The violet marten lunged again, no warning this time, exploding forward so violently the asphalt squealed under its paws.
Leon still made it.
He snapped his hips back and slipped into a short sidestep on the edge of balance. The beast's claws tore through empty air exactly where his throat had been a heartbeat earlier, and the miss visibly startled it.
Leon didn't let that hesitation go to waste.
He twisted through the opening and cut for the creature's torso, instinctively aiming for where vital organs would sit on most living things, but the marten reacted just as instinctively, lifting its forelegs and catching the blade on its claws.
Metal screamed against something harder than Leon expected.
The impact knocked the beast two steps back. It landed softly on all fours without losing its balance, lifting its head immediately, eyes fixed on him, no longer pure aggression, but a careful, predatory assessment.
Leon let out a short huff. He knew he'd wasted the chance. If his timing had been a fraction better, this fight might already be over.
No time for regret.
He drove forward instead.
Leon kicked off hard, collapsing the distance almost instantly. To anyone watching from farther away, it would've looked like he'd simply skipped several meters in a single blink.
The marten kept up.
Even with Agility at a level that would've seemed absurd to him yesterday, the beast still reacted, dodging at the last possible instant while countering in the same motion, jaws gaping as it launched straight at him.
Leon jammed his sword in, catching the teeth on steel. The collision was brutal, forcing him back a step, then another, until his boots squealed against concrete again.
And then it turned into something else entirely.
Not a chaotic scramble. Not panicked defense.
A string of violent, close exchanges, both of them flashing in and out of the observers' sight, leaving only bursts of violet glow and sudden punches of displaced air. To the students watching from a distance, it looked like Leon was colliding with something invisible over and over at random points across the square, with no clear start or end to it.
With each exchange, Leon felt the weight of the blows bleeding into his shoulders, the tremor building in his muscles, the nasty fatigue that didn't come from a lack of oxygen but from absorbing force again and again, fighting at full intensity, full speed, far longer than his stamina was meant to hold.
Every so often he'd get shoved back, sometimes half a step, sometimes more, and each time he read the fight colder, cleaner, until a conclusion formed that he couldn't ignore anymore.
In speed, they were nearly equal now.
The difference was that the beast was stronger. And every hit, even blocked, carried more mass, more momentum, more brutal animal force.
An impasse formed as they circled, attack, retreat, test, probe, both searching for the one lapse that would tilt the scale. And the longer it went on, the more Leon noticed the shift in the marten's behavior.
Its movements grew more aggressive, less careful. Short, excited sounds started to rise from its throat. The predator could feel it, this was a valuable fight. A meal that would make it stronger.
There was no strategy in its mind. No doubt.
Only rising exhilaration at how much it would gain once it tore this human apart.
In Leon's mind, there was nothing but the fight.
Not the students. Not the campus. Not the system, levels, rewards, nothing. Not even his family. His entire awareness narrowed to the beast's movement, its breathing, the tension in its muscles just before a leap.
His passive skill ran at full output, flooding his brain with a controlled, pleasant cold that stripped away everything unnecessary and left only clarity and reaction.
In this moment, only the two of them existed.
Leon saw the change in the creature more clearly now, how its movement stopped being measured and became a series of impatient charges. More power than control. More hunger to rip him apart than any actual plan.
And in one of the brief gaps between exchanges, an idea came to him.
It had nothing to do with courage. Nothing to do with honor.
It was just practical.
On the next retreat, he let his foot place wrong. He caught an uneven patch of asphalt, a small hole where a chunk of pavement had been torn out, and stumbled just convincingly enough that his balance visibly broke.
For a fraction of a second, his face showed something that looked like pure fear.
That was enough.
The violet marten reacted instantly, launching with everything it had, no caution, driven by the predator's thrill at a wounded target. For a very short moment, it believed this was it.
He'd finally exposed himself.
And then one of its legs jerked violently sideways.
Something rose from its own shadow, a thin, uneven shape that snapped into the form of a tangled chain, wrapping around the limb and ruining the motion at the worst possible time. The beast's balance slipped, barely, almost imperceptibly, but enough that it instinctively twisted its head down, trying to understand what had caught it.
