Chapter 134: Leon Against Kaelen (3)

"Imperial decree," Kaelen gasped, the words bubbling with blood and absolute malice. "Level absorption activate!"

The necrotic crimson light that had been pooling around Kaelen’s hand flared into a blinding, parasitic sun. Silas did not just scream; his vocal cords shredded as the fundamental essence of his existence was violently ripped from his biological framework. The Level 33 Rogue was lifted inches off the ground, his body convulsing in agony as thick, pulsing veins of stolen mana and raw system data flowed out of his skull and directly into the Guild Master’s arm.

Sienna, the support mage, scrambled backward through the mud, her eyes wide with unadulterated horror. She didn’t try to cast a healing spell. She turned and ran, fleeing blindly into the crystalline forest, leaving her dying comrade behind.

Silas’s skin desiccated, turning a pale, ashen gray. His armor lost its magical luster, and the very density of his muscles withered away. In less than three seconds, the rogue was entirely hollowed out, reduced to a fragile, dried husk that crumbled into dust as Kaelen finally released his grip.

Kaelen threw his head back, letting out a roar that shook the damp earth.

The catastrophic influx of thirty-three levels’ worth of foundation, essence, and raw stat points slammed into his broken core. The horrific injuries Leon had inflicted healed instantaneously.

The shattered bones in his jaw and wrist snapped back into place with sickening cracks. His armor, dented and ruined moments before, aggressively morphed and repaired itself, drawing upon the stolen essence to re-forge into something thicker, darker, and radiating an unbearable, suffocating heat.

The golden-red ring of gravity that had shattered moments ago violently re-ignited, expanding with triple its previous circumference. It crushed the surrounding grass into the dirt and caused the rushing water of the nearby mana-waterfall to physically stutter in its descent.

A notification pulsed in the heavy air at the edge of Kaelen’s vision, stark and undeniable.

[DING! Player, Kaelen Vance, your have leveled up! Forced Evolution was successful!]

[Current Level: 73]

[Role Talent: SS]

Kaelen slowly lowered his head, his dark eyes burning with a renewed, frenzied obsession. The suffocating pain of his defeat was gone, replaced by a surging, intoxicating high of stolen power. He flexed his hands, feeling the catastrophic strength of a Level 73 entity coursing through his veins.

He bent down, gripping the haft of his discarded halberd. As his fingers wrapped around the weapon, the blade did not just ignite; it erupted into a towering, roaring pillar of unstable, blood-red plasma that superheated the damp air, instantly turning the mud beneath him into baked clay.

"You pushed me to this," Kaelen snarled, his voice no longer a wheeze, but a booming, metallic resonance that carried the absolute weight of a tyrant. "You made me slaughter my own subordinate. I am going to peel the flesh from your bones, and then I am going to burn this valley to the ground with your wife trapped inside it!"

Leon Wes stood perfectly still on the ruined grass. He did not look at the ashes of the rogue, nor did he flinch at the blinding heat of the plasma. His icy blue and golden eyes remained fixed on Kaelen, completely devoid of empathy.

"You cannibalized your own subordinate for a fraction of borrowed time," Leon stated, his voice a low, cold hum that cut through the roaring flames. "It doesn’t make you a king. It just makes you a parasite. And parasites are meant to be exterminated."

Kaelen didn’t waste another word. He vanished.

The speed he displayed was no longer the sluggish, easily readable movement of a Level 46. Bolstered by the stolen Agility and the crushing atmospheric control of his domain, Kaelen moved like a localized meteor. He crossed the clearing in a fraction of a second, bringing the massive, superheated halberd down in a devastating, two-handed vertical execution strike.

Leon didn’t catch the blade bare-handed this time. The thermal output had increased exponentially, possessing enough localized heat to warp the space around the metal.

Instead, Leon raised his right hand, summoning his dark, sleek axe from his spatial inventory. The weapon materialized perfectly into his grip. He brought the dark silver haft up in a smooth, frictionless arc to parry.

The collision of the plasma-wreathed halberd and the conceptual metal of the axe generated a shockwave that physically tore the topsoil away from the earth. The remaining bamboo structure of the estate’s porch violently splintered, sending shards of wood raining down around them.

Kaelen grinned viciously, feeling his weapon bite into the block. He was no longer completely outclassed. His stolen Level 73 stats allowed him to actually push against the Vanguard’s guard.

But Leon’s expression remained terrifyingly stoic. He wasn’t being pushed back. He was simply anchoring himself.

Leon allowed the weapon’s mass to shift. He utilized the dark axe’s unique kinetic property, dropping its weight to absolute zero for a fraction of a microsecond. The sudden loss of resistance caused Kaelen to stumble forward slightly, his heavy swing overextending.

Leon instantly stepped into the opening. The dark axe regained its catastrophic mass in a heartbeat, and Leon drove the flat of the blade directly into Kaelen’s reinforced ribcage.

The delayed kinetic pulse injected directly into the crimson armor. Half a second later, the shockwave violently imploded inward. Kaelen was blasted off his feet, launched backward through the air. But he didn’t crash helplessly into the trees this time. He twisted mid-air, utilizing the localized gravity of his domain to anchor his boots to the side of a massive crystalline tree trunk, standing horizontally against the bark.

He pushed off the tree with explosive force, rocketing back toward Leon.

The clearing became a blur of apocalyptic violence. The two men clashed over and over, their weapons ringing out like a continuous, deafening thunderclap. Kaelen fought with the desperate, frantic energy of a cornered beast given a second lease on life.

He swept his halberd in wide, devastating arcs, projecting massive waves of superheated plasma that scorched the earth and boiled the nearby river. He actively manipulated the gravity around Leon, trying to randomly invert the pressure to throw the player off balance.

But Leon was an immovable object!