Leo suddenly jumped up in fear. His chest was heaving, breath ragged, and his hand immediately went to his chest, fingers trembling as they searched for the wound. But there was nothing, no pain, no torn flesh, not even a scar. His skin was smooth, unbroken. His pulse pounded under his palm as his eyes began to scan the room.
The air smelled faintly of dust and old wood polish. The faded curtains swayed gently with a morning breeze that carried the scent of dew and the distant sound of birds outside. The sight of the scratched desk, the worn-out bedsheets, and the small bookshelf made his throat tighten.
He knew this place.
It was his room, the same one he had when he was still Jacob Brown.
For a few seconds, his breath caught. The wallpaper, the old lamp with its crooked shade, even the small crack on the corner of the ceiling, it was all exactly as he remembered.
But unlike the first time he'd found himself in another world, this time he didn't panic. Experience held him steady. His breathing slowed. His gaze sharpened, studying the smallest details with a cold focus. He could feel the subtle wrongness behind everything, the air too still, the silence between sounds too deep.
There were only two explanations.
Either he had died and he was in the afterlife or this was an illusion, something his mind created while hanging between life and death.
The second one felt right.
Every instinct as an illusionist screamed at him that this wasn't real. The light didn't bend naturally, and his reflection in the window didn't move in sync.
Then he heard it.
"Jake, are you awake? Breakfast is ready!"
The voice froze him in place. His chest tightened, and for a moment he couldn't breathe.
That voice, his mother's voice, soft, loving, alive.
His hand slowly reached for the doorknob. The cold metal touched his fingertips, and an ache spread through his arm. His heart began to pound violently in his chest, a rhythm that drowned out everything else.
He wanted to see her again. Just once more. But something deep inside whispered that if he opened that door, he would never leave this place again.
His hand stopped on the handle. His forehead came to rest against the wooden door, his eyes closing tightly.
"Jake?"
Her voice came again, closer this time, filled with warmth that tore at his heart.
He took a deep breath. His hand dropped away from the handle. Then, with a slow, practiced motion, he raised it again, not to open, but to command.
He waved his hand as if brushing away a curtain of air.
At once, the world shivered. The walls cracked and folded in on themselves, the air trembling like ripples on water. Then, everything shattered.
The light collapsed into fragments and dissolved into a sea of red and white mist that spread endlessly in all directions. The scent of dust was gone, replaced by the familiar white fog.
Leo exhaled, his voice low and steady. "Looks like my domain saved me… again."
At his thought, a translucent screen appeared before him, floating in the air. Through it, he saw the battlefield, the real world. His body was still there, standing, fighting.
But the way it moved wasn't his. The stance, the precision, the cold intent, none of it felt like him. His fingers tightened into a fist as he stared.
Something had taken over.
As he watched longer, Lucius's voice came through faintly from the other side, like an echo through a tunnel.
"Nemesis…"
Leo's expression hardened. He didn't need long to understand.
Nemesis had survived inside Thorn. Somehow, she had remained dormant, hidden deep within his weapon. And when the Moon Goddess's power went through him, she awakened, rising to take control of his weakened body.
He could feel it even from here, her rage, her pride, her ancient power using his form as a vessel.
He could try to return, to push her out, but logic told him the truth, he had lost that battle already. His strength was gone. Lucius and Nikolaus were both there, too strong to face head-on now.
So he made his choice. He would let Nemesis fight while he watched, while he prepared.
He raised his right hand. A faint red light pulsed around it, coalescing into a small, ornate staff, the one he'd taken from the automaton in the city of the God of Knowledge. The metal hummed faintly, warm to the touch.
Leo's gaze lingered on it, calm but resolute. His eyes reflected the shifting mist around him.
"It's time to see what you can really do," he whispered.
…
Lucius knew that he couldn't go easy anymore. The air around him thickened, and then his power exploded outward. A shockwave of mana burst from his body, rippling across the ground like a physical force. Stones cracked. Dust lifted into the air and hovered there, trembling.
"I'm not like before," he said, his voice low, steady, but heavy with restrained fury.
