Leo jumped from the mountain and landed on the ground first. The impact cracked the earth beneath his feet and sent a shockwave across the field. Every monster nearby turned toward him at once, drawn by the force of his landing.
The others followed a moment later, landing behind him in scattered positions.
"Weren't we supposed to go in quietly?" Dave asked, already raising his book.
Leo gave no answer. His hair turned white in an instant, and his body blurred as he launched forward. The pressure from his sudden movement slammed into the others, forcing them to shield their faces. The ground shattered beneath his feet as he accelerated.
Lightning traced his path, shaped by pure speed. His sword stretched as he moved, growing longer and heavier, its blade coated in swirling blood. Without slowing, Leo swung it in a wide horizontal arc.
"Blood Calamity."
A massive wave of blood tore forward, consuming everything in its path. Monsters vanished on contact, their bodies erased as the wave carved a clean path through the battlefield. Behind him, Luciana and the others stared in stunned silence. Leo's power had risen far beyond what it had been three months ago.
The wave surged toward the towering legs of the mother beast, then stopped abruptly. Something unseen resisted it. A moment later, the wave split apart as a figure cut through it from behind.
A knight looking monster emerged, its form dark as night itself. It charged without hesitation.
Leo remained calm. He leveled his sword, which shrank back to its normal size before extending again in a sudden thrust. The knight raised its blade and blocked, but the force drove it backward across the ground.
"Blood Explosion."
A sphere of compressed blood formed at the tip of Leo's sword and surged forward with the strike. The knight held its guard, but the blood attack tore into its body despite the block.
When the assault ended, the knight stood directly beneath the mother monster. It dropped to one knee, its body trembling, armor cracked and bleeding shadows.
Leo did not pull back his blade.
"Blood Destruction," he whispered.
A sphere of blood, hundreds of times larger than the previous one, formed in front of Leo's blade. It expanded in an instant, swallowing both the knight and the massive mother creature above it. The air screamed as the attack detonated. A deafening roar tore through the Shadowland, echoing across the wasteland.
When the light faded, smoke rolled upward from the mother monster's scorched body. Large sections of its flesh burned and collapsed inward. The knight beneath it no longer existed, nothing remained, not even fragments.
Behind Leo, Elna, Briva, and the others stood frozen. None of them spoke. The difference in power was impossible to ignore.
Before the monster could recover, a rain of golden swords descended from the sky. Thousands of blades pierced down from above, slamming into the creature's upper body. Each impact exploded on contact, tearing through flesh and eyes alike.
At the same moment, Paul appeared above the monster's back. His fists moved faster than sight. He unleashed a barrage of punches, each strike sending compressed shockwaves crashing into the creature. The combined force of the explosions and his blows ripped through its body, driving it downward.
Arthur hovered even higher.
"Paul, move away," he shouted.
Paul struck the air beneath his feet and launched himself back.
Arthur raised his hand. A massive sword of light formed above him, its size dwarfing everything below. As it descended, its glow cut through the eternal darkness of the Shadowland, turning the land bright as day for a brief moment.
The sword struck the monster's back and detonated. The explosion shook the ground and forced another scream from the creature, deeper and more desperate than before.
From a distance, Leo watched with a faint smile. His group had grown strong, far stronger than before. If they had possessed this level of power during their fight against Lucius, the battle would have ended far faster.
Lost in thought, Leo didn't notice the movement behind him. Three monsters, each the size of the fallen knight, charged from his rear. But they never reached him.
Elna intercepted the first, her power flaring as she struck it head-on. Briva stopped the second, her attack crushing it into the ground. Vanessa blocked the third, cutting its advance short before it could close the distance.
Then the mother monster screamed again.
From its body, thousands more creatures poured out, flooding the battlefield. They were smaller and weaker, but their numbers were overwhelming.
Before they could reach Leo, golden swords rained down once more, cutting through entire clusters. Paul followed with another wave of shockwaves, vaporizing dozens at a time. The survivors froze in place as chains erupted from the ground, binding them where they stood.
Dave stepped up beside Leo, his book flipping to a new page.
"Don't forget us," he said calmly.
The chains ignited, burning with searing heat. The trapped monsters writhed and screamed as the flames consumed them. "Leave the weak ones to us."
Leo nodded, satisfied, and walked toward Arthur and Paul as they regrouped.
"How many swords did you use?" Leo asked.
Arthur exhaled. "Twenty-five."
The monster let out another scream, deeper and heavier than before. The ground beneath them split apart, and a massive worm-like creature burst from below, its body thick and armored, its mouth opening wide as it lunged to swallow them whole.
Leo reacted instantly. A sphere of condensed space formed in his hand, and the world folded. In a blink, they vanished.
A heartbeat later, they reappeared in the air, standing on a solid platform that had not existed moments before. The platform shimmered faintly, held together by Leo's power.
Below them, corruption gathered beneath the mother monster. Flesh twisted and folded in on itself, forming a new shape. A dragon-like creature rose from the mass, its wings torn and warped, its body dripping with black residue as it took flight toward them.
"It wants to reach us up here," Arthur said calmly, his grip tightening on his sword.
Before he could move, something slammed into the dragon from the side and knocked it off course. Luciana streaked through the air, her expression sharp and focused.
"This one is mine," she said, and charged forward without hesitation.
Paul glanced down at the massive worm still tearing through the ground below. "Can you handle the big one?"
Leo nodded once.
"Then I'll take that," Paul said, grinning. With practiced ease, he jumped from the platform, diving straight toward the worm. It was almost as large as the serpent they had faced before, but that only seemed to excite him.
Arthur watched him fall. "You found some interesting people in the maze."
"They're strange," Leo replied, "but reliable." He paused, then added, "Prepare your final sword. We'll need it."
