Leo had been fighting the shadow version of himself for hours. The valleys of the Underworld were devastated, jagged rocks scattered like broken teeth, the ground scorched, and the bodies of undead strewn everywhere, some crushed beyond recognition.
No matter what he created with his spell, spikes, walls, or flames, the shadow always answered in kind. Each attack drained him a little more, and he could feel his mana slipping away. Time was running out.
He had to end it.
A sudden surge of power erupted from Leo. White and red fog coiled around his feet, crawling outward as the very Underworld began to shake. Cracks webbed across the ground, and loose stones lifted slightly before settling again.
…
Zahhak's eyes were half open as he observed the battle, his gaze calm but sharp. He understood better than most how difficult it was to defeat true corruption. Souls were the thread connecting mortals to the rules of the world, and those rules were absolute. When a soul strayed too close, it could warp, twist, and spiral out of control. That was why people built domains, to shape and contain power, to bend the rules without being consumed.
But a soul that approached a rule with no regard for control, seeking only chaos? That was corruption incarnate. Dangerous, unpredictable, and utterly indifferent to the boundaries others relied upon.
Leo was already an S-rank, and the corrupted fragment of his soul was reaching heights most could never touch. He was facing a shadow S-rank with limitless mana, a mirror capable of matching him at every turn. The potential for catastrophe was enormous.
Zahhak had been analyzing, calculating, and observing, but then the world itself began to shudder. The tremors started small, like distant thunder beneath the Underworld, but they grew in intensity, shaking rocks loose and rattling the remnants of undead across the valleys. His attention snapped to Leo, the epicenter of the disturbance.
A thick fog of white and red began to coil and rise from around him, glowing faintly and casting shifting light across the ruined landscape. Zahhak's eyes widened, a flicker of alarm passing over his otherwise composed features.
The fog wasn't just mist, it was part of his domain. Summoning a domain here should have been impossible. How? Was Leo so powerful he could push past the limits Death himself had placed on this world? The fight had just gotten far more interesting. Zahhak's attention sharpened.
Slowly, massive faces made of stone emerged from the air, appearing from every direction. Each one twisted with a different emotion, rage, sorrow, fear, joy, and sent shivers through the battlefield. But faces alone weren't enough. Stone hands began to reach out from thin air, grasping, clawing, filling the space in moments. Within minutes, the air was crowded with hundreds of faces and hands, all suspended like statues of wrath.
The shadow version of Leo watched warily. When the first hand lunged toward him, he reacted instantly, shaping a massive sword of shadow that cut the hand apart in a single stroke.
Hundreds more followed.
The shadow darted and twisted through the air, dodging and blocking attacks, his movements a blur of precision. But the assault didn't stop there. Spells began raining from the mouths and hands above, fireballs, bolts of lightning, shards of ice, and other elemental strikes. One hand hurled a massive fireball while a mouth discharged a jagged bolt of lightning, the air around it sizzling with energy.
The shadow version reshaped his power faster than ever, forming barriers and weapons on the fly to intercept the attacks. Just as he stabilized, Leo charged. His sword sliced through the chaos with blinding speed, cutting toward his opponent with terrifying intent.
The corrupted Leo raised his hand to block, but the attack struck with terrifying force, slamming him backward like a ragdoll. He collided with a massive stone hand that had just risen behind him. The hand's fingers snapped shut, threatening to crush him instantly. Before it could, a thousand shadow swords erupted from the air around him, spinning and stabbing in every direction, shattering the hand into jagged fragments. Sparks of dark energy flew, and the impact sent echoes rippling across the valley.
No time to breathe. Another hand lunged from behind, moving faster than he could react. The punch slammed into him, forcing him downward toward the scorched ground. Just as he braced for impact, a colossal stone face tore itself from the earth. Its gaping mouth was vast enough to swallow entire villages, teeth jagged like mountain peaks.
The corrupted Leo plunged into the maw. The jaws snapped shut with a deafening roar, triggering a massive explosion that shook the entire valley. Fire spewed between the teeth, while thick plumes of black smoke curled into the sky, choking the battlefield.
Zahhak's eyes were now fully open, sharp and calculating. Even he could see that the corruption was far from finished. The explosion had been enormous, but the corrupted Leo was still alive, and far from contained.
Suddenly, shadows surged from the mouth like a dark tidal wave, fluid and unstoppable. They rippled outward in all directions, cutting through stone and tearing apart the air itself. The attack swept across the battlefield, smashing anything in its path. Even for Zahhak, trying to destroy all of it at once was impossible.
The shadow knew that brute force alone wouldn't be enough, it had to strike at the real Leo.
It surged through the air, weaving through the chaos of colliding shadows