Nemesis tilted her head slightly, Thorn hanging lazily at her side. Her lips curved into a small, amused smile. "I can see that," she said softly. "But you are less than before. Last time, there were five of you… and I almost killed all of you."
Lucius's eyes narrowed. "Almost," he repeated coldly.
Then, without warning, two massive fists of blood erupted from the ground on either side of him. They twisted into shape, every drop moving as if alive. He shot forward, the fists following in perfect sync. When they slammed down, the impact cracked the earth and sent fragments of stone flying in all directions. But there was nothing there to hit.
Nemesis was already above him.
Her body blurred, almost flickering between frames of reality. She descended like a streak of red lightning, her sword coming down in a deadly arc aimed for his neck. But before the blade could connect, Lucius vanished in a burst of blue light.
The next instant, he reappeared several meters away, Nikolaus standing beside him, his calm expression a sharp contrast to the chaos around them.
"You have to control yourself," Nikolaus said evenly.
Lucius opened his mouth to reply, but Nikolaus cut him off with a small gesture. "Leave him to me. Use this time to control your thoughts."
And then he was gone.
A flash of blue light, Nikolaus appeared behind Nemesis, his sword already descending. But the strike never landed. Thorn met it halfway, steel shrieking against steel, sparks bursting between them.
Nikolaus's teleport triggered again instantly, pulling him back before Nemesis could counter. But she was already moving. In the same moment he appeared several meters away, she was there too, her speed unnatural, her movement almost like a prediction rather than reaction.
Then their fight began.
They vanished, reappeared, clashed, and vanished again, two blurs of motion tearing through the air, the sound of their collisions echoing like thunderclaps. Each time their swords met, waves of mana rippled outward, distorting the air and carving invisible lines into the ground beneath them.
Even though Nikolaus was teleporting faster than the eye could follow, Nemesis was catching up to him. Her movements were too sharp, too instinctive. She began to close the distance, her strikes faster, her follow-ups more precise.
A flicker, and Nikolaus appeared several meters away, his sword raised to defend. But in the very same instant, a shadow was behind him. Nemesis was already there, Thorn already descending.
Then her instincts screamed.
She twisted midair, Thorn's edge missing Nikolaus by inches as she bent away, Lucius's sword passed through the space her back had been a second ago. The swing was fast enough to cut the air itself, leaving a faint trail of red mist.
Landing lightly, Nemesis slid back a few paces, her crimson eyes glinting. She stood in the corner of the battlefield, her sword loosely in her hand, watching the two S-ranks before her, the vampire lord and the teleporting swordsman.
Lucius's gaze didn't leave her. His eyes flickered briefly, and his voice carried a faint note of realization. "She's a she," he said quietly.
Nikolaus blinked. "What?"
"Nemesis," Lucius said, eyes narrowing. "She's a she. She's using his body, but inside, that's a woman."
Nikolaus gave him a sideways glance, utterly indifferent. His expression didn't change. "Thank you for the information," he said dryly, as if it meant nothing at all.
Nemesis and Lucius locked eyes for a brief heartbeat, two ancient predators measuring each other, before they charged forward again.
Their swords collided with a deafening clang, the shockwave bursting outward in concentric waves that shattered the ground beneath their feet. Sparks and crimson droplets scattered through the air, sizzling like embers.
At that same instant, Nikolaus appeared above them, his sword drawn and gleaming with killing intent. Using the split-second opening while Nemesis's blade was locked with Lucius's, he descended in silence, aiming for a fatal blow straight through her skull.
But Nemesis didn't dodge.
Instead, Thorn's rigid edge liquefied into crimson light and snapped into a whip. In one motion, she coiled it around Lucius's blood-forged sword and pulled with inhuman strength, twisting her body. The sudden force yanked Lucius off balance and hurled him sideways, right into Nikolaus mid-descent.
The two S-ranks collided in the air and were thrown back like broken arrows, smashing into the ground with an echoing crash that cracked the floor beneath them.
Before either could catch their breath, the whip lashed forward again, hissing through the air. The tendril of blood and mana moved like a living creature, like a serpent tasting the air, seeking its prey.
