Halo's strength wasn't his alone. He had to fight and defeat the duty-oriented tyrant, whom he had sworn to free from his shackles. Noah.
Their duel was far off, since he had to fight only when he became an Assassin-ranked, but that still didn't change a thing. He needed to be strong.
He's seen Sinners exhaust his clone, Light, in mere minutes. And considering it couldn't die, Halo believed that if he was able to pull such a feat against it, then it would be a sign of his resolve.
As it turned out, Light was very much inclined toward this idea since it already despised Halo's weakness. However, Halo couldn't tell if Light simply wanted to kill him or if it was just putting up a fair fight.
They stood on one of the castle's towers, their strikes tearing through the wind as they both held their own. However, Halo found himself cornered.
No matter how powerful he thought his strikes were, they weren't able to faze Light in the slightest. Worse, he'd expected to be able to read the clone's movements since they used the same techniques.
But he was wrong.
Light smoothly twisted and distorted its limbs from impossible angles due to its undead body. This kept Halo on edge, making him hesitant to attack his own clone.
Using mental discipline, he started throwing feints. He baited a powerful jab, and the moment it reached within inches of contact, Halo adjusted and kicked.
This sent a shockwave across the distance, so powerful and echoing that it drew the attention of the others to the tower top.
His strikes accomplished nothing. Each blow warped Light's body, creating temporary dents and distortions, but they smoothed out almost instantly.
Halo wasn't sure of what to do anymore, yet he couldn't shake off the idea of assessing how much force he would need to cause real damage.
In the heat of the moment, he sent countless jabs toward Light and allowed them to land, which seemingly caught Light off guard as it supposedly expected a feint strike.
The attack's force drove the clone backward. Halo spotted the opening immediately. He spun, channeling his energy downward into his leg, then drove it into Light's chin with amplified force.
The blow spun Light's head completely around. Light staggered, movements sluggish for just a moment. But before Halo could press the advantage, it had already recovered and was coming at him again.
Halo saw nothing at that instant, his brain was too shallow to process anything, but he felt every bit of Light's attacks. They shook deep into his body as though the clone wanted to knock his soul out of him.
Before he knew it, his body was already dropping to the floor. Yet, he was somewhat grateful that he fell, else Light would have beaten him to death.
For the next few minutes that followed, he only allowed his body to relax on the floor and the pains in his body to subside, but his mind barely rested.
He'd vowed not to rejoin the others until he could defeat Light in under three minutes. That timeframe was sacred to him. In his past life, three minutes had been his signature.
Entire organizations were slaughtered within that window. To reclaim his identity as the Halo everyone feared, he first had to prove it to himself.
But this wasn't going to be easy, and his fight with Light today told him that much. Since Light was made of darkness, with every part of its body being made of that except for its pitch-white eyes and hair, physics didn't apply to it.
It could reform almost immediately and counterattack, so unless almost all his attacks had force equivalent to or even more powerful than his last attack, his chances of winning were slim.
However, as he lay there, an agonizing scream from below caught his attention, prompting him to rise to his feet through the agony in confusion.
But the scene below made him gulp bile with his skin crawling.
Roni stood there, letting out deep and terrifying screams while both Liam and Seraph stood beside him in confusion.
Before long, his screams turned into horrific laughter. He desperately pulled his own skin as though he wanted to tear it off.
Even as confusion violently stirred in Halo, Roni's metamorphosis reached its end. A single hollow growl from whatever he had become was enough to force Liam and Seraph to put a distance between themselves and assume their stance.
But Halo's eyes failed to miss Roni.
Standing below him was roughly a four-foot-tall black creature with six spindly legs and a lengthy tail that lashed about as if it had its own malevolent intelligence.
The creature was bull-sized, with razor-sharp teeth like a wolf's. It growled menacingly, saliva streaming from its gleaming fangs.
Halo never wanted to see this. This was Roni's punishment for failing his Purpose. Well, he'd never truly tried to fulfill it for the past three months. And though the Purpose had somehow fulfilled itself, it was still deemed a failure by the gods.
However, something entirely caught Halo's eyes. He watched as Seraph let down her guard and Liam summoned his wings.
Massive black wings burst from his shoulder blades, his shirt exploding into tatters. The wings matched his height, and as they beat against the ground, they lifted him effortlessly upward.
Almost too fast to perceive, Liam beat his wings toward Roni. The next moment, countless feathers pierced Roni's body. The image was simultaneously horrifying and magnificent, like divine weapons corrupted into instruments of malice.
Halo had his mouth parted in shock as he watched the creature fall to the ground. He knew Liam could do many things, but never knew he could use his feathers as a weapon.
Halo clenched his fist as they trembled.
If he'd been down there, it would've taken him multiple strikes to finish the creature. And pathetic as it was, he felt jealous.
Yet, this gave him more reasons to manage a victory against Light within three minutes.