Arthur shook his head slightly. "I want to test the sword shaped by the Creator's power. It will take time, but I need to know its limits."
Leo nodded. As an S-rank, he wielded the power of Creation, a rare authority that allowed him to shape reality itself through will and mana. It was considered one of the most dangerous abilities among all S-ranks, limited only by the user's mana and imagination.
Arthur had reached S-rank as well. His unique power manifested as the Knight of Light, allowing him to forge weapons directly from light without spells. The longer he remained in battle, the stronger both his light and his control became.
Arthur raised his hand, light bending and sharpening around him.
"Let's go."
As Arthur said it, he jumped forward.
The trembling monster sensed the threat, and the countless tentacles covering its body surged upward to intercept him. They barely moved before thick bands of iron formed around each one.
The iron never touched the tentacles directly, at first. Each band hovered roughly two meters away, forming heavy rings suspended in the air. This gap existed because of Leo's unique S-rank power, Creation.
Leo could create anything from nothing, but his power had a limitation. To create something, he had to place his mana in the space where the object would form. If an enemy's mana occupied that space, Leo had to first overpower and envelop it, which drastically increased the cost. This creature carried a dense, layered field of mana around its body, making direct creation impossible.
Instead of forcing through it, Leo relied on precision and imagination. By creating objects just outside the creature's mana field, he spent far less energy. That same limitation explained why he could not create objects inside a person's body, yet it also revealed the terrifying potential of his power. Against C-ranks or weaker, he could create a bomb inside them instantly. With infinite mana, Creation would make him omnipotent.
Each iron ring carried a powerful weight enchantment. The moment they fully formed, gravity took over. The rings slammed downward, dragging the tentacles with them. The impact shook the ground like an explosion, dust and debris blasting into the air as the tentacles crashed into the earth.
With the tentacles pinned, Arthur flew forward unhindered.
The monster reacted violently. Two of its massive legs twisted unnaturally, bending as if boneless, reshaping into enormous arms. At their ends, massive chelae opened and closed, snapping with lethal force.
They lunged toward Arthur at incredible speed.
Another sword of light formed instantly in Arthur's free hand. Both swords melted and reshaped, expanding outward into a pair of golden circular shields. They grew larger and thicker in the blink of an eye.
The chelae struck the shields head-on.
The impact echoed across the battlefield. The chelae wrapped around the shields and squeezed, trying to crush them. Then, from the edges of each shield, blades of light erupted outward, tearing straight through the chelae.
Black blood sprayed across the air.
From the ruined arms, thousands of smaller tentacles burst forth, shooting toward Arthur from every direction.
Leo instinctively prepared to create a barrier, but then he stopped.
None of the tentacles reached Arthur.
Arthur moved as if he already knew where every strike would land. His body flowed between attacks with impossible precision, his steps measured, his turns flawless. It looked less like reaction and more like certainty, as though the battlefield itself had revealed its future to him.
It took Leo a few seconds to understand what he was seeing. A small smile formed on his face as he whispered, almost to himself, "Foresight Edge."
Arthur was using his divination spell to glimpse a short span of the future. Combined with his overwhelming attack power, it turned him into something terrifying on the battlefield.
Arthur moved as if every strike had already failed before it was launched. He slipped between attacks and surged forward. When he closed the distance, he hurled five swords in five different directions around the monster. The blades stopped in midair, then shifted shape, each one forming a copy of Arthur made entirely of light.
All six Arthurs raised their hands at the same time.
Hundreds of swords appeared in the sky.
They rained down in perfect alignment, each blade piercing one of the monster's countless eyes. A heartbeat later, every sword detonated at once.
The monster screamed and collapsed, its massive body slamming into the ground.
Leo frowned. It was too easy.
He could still sense his companions fighting across the battlefield, but none of them were struggling. None of them were in danger.
Arthur began forming another sword, larger than the last, clearly intending to finish the creature properly. He had already summoned his fortieth blade.
Then the monster's body suddenly burst apart.
Its flesh dissolved into thick black liquid that splashed across the ground.
Arthur froze. The enemy was gone before he could strike.
At the same moment, Leo felt it, a sharp spike of danger. Mana began gathering inside the liquid, dense and violent. He reacted instantly. With a flick of his hand, Arthur vanished and reappeared beside him.
A second later, the black liquid surged upward like a reversed waterfall, pulling itself into the air. As it rose, it tore through the massive sword Arthur had been forming, shredding it as if it were nothing.
Across the battlefield, the same thing happened. Every monster the others were fighting melted into black liquid and flowed toward the rising mass. It wasn't limited to the battlefield. From every direction within the Shadowland, monsters abandoned their forms and rushed toward the source.
Leo gathered the others with another wave of his hand, pulling them all to his side.
"What's happening?" Luciana asked, her voice tight.
"The real enemy is coming," Leo said.
The black liquid continued to rise, stretching higher and higher as it reshaped itself. Slowly, it formed a towering figure. The outline suggested a man, but it never fully became human. Its body was tall and thin, unnaturally elongated, as if molded from shadow and ash rather than flesh.
A horned shape crowned its head, jagged and uneven, like a broken halo. The face beneath it felt wrong to look at, not hidden, but incomplete, as if the mind refused to accept it.
From the center of its chest, pale symbols burned into existence. The markings were sharp and deliberate, ancient in design, glowing with a cold, steady light. They did not pulse like a heart; they anchored the creature, binding it to the world through force alone.
The air around the figure twisted and recoiled. Mist curled away from its body, refusing to linger.
The being did not rush forward. It did not roar or threaten.
It simply stood there, vast, calm, and inevitable.
And in its stillness was a promise, everything before it would break.