The atmosphere in the garden turned frigid as Leon and Ron braced for the coming storm. Ron, sensing the venom from the plant's bite spreading through her veins, opened her palm with practiced grace. In an instant, a glowing healing potion manifested out of thin air. She poured it over her wound, the flesh knitting back together before their eyes.
"Wow, I'm impressed," Xenes remarked, his voice dripping with mock admiration. "The Primordial Skill of Creation. Tell me, my lady, what else can you manifest?"
Leon's mind raced. He knew he could end this in a heartbeat with a surprise attack, but he was trapped by his own deception. He couldn't use a skill he hadn't "stolen" yet, and doing so in front of Ron would shatter his disguise. He needed to be surgical, but he could feel it—the man standing before them was no ordinary mage.
Ron felt Leon's tension and reached out, her fingers interlacing with his. "You don't have to worry," she whispered, her eyes filled with a fierce resolve. "I can protect you. I know how your abilities work, and together, we can stop him. You have me."
Her words acted like an anchor, steadying Leon's heart. She raised her hands and brought them together in a sharp clap above her head. A thick, purple mist began to billow from her palms, rolling across the garden like a tidal wave. Wherever the gas touched the vibrant leaves, they shriveled and turned to ash.
She can create poison, Leon realized, surprised by her tactical lethality.
But the sound of clapping interrupted his thoughts. Xenes was laughing, a distorted, rhythmic sound. "Impressive! You make poison. I'd love to see just how much you can produce." His smile vanished, replaced by a cold, predatory stare. "But I am a Legendary Rank, and unlike the others, I don't like to play with my food. Let's get serious."
Xenes stretched his hands toward the horizon, his voice chanting a dark, rhythmic melody:
"All things beautiful and deadly,
Where creation comes in harmony,
Nature unites, emits catastrophe,
Behold the vile creature..."
"Soul's Palace: Wrath of Mother Nature!"
Reality tore open. The beautiful garden was swallowed by a realm of primal horror. Monstrous trees with reaching, clawed branches erupted from the earth, and the ground gave way to a sea of bubbling, toxic water filled with the silhouettes of carnivorous, prehistoric fish. Mythical beasts of legend—distorted and feral—emerged from the thickets. This was nature, but twisted into a weapon of pure malice.
Everything in this domain hungered for blood. The sky rumbled with violet lightning, and earthquakes shattered the terrain, yet the monsters within the palace moved through the chaos unaffected, as if they were part of the storm itself.
Plants began exhaling clouds of lethal gas that made Ron's poison look like mist. In an instant, the animals began to grow, their bodies bulging with unnatural muscle as they evolved into titanic predators.
From the heart of the chaos, Xenes's mocking laughter echoed across the sky. "Behold my palace! Is it not perfection? Now... let's get this over with."
In the heart of the corrupted domain, Ron summoned the peak of her power, manifesting a shimmering dome of light to purify the toxic air. Beside her, Leon mimicked the movement, casting a duplicate shield to maintain his charade. But the sky above them didn't just darken; it curdled.
From the churning, poisonous clouds, a flight of Black Dragons descended. In the annals of history, a single Black Dragon was a localized calamity capable of leveling a capital city with a single breath—and Xenes Roman commanded hundreds. He was no longer a man; he was a living apocalypse.
Ron's Creation skill was legendary, but her current rank had its limits; manifesting an army of drakes to match Xenes was an impossibility. She poured her life force into the shield as the dragons beat their wings, sending hurricanes of jagged wind against her light. Twin torrents of dragon-fire washed over the domes, the heat turning the toxic sea into steam.
Leon stood in the center of his barrier, his heart a battlefield of indecision. He watched Ron strain, her face pale and glistening with sweat. He was seconds away from an impossible choice: reveal the Almighty and lose his friend's trust, or watch her perish.
The choice was made for him.
Two dragons broke from the formation, diving at Mach speeds from the blind spots behind the shields. The dragon that slammed into Leon's barrier didn't break the glass; it hit an immovable law of physics and was pulverized into a spray of gore. But Ron's shield shattered like parchment. The impact launched her through the air, her body slamming into a gnarled, demonic tree. The sound of snapping bone echoed through the realm, her leg mutilated, her breath a ragged gasp of agony.
Seeing Ron broken and bleeding, Leon's restraint didn't just snap—it evaporated. The air around him didn't just vibrate; it screamed. His hair and eyes ignited with a terrifying, celestial radiance.
There was no incantation. There were no words. Reality didn't shift; it surrendered to a superior force.
The sky was suddenly occupied. The hundreds of Black Dragons were dwarfed by an infinite horizon of Gigantic Alien Gods. The Realm of the Almighty had overwritten the Wrath of Nature without effort.
Xenes Roman stood paralyzed. He had ignored Ren's warnings as the ramblings of a coward, but the sight of the cosmic entities staring down at him made his soul wither. In a frantic, blind panic, he signaled his dragons to attack.
A single God in the sky snapped its fingers.
The sound was like the closing of a book. Instantly, the hundreds of Black Dragons dropped from the sky like dead flies. The monstrous plants wilted; the feral beasts collapsed. Death didn't just visit the realm—it became the atmosphere.
Before Xenes could scream, Leon was there. A single punch connected with the Legend's face, the shockwave so immense it distorted the space of the entire realm. Xenes was sent flying for miles, hitting the ground with half of his head obliterated. He was dead before he stopped sliding.
Watching through the glowing orb, the mysterious figure on the red throne stood up, breath hitching in shock. Ren hadn't exaggerated. This wasn't a skill; it was a cosmic error.
Leon blurred across the distance, appearing over Xenes's corpse. His face was twisted into a mask of divine, unhinged fury. He looked at the remains of the man who had dared to touch his friend and hissed:
"How dare you die!"
Leon snapped his fingers. Time and biology obeyed. Xenes's head knitted back together; his lungs filled with air; his soul was dragged back from the gates of the afterlife. Leon didn't wait for him to speak. He began to beat him back into the earth, and each time Xenes's body failed, Leon resurrected him to feel the next blow.
Xenes slipped through Leon's blood-slicked fingers, falling to his knees and weeping. "Please... forgive me! I promise you'll never see me again! If you can't forgive me... then just let me die! This is too much to bear!"
Xenes's mind broke. What is this? What sort of devil is he? A maniacal monster.....This walking anomaly... those eyes... it's like he's enjoying the slaughter. Why did I come here? If only I had never been born!
Leon looked down at the sobbing Legend, his face lit by a sinister, cold smile that held no trace of the boy Ron knew. A vile aura, thick with a bloodlust that could be felt for miles, radiated from his skin. He reached down, grabbed Xenes by the face, and lifted him up.
His voice was a cold, emotionless whisper that felt like a razor against Xenes's ear:
"Round two."