Chapter 135: Leon Against Kaelen (4)

But Leon was an immovable object!

The Steadfast-tier biology he possessed was simply too dense, his foundation too profoundly reinforced by his SSS+ talent. The crushing gravity washed over his dark, gold-embroidered garb and failed to slow his footwork. The waves of plasma crashed against his passive, anti-magic carapace, the intense heat instantly mitigated and absorbed to fuel his relentless stamina.

Leon fought with cold, methodical rage. He didn’t shout. He didn’t boast. Every time Kaelen overextended, Leon punished him.

Kaelen lunged, thrusting the spear-tip of his halberd toward Leon’s throat. Leon smoothly shifted his physical framework into a localized sub-dimension for a split second.

The flaming weapon passed harmlessly through his chest as if he were a ghost. The moment the blade cleared his hit-box, Leon solidified, grabbing the haft of the halberd and delivering a devastating knee strike directly into Kaelen’s sternum.

The impact lifted Kaelen off his feet, cracking the heavily reinforced armor plate. Before Kaelen could recover, Leon spun, driving a brutal, sweeping kick into the side of the Guild Master’s knee. The joint buckled with a sickening snap, and Kaelen was forced down into the mud.

"Is this the extent of your stolen power?" Leon asked, his voice calm, yet radiating absolute hostility. He stepped back, allowing Kaelen to drag himself upright. "You sacrificed your humanity to close the gap, and you are still nothing but a minor inconvenience."

Kaelen spat a glob of boiling blood into the grass, his chest heaving. The intoxicating high of the level absorption was fading, replaced by a creeping, agonizing realization. He was Level 73. He was moving faster and hitting harder than he ever had in his entire life. He was manipulating gravity and superheated plasma with absolute mastery.

And yet, Leon Wes had not taken a single step backward. The player hadn’t even drawn his greatsword. He was dismantling Kaelen with a single-handed axe and basic martial arts, parrying and striking with a terrifying, effortless efficiency that made Kaelen feel like a child swinging a stick at a mountain.

"I am the Emperor of the East!" Kaelen roared, his voice cracking with desperation.

He slammed his hands against the muddy earth, pouring every ounce of his remaining stolen mana into the ground. The golden-red ring of his domain pulsed violently, contracting inward. He wasn’t trying to suppress Leon anymore; he was weaponizing the environment.

The earth beneath Leon’s feet violently fractured, huge slabs of rock and mud launching upward, attempting to crush him in a localized singularity of debris. At the same time, Kaelen leaped into the air, bringing his halberd down in a blazing, two-handed strike, intending to cleave Leon in half while he was trapped by the earth.

From the shattered ruin of the bamboo estate, Snow watched the battle with her heart hammering in her throat. She had seen Leon dominate the Level 50 bears, and she had felt his restrained power during their spars, but watching him fight a Level 73 tyrant was an entirely different reality.

The sheer shockwaves from their clashes were enough to make the air vibrate painfully against her skin. She saw the debris converging on Leon and gripped the splintered wood of the floorboards, her knuckles turning white.

Leon didn’t even look at the converging rocks. He simply willed the localized space around him to compress.

A pitch-black, shimmering shield of dimensional energy violently expanded from his left hand. The flying debris crashed into the dark void and instantly vanished, erased from the physical plane.

Kaelen descended through the air, his plasma blade roaring.

Leon stepped casually to the side, allowing the massive halberd to crash into the earth where he had just been standing. The impact detonated, blowing a twenty-foot crater into the ground and sending a geyser of mud and boiling water into the sky.

Before Kaelen could pull his weapon from the crater, Leon stepped in. He didn’t use the axe. He reached out and grabbed Kaelen by the throat, hoisting the heavily armored man entirely off his feet.

The grip was absolute. Kaelen dropped his weapon, his hands desperately clawing at Leon’s leather-gloved fingers, his legs kicking uselessly in the air.

"You came here to find me," Leon said softly, his dual-colored eyes burning into Kaelen’s terrified gaze. "You found me. And now, you are going to die here, entirely forgotten by the world you tried to rule."

Leon tightened his grip, the sound of Kaelen’s reinforced gorget beginning to crumple under the immense pressure.

Kaelen was suffocating, his vision swimming with black spots. The realization that he was entirely outmatched, that his stolen levels meant absolutely nothing against the Steadfast Vanguard, finally broke the last remnants of his aristocratic pride. He was going to die here.

Unless he burned everything to the ground.

Kaelen’s hands dropped from Leon’s wrist. He closed his bloodshot eyes, forcing his fractured mana core into a complete, catastrophic overdrive. He abandoned all defense, all regeneration, and all physical reinforcement. He drew the entirety of his golden-red domain inward, collapsing the crushing gravity directly into his own chest, forcibly merging it with the unstable, superheated plasma of his weapon’s aura.

The air around Kaelen began to scream, warping violently as a blinding, apocalyptic light began to radiate from the cracks in his armor.

Leon sensed the catastrophic buildup of unstable, compressed energy. It wasn’t a standard spell; it was a localized, suicidal detonation designed to wipe the entire valley off the map.

Kaelen’s eyes snapped open, glowing with a blinding, blindingly bright mixture of gold and blood-red light. He looked down at Leon, his face twisted into a mask of pure, self-destructive malice, preparing to unleash the entirety of his condensed domain in one final, inescapable wave of absolute annihilation.

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A/N: Thanks for reading this far!

I really appreciate all of your support, and through golden tickets and power stones, you can truly motivate me to keep going.

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