The moment Lace Freeman shed his disguise, the air itself seemed to curdle. With a casual, almost bored wave of his hand, Lace unleashed a kinetic blast that sent Leon hurtling through the air. The boy crashed into a nearby oak, the impact rattling his teeth and clearing his clouded mind.
As Leon slid down the trunk, the pieces of the puzzle finally locked into place. He realized he had been blind. The excessive, oily aura he had felt when "Luther" first entered the classroom; the invisible presence watching him through the orb around Xenes's neck—it hadn't been a series of coincidences. It was a hunt. He had spent so much time running from his own reflection that he hadn't noticed the shadow chasing him.
"What do you want from me?" Leon screamed, his voice echoing through the silent woods.
"Your power, of course," Lace replied, his voice dripping with an ancient, cold entitlement. "Like I said before, there is always a 'third option.' I am more deserving of that strength you keep trying to bury. I don't care what you are or where you came from, Leon. I want that authority. I deserve it."
Leon struggled to his feet, his eyes narrowing. "You're a monster. To live this long... to transcend death... you must have buried countless vile secrets. No one with clean hands survives for centuries."
"You're right," Lace said, a dark glint in his eyes. "Tell me, Leon, do you know the true pinnacle of Theft? Do you know why the universe calls it 'Theft' and not 'Adaptation' or 'Copy'?"
Leon took a short, sharp breath. If the skill only copied, it would be a mirror. But "Theft" implied something taken—something stolen that could never be returned. "I don't know," Leon whispered. "But I know it isn't for anything good."
Lace's mocking laughter cut through the air. "Well then... let me show you."
Leon braced for impact. He manifested a shimmering, impenetrable shield, locking his focus entirely on Lace. Suddenly, the atmospheric pressure plummeted. He heard the low, rhythmic hum of an incantation—the sound of a Soul Palace being birthed—but Lace's mouth never moved. The voice was deep, echoing, and belonged to someone else.
"A kingdom in hell,
Where the dead and devils dwell.
In an instant, your soul is destroyed,
A scorching heat controlled by only one being's desire..."
"Soul Palace: The All-Consuming Fire!"
Reality groaned as it was flayed open. The forest vanished, replaced by a nightmare of obsidian and flame. The heat was so intense it would have melted steel in seconds; waterfalls of liquid lava cascaded from jagged cliffs, and a sea of molten rock swallowed ninety percent of the horizon. Inside his shield, Leon felt the air begin to bake.
"This is impossible," Leon shouted over the roar of the flames. "This isn't a Theft user's palace! How are you casting this?"
Lace merely smiled and took a slow step to the side. Behind him, standing amidst the lava as if it were cool water, was a titan of a man. It was Mordrid, the Flame God—the most famous Legend in the history of the kingdom.
Leon's heart sank. "You... you work for Mordrid? The Legend of the Flame?"
Lace's smile widened into something truly ghoulish. "No, Leon. He works for me."
The chilling truth settled into Leon's marrow like frost. It was one thing to command S-Rank mages, but to hold a Legendary Rank—the absolute pinnacle of human evolution—as a mere subordinate? Lace Freeman wasn't just a survivor; he was a sovereign.
Leon realized there was no more room for hesitation. He didn't know the depth of Lace's scheme, but he knew he couldn't afford to let the elder thief dictate the tempo of this war. He stretched out his hand, preparing to overwrite the hellish landscape with his own divinity.
As his silver hair began to ignite with celestial light, Leon felt a sudden, inexplicable flicker in his mana—a strange "wrongness" he couldn't name. He pushed the sensation aside. If I end this now, he reasoned, whatever this glitch is won't matter.
His voice boomed, echoing through the halls of the fire-palace:
"Behold a race of gods,
Each skill and its Lords.
A pantheon of endless gods,
Born from nothing..."
"Soul Palace: Realm of the Almighty!"
The fiery dimension shattered like brittle glass, giving way to the infinite void of the Pantheon. Colossal, alien deities loomed in the silence, their multi-eyed gazes fixed on the two figures below.
To Leon's growing unease, Lace Freeman didn't flinch. He didn't scream. He simply smiled—a calm, terrifying expression—and began to walk toward Leon with the casual gait of a man strolling through his own garden.
"Like I asked before," Lace said, his voice cutting through the divine pressure. "Do you know why the skill is called Theft, and not Adaptation?"
Leon's heart hammered against his ribs. The unease he felt earlier was growing into a cold dread. Why was Lace so unbothered? Why did the gods of the Pantheon feel... distant?
