Just as Leo cast the spell, hundreds of words of power appeared around him, glowing faintly as they rotated in perfect harmony. The air trembled with the weight of ancient language. His pupils rolled upward until only the whites of his eyes remained, and a torrent of knowledge poured into him like an endless stream.
While his body remained in the real world, his mind descended, or rather, ascended, into his domain. The entire place shook beneath the surge of new power. He stood within the heart of his throne hall, and the air itself seemed to bend around him.
He turned toward the throne and took a single step. Instantly, the domain responded. The trembling deepened, echoing through every stone and wall, and the grand throne hall began to rise toward the white sky above. The stairway connecting it to the gathering hall stretched and multiplied, ten steps became a hundred, rising upward like a divine ascent.
He took another step. The gardens surrounding the gathering hall bloomed violently, vines and blossoms expanding across the marble floors until they overtook the edges of the two bells standing on either side. The once tranquil greenery now pulsed with life and mana.
With his next step, the ground itself convulsed. Far beyond the heart of his domain, ten colossal structures emerged from beneath the surface in a perfect circle, silent sentinels rising from the void. No path yet connected them, but Leo knew instinctively that with the next evolution of his power, the way would reveal itself.
When he finally sat upon his throne, his domain had been utterly transformed. The space hummed with divine stillness, every surface alive with quiet reverence.
Ilandra appeared at the foot of the endless stairs, ascending slowly until she reached him. When she saw the new depth in Leo's gaze, she smiled faintly.
"It seems you're one step closer to becoming the Creator," she said.
"I may need your help," he replied.
"But I can't leave this place yet."
"You can," Leo said calmly. His voice carried the quiet certainty of one who now shaped worlds with words alone, his eyes locked on the spell hovering above the roofless hall.
One of the two circles in the middle was now filled with a new spell, its runes glowing faintly as they spun in slow motion. The light from it reflected in Leo's eyes, steady and resolute.
…
In the real world.
Leo's gaze was fixed on the staff suspended before him, unmoving, unwavering. His pupils gleamed faintly with the dual glow of two worlds, his consciousness split between his domain and reality. He was standing in both at once, feeling every ripple of mana around him while he also reigned from the throne above his domain.
He moved his hand slowly over the staff. The ancient runes carved along its shaft began to shimmer, one after another, awakening in sequence. Each symbol pulsed with its own rhythm, releasing faint waves of heat and pressure. The air around him bent and hummed as invisible currents of mana flowed toward the artifact like moths drawn to a flame.
Far across the ruined battlefield, Lucius watched. His jaw tightened; his crimson eyes narrowed with fury.
"I'm not going to wait for you to finish," he said, his voice low but heavy with restrained rage.
The air quivered.
He extended his arm, and the world responded.
Lucius's mana burst outward like the eruption of a dying star. The ground beneath his feet split open, spiderweb cracks racing outward for hundreds of meters. Stones rose into the air, orbiting him before shattering into dust under the pressure of his power. The crimson aura of his domain flooded the battlefield, twisting the very light into shades of red and black.
A single drop of blood floated from his fingertip, glowing like a ruby suspended in the air. It expanded, spiraling outward, solidifying into a blade vast enough to cleave mountains. The sword was the same he had once used to strike down Alexia, but now, it was even larger, its edges serrated by raw mana, humming with destruction.
At the same time, Nikolaus Graf crouched low on the opposite side. His expression was unreadable, calm as always, but his mana told a different story. Blue light flared from beneath his feet, crackling like thunder through the broken earth. When his domain unfolded, the sky above him twisted, warping into a vortex of lightning and motion. Every breath he took scattered sparks across the air.
Leo didn't even flinch. His attention was locked on the final rune.
The words of power glowed brighter, faster, circling the staff like a spiral of stars. Then, click.
A sound like glass breaking echoed through the still air.
The staff disintegrated into dust between his fingers.
The golden motes didn't fall. They gathered, swirling together in front of him, until they condensed into a small, glowing crystal, pulsing softly like a beating heart.
Lucius's eyes widened. "What the hell are you doing…" he muttered, but then his lips twisted into a snarl. "No matter. You die first."
He swung his arm downward. The colossal blood sword tore through the sky, its tip glowing white-hot from friction as it plummeted toward Leo.
Nikolaus vanished into blue light. He reappeared less than a breath away from Leo, his sword flashing in a perfect horizontal cut aimed at Leo's neck.
The air screamed.
Then Leo crushed the crystal in his palm.
For an instant, everything froze, sound, movement, even time itself. The fragments dissolved into liquid light that poured into his veins, and then—
The world exploded.
