novelbest Chapter 459: Battle—3
Chapter 459: Battle—3
Leon regarded the cloaked figure across the thirty meters of burning sky between them.
Dangerous. Undeniably so.
But he wasn’t feeling dread. Not even close.
He had already dealt with an Ethereal Initiate before—even if that victory had relied heavily on luck and circumstances, and even if he’d been significantly weaker at the time. Just from this first direct confrontation, Leon could already feel the fundamental difference. His physical prowess held a clear advantage. Speed, raw strength, and likely several other categories as well—his growth since that previous encounter had been unilateral, advancing across every single area simultaneously rather than in isolated spikes.
His mana was different now. More refined, thicker, denser—each point carrying more destructive potential than before. Every skill and technique he possessed had been improved automatically. The physical enhancement skills he’d relied on for so long were now operating at levels that would have seemed impossible to his previous self.
The same techniques. Dramatically different results.
He still couldn’t integrate his holy energy and mana into a true combined output—he wasn’t even certain that was possible yet, something he’d only discover by attempting it. But he could use both simultaneously, running parallel streams rather than a fused one, and that alone provided a substantial boost that most opponents wouldn’t know how to account for.
His mana was progressing toward a level where it could genuinely contend with holy energy—drawing closer to that threshold—but it wasn’t there yet. Holy energy’s real advantage wasn’t refinement or technique. It was its universal nature, operating as an all-round force unlike a single elemental affinity, and its quantity—the sheer volume of it he could generate and sustain was difficult to match through conventional mana alone.
But he didn’t need parity. He needed enough.
In his empty left hand, a sword materialized from pure condensed holy energy—solid, blazing, a physical shape formed from divine force that hummed with quiet, absolute threat. In his right hand sat his epic-ranked sword, buzzing with multiple different Auras intertwined in that characteristic unstable spiral. Not fully integrated—Space, Lightning, Ice, and Wind still clashing against each other rather than merging—but stable enough that Leon could manage them effortlessly now. His mental strength was in a completely different league than before, making what had once required exhausting concentration feel like maintaining a casual grip.
Both hands. Both streams. Running simultaneously.
Multicasting has also become meaningfully more accessible. Previously, deploying a powerful skill left a millisecond gap before he could execute a second—imperceptible to most, but enormous at the combat level where he now operated. That gap had closed. Casting two techniques nearly simultaneously was within his capability now, in a way it genuinely hadn’t been before.
Both figures assessed each other across the burning sky.
The figure’s staff was held ready. Its posture had shifted from that earlier casualness into something more guarded, more alert—the posture of something that had just been reminded that underestimation carries a price.
Then Leon vanished.
FWOOSH!
Space distorted where he’d been standing—a visible ripple, like light bending through heated glass—and he was already behind the cloaked figure, mouth opening, a single word leaving his lips.
Not loudly. Not shouted.
But it landed like a thunderclap.
"FREEZE."
Leximancy detonated through the air in a wave of absolute authority.
The cloaked figure locked mid-motion. Its body stopped completely—limbs arrested, mana flow severed, every attempt at resistance meeting a wall that simply didn’t negotiate. To its horror, it couldn’t move. Couldn’t circulate energy. Couldn’t access anything it might have used to counter or escape.
Complete. Total. Helpless.
Leon registered the effect with quiet satisfaction—and something else. The power output he’d used to achieve this was only within the threshold where he’d sustain no personal injury. It’s all, but the safe version of his all. If he pushed into the range where he accepted damage as a cost, the Leximancy would be two or three times stronger—he wasn’t certain of the exact multiplier.
It’s gotten significantly stronger. That’s what matters right now.
He hadn’t even fully cataloged the upgrades yet. The most obvious contributors were his dramatically increased physical strength and his substantial growth in mental acuity and intelligence, both of which fed directly into Leximancy’s output. But there were likely other factors he’d discover later.
The cloaked figure experienced every microsecond of what came next with horrifying clarity.
It could see the two swords. It could calculate their trajectories. It could feel exactly what would happen when they arrived.
And it could do absolutely nothing.
Leon executed Skybreaker Draw with both blades simultaneously.
The holy energy sword was slightly awkward in the technique—the skill had been developed for conventional blades, and holy energy responded differently to the required motion—but it was the same fundamental structure, and the lethality increased considerably because of it. Both attacks launched on converging vectors aimed at tearing the cloaked figure apart.
