"I knew you'd come for me. Someone as desperate as you would never let go after a failed trade," Leon replied, his voice eerily calm. "But you've already lost before. How do you intend to face us now?"
"Surely you didn't think I'd come alone?" Luke said with a twisted smile.
Suddenly, a swirling rift in reality opened behind Luke, and a young boy stepped out. He looked to be no more than six or seven, his face a hollow, emotionless mask, as if his very soul had been extinguished.
"Wait... that's the missing kid, Frey Lucien!" Connel exclaimed, his eyes widening in shock.
"That name has long been forgotten," Luke said confidently. "This is my ultimate creation: EMRAK. And with him, my victory is certain."
"You really think you'd win? It's two against two! If you lose to him, we have the upper hand!" Connel shouted, readying his stance. But before he could act, a hand burst out from the center of Connel's chest, clutching his still-beating heart. Connel collapsed, gasping. The attacker was a boy who looked exactly like Frey, yet the original was still standing beside Luke. It was a clone.
"...And now, it is actually two against two, or maybe three," Luke erupted in manic laughter. "Or maybe even more. Frey can clone himself into an endless copy, each one as strong as the original, and each clone can clone themselves, too. This is the pinnacle of true, unrestricted power!"
Suddenly, the clone was launched backward by an unseen force. Connel's body hit the dirt, his heart discarded in the dust. With a sharp snap of his fingers, Leon created a glowing dome around the fallen Connel, sealing him away.
"I'll get back to you later," Leon whispered.
His mood shifted—a dark, suffocating pressure began to emanate from him. Seeing how Luke was manipulating a child, forcing him to commit cold-blooded murder, Leon wasn't just annoyed anymore. He was truly, utterly disgusted. He was beyond pissed.
"You've crossed the line, Luke," Leon said, his voice trembling with a quiet, dangerous fury as his hair began to float, glowing with a blinding, celestial light. "And I promise you, you will pay for all your crimes. It will not be painless."
Luke, as the head of the human-hybrid organization, had spent decades searching for ultimate power, a pursuit that led him down a dark and twisted path. The human-hybrid experiments were a breakthrough; they proved that a new breed could possess multiple skills and evolve them rapidly. It was the next step in his evolution plan.
Everything changed when they captured Frey, the possessor of the Primordial Skill of Theft—also known as "Copy." By copying skills from both monsters and humans alike, they could create a being of ultimate perfection, bypassing the years typically required for growth.
They searched for every unique monster, merging their abilities into the host. By now, the user had over thirty main skills and more than a hundred sub-skills and styles.
Their ultimate goal was to bestow upon Frey every skill in existence, aiming for literal omnipotence, or at least something approaching it.
When Luke first confronted Draken, he realized he had hit the jackpot. The dragon possessed seven distinct skills, two of which were Primordial, along with a body capable of surviving extreme heat and cold. It was the definition of ultimate perfection. Luke knew that if he merged Draken with Frey, no power on the planet could stop them—excluding Leon, of course.
He walked slowly toward them, and Draken jumped off Leon's shoulder, transforming into his humanoid form.
"Take the advisor, and make sure he doesn't get an easy death," Leon said calmly.
Seeing the dragon transform, Luke screamed, "Kill them!"
With a single snap of Leon's fingers, both Draken and Luke were teleported hundreds of meters away, isolating the battlefield.
"I'm sorry, Frey, for letting you down. Allow me to correct those flaws," Leon said as he moved at a speed massively faster than light. But just as he reached out for Frey, the boy vanished.
He can move faster than light? Leon thought, surprised.
Suddenly, he felt a presence above him. It was Frey—not just one of him, but over a hundred. Each one unleashed a different, devastating attack simultaneously. The entire scene was overwhelming; it reminded Leon of his previous soul's palace, the Realm of the Almighty.
They had pushed far beyond the fragile boundaries of mortal existence, clawing their way into the forbidden realm of the Divine, yet the vessel for this cosmic intrusion was nothing more than a seven-year-old child.
The organization had perfected their vile, systematic experiments on a boy barely old enough to understand the concepts of pain or morality, let alone godhood. There was truly no limit to their cruelty; the cold, calculated manipulation of such innocence did not just strike Leon as wrong—it was fundamentally abhorrent.
As the hundred iterations of the boy launched their combined assault, Leon exerted his will, and the world shivered into stillness. Time fractured and froze; the kinetic energy of a hundred distinct elemental strikes hung suspended in the air, a chaotic tapestry of destruction halted mid-flight.
He drifted through the frozen carnage, observing the boyish faces, each one twisted into the same vacant, aggressive mask. He paused, a momentary flicker of calculation crossing his eyes as he wondered which of these husks contained the original essence.
If he were to accidentally eradicate the real Frey in his haste, the other clones would dissolve into nothingness, and the objective of saving the child would be rendered a hollow, tragic waste.
Wait... it doesn't really matter, Leon thought, his resolve hardening into an absolute, icy certainty. Even if he dies, I can always resurrect him.
With no further need for hesitation, he propelled himself toward the swarm. Yet, the moment his fist connected with the first target, he recoiled, realization dawning. The tactile sensation—the metaphysical "weight" of the being—was hollow. It was distinct, unmistakable; he could feel the resonance of a construct rather than a soul. He could easily tell that this was a mere projection.
Since he had developed a sensitivity to the nature of these entities, he opted to refrain from immediate destruction, hoping to spare himself the complex headache of a full-scale resurrection if he could simply identify the source.
He moved like a phantom through the suspended time, pressing his fingers to the forehead of each copy, probing for the spark of the original. But to his growing frustration, every single one he touched, from the primary clones to the nested echoes of the clones' clones, was an imitation. He was carving through a labyrinth of shadows.
He methodically dismantled the army, shattering the frozen constructs one by one until only a single figure remained suspended in the air. His logic dictated that if all others were flawed reflections, this final specimen must be the original.
He drifted closer to the last clone, his hands glowing with a soft, restorative light, intending to overwrite the organization's programming and purge the corruption from the boy's mind. But the moment his fingertips brushed the skin of the final target, the illusion shattered.
In that moment,realization hit him like a brick.
" This... this is also a clone, Leon realized, a surge of cold dread rising in his chest. The real one never showed up.