NOVPUBLeon landed, skidding across the fractured glass-like floor, sparks flying from his boots. His nose bled from dimensional pressure alone.
"Tch. Let's start with Body Force."
He slammed a fist into his chest. Crack! His aura surged—dense, silver, and hardened like compressed stone. The Body Force Halo wrapped his limbs with reinforcement rings.
Tharj flickered again. Leon moved this time—barely—letting Shell Reverb absorb the kinetic disruption. The air bent around him as the punch landed, echoing with warping pressure.
[Shell Reverb - Current Echo Stored: 21%]
[Body Force - Shock Compression: 2nd Layer Active]
Leon twisted, fists glowing, and launched a counter-blow—right into Tharj's ribcage.
BOOM!
A ripple of dimensional rupture burst outward. But Tharj didn't stagger. Instead, its body bent the impact, absorbing part of it through sheer void mechanics. Then it retaliated—its jaw unhinging—firing a beam of absolute erasure.
Leon cursed, flipping backward. The beam grazed his shoulder, and his armor ceased to exist. Not burned. Not broken. Just… gone.
"Right," Leon muttered, breathing hard. "Time for Sync Phase."
He reached deep.
Aether ignited in his veins, threads of starlight crackling through his arms. Gold Magic layered over it in concentric bands, etching geometry across his skin. And then, like a chained animal freed, the Destruction Core flared—its crimson light corrupting the space around him.
His staff materialized, unstable and buzzing with layered matrices.
"Let's break causality."
He slammed it into the ground.
[Voidbreaker Mode: Tier VIII Convergence Initiated]
The field shattered.
Literal fragments of reality peeled away. Leon blurred forward, his body now slipping through local time frames. He bypassed Tharj's defensive flickers—each blow launching in sequences across multiple timelines.
Gold Magic burned with refinement, locking quantum positions.
Aether flooded the gaps.
Destruction blew holes in stability.
Tharj screamed—a soundless howl—as its void core destabilized. But it still lunged, jaws snapping down to erase Leon's face.
Leon didn't dodge.
He poured Shell Reverb into the point of impact, compressing every ounce of learned damage into his staff. The blow landed—and Tharj's mouth collapsed inward, its singularity reversing from the feedback.
"Return to nothing."
Leon's voice echoed through fractured physics—and he drove the staff through Tharj's chest.
BOOM.
The arena cracked. The air imploded. Tharj's body spasmed—then crumbled into ribbons of light, disintegrating into void motes.
Silence.
Then—
"VICTORY: Challenger Leon. Rank 44 Defeated."
[Shell Reverb: Mastery Increased to 39%]
[You have learned a new technique: Echo Detonation — Collapse a stored Shell Reverb echo into an explosive counterstrike.]
[You have gained: Void Core Fragment x1, Reality Binder Thread x3]
Leon knelt, panting, arm cracked and twitching.
Roselia's voice echoed faintly from above. "Idiot… you did it again."
He smiled, blood in his teeth.
"Yeah," he murmured. "But there are still three challenges left."
Leon stumbled out of the fractured arena gate, body trembling with residual energy. The Void Core Fragment still pulsed faintly inside his inventory like a tiny caged star, and his nerves twitched involuntarily as if trying to phase out of reality.
The moment he crossed the threshold, Roselia and Naval were already at his side.
Roselia knelt, worry hardening her voice. "You shouldn't have used full convergence again. Your body's still adapting."
"I had to," Leon rasped, gripping his ribs. "Tharj was eating time…"
Naval sighed, tossing him a concentrated Vital Tonic. "Just once, try not fighting a reality-warping boss half-dead."
Leon chuckled, downing the potion. Warmth spread through his frame. His fractured bones slowly knit back together. But the mental exhaustion lingered—his mind stretched too thin between Shell Reverb, Destruction Core sync, and Voidbreaker state.
Roman leaned against a pillar, arms crossed. "You really gonna keep pushing till your soul splits again?"
Leon looked up, his eyes dim but resolute. "One more. Just a few more ranks before we step out of this floor."
Liliana walked over, adjusting her gloves. "We should rest. A full cycle. I'll stabilize your nervous system with lightcore runes. After Rank 44… you need sleep."
Milim flopped onto a seat of summoned stone. "Can't believe you turned a timeline into a weapon again. Seriously, you're a menace to physics."
Leon smiled faintly. "Only to enemies."
Later, beneath the glowing chasm-veined moonlight of Floor 300, Leon sat in meditation. His body, suspended in a low-lev gravity field formed by Shell Reverb resonance, pulsed rhythmically.
He wasn't just recovering. He was evolving.
A faint click echoed behind him.
An elder figure, robed in jet-thread and amber carapace, stepped into the sacred space. It was Elder Ma'Vhun, keeper of the Resonance Vaults.
"You've passed into Echo Threshold," the elder said.
Leon opened one eye. "That so?"
Ma'Vhun nodded solemnly. "You have accessed the third pathway of Shell Reverb. Now comes the next transformation."
He raised a six-fingered hand, and three runes appeared mid-air—each spiraling around Leon in pulses of memory and motion.
"You've learned Reflection, Retention, and Reversal. But there is one echo left… Reclamation."
Leon's eyes widened.
"Reclamation?" he echoed.
"Yes," Ma'Vhun intoned. "The echo that does not react, but recovers. All lost strikes. All missed timings. All delayed instinct—Reclaimed in the next motion."
He tapped Leon's chest, and the runes fused into his body.
"This is the final internal technique before you transcend Shell Reverb entirely."
[Shell Reverb – Subform Unlocked: Reclamation Echo]
Description: Allows the user to reclaim and replay a missed or ineffective strike within 1.5 seconds of the motion. Uses an internal memory trace to refit motion and intent into a second, perfect form.
Mastery Gained: 42%
Leon opened his eyes fully. His aura flared once, smooth and steady.
"Then let's use it for the next fight."
He stood up, muscles light but dense—his form sharpened like a wire pulled through fire and cold steel.
Opponent: Vhorrak the Echo-Splitter
Title: "The Blade of Collapsing Motion"
The obsidian sands rippled beneath Leon's bare feet as he stepped into the open ring again. Runes locked behind him, sealing the space like a tomb of movement.
Across the field stood Vhorrak — a twin-bladed Ant Ascendant with an unnatural stance. His arms flowed like silk, but his presence was jagged. He didn't hold his swords — they hovered around him, orbiting his form like moons bent by gravity.
