NOW

Leonel's aura felt towering and unapproachable. As though a nebula had exploded out with an array of violet and gold, he stood high in the depths of the Inbetween World, his hair fluttering as roars came from his spear.

He looked down and made eye contact with the pair of ghoul look-alikes.

Invalids didn't feel fear. It was as though it was a part of them that had been cut away, replaced instead by an instinctive desire to survive.

Variant Invalids were slightly more advanced, but all of their actions were still tinged with the same desire to do and have more. It could be said that while they might feel fear in a certain sense, it was always tinged with a particular corruption of greed.

Staring at Leonel now, they couldn't help but feel their hearts skip a beat.

He was like a star in the skies, the life vein of a world. His presence alone seemed like it could both feed populations and wipe them out in the same instant.

And then he moved.

The ghoul Variant Invalids were immediately on their guard.

They didn't fear anyone. They were a pair of Ancestor-level characters and they hadn't believed that they would come to face any sort of pushback or harm when facing off against the likes of the Dwarven Race.

However, at this moment, they felt their blood run cold.

It was then their auras surged, realizing that this was an assault of the mind. It wasn't that Leonel was truly so fear-inducing, but his Dream Force was so powerful that his confident air was infecting their minds.

There wasn't a single part of Leonel who thought of anything but winning and crushing his enemies in revenge, and as such they began to subconsciously feel like this must be the truth.

Unfortunately, their thoughts were too simple.

Two things could be true.

And the one question that they should have asked themselves was...

Where was Leonel's confidence coming from in the first place?

BANG!

Leonel's spear fell from the skies like a meteor. The halo to his back reflected his Mana Core. The gorgeous tree of Force Arts swayed just once and Auspicious Air flooded the surroundings.

In that moment, Leonel's spear didn't just fall like a meteor, it seemed to truly become one.

All at once, it embodied Heaviness and Heat, a fusion of two fundamental concepts that exploded forth and clashed against one another.

It wasn't a perfect fusion, but compared to the Swift arrow that Leonel had used against Minerva, the very arrow that almost took her life, this was easily twice as powerful.

BANG!

The ghouls arranged themselves in a single file, one pressing their hands against the back of the other as they faced off against this strike. It was a combat style that Leonel had simply never seen before, but it also didn't slow down his momentum in the slightest.

As Bracken continued his slaughter, Leonel had his first clash and it shook the pair of ghouls back, their bodies shuddering, but the force dispersing with every step they took.

The ground of the Inbetween World cracked and splintered, a black fog seeping out from the damage that quickly fused it all back together.

Leonel's spear spun in his hands and he took a step forward, his intent blazing.

At that moment, he tapped into his Destruction Sovereignty and a crown of black appeared above his head while cracks of crimson spread across his skin.

However, beneath the powerful vitality being pumped into him, it seemed that he was also especially calm and unbothered. His situation was far more stable now than it had been in the past and the roars of the beasts trapped in his spear only grew more agitated.

He wanted to end this.

Now.

The ghouls sensed the trouble coming immediately, and if before they had dismissed their fear, it now came back in full force.

Without a second of hesitation, the ghouls pressing his hands to the back of the other suddenly forcefully pushed harder. But instead of this sending the first ghoul flying toward Leonel, the two instead seemed to fuse into one.

They formed into a cancerous creature with grotesque lumps growing all across their body. They seemed to have both become one, and yet were separate at the same time, two heads popping out from their now black and veiny necks.

At the same time, their bodies became amorphous, losing a lot of form, but not any function. Instead, it looked as though they could control their sizes freely.

Just like that, they raised a hand that extended into an enormous sledgehammer. It pierced down from the skies above, the momentum already enough to shatter a person and scatter their bones from the wind pressure alone. In the vacuum it quickly formed, it was hard even to breathe.

Leonel felt the sense of danger well up in his heart as well. The moment they survived his first strike, he knew that these two weren't simple. That was why he brought out his Destruction Sovereignty immediately as well.

However, the pang of danger only lasted for a moment before it was replaced by a bone-chilling coldness.

The entire world seemed to be reflected in Leonel's eyes and Anarchic Force trembled around him.

He took a casual step forward, breaking out of the suction vacuum formed by the attack with almost too much ease.

BOOM!

Before, the ground had only splintered. But this time, an enormous crater was left behind, one that still seemed to be spreading even now.

The wave quickly caught up with Leonel and seemed to want to swallow him whole, but his entire demeanor remained relaxed.

He continued to walk, his steps almost carelessly dodging shards of rock that would break apart the bodies of even Ninth Dimensional existences.

Leonel raised his spear and the blade trembled just the slightest bit.

Then he thrust it forward. Crimson, violet, gold, and black all swirled around each other.This text is property of Nô/velD/rama.Org.