A shadow erupted from beneath the figure.
Not a random Archon-rank undead from the army below. Something different—a thin, black, ferocious shape that emerged from the figure’s own shadow with the speed and intent of a genuine trump card being played in the final moment before disaster.
It was the corpse of a Shadow Beast. Ethereal rank. Controlled undead belonging to the figure itself—something it had acquired at high cost, held in reserve for exactly this kind of moment. Shadow Beasts of that rank were renowned for several things: their ferocity, their physical resilience, and most crucially, their near-invulnerability to physical attacks.
Against most opponents, throwing it into the path of two incoming blades would have bought the necessary fraction of a second.
The blades didn’t stop.
They cut through it like it wasn’t there.
SLASH! RIIIP! CRACK!
The Shadow Beast came apart—not slowly, not with the resistance its nature should have guaranteed, but completely and immediately, as though the concept of its physical invulnerability had been presented to these particular weapons and politely declined.
The cloaked figure couldn’t process what it was seeing.
That Shadow Beast had required extraordinary effort to obtain. A high price paid. It had served as the figure’s most reliable escape mechanism across countless dangerous situations—not because it could win every fight, but because something one step below Ethereal Lord, combined with the Shadow Beast’s invulnerability to physical damage, could always survive long enough to retreat. That one step between Ethereal Initiate and Ethereal Lord was a chasm that took years to cross, and until it was crossed, the Shadow Beast was what bridged the gap between dangerous situations and survival.
It had died like a common enemy.
What the figure didn’t know—couldn’t know—was why.
Leon’s holy energy sword was, to a Shadow Beast, functionally a direct counter. Holy energy’s relationship with shadow-element entities wasn’t merely effective damage—it was something closer to fundamental incompatibility. The Shadow Beast’s invulnerability was physical in nature. Holy energy wasn’t physical in the conventional sense. It passed through that defense the way sunlight passes through the concept of darkness rather than competing with it.
Add to that the light element and lightning element woven through Leon’s conventional blade, both of which carried their own degrees of counter-property against shadow-based creatures.
The Shadow Beast hadn’t been destroyed. It had been erased by something it had no framework to resist.
Even sacrificing its most valuable trump card hadn’t bought the figure enough time.
As the Shadow Beast came apart and the figure’s last line of defense dissolved into nothing, it tried to move—tried to throw itself out of the trajectories with whatever fractional mobility it could force through the Leximancy’s grip.
It wasn’t enough.
CRAAAAAACK! SLASH! BOOM!
The figure was caught.
Its body was launched through the sky like something struck by a divine force rather than a sword—tumbling, trailing pieces of itself, blood and fragments of bone and torn flesh scattering in its wake as it carved an arc through the air above the burning battlefield.
WHOOOOSH! THUD! CRAAASH!
The sound it made wasn’t a scream. It was something rawer than that—the involuntary sound of a body experiencing catastrophic damage faster than the mind can process the event.
It came to rest hundreds of meters away, held up by nothing except whatever autonomous function kept an Ethereal Realm cultivator’s body from simply ceasing.
Far below, the battle hadn’t paused—it couldn’t. The army of Archon-rank undead pressed on with mindless persistence. But something had changed in the quality of the pressure. A subtle shift, like a conductor suddenly absent from an orchestra that had been playing with terrifying precision. The coordination remained, but the perfect timing of those small, decisive interventions—the restraints on the dragon, the counters to Vyra’s attacks—had stopped.
Archon Vyra felt it immediately.
RRRROOOOAAARRR!
The Red Dragon felt it too. And it did not waste the opening.
Leon descended from the sky toward where the figure had landed, his twin blades still active, his expression unchanged from the cold, analytical calm he’d worn since stepping through the portal.
Still alive. Ethereal Realm doesn’t die from that alone.
But the shape of this fight has changed.
He landed thirty meters from the figure’s position, regarding what remained of the incarnation’s carefully maintained composure.
Bones visible. Blood pooling. The cloak was torn beyond recognition.
But the eyes—whatever passed for eyes beneath that hood—were still open. Still looking at him.
Still processing.
Good, Leon thought. I want you to understand exactly what happened before this ends.