Lace stopped, his eyes glowing with an ancient, parasitic hunger. He began his own chant:
"The eyes that see all things,
The reflection of everything.
Look and behold the Almighty,
For he is the one true god..."
"Soul Palace: The Reflection of God!"
At first, nothing changed. The Pantheon remained, the alien gods still stood tall. Leon scanned the horizon, waiting for a tectonic shift or a sudden attack, but the realm stayed still.
"The reason it is called a Theft skill," Lace whispered, breaking the silence, "is because once you reach the peak, you don't just mimic. You take."
Lace's smile widened, revealing teeth that seemed too sharp. "In other words, Leon... you can steal a Soul Palace itself."
In that heartbeat, the trap snapped shut.
In front of every single god in the sky—thousands of them—a massive, shimmering mirror materialized out of thin air. The alien deities froze mid-motion, their divine auras becoming stagnant. Leon tried to command his gods to move, to strike, to do anything, but they were no longer his. He felt the connection to his own soul being severed, as if a master key had just been turned in his own lock.
Lace Freeman stood in the center of Leon's own kingdom, looking up at the stolen Pantheon with the eyes of a new owner. He turned back to Leon, waving a hand with a gentle, mocking grace.
"Bye-bye."
The transition was violent. One moment, Leon was drowning in the cold realization of his defeat; the next, he gasped for air, his eyes snapping open to the familiar ceiling of his bedroom at the Vinci Mansion. The morning's journey to the school hostel felt like a lifetime ago. Space and time had been warped to discard him like refuse.
"What's happening? What is going on?" Leon whispered, his voice cracking.
Tears began to fall, hot and uncontrollable. It wasn't just fear; it was a visceral, hollow sensation in his chest. For the first time in his existence, he felt the agony of being diminished. Something vital—the very core of his authority—had been torn away, leaving an ache he couldn't comprehend.
In the dim light of the room, Yudris materialized without a summons. She didn't bow. Instead, she knelt beside him, her hands cradling his cheeks with a mother's tenderness as she wiped away the salt of his grief.
"I shouldn't have ignored it," Leon choked out, his body trembling. "I sensed the glitch before it happened, but I hoped it would just go away. I was foolish. Now, I've given him the keys to the universe. No one can stop him."
"Young Lord," Yudris said, her voice a calm anchor in his storm. "You lost today not because he was superior, but because you are at war with yourself. You crave a normal life so desperately that you've turned your own power into a stranger. Your biggest weakness isn't Lace Freeman—it is the boy who refuses to accept the God."
She leaned closer, her eyes burning with an ancient intensity. "Stop running. Stop hoping problems will vanish if you close your eyes. You need to be the real you. Not a 'Theft' user. Not a naive child. You."
The words sank into Leon like iron in water, heavy and permanent. He looked directly into her eyes, the tears finally stopping. "Is there a way to stop him? Even without my Soul Palace?"
Yudris smiled, a sharp, knowing expression. "Young Lord, you are the one who defines the limits. What restricts the average human cannot hold you. Stop limiting your reality with your thoughts."
Leon sat in silence for a long moment, the air in the room beginning to hum with a new, focused frequency. The "naive kid" died in that silence. He was done playing stupid. He was done waiting for a change. He stood up, took a single, deep breath, and locked onto the oily, stolen signature of Lace's mana.
He vanished in a crack of displaced air, teleporting directly back to the source of the rot.
While Leon had struggled in the void of his bedroom, Lace Freeman had wasted no time. Under his command, a trembling Ren had gathered every student and staff member into the grand School Arena.
Lace stood upon the central stage, still wearing the gentle face of Mr. Luther, though the mask was beginning to fray at the edges. The students watched, confused and murmuring, until he began the chant that would end their world.
"The eyes that see all things,
The reflection of everything.
Look and behold the Almighty,
For he is the one true god..."
"Soul Palace: The Reflection of God!"
The sky above the arena didn't just change; it disintegrated. The reality that replaced it was a stitched-together nightmare of every soul Lace had ever devoured. The golden gods of Leon's Pantheon stood side-by-side with Xenes's Black Dragons, Mordrid's lava-falls, and a dozen other extreme phenomena.
Lace had merged them all into one invincible, overlapping realm of chaos. He stood at the center of this stolen divinity, a sinister smile stretching across his face as the realization finally hit the crowd:
The gatekeeper had opened the doors to Hell.