A surge of mana unlike anything they had ever felt erupted outward. The blast shook the city ruins and bent the very air around him. Nikolaus's blade stopped mid-swing, as if pressing against an invisible wall. The massive blood sword halted in the air and
shattered into dust.
Both S-ranks jumped back.
Nikolaus landed hard, boots skidding across broken stone, his face twisted in shock. Lucius stumbled a step before catching himself, eyes wide with disbelief.
"Where did you get that crystal?" Lucius demanded, his voice shaking.
Nikolaus's brow furrowed. "Crystal? What kind of crystal can do that?"
Lucius's expression darkened. "It's one of the Ten Crystals of the Mad God," he said slowly, almost reverently. "Each one holds the mana of thousands of black crystals. Only two still existed."
Nikolaus turned toward Leo, who stood untouched at the center of the storm, his hair and coat whipping in the mana wind. "Then why does that kid have one of them?"
Lucius's voice dropped to a growl. "That's what I want to know."
Leo barely heard them. His body vibrated with power so vast it bordered on pain. The mana flowed through every cell, every thought, every breath. His skin glowed faintly, veins of light running up his arms and across his neck.
He lifted his hand before his face and watched the power shimmer between his fingers, pure, radiant, infinite.
His lips curled into a faint smile.
"With this power…" he whispered, his voice almost lost in the storm, "…I can use that spell."
"Not sure what's going on," Nikolaus said, his tone sharp and impatient as lightning crackled around him. "But you'll die before you even use that power."
Then he vanished.
A streak of blue light tore through the air, the ground beneath him cracked open from the force of his departure. He moved so fast he left no afterimage, only a faint hum that rippled across the battlefield.
But before he could reach his target, a sphere erupted from Leo's hand and expanded outward at impossible speed.
It wasn't light.
It was absence, consuming, swallowing, stretching across the broken city until it became the sky itself. The sphere pulsed once, and then its edges rippled, extending far beyond the battlefield, until it blanketed the entire city… even the distant plains where Arthur was fighting. The world dimmed under it, the air vibrating as if existence itself was being rewritten.
Nikolaus appeared before Leo an instant later, his blade mid-swing, momentum already committed to the strike. But Leo had already raised his hand, calm and deliberate, pointing one finger forward.
A small black orb shimmered into existence at the tip of his finger, perfectly still, perfectly silent.
The moment it appeared, the space around Nikolaus bent.
Reality wavered like heat haze. His movement faltered mid-swing. Then, He coughed blood. A crimson spray scattered into the air.
Leo didn't move. He only lowered his hand slightly, and the ground responded.
With a deep crack, a massive wooden cross burst upward from beneath Nikolaus's feet, its roots splintering through the ruined stone. The air burned with the scent of ash and pine. A hollow circle was carved in its center, waiting.
Chains snaked out from the cross like living serpents, coiling around Nikolaus's arms, his legs, his throat. The blue lightning that once danced around him shattered as the chains locked him in place. He struggled, but the cross itself began to hum with power, sealing him within its gravitational pull.
Inside the hollow, a second black orb appeared, larger and far darker than the first. The air twisted violently around it, light bending inward as if being devoured. Nikolaus's figure blurred, his outline splitting slightly, one form trying to escape through space, the other pinned and screaming silently against the pull.
"You sure are fast," Leo said, his voice calm, almost admiring. "But your speed comes from space bending, not raw movement. It's like teleportation, compressed through broken space. A terrifying ability… one worthy of an S-rank."
His lips curved faintly. "But I'm bending the space too, just enough to interrupt your jump mid-transfer."
Nikolaus gasped between ragged breaths. "How…?"
"That black thing behind you," Leo said, his voice almost casual, "is called a black hole."
He didn't elaborate. Instead, fire began to form at the tip of his finger, a swirl of red and gold, spinning faster and faster until it condensed into a sphere. A miniature sun. The light scorched the air around it, distorting it like molten glass.
Then, with a flick of his wrist, he released it.
The sun shot forward, leaving a trail of vaporized air in its wake.
Just before it struck Nikolaus, two colossal blood hands crashed into existence in front of him, Lucius's spell. The fingers clenched, intercepting the miniature sun. For a heartbeat, the fire resisted, pushing the hands backward. Then both spells exploded.
A wave of heat and pressure rippled across the field, shattering the nearby ruins into dust.
Lucius's voice cut through the roar. "You still underestimate the power of S-ranks."
Leo lowered his hand slowly, his expression unreadable. "Actually," he said softly, "it's the opposite." He raised his gaze toward them. "You're the ones underestimating me."
He lifted his right hand skyward. "Moon."
Above the dome, the clouds shifted, and an image appeared.
A pale, spectral moon shimmered into being, distant yet immense, hanging above the black dome like a phantom. Its surface rippled faintly, hazy and translucent at first… until it began to descend.
Lucius scoffed. "You want to kill us with an illusion?"
Leo didn't respond. He just watched.
The moon kept descending, its light spreading across the city until the shadows retreated completely. As it began to pass through the dome's barrier, it stopped flickering. It solidified.
The illusion became real.
Lucius's expression shifted. "What?" He extended his hand, whispering counter-spells under his breath. Waves of crimson magic erupted from his palm, washing over the field to dispel any illusions. But the moon didn't fade.
"What's going on?" Nikolaus asked, his tone uneasy.
Lucius didn't answer immediately. His instincts screamed danger. Mana surged through his veins as he extended his arms. From his back, a colossal figure of blood took form, only half a body, from chest to crown. A giant, shaped from liquid power, towering above them.
It raised it's massive hands and pressed them against the falling moon.
The world shook.
Even though the moon Leo created wasn't as big as the real one, it was still massive enough for the impact to shake the land for kilometers beyond the city walls. The ground split apart, waves of dust rolled outward, and the air itself seemed to tremble under the force.
Lucius managed to stop the moon's descent, but veins bulged across his forehead as sweat dripped down his face. His blood giant quivered under the strain, cracks forming across its surface.
Leo, by contrast, stood motionless amid the chaos. Calm, focused. He lifted his sword and aimed it straight at Lucius.
But at that moment, Lucius tore his amulet from around his neck and shouted, voice echoing like thunder.
"No living being that is not of this land can move for the next minute!"
The command rippled through the battlefield. Last time he had said this land, and Leo had still been able to move, but now the spell was crafted differently, more precise, targeting anything foreign to this world itself.
Lucius started laughing, his tone triumphant. "Now stay there and watch your own death!"
Before the words had even faded, a sword pierced through his waist.
Lucius's breath caught. He looked down in disbelief and saw Leo's blade stretching unnaturally, glimmering in the dim light.
"Thanks to Nemesis," Leo said quietly, "I know how this sword works now."
Lucius coughed blood, voice shaking. "How can you move?"
"Well," Leo replied, calm as ever, "I'm both from this world… and not from this world."
Lucius raised an eyebrow weakly. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"You don't need to know."
A deep clang sounded behind them. The ritual chamber, already battered by the S-rank battle, finally collapsed. The Eye of the Mad God cracked, lines of energy shattering like broken glass.
With the sound of splitting stone, the eye snapped in two and fell uselessly to the ground. A heartbeat later, the air tore open into a swirling portal. An enormous eye appeared within it, staring down. From it poured waves of void energy, twisting and pulling reality apart. Tentacles followed, tearing their way through the rift.
Lucius began to laugh again, his voice unsteady. "Look what you've done! Now we'll all die here!"
But the calamity wasn't over. A sharp, cracking sound split the heavens, and the moon above shifted, its surface bending into a wide, grotesque smile. Two smaller moons appeared beside it like eyes, and the sky shattered like glass as two colossal shadowed hands reached through.
Leo looked up, still perfectly calm. "I almost forgot about you," he murmured. "Looks like the barrier Mr. Osvald placed on my mind is gone."
He closed his eyes, and a deep tolling echoed through the air, two bells, heavy and resonant.
But this time, the sound wasn't just heard, it reshaped reality. Two massive white bell towers rose from the earth, followed by long halls of polished stone. Flowers burst from the cracked ground, spreading in every direction as if life itself answered his call.
Lucius's eyes widened in disbelief. Even if Leo possessed an enormous reserve of mana, enough to rival even the Gods, and even after being blessed by the goddess herself, this… this was something else entirely. The sheer scale of the domain before him was impossible for someone that wasn't an S rank
"How…" Lucius whispered under his breath, his voice trembling. "How can he have a domain like this?"
At the center of the blooming domain, Leo sat upon his throne. Behind him, a statue of a man formed from white stone, cross-legged, serene, with six arms raised in poise and balance.
Two of the statue's hands rose to block the beast god's incoming strike; two more extended outward to halt the void's writhing tentacles in midair.
While holding back both godlike forces, Leo extended his awareness across the battlefield. He could feel every heartbeat within his creation sphere, his allies, his enemies, their struggles. His newfound power strengthened them all, but his focus settled on one, Luciana. It was time to change her fate.
Half his attention drifted there, but Lucius could only stare from where he knelt, blood pooling beneath him. The figure before him no longer felt human.
"What… what the hell are you?" he whispered.
Leo's gaze lowered to meet his.
One of the statue's remaining hands rose toward the sky, and above it, a blazing sun began to form, its light swallowing the darkness.
"I am the Creator," Leo said. Reality quivered beneath the weight of his words, and for an instant, the world seemed to bow to his will.