Of all the soldiers in the camp, only a handful remained alive, and that was no accident. Leo needed information. To leave no room for escape or resistance, he had attacked with overwhelming force, flooding the battlefield with his full power. It had cost him a massive amount of mana, but he had made sure no enemy could regroup or flee.
The camp now lay in ruins.
Burned tents smoldered. Broken weapons littered the ground. The air stank of blood and smoke. The few survivors knelt in terror, too broken to resist.
The woman before him, Kaia, stood stiff and unmoving. Her eyes were empty, unfocused. Her mind was trapped inside an illusion. Only her body remained, forced to obey.
"Tell me everything you know," Leo said coldly. "Who sent you?"
Her voice came out flat and mechanical. "The prince planned the operation. We used a spy inside Raiwood to open a portal. We were ordered to kill everyone."
"Where is Mr. Elric Bourne, the guild master?" Leo asked.
"Our intelligence placed him in the mountains. That was part of the prince's plan. We do not know why."
Leo's eyes narrowed. "What is happening in the mountains?"
"We don't know. We only heard a loud sound. A creature awakening."
"What kind of creature?"
"It was like a dragon."
Leo's brow tightened.
So the creature in the mountains had awakened. The timing was too perfect. Either the prince was involved, or the same hidden enemy manipulating his future was moving again.
There was only one way to learn the truth.
He questioned the remaining soldiers, but none knew more. When he was finished, Leo returned to where the clone, who believed herself to be Elna, waited among the ruined camp.
"What happened?" she asked.
"I destroyed their army and took what information I could," Leo replied. "It seems Mr. Elric Bourne is in the mountains."
"Then let's go there," she said without hesitation.
Leo studied her face. "Are you sure you want to come?"
The clone nodded firmly.
"Alright," Leo said. "Let's go."
Together, they moved through the jungle and began climbing the mountain. No beasts or creatures dared approach them. The dense mana radiating from Leo pressed outward like an invisible storm, forcing everything with instinct to flee long before they came close.
Higher up the mountain, the rocky path narrowed. Between two massive stone walls lay an opening, like a hidden vale carved into the mountain itself. The air there felt heavy. Leo could sense it immediately, an overwhelming pressure of mana leaking from whatever lay beyond.
He frowned. Using his creation spell here would drain him too much.
Instead, he raised his hand and formed a Blood Phantom, its shape solidifying before silently moving ahead. Leo and Elna followed about a hundred meters behind it, concealed beneath a thick layer of illusion magic.
Minutes passed as they advanced deeper. Then the phantom reached an open chamber.
Leo froze. Through the phantom's eyes, what he saw made his own eyes widen in disbelief.
Elna noticed his reaction immediately. "What is it?"
"It's hard to explain," Leo said quietly. "You should see it yourself."
They moved forward together.
When they stepped into the chamber, blinding light reflected off the walls, forcing Elna to shield her eyes for a few seconds. When she finally lowered her hand, her breath caught.
In front of them stood a massive dragon, sealed within a thick layer of ice. Its enormous body was covered in countless scars, deep, jagged wounds that told the story of ancient battles. This was not a creature that had slept peacefully. It had been frozen after war.
Leo slowly shifted his gaze.
Farther inside the chamber, on the opposite side, lay another block of ice, much smaller.
As they approached, the shape inside became clearer. It was Mr. Elric Bourne.
When Leo focused his Vampire Gaze, his heart sank. There was no life force.
Leo closed his eyes for a brief moment, paying silent respect to the old warrior. His jaw tightened.
Only one person possessed the power to do this.
And she was the reason this dragon had awakened in the first place.
Leo's head slowly turned toward a distortion in the air. Massive amount of mana poured outward from the body of a woman standing there, bending the light around her and frosting the air itself.
It was Clementia Lindsey, the Icethrone Empress.
"Elna," Leo said quietly.
Elna did not hesitate. She nodded once and retreated immediately, putting as much distance between herself and the battlefield as possible.
Leo focused fully on the Empress.
Her eyes still held traces of emotion, but her mind was fractured. The cold mana leaking from her body was unstable and violent. Whatever had happened in her battle with the pope had shattered her sanity, turning a once-proud S-rank into a corrupted calamity.
Without warning, a massive sword of ice formed beside her. It screamed through the air as it shot forward, freezing the ground in its wake. Stone cracked and split as the blade passed, leaving a jagged trench behind it.
Leo shifted aside with minimal movement, stepping through the air itself. He appeared directly in front of her, Thorn pulsing as blood mana surged along its edge.
Five more ice swords formed in an instant, surrounding Clementia like a crown of frozen steel.
They fired simultaneously.
Blood erupted outward from Leo, forming a rotating crimson barrier. The ice blades touched the blood and disintegrated, hissing into mist. When the red fog dispersed, Leo had vanished.
He reappeared behind Clementia and swung.
His blade descended with terrifying speed, aiming for her spine. Clementia twisted sharply, ice condensing into her palm as a sword formed just in time to block.
Boom.
The collision sent a shockwave through the vale. The mountain trembled as cracks raced through the stone walls, and chunks of rock broke loose, crashing to the ground below.
They exchanged blows at blinding speed. Blood and ice clashed again and again, each strike carrying enough force to shatter steel. Frost spread across the ground while crimson slashes carved glowing scars through the air.
Clementia thrust forward, releasing a spear of compressed ice. Leo deflected it and countered with a Blood Slash that tore through her guard, forcing her backward.
Her ice sword fractured, fissures spreading across its surface.
