clearing this single battalion, he gained an unprecedented understanding of his own strength, and how enemy numbers no longer ant anything to him.
Yet in the sa breath, he also gained a cleaner, sharper understanding of the limitations that still blocked his path ahead, as he quickly ca up with a thod to work around them.
"Well... if that's how it is then I guess I can't kill the Commander just yet...."
Leo muttered, as he patiently folded his arms behind his back and looked towards the sky, as he waited for the enemy Commander to show up.
(anwhile Commander Yu Zu)
Commander Yu Zu sped towards the Sector Eleven military base as if there was no tomorrow, his internal thoughts giddy and optimistic as he thought about all the heroic praise and fa he could receive if he captured or neutralized the Evil Cult's infamous Shadow Dragon.
'If I manage to capture him alive, I'll beco a universal hero!
My na will be said in the sa breath as Commander Raymond, and I will be forever rembered as a legend!'
He thought, as a wide grin ford on his face as he flew towards his destination.
'I don't know what his play is to co here alone. However, surely, I can't let him leave now that he's here.
If he's co here alone, he must have so escape devices on his body.
However, I need to ensure that he can't use them...!
He thought, as he rubbed his palms in anticipation.
"Stay right where you are, Skyshard... I'm almost there."
He said, as he cut through the air toward the Sector Eleven military base, his body gliding forward with effortless speed, as he excitedly grabbed the hilt of the sword attached to his hip.
The wind wrapped around him as he moved, carrying with it the familiar hum of energy that followed a Monarch in motion.
However, no matter how close he got, no sounds of explosions or tal colliding entered his ears, which felt weird to him as a veteran. "No fighting sounds? Has Skyshard been neutralized already?"
He wondered, as it was not until he ca within a kilotre of the base that the truth revealed itself before his eyes.
"Huh...?"
The sound slipped out of him, soft and uncertain, as he blinked and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.
For a mont he wondered if heat shimr, dust, or pure disbelief warped what he was seeing.
Yet no matter how long he stared, nothing shifted, as only then did
the truth finally sink into him.
"What the fuck?"
He muttered, as his mind at last accepted the overwhelming
devastation that lay spread across the earth.
The entire landscape around the base was hollowed into a massive
crater, its edges torn open by a force far beyond anything he
expected.
And across that crater, scattered in every direction, lay the unmoving bodies of the garrisoned soldiers, tens of thousands of them sprawled across the ruined terrain as if struck down in the sa frozen instant.
One hundred twenty-two thousand.
The full stationed force.
All of them gone.
And at the center of that crater, quiet and sharply defined against the
desolation, stood one man.
Leo.
He stood still, almost relaxed, his posture composed in a way that felt completely out of place within the surrounding ruin.
His head tilted upward slightly, his gaze finding Yu Zu the mont he hovered into view, as if Leo sensed him the instant he crossed the
horizon.
Yu Zu felt his stomach twist, a slow, rolling shock spreading through him as he tried to take in the impossible scale of what he was
witnessing.
"No way... no way he killed all of them in the ti it took to get
here..."
The thought echoed inside him, refusing to form cleanly, refusing to
align with anything logical.
Between the communicator call and his arrival, only seven minutes had passed. Barely enough ti for him to respond, let alone for an entire battalion to vanish from existence.
Yet...
Here it was.
The silence.
The crater.
The stillness of 122,000 fallen soldiers.
And Leo, standing alone at the center, as though this level of devastation were nothing more than a brief pause in his path.
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