NOVPUBLeon ducked and countered with a golden-threaded Shell Pulse punch to the gut—but Raskhaal didn't even flinch.
"Too slow!" the champion roared, swinging again.
Leon took the hit, used Shell Reverb to absorb and store the energy—but Raskhaal grabbed him mid-air, suplexed him into the obsidian.
Pain blossomed through Leon's back as cracks spidered from the crater.
"Your technique is refined," Raskhaal snarled, stomping toward him. "But your body isn't ready for the furnace."
Leon coughed, rolled aside, and let Destruction Thread coil into his limbs. Time to escalate.
He clapped his hands together—energy igniting like a sonic boom.
Shell Reverb: Tripart Echo.
Three versions of the same strike echoed—past, present, and predicted future. Raskhaal was rocked back by the sudden convergence of impacts. It was the first time he lost ground.
Leon surged forward, chaining Shell Reverb, Temporal Reverb, and Aether Blood Burst into a dance of precise, adaptive combat. He leapt above Raskhaal's spinning lava punch, twisted in mid-air, and landed a triple rebound kick off the champion's shoulder.
But Raskhaal laughed.
Then exploded.
Not literally—but his body became a living inferno. His outer plates flared open, venting magma, and Leon's skin began to sear just from being near him.
"You're not the only one who's evolved!" he bellowed.
Raskhaal: Furnace Core Mode – Active.
Now every punch was a wave of heat. Every movement melted the arena.
Leon tried to stay ahead of it—but his stamina was bleeding fast. He dropped to one knee, coughing, scorched and battered.
He had one option left.
He plunged his staff into the ground, whispering:
"Tandav Core. Open."
A pulse of Destruction, Aether, and Gold Magic exploded from within him—his hair flaring, eyes igniting. Abyssal aura coiled around him like a wrathful cloak.
He blurred forward.
Raskhaal laughed and raised his gauntlets.
Their fists collided.
The explosion flattened half the arena.
Then came the second strike—Shell Reverb Absolute Return laced with Gold Lattice Collapse.
And the third—Destruction Spiral Fang driven straight into the champion's core.
Raskhaal staggered… and fell to one knee.
Then collapsed.
[Victory: Challenger Leon. Rank 45 Defeated.]
[Shell Reverb Mastery: 71%]
[New Technique Acquired: Gold Spiral Conduction – Your attacks can now imprint golden circuit pathways into enemies, disrupting mana flow.]
Leon stood in the ruin, smoke rising from his arms, one leg barely supporting him.
He exhaled shakily. Then smiled.
"Five more…"
The victory had come at a cost.
Leon now lay on a reinforced obsidian slab, steam rising from his body. His skin was raw in places, hair clumped with dried blood and soot. He hadn't sustained wounds this deep since the Mirror Sovereign… and even then, he'd had his team nearby to stabilize him. But here?
This was solo pain.
Roselia stood beside him, carefully feeding small drops of Lifebloom Elixir into his lips. Roman leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, eyes fixed on Leon's rising and falling chest. Naval was half-asleep in a chair, while Liliana and Milim sat nearby, tending to scorch-marks on Leon's outer gear.
"How long do you think he'll be down?" Milim asked, fingers twitching with restless mana.
"Not long," Roselia replied softly. "He's been breaking limits every other day. His body is… adapting. Too fast, maybe."
Roman nodded. "I watched the whole fight. That final blow? It fused Shell Reverb with the Destruction Circuit. He's crossing frameworks."
"That's dangerous," Liliana murmured. "He might be overloading."
"I think he already is," Roselia said, brushing hair from Leon's forehead. "But he's not stopping."
Leon stirred.
The room went still.
His eyes opened, golden filaments glowing in the irises like runes etched in blood.
"…Water," he croaked.
Roselia handed him the flask instantly. He drank, sat up slowly, and winced as his muscles screamed.
"You're insane," Naval muttered, not looking up. "Taking Furnaceborn alone, after that Mirror thing."
Leon smiled faintly. "Had to test a new sync between Gold Conduction and Absolute Return. It worked."
"You nearly fried your core," Liliana said.
"And your lungs," Roselia added, eyes narrowed.
Leon stood anyway.
"Then I need to improve the stability before the next fight," he said, walking over to the edge of the chamber. His body shook slightly, but he caught himself. "What's next?"
Roman approached, handing him a new core-inscribed obsidian shard. "Rank 44 is called Tharj the Void Jaw. He's an Ant who devoured a rift beast and mutated."
Leon read the shard and whistled. "Void-type?"
"Yeah. He's not just strong. He's wrong. The arena shifts when he fights. Reality bends."
Leon's eyes lit up.
"Perfect," he said. "I've been needing a Void-type to test the new Voidbreaker matrix."
Milim groaned. "You literally just coughed up blood!"
"And I will again," Leon said, walking toward the next lift platform. "But not before I rip through Rank 44."
The obsidian platform rumbled as the lift brought Leon to a new battlefield—unlike the ones before. 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓅𝓊𝓫.𝒸ℴ𝓶
Here, the arena wasn't solid.
It shimmered like a mirage, reality stuttering at the edges. Colors bled together. Shadows refused to match their sources. The floor was semi-transparent, revealing glimpses of an endless abyss beneath—a chasm where stars blinked and died like dust motes.
Above, runes flickered and fractured.
The announcer's voice echoed, but it was distorted, as if reaching from some alternate plane:
"Challenger Leon… versus the Rank 44 Champion: Tharj the Void Jaw. Begin."
A split formed in the air itself. Not a gate. Not a teleport.
A rupture.
From within crawled Tharj, a hunched, grotesque figure with fractured carapace armor that shimmered like oil and voidstuff. Its mandibles were elongated and ragged, and at its core pulsed a miniature singularity—an exposed, black hole heart dragging the surrounding light inward.
Leon's expression sharpened.
"This one's not just mutated," he murmured. "It's merged with void physics…"
Tharj let out a soundless roar—and vanished.
A flash—then impact.
Leon was thrown back instantly, his Shell Reverb only just reacting in time. The force didn't carry heat or concussive shock—it was like being unmade in slices, pieces of existence peeled from him.
Leon landed, skidding across the fractured glass-like floor, sparks flying from his boots. His nose bled from dimensional pressure alone.