Leo pressed the advantage. The Sphere of Creation expanded behind him, distorting the sky. Heat and pressure gathered above as a massive meteor formed, tearing through the clouds as it began its descent.
Clementia looked up.
She screamed, a sound filled with rage and madness. Her mana erupted outward, forming a sphere of absolute cold that swallowed her entire body. The temperature plunged instantly, freezing the air itself.
She launched upward, meeting the meteor head-on.
Ice and fire collided in a deafening explosion. Steam and shards filled the sky as the Empress's freezing power bored straight through the meteor's core.
A massive hole formed at its center.
The broken remains of the meteor continued falling, burning fragments raining down toward the mountain as the battlefield shook once more.
Leo reacted instantly. He raised his hand and formed a layered blood shield around Elna on the ground, sealing her inside just as the shattered remains of the meteor crashed into the mountainside. Heat, pressure, and debris slammed into the barrier, but it held.
At the same time, Leo focused on the Empress.
He needed to understand her ability.
He sent several Blood Slashes toward her, sharp and precise. Each one vanished the moment it touched the frozen sphere around her, erased without resistance, as if they had never existed.
A pattern began to form in Leo's mind.
He shifted tactics. Using real illusion, he created several phantoms and concealed his true body among them. The Empress moved immediately.
She crossed the battlefield in bursts of frozen air, striking one phantom after another. Each illusion shattered on impact, erased completely. Even indirect attacks and blood spells, collapsed the moment they touched her sphere.
Leo pushed further. He formed an enchantment circle directly inside the frozen sphere, forcing it into existence. Then he created massive spheres of fire and hurled them forward.
None of it worked.
The fire died instantly. The enchantment unraveled. Even the phantoms disintegrated the moment they crossed the boundary.
Understanding struck. The temperature around her was absolute zero.
Matter could not exist inside there. Magic could not function. Atoms lost almost all kinetic energy, motion ceased, and in that situation and under that massive amount of mana and pressure from her spell, everything simply stopped being.
That realization raised two questions.
How was she surviving inside that zone? And how could Leo reach her?
The answer to the first was also the key to the second.
The Empress no longer fought with reason. Her attacks came in wild, destructive bursts, driven by instinct rather than strategy. Leo used his remaining illusions to keep her occupied, forcing her to waste movement and power while he thought.
No matter could exist inside that sphere. Not physical matter. Not magic constructs. His enchantments failed and his illusions collapsed.
But Leo was a creator. Limits did not stop him, they only defined the problem.
He began with his first theory. Leo rose higher into the air and extended his hand. A massive enchantment circle formed above the Empress, its symbols rotating rapidly. The air distorted as power gathered.
Then the force released. A crushing pressure slammed downward, invisible and overwhelming. It struck the Empress and drove her into the ground. She shot downward like a falling star, smashing into the earth.
But even then, the ground did not resist her. Stone, soil, and rock vanished as she passed through them, erased by the absolute cold surrounding her body.
Leo narrowed his eyes. The test confirmed it. Forces still worked.
Leo could drive her downward, straight toward the planet's core, but the cost would be enormous. Sustaining that level of force long enough to overcome her resistance would drain his mana reserves dry.
Teleportation offered another option. He could drop her directly beneath the crust, but that would require an enchantment circle expanded hundreds of times beyond its normal size. The mana cost would be just as ruinous.
Neither choice worked. Leo dismissed his spell, letting the pressure fade. One conclusion remained clear.
Force still affected her. The Empress snapped her gaze toward him and surged forward, ice screaming as she accelerated. Before she could reach him, another invisible force struck from below, reversing her momentum and launching her upward.
If he could not send her down, he would send her away.
She shot skyward at terrifying speed, tearing through the clouds and into the upper atmosphere. Leo felt the mana strain spike as he maintained the push.
Then she stopped. Without hesitation, without damage, she twisted in the air and plunged back toward him like a falling blade.
Leo clicked his tongue. All that mana, wasted. Whatever shielded her from her own domain also protected her from the vacuum and cold of space.
As the corrupted S-rank descended, Leo's thoughts raced.
Mana was not matter. And there was a path that relied on nothing else.
Pure magic worked differently from most other forms of magic. When two sources of mana collided, the stronger one naturally suppressed the weaker. That meant if Leo wanted his illusion or enchantments to function inside the sphere, he would have to pour far more mana into them than usual. Otherwise, the sphere would destroy them. Doing that would drain his mana pool very quickly.
Pure magic, however, was mana itself, compressed and held in one place. It didn't rely on maintaining a complex structure like illusion or enchantment.
Not all spells worked this way. Elementalist spells, for example, created actual matter or natural phenomena, much like real illusions formed into substance.
Leo raised Thorn. Blood surged along the blade, then mana poured in, wrapping the crimson energy in a deep violet glow. The two forces fused, stabilizing each other.
He swung.
A Blood Slash infused entirely with mana tore through the air. It passed straight through the frozen sphere without distortion or decay. The Empress raised the back of her hand and caught the attack head-on.
The impact pushed her arm back, the mana grinding against her defense. With a sharp twist of her wrist, she redirected the slash, sending it carving harmlessly into the mountainside.
Leo's lips curved into a slow smile. The attack had worked.
Not only could mana pass through her absolute-zero domain, but she could not generate new spells inside it. Any magic she created would be erased by her own ability.
Blood and mana coiled tighter around Thorn, the purple glow deepening as Leo's confidence grew.
He had found the answer. And now, he could kill her.