Back at the canyon, Leon had already shifted into Tenseigan Mode. His eyes glowed with a piercing light, and a golden radiance gathered in his palm.
He wasn't about to wait for the dragons to finish their fusion and reach an even more untameable state. For Leon, these two dragons were the final Excelia he needed to reach Level 10.
Golden Wheel Rebirth Explosion!
Leon swung his hand downward. A beam of golden light sliced through the atmosphere, changing the very color of the sky. The earth groaned and split apart, a bottomless abyss opening up where the canyon floor once was. Leon didn't hesitate, he dived into the darkness.
As he descended, he transitioned from Tenseigan Mode into Hyper Dying Will Mode. The Vongola Gloves manifested on his hands, ignited by the intense, purified orange glow of the Sky Flame.
X-BURNER!
A dual-natured blast erupted. The Soft Flame stabilized his position, reaching toward the skies, while the Hard Flame transformed into a pillar of pure destruction that pierced through the earth. Everything in its path—rock, magma, and ancient seals—was annihilated.
The blast struck the spatial barrier surrounding the fusion chamber. The white, glowing egg containing the two dragons began to pulse erratically. The light flickered as the structural integrity of the fusion was compromised. A moment later, Leon's flames breached the barrier entirely.
BOOM!
The space where the dragons were merging exploded. The giant egg underwent a violent transformation. The shimmering white light died out, replaced by a sudden, ominous burst of crimson light.
Two black streaks of light shot out of the abyss, trailing orange embers from Leon's previous attack. Leon, hovering above the wreckage, sensed the change immediately.
He muttered to himself, "The fusion was interrupted. It seems they've decided to put their evolution on hold to eliminate the nuisance first. Well, that's exactly what I wanted."
He dispelled the X-Burner and dropped toward the surface.
The two dragons were fast—terrifyingly so. As they emerged from the hole in the world, they flanked Leon instantly. They didn't roar, they simply attacked with the cold precision of apex predators.
Two overlapping debuff auras washed over Leon, attempting to crush his spirit and slow his movements.
Simultaneously, torrents of black flame erupted from both dragons, converging on Leon from opposite sides to leave him no room for evasion.
The heat was so intense it began to liquefy the stone beneath them.
Leon remained motionless, his expression one of absolute focus. As the black flames closed in, the Sky Flame in his hands exploded outward, shaping itself into two massive, razor-sharp blades of orange energy.
With a fluid, spinning motion, he unleashed the blades. They expanded as they caught the wind, cutting through the black fire and hurtling toward the two dragons like twin suns.
As soon as the battle between Leon and the two black dragons reached its boiling point, Hermes and Asfi were the first to feel the catastrophic consequences of proximity.
Though Leon had sent them far away before the initial clash, they had only just landed on the rugged terrain when the primary shockwaves of the confrontation reached them.
A powerful wave of kinetic energy swept over the area, nearly lifting Hermes off his feet and sending him hurtling into the sky. If it weren't for Asfi's lightning-fast reflexes, grabbing him by his collar and anchoring him to the ground, Hermes might have become an "undeserved calamity," forced back to the Divine Realm simply by being a bystander to a mortal struggle.
"Asfi, go, go, go!" Hermes shouted during a momentary lull in the roaring atmosphere.
He had no desire to be the first god in history to be accidentally evicted from the lower world by the wind of a friend's fight.
"Yes, Hermes-sama!" Asfi responded with a grim, determined nod.
Knowing there was no time for grace, she hoisted Hermes onto her shoulder like a sack of supplies.
Hermes's eyes went wide. "Wait! No way—!"
His premonition was correct. The next second, Asfi burst forward at her maximum speed. She completely disregarded whether the god on her shoulder could withstand the G-force or the turbulence. She shot across the landscape like a cannonball, a blur of motion that left a trail of dust in her wake.
Hermes, dangling helplessly, was bewildered, his soul practically lagging behind his body. His screams were instantly swallowed by the whistling wind.
Asfi ran at full tilt for a full hour. Only when she felt the vibrations in the earth diminish to a level that a fragile mortal could withstand did she finally come to a halt and set Hermes down.
Hermes was a sorry sight: his eyes were rolled back and he was literally foaming at the mouth from the sheer intensity of the "transportation."
Ignoring her god's temporary vegetative state, Asfi activated her flying boots and soared into the air, looking back toward the horizon they had fled.
"What a devastating battle." She murmured, adjusted her glasses with a trembling hand.
Even from this massive distance, the edge of the world had been transformed into a sea of shimmering crimson. The roars of the dragons and the explosions of Leon's magic were a continuous, deafening thunder.
Shockwaves rolled out like tidal waves, visible to the naked eye as they distorted the air.
"Luckily I ran fast, otherwise I would definitely have been caught in it." Asfi muttered.
She felt a slight twinge of guilt looking at the foaming Hermes on the ground, but she knew she had no choice. She was an adventurer, she could survive a stray shockwave. But Hermes's divine power sealed and he was currently as vulnerable as any civilian.
—
On the battlefield, mercy was a forgotten concept.
Leon was a whirlwind of diverse powers, cycling through his most potent forms with fluid mastery. He was a fusion of Tenseigan Mode and Hyper Dying Will Mode, his hands wreathed in the brilliant orange of the Sky Flame while his eyes mapped the flow of magic and space.
He wove together light magic and dark magic into a seamless offensive, a display of versatility that would have driven any other mage to despair.
However, the two black dragons were not mere beasts. A single black dragon, even at Level 10, would have been systematically dismantled by Leon at full power. But together, the two dragons functioned with a collective instinct that allowed them to fight Leon to a stalemate.
Their magic was devastating, their scales were virtually impervious to standard attacks, and their physical strength matched Leon's current Level 9 physique.
Despite the danger, Leon felt a surge of genuine joy. Since the moment the fight began, the grace on his back had begun to burn with a heat more intense than any previous elevation.
The excelia he was accumulating from this dual-dragon encounter was skyrocketing. Every parry, every exchange of flames, and every near-miss was pushing his attributes to unprecedented heights.
This was the third time Leon had truly fought with everything he had—the first being the ambush by Filvis, and the second being the encounter with the Juggernaut on the 59th floor.
In other fights, he had often held back to prolong the training, but here, against the pinnacle of the Dungeon's malice, he was finally cutting loose.
Well, almost. He still hadn't touched his Divine Power. He knew that if he unleashed that authority, the dragons would likely be obliterated instantly, ending the training prematurely.
As the battle raged on, Leon noticed a strange phenomenon. A deep, crimson light began to emanate from the scales of both dragons. He had no intellectual record of this specific glow, but his instincts screamed a warning.
As the scarlet light intensified, the two dragons began to move with a terrifying, uncanny synchronization. Their attacks were no longer just "together"—they were becoming a singular, cohesive rhythm.
"What's going on?" Leon pondered, his eyes narrowing as he deflected a beam of black fire.
The crimson light grew so bright it began to stain the entire battlefield.
Following a massive collision that sent all three combatants backward, the two dragons did not recover for a counter-attack. Instead, they unleashed a blinding burst of that scarlet energy.
To Leon's astonishment, the two dragons transformed into two streaks of crimson light and rushed directly toward one another. They didn't crash, they merged, forming a gargantuan sphere of pulsating, blood-red light that hovered in the air.
Leon's mind flashed back to the images his detection magic had captured deep underground.
"No way..."