The chain shattered almost immediately, torn apart by a savage yank like it was made of wet paper.
But that flicker of distraction cost it everything.
The human who should've been scrambling up off the asphalt was suddenly right beside it.
Leon spent everything, full speed, the last of his energy, every scrap of strength left in his arms, and struck low at the rear leg, exactly where the muscles and joints worked hardest during a sprint.
The blade went in deep, resisting hard enough he felt it in his wrists, but he didn't slow. He drove the cut through until the steel punched clean out the other side.
The beast's eyes flew wide.
It didn't even have time to react. It had been in motion, in a lunge, and losing a hind leg at that moment meant losing control completely.
A piercing shriek tore across the square, pain and rage so sharp everyone flinched on instinct. The severed limb hit the asphalt with a wet, heavy smack.
The marten sprang back, except now, on three legs, it wasn't the same creature.
Its movement turned uneven, less fluid. Every attempt to accelerate ended in skids and stumbles, balance constantly slipping away.
Leon saw it instantly.
A short smile, without any joy, flickered across his face. This was his only chance.
He surged forward without hesitation, determined to end it before fatigue stole him entirely. Now he dictated the pace. He pressed the advantage he'd created, and each cut landed more often, deeper, carving more wounds into the beast's body as violet blood spilled and splashed the ground.
Off to the side, Valeria watched in silence with focused, almost professional interest. Most people would've seen only chaos, but she saw the structure: the provocation, the intentional opening, the single use of a skill meant only to force a reaction, and then the precise severing of the hind limb, not to kill the opponent, but to strip away its greatest advantage.
Speed.
Now the beast couldn't keep up.
No explosive leaps. No vanishing and reappearing in fractions of a second.
Leon was tiring fast from using his maximum speed, but he finally had room to control the fight, cut, half-step back, cut again, systematically bleeding it down until its movements grew increasingly desperate.
It was clear the battle was heading toward its end.
The creature stumbled again, this time not because of a trick, but because its body could no longer match its intentions. Three legs couldn't maintain a pace that had been natural to it moments ago. Leon could see it in the way it started panting, in the uneven rhythm of its breath, and in how the violet glow beneath its skin pulsed weaker and weaker, as if the energy driving it was leaking out with its blood onto the asphalt.
For the first time since the fight began, something appeared in its eyes that hadn't been there before.
Fear.
Not the wild, aggressive impulse that drove it to attack, something cleaner. A raw instinctive understanding that this opponent was no longer prey, but danger. That if it stayed another heartbeat, it wasn't leaving alive.
It hesitated for a fraction of a second, then spun, trying to flee. Turning its back, choosing the only exit its instincts offered.
And that was the mistake.
Leon moved immediately, no longer thinking about exhaustion or the pain in his shoulders. He spent his maximum speed and surged forward, one instant and he was in front of it, cutting off its escape route before it even registered that he'd left its field of view.
The sword came down.
All his strength. No hesitation. No correction.
The blade drove from above into the beast's neck, punching straight through, through tissue and bone with a dull, heavy resistance. The momentum was so great the steel kept going, biting into the asphalt beneath and pinning the body to the ground like Leon had nailed it to the campus itself.
"Where do you think you're going?" he said coldly, almost under his breath, more statement than question.
The violet marten howled once more, short and broken. Its body convulsed, claws scraping the ground and carving ragged lines into the concrete. The shriek sank into lower, choking sounds, until it stopped entirely.
The spasms ended. The tension drained away.
And the violet glow under its skin went out, as if someone had flipped a switch.
Leon stayed still for another moment, both hands locked on the hilt, heart hammering, muscles trembling with effort. Then he finally let go of the sword and stepped back.
Only then, exactly as always, the familiar, dry system window appeared before his eyes.
[Essence Record - Kill Confirmed]
[Target: Violet Mutant Marten (LVL 25)]
[Reward: +15 AGI | +10 STR | +10 VIT | +50 MANA]