Leon stared at the boy, Arondight hanging in his hand, its faint light humming in the charged air. Essence thrummed around the Grand Knight like a living thing; the vibration in the corridor was almost tangible. He expected that display to cow the prisoner yet the boy did not so much as flinch.
He looked far too young. Seventeen, maybe you younger. Leon thought, and the thought sharpened his unease rather than eased it.
So young, and yet when faced with what should have been certain annihilation he did not blink, did not yield. There was the steadiness of a battle-hardened veteran in that little body, a stillness Leon had learned to recognize only after decades on the field.
Leon's gaze drifted to the wreckage behind the boy: the torn stone, the shredded iron, the lingering vapor of essence that curled in the ruined air. The scale of the energy released earlier matched the trail of destruction exactly an enormous, focused discharge that had carved its way through wall and metal alike. It fit together in his mind like pieces of a sick puzzle.
He thought of Gremlo, the divine knight whose duty had been to keep this place in order, the one who beat prisoners without mercy. He thought of Maxwell, once part of Leon's own battalion until he was posted to the border. Both were seasoned fighters with excellent essence control. Both by all signs had been consumed in that blast.
The conclusion formed before he needed to verify it. This thin, ragged boy had killed two divine knights and stood virtually unscathed afterward.
Leon's training told him what to do in uncertain situations: assess, analyze, and strike only when the odds were decisively in his favor. In Aetherion, where men bent essence into monstrous forms, caution was survival.
Yet the truth of Leon's life had always been simpler he swung his sword and the world yielded. He had never needed to retreat.
Now, as he stared at the boy and probed for openings in the aura that might explain the impossibility, he found nothing. The essence around the boy was strange present, potent, but not legible. No telltale fraying from exhaustion, no obvious flaws to exploit.
For the first time in his life, Leon felt a real, unfamiliar uncertainty.
Leon's eyes swept across the wreckage, tracking the line of destruction from the boy's feet to the far wall. At first, he had only registered the scale the raw, overwhelming power behind the blast.
But as he turned, letting his gaze travel up toward the other end of the devastation, something else struck him.
His expression darkened.
The explosion wasn't wild. It wasn't uncontrolled. It wasn't the tantrum of unrefined, reckless essence.
It was aimed.
Leon followed the trajectory again, slower this time, realization sinking in like cold iron. The blast path wasn't random it bent cleanly toward a specific direction. Toward a specific structure.
The Thax Prison Guards' control center.
A building not even fifty meters away from the cell block.
Now it was nothing but rubble ashen wood, shattered stone, melted iron supports, all collapsed into a burning crater. He hadn't noticed earlier through the dust and smoke, but now the truth was clear:
The boy had launched a precision strike. A perfectly directed, perfectly devastating strike.
Leon's jaw tightened.
He could already sense faint life signatures some guards survived, likely the divine knight class among them but most of the rank-and-file were unquestionably dead. The blast had hit its target with surgical brutality.
From a kid. A scrawny kid. Leon turned back, his face colder than before.
"Do you feel no regrets?" he asked quietly. "So many lives lost."
Silence.
The boy didn't look shaken. Didn't look guilty. Didn't even look conflicted.
Instead he lifted his chin. His stare sharpened. And then he spoke with a voice too calm for someone his age.
"Regrets? You are in no position to ask me that, Knight of Light. After all…" his grin widened, sharp and merciless, "they don't call you the Monster of Maken for nothing."
A flicker passed through Leon's eyes.
A memory. A reputation only a few knew. Certainly not prisoners. Certainly not children.
He exhaled, a short, humorless breath.
"So someone out there still remembers that name…" he said.
"Interesting."
Instead, he shifted his gaze past Harian and toward the crowd of prisoners gathering behind him.
"Have you made up your minds?" Leon asked, voice steady. "This is the final time I will ask."
Silence.
Not even Muliad spoke. Dozens of prisoners, battered, bruised, terrified and all of them frozen.
Leon's grip tightened around Arondight.
"This is your last warning."
Still, no one moved. Then...A single figure stepped forward.
The same skinny, shirtless prisoner from earlier the one who cheered Harian's kill walked out with trembling legs but a burning glare. His voice cracked as he yelled,
"Anything we do now means death anyway!"
Leon's expression didn't change, but the prisoner pressed on, louder, angrier..
"We were thrown in here unfairly! Without trials! Without a chance to speak! And now you stand there telling us to repent?! Repent for what?!"
A ripple passed through the crowd.
The prisoner jabbed a finger toward Leon, then the shattered prison around them.
"The kingdom abandoned us a long time ago! Used us, discarded us, and then locked us up to rot for their own benefit!"
His voice cracked into a roar.
"So don't talk to us about justice!"
And as if a fuse had been lit. The entire prison erupted. Shouts. Screams. Cries of rage and defiance. Men in torn clothes, bloodied and bruised, all voicing the same rebellion.
"We won't bow!"
"We're done kneeling!"
"To hell with the kingdom!"
"To hell with your justice!"
Even Muliad didn't intervene. Even the old man kept his silence.
Dozens of prisoners now free, furious, and desperate stood together against the kingdom's greatest knight.
And Leon? He simply stared at them.
Expression unreadable. Sword glowing faintly in his hand. A storm gathering quietly behind his eyes.
"Then you have accepted your deaths today."
Leon's voice cut through the air like a blade. Calm. Final.
"Treason is a crime of the highest calibre. In my eyes you are all still criminals that is why you are here. And so, by the authority granted to me by His Majesty…"
He raised Arondight, light bleeding along the blade's edge.
"I will kill you all. Swiftly. And painlessly."
The prisoners froze. Their anger shrank into dread. Then Leon's gaze shifted back to Harian.
"And you, boy…"
"What about me?" Harian replied, voice just as calm.
Leon's eyes narrowed. "I take it this was your plan from the start. To lead a rebellion. To bring chaos to Thax Prison. That explosion… all that destruction…" He gestured at the ruined wall behind them.
"Did I interrupt your grand scheme? Because of you, these men will die. And after we take you in for questioning, you too will be hanged."
Harian shrugged.
"Kill them."
Silence.
Even Leon blinked once.
"…What?" he asked.
"Kill them," Harian repeated, staring him dead in the eye. "I don't know most of them anyway."
The entire prison went still.
Leon's jaw tightened. "Stop joking around."
"I'm not joking," Harian said. "You already planned to kill them, didn't you? Go ahead. I'm not responsible for them. I don't care what happens to any of them. I only do things for myself."
The shirtless prisoner the one who shouted earlier stumbled backward, face draining of color.
"Young hero… you must be joking…" he whispered.
Harian turned and looked at him with eyes that held no warmth.
"I'm not your hero. I don't owe any of you anything." His cold grin stretched wider.
"If he wants to kill you, let him." The prisoner's knees buckled.
Leon exhaled slowly. Then, unexpectedly, he let out a short laugh and dragged a hand down his face.
"…You crazy bastard," he muttered. "For a moment, you actually surprised me."
He lowered his hand, eyes sharpening into steel.
"I know what you're doing. You're desperate to create an opening. You're planning something, aren't you?"
Harian only kept smiling. Leon raised his sword.
"Then let me correct your mistake first."
His gaze locked onto Harian alone.
"I'll kill you before anyone else."