Lucius shot upward, his wings flaring wide, dodging the whip in midair. But Nikolaus didn't flee. He vanished into a flash of blue light and reappeared behind Nemesis, ready to strike from her blind spot while her weapon was extended.
Just as his blade was about to pierce her back, Thorn snapped back to solid form, faster than an eye could follow. Nemesis spun with impossible speed, her sword rising in a diagonal arc. The two blades met with a metallic shriek, sparks scattering between them.
Nikolaus clicked his tongue and teleported back instantly, reappearing beside Lucius, who hovered above the ground, his gaze sharp and assessing.
"Her sword can change back in no time," Lucius said, his tone low.
"Yeah, I figured that out," Nikolaus replied dryly, brushing dust from his sleeve. "Would've been great if you'd mentioned that before I tried to stab her."
Lucius's eyes narrowed. "Didn't you use the Space Cutter?"
"I lost it in my last battle."
Lucius turned his head slightly, his blue eyes cold, staring at him with visible disappointment. "Pathetic."
Nemesis watched them in silence, her expression unreadable. The faint curl of a smile tugged at her lips. Then she lifted Thorn and pointed it toward them.
In the next instant, the sword elongated, its blade extending outward at terrifying speed.
Both S-ranks reacted at once, flashing to opposite sides as the weapon sliced through where they had been a heartbeat ago. The blade's edge cut through the air with such force it screamed, a violent ripple tearing through the walls behind them.
Then, as quickly as it had lengthened, Thorn contracted again, only to swell and transform, growing impossibly wide. Within a breath, Nemesis was wielding a colossal blade large enough to cleave a mountain in two.
With a roar of motion, she swung the weapon down. The ground split beneath her, air shrieked, and the sheer weight of the blow should have been impossible for any human body to control, but she handled it as though it were light as silk.
Lucius responded instantly. Around him, two massive blood-forged hands materialized once more, each gripping a sword of condensed crimson mana. The first swing collided with Thorn in midair, the clash erupting into a shockwave that flattened everything in the vicinity, stone, steel, and shadow alike.
Then the other blood-hand darted straight toward Nemesis.
Her weapon dissolved again, reforming into a circular shield of shifting red light. The impact struck it dead center, shattering the air like glass but holding firm. The sound was like thunder trapped in a bell.
Nemesis lowered the shield slightly, her eyes narrowing in focus.
Then, pain.
A cut opened across her arm. She blinked, looking down as a bead of blood rolled free, glinting under the pale crimson light. Slowly, her head turned toward the far corner where Nikolaus stood, his sword dripping with faint blue sparks.
"You may be fast," he said with a confident smirk, "but no one is faster than me."
And then he was gone.
A blue flash circled around her like a ring of lightning. His movement was so fast it left streaking afterimages, twisting and overlapping until the entire world around Nemesis seemed to blur. She spun, slashing at the flickers of light, but Nikolaus's true position was nowhere. Each second, a new cut appeared across her arms, her side, her thigh, small, precise, lethal.
Her smile only widened.
At the same time, Lucius gathered his strength, his twin blood-hands merging into one, holding a single massive sword, a slab of solid crimson energy that radiated destructive power.
He swung it down with all his might.
"You two are powerful," Nemesis said softly, her tone almost a whisper, but it carried across the chaos.
Then, her grin stretched unnaturally wide. "But…"
Every drop of her spilled blood trembled, then burst upward. In an instant, hundreds of tendrils of blood exploded from her wounds, writhing outward like living things.
Dozens shot up, wrapping around Lucius's descending sword, stopping it in place with a deafening crack. The rest spread outward in all directions like a storm, piercing ground and tearing apart the air.
Even Nikolaus's speed faltered. He dodged and teleported through the swarm, but there were too many. One tendril caught his side, carving a deep gash across his waist.
He staggered back, teeth gritted.
Nemesis lowered her head, smiling through the blood that poured down her face. "Now that we've had our fun," she said in a voice half-feral, half-playful, "let's end this."
But then, she froze.
Her smile vanished. Her eyes widened, glowing with sudden panic.
Inside her mind, a voice echoed like thunder.
"Give me back my body."