Chapter 141: Godspeed vanish effectiveness

The grass beneath Leon’s feet shifted violently, blades twisting and thickening in an instant, transforming into a writhing mass of thin, hissing snakes that lunged directly at his legs.

Leon reacted on pure instinct, calling on Aegis without thinking.

The familiar translucent green shield flickered into existence around him for the briefest fraction of a second, then vanished entirely, gone before it could offer any real protection at all.

His eyes snapped toward Medusa, and he found her watching him with a knowing, satisfied smirk, clearly unsurprised by the shield’s sudden failure. ℯℯ𝑙.

"So that’s how it’s going to be," Leon muttered, scoffing.

The snakes surged closer, jaws snapping toward his ankles. Instead of retreating, Leon jumped, launching himself high into the air, and pushed off with a sudden, explosive burst of speed, dashing straight toward Medusa herself.

She never even had the chance to react.

One moment Leon was several feet away, airborne.

The next, he was directly in front of her, his hand already closing tightly around her throat, golden wings flaring briefly into view around his ankles as Hermes’ speed carried him across the distance in less time than a heartbeat.

Medusa let out a strangled grunt of surprise, her hands flying instinctively toward his wrist, though her fingers found no leverage against his grip.

"I won’t let anyone control me," Leon said, his voice low and hard, his fingers tightening slightly around her throat. "Get that into your skull."

Medusa struggled against him, clawing weakly at his hand, though whatever strength she possessed clearly wasn’t enough to break his hold.

Just as Leon began to think the confrontation might end here, a sudden, faint shimmer of green light rippled across her skin.

A thin, translucent coating spread rapidly beneath his fingers, the same unmistakable shade as Aegis’s own barrier.

His grip bounced off entirely, his hand recoiling as though he’d struck solid stone instead of flesh.

Leon’s eyes widened slightly.

’She’s using Aegis,’ he thought. ’On herself.’

Medusa staggered back a step, coughing, though the momentary damage to her composure didn’t last. Her expression twisted into something furious, her earlier warmth completely gone now.

"You’re either mine," she snarled, "or no one’s at all!"

The snakes coiled through her hair lunged forward as one, spitting thick streams of glowing, hot green venom directly toward him.

To Leon, the venom crawled through the air, painfully slow, each droplet visible and sluggish enough that avoiding them required barely any effort at all.

He simply stepped back, letting the venom splash harmlessly against the grass behind him, the ground hissing and smoking where it landed.

He vanished from her sight an instant later, reappearing directly behind her.

"I’d rather not hit women," he muttered, already swinging his hand toward the back of her neck, aiming to knock her out cleanly rather than cause any real harm. "But sorry. My freedom’s at risk here."

The moment his hand connected, the same green barrier flared to life instantly, and Leon’s strike bounced off completely, the recoil violent enough to send him flying backward through the air.

He caught a brief, disorienting glimpse of the sky spinning above him as he flew, before his focus snapped back down toward the ground rushing up to meet him.

The grass where he was about to land had already begun shifting, twisting rapidly into massive, thick-bodied snakes far larger than the thin ones that had first lunged at his ankles.

They surged upward like a rising tidal wave, hissing loudly in unison, jaws wide and waiting directly beneath him.

The massive wall of snakes surged upward, jaws wide, closing in fast enough that any ordinary reaction would have been far too slow to matter.

Leon’s body flickered instead, a faint shimmer rippling across his frame the instant before impact.

The wave crashed through him entirely, snake after snake passing straight through his body as though he were nothing more than a mirage.

The tidal wave surged past and collapsed back down into ordinary grass on the other side, the field settling back into its usual, deceptively peaceful stillness within seconds.

However, Leon was no where to be found.

Medusa spun around sharply, her eyes darting across the field, searching for wherever he’d disappeared to.

"Where—" she started, turning again, scanning the open field stretching out in every direction.

The snakes coiled through her hair hissed anxiously, their small heads swiveling in every direction, searching just as fruitlessly as she was.

"Come out," she called, her voice carrying an edge of frustration now, the earlier venomous confidence noticeably thinner. "This is my domain. You can’t actually hide from me here."

Nothing answered.

Then, from directly behind her, she felt it.

A sharp, precise strike landed against the side of her neck, fast enough that she barely registered the contact before her vision blurred violently at the edges, the world tilting sharply out of focus.

Her knees buckled instantly, her body swaying, legs failing to hold her upright any longer.

As she fell, her vision still fading rapidly toward darkness, she caught one final glimpse of him.

Leon stood behind her, with a frown on his face, and no trace of the earlier warmth he had towards her.

Something in that frown struck her harder than the blow itself had.

’Don’t...’ she thought, the words forming weakly somewhere deep beneath the rapidly encroaching darkness, ’frown at me like that.’

Her body hit the ground a moment later, and everything went black.

Leon stood over her for a long moment afterward, his chest rising and falling steadily.

’I never expected Godspeed Vanish to come in handy this fast.’ he thought.

Normally, he wouldn’t have been able to touch Medusa due to Aegis directly covering her, so no matter how much more stronger he was, the fight would just be dragged out.

However, with Godless Vanish, he could easily bypass Aegis, since it made him exist outside of reality.

He had also been standing close to her for a while, but she hadn’t been able to perceive him at all, due to Godspeed vanish also.