The air shifted. It wasn't just the monsters who felt it. On the walls, the villagers felt a new pressure, a static charge that made the hair on their arms stand up. The boy they'd known as Kaelen was gone, replaced by a conduit of something ancient and terrible.
Leo didn't wait for them to regain their courage. With the Force as his new senses, the battlefield was an open book. He could feel the clumping of goblins here, the heavy, thudding presence of a troll there, the skittering minds of the bat-creatures circling above. He was no longer just reacting; he was orchestrating.
He moved again, but this time it was different. He didn't just run. He flowed, using the Force to augment his enhanced speed, becoming little more than a black and silver smear. Goblins didn't just fall to his lightsaber; they were thrown into each other by unseen shoves, their formations breaking before he even reached them. A group of hobgoblins raising spears found their weapons ripped from their hands, the wooden shafts splintering as they were crushed against a rock by an invisible fist.
[+50 NP]... [+75 NP]... [+500 NP]...
The points were a river now, flowing steadily into his account. He was a farmer, and this was his harvest.
A bat-creature dove, its stinger aimed at his back. Without even turning, Leo raised his left hand. The creature froze in mid-air, its wings beating frantically against an invisible cage. He made a slight crushing motion with his fist. There was a wet, popping sound. The creature dropped, lifeless. [+150 NP]
He was efficiency personified. No movement was wasted. No energy was spent unnecessarily. He was a god of death, and this was his divine duty.
The horde, driven by some primal instinct, began to focus on him entirely. They forgot the village, the walls, the screaming humans. The only thing that mattered was destroying this single, impossible threat. They surged towards him in a single, roaring mass, a living tsunami of flesh and fury.
For the first time, Leo was forced to stop his advance. He stood his ground, the silver lightsaber a constant, humming arc of destruction, his free hand a relentless instrument of the Force, pushing, pulling, and crushing. But there were too many. They began to press in, their bodies piling up, creating a grisly ramp of their own dead. A troll's club grazed his shoulder, the impact jarring even through his enhanced durability. He felt a rib crack.
This was inefficient. He was spending more energy defending than he was earning.
His NP counter blazed: [NP: 1,450,320.]
Enough.
He deactivated the lightsaber, the silver blade vanishing with a final hiss. He clipped the hilt to his belt. The monsters, sensing a lapse, redoubled their efforts, scrambling over the mountain of corpses to reach him.
Leo planted his feet firmly. He ignored the pain in his side. He ignored the closing circle of teeth and claws. He closed his eyes, and for the first time, he reached deep into the Universal Energy Core within him. He didn't pull on Ki or Chakra. He reached for the raw, untapped potential, the pure life force.
He brought his hands to his side, palms cupped. A faint, blue-white light began to glow between them.
The air itself began to hum, a deeper, more resonant frequency than the lightsaber. The very particles of light seemed to bend towards his hands. The wind picked up, whipping his hair and cloak around him.
"What... what is he doing now?" a militiaman whispered, his voice trembling.
The blue-white energy between Leo's palms grew, swirling, compressing, gathering into a sphere of incandescent power. It crackled and spat, throwing off waves of pure force that made the advancing monsters stagger. The grass around his feet was flattened in a perfect circle.
He could feel it—the energy of a star being born in his hands. The Kamehameha.
He opened his eyes, and they glowed with the same blue-white intensity. His voice, when he spoke, was not his own. It was the voice of the energy itself, a low, thunderous roar that silenced the battlefield.
"KA... ME... HA... ME... HA!"
He thrust his hands forward.
A massive, continuous beam of pure, concentrated energy erupted from his palms. It wasn't a laser; it was a river of destruction, ten feet wide. It didn't burn; it erased.
The beam tore through the center of the horde. Goblins, hobgoblins, trolls—they didn't have time to scream. They were vaporized where they stood, leaving no ash, no blood, only a clean, empty trench carved through the earth that stretched from Leo's position all the way to the distant tree line. The bat-creatures in the path of the beam simply ceased to be.
The roar of the energy blast faded, replaced by a deafening silence. The few surviving monsters on the flanks stood frozen, their primitive minds utterly broken by the display of power. The half of the horde that remained was now leaderless, terrified, and scattered.
Leo stood panting, smoke rising from his hands, the smell of ozone heavy in the air. His energy core felt drained, but it was already refilling. The points counter was a blinding, frantic scroll of numbers. He'd killed hundreds, maybe thousands, in a single shot.
[+50 NP]... [+500 NP]... [+150 NP]... (x hundreds)
[Major Objective Complete: Decimate the Horde.]
[Achievement Unlocked: One-Man Army.]
[Achievement Unlocked: Eraser of Legions.]
The numbers finally settled.
[Nexus Points: 4,887,650.]
And then, a new line of text, glowing with a deep, blood-red hue, appeared beneath his name.
[TITLE UPDATED: From 'Village Pariah' to 'Legion's Bane']
A slow, weary, but utterly triumphant smile spread beneath his mask. Legion's Bane. He liked the sound of that.
He looked up at the remaining monsters. They looked back at him, and then, as one, they broke. They turned and fled, scrambling over each other to get away from the silver-handed demon who commanded the sky itself.
The silence on the wall was absolute. Then, a single cheer broke out. It was hesitant at first, then another joined, and another, until the entire village was roaring his name—or the name they knew him by.
"Kaelen! KAELEN!"
Leo didn't acknowledge them. He turned his back on the cheering villagers and the field of the dead. He looked down at his hands, then towards the horizon, towards a world that was now, truly, his for the taking.
The storm was over. He had reaped the whirlwind. And he was just getting started.