Leo's gaze moved slowly from one opponent to the next, measuring distance, posture, and their abilities. Three S-ranks stood before him. One of them ranked among the most dangerous of their generation, and her brother had a reputation for reading battlefields several steps ahead of everyone else. Their stances were relaxed, but not careless. Each of them watched for the smallest change in his shoulders, his feet, even the direction of his eyes.
He knew better than to underestimate them.
The change in his soul had strengthened him, but it had not raised his rank. By all measures, he remained S1. The difference now rested in the marks carved into his existence. Those marks carried authority that did not belong to his rank. If their power failed here, then facing a god would be nothing more than suicide.
Nikolaus broke the stillness first.
"This is not like our last fight. You don't have the Goddess of the Moon's blessing or that strange crystal."
He stepped forward.
The instant his foot moved, space in front of him warped with a sharp, cracking sound, as if invisible glass had shattered. A narrow tear opened, its edges bending inward and revealing a dark seam where the world no longer aligned. Nikolaus moved into that gap without slowing down, his body slipping through as naturally as walking through a doorway.
The tear snapped shut.
Less than a heartbeat later, it split open again directly in front of Leo.
Nikolaus emerged already in motion, completing the strike he had begun before entering the tear. His sword moving toward his left side. The blade vibrated with condensed mana, blurring at the edge and leaving a pale distortion in the air behind it. The pressure of the swing split the ground below Leo before the steel could even reach him.
The moment Leo registered Nikolaus's movement, the mark of Alad on his hand began to glow with a deep, steady light.
Power did not rush into him in a wave. It settled into him with precision. His muscles tightened, his bones felt denser, and his skin hardened as if an invisible layer of armor had fused with it. At the same time, his thoughts sharpened. The battlefield slowed. He could track the angle of the sword, the shift of Nikolaus's shoulders, even the tension in his grip.
Leo lifted his left hand beside his neck.
Nikolaus's blade struck his wrist.
The sound was not metal cutting flesh but steel slamming into steel. The impact stopped the sword mid arc. A shock ran up Nikolaus's arm, and the edge failed to move even a fraction deeper.
Leo smiled.
Nikolaus's eyes widened.
"Much harder than I expected," Leo said calmly.
He drew his right hand back and threw a punch.
Nikolaus reacted instantly and jumped backward, but the punch never needed to reach him. The force behind it compressed the air into a dense wave that shot forward like a battering ram. The pressure struck Nikolaus in the chest and forced him to raise both arms to shield himself as he slid several meters across the sky.
Leo felt the difference clearly. With Alad's mark active, his raw physical strength matched Paul's normal state, and his skin felt even tougher than Paul's.
Aerwyna's voice cut through the moment. "Let's see how you defend against this."
She raised her left palm toward Leo.
Leo's eyes shifted to Aerwyna, and the mark of Leviathan along his arm flared with a cold, pale light.
The air around her changed first.
Moisture condensed instantly. A thin mist formed, then hardened into invisible layers of frost that spread outward in a perfect sphere. The temperature did not drop gradually. It collapsed. Heat vanished from the space around her as if it had been erased.
Aerwyna froze in place before her mind could register the danger.
Frost did not form on her skin. It formed in the space she occupied. Ice grew through the air, through mana, through the unseen layers that connected body and soul. The freezing did not target her flesh alone. It reached deeper, locking the flow of her power, slowing the movement of thought, and halting the subtle distortions she used to influence time and probability around her.
Leviathan's mark flooded Leo with mana while granting him authority over cold, water, and storm. This was not ordinary ice. This was a high tier elemental force that ignored the boundary between realms. It reached into the spiritual layer of existence and spread there as easily as it did in the physical world.
Time and space around Aerwyna stiffened under the pressure of the cold. The delicate future sight she relied on could not function when the flow of events itself slowed to a crawl.
Leo remembered how he had used ice to reach Leviathan back then, even shaping massive walls of frozen crystal around her to contain her movements. She had been capable of manipulating ice at the highest levels, a terrifying display of power. He allowed himself a small, relieved smile, she had been reasonable. If she had chosen to fight him in that moment, he knew without a doubt that he would have been dead.
Aerwyna did not fall so easily.
A sharp crack rang out as the ice around her fractured in every direction. Shards burst outward, dissolving into mist before they could touch the ground. She forced her body backward, putting distance between herself and Leo, her face tight with shock. For the first time since the battle began, her composure had broken.
Iason watched the exchange with a twisted expression. His hand moved inside his coat and came out holding a thick glass vial filled with a dense, luminous liquid that pulsed as if it were alive.
"You ruined my plan once," he said through clenched teeth. "I will not allow you to do it again."
He hurled the vial with the force of a cannon shot.
"That contains enough power to erase the capital of the Kingdom of Light and the villages around it."
Nikolaus reacted instantly. A spatial gap tore open beside him. He stepped through, appeared next to Iason, grabbed him by the collar, and vanished again. In the next breath he repeated the same action with Aerwyna. All three disappeared into another fold of space, abandoning the battlefield.
Leo did not move.
Alad's mark flared across his hand as he raised his right arm.
The vial reached him and exploded.
Boom.
…
Nikolaus stepped out of a spatial tear far from the battlefield and threw Iason and Aerwyna aside with little care. He turned on Iason, anger clear on his face.
"Why would you explain your attack? He can…"
Boom.
The sound cut him off.
Far in the distance, a massive explosion rose into the sky. Fire expanded outward in a growing sphere, swallowing mountains, fields, and even the clouds above in a wall of light and heat. The shockwave raced across the land, flattening everything in its path as it advanced.
Then, abruptly, the expanding inferno stopped.
The wall of destruction pressed forward for a moment longer before halting as if it had struck an invisible surface.
Nikolaus narrowed his eyes. "What is going on?"
Iason stood up, dusting himself off with a faint smile. "A barrier I prepared beforehand. Only the three of us could leave it. I told him what the vial would do because he couldn't escape anyway." His smile widened. "It makes it more entertaining."
Nikolaus did not smile back. He kept watching the distant wall of fire. "And what if he finds a way out?"
"I prepared that vial to kill the Pope," Iason said. "He was S3, possibly even higher."
"Don't be so sure," Aerwyna replied from where she stood, brushing frost from her sleeve.
Iason glanced at her but said nothing.
Several minutes passed before the explosion fully died down. The firestorm faded into thick smoke, and the air trembled with lingering heat. Nikolaus opened another spatial gap, and the three of them stepped through, returning to the place they had abandoned.
They scanned the ruins for Leo.
Nikolaus spoke first. "It looks like your sister was right."
Iason followed his gaze immediately.
The ground beneath them had turned into a massive crater carved by the blast. Stone had melted. Soil had fused into glass. Nothing remained standing, except for a single section near the center.
Leo stood exactly where he had been before the explosion, his right hand still raised.
Behind him, the land remained untouched, as if the destruction had split around an invisible shield and flowed past it.
His sleeve had burned away. The skin of his raised arm was blackened and cracked from the heat, thin trails of smoke rising from it.
Iason's jaw tightened. "An explosion of that scale… and that's all the damage it did?"
…
Leo lowered his gaze to his arm and studied the damage with calm focus. The explosion had carried power equal to the artificial sun he once used to kill Lucius, perhaps even greater. That level of force should have erased him completely. Instead, it had only burned through his skin.
Alad's mark had absorbed the rest.
If he had layered Leviathan's power over it, he could have wrapped himself in ice and taken no damage at all. The problem was control. Managing one mark demanded constant focus. Handling two at the same time still lay beyond him.
What he wanted now was to test the last one.
Zahhak's mark began to glow.
Heat spread across his burned arm, but it did not hurt. The cracked skin sealed itself. Charred flesh peeled away in thin flakes and new skin formed beneath it at visible speed. Muscles tightened back into place, nerves reconnected, and in seconds his arm returned to its original state.
Leo flexed his fingers once, testing them.
The burn had come from a high tier spell. Damage of that level normally resisted healing and left lasting scars. Zahhak's mark erased it as if it had never happened.
He watched the last trace of smoke fade from his skin, then turned his attention inward, focusing on the mark to understand what else it could do.
Understanding settled into Leo's mind as he focused on Zahhak's mark.
It could heal damage to both body and soul. It restored what had been scarred, and it sharpened the wielder's agility and speed beyond normal limits.
If he could command all three marks at once, his strength would rise beyond S3. This battlefield offered the perfect chance to attempt it.
A thin smile formed on his lips.
From the center of his right palm, Thorn slid outward, its dark surface catching the light as if it were alive. At the same time, his hair began to lose its color, turning silver strand by strand, and his eyes shifted to a deep red.
Alad's mark flared and Zahhak's mark followed.
The two powers activated together and immediately pressed down on his body. Pain ran through his muscles and bones as if they were being forced to carry more than they were built for, but beneath that pain lay a rising tide of strength that made his pulse quicken.
He inhaled slowly, feeling both the strain and the thrill of the power settling into him.
He looked at the three S-ranks ahead.
"Let us begin."
…
Away from the battlefield, Luciana and the others finally reached their army, only to have the ground tremble violently beneath their feet. A massive explosion had erupted behind the mountains, sending shockwaves through the earth. Dust and debris rose into the sky, rattling the soldiers' nerves as if the world itself had shifted.
All eyes turned toward the source of the blast. Some soldiers froze, wide eyed and trembling, while others shouted frantic orders or whispered prayers, their fear echoing across the ranks. The distant mountains seemed to shudder, sending small avalanches of rock tumbling down their slopes, adding to the chaos.
Luciana's face remained calm, her eyes scanning the scene without panic. In contrast, Timon's expression darkened with annoyance. He had believed Leo would fall soon, allowing the enemy to press their attack. But he may buy them enough time, at least, for him to tend to the gaping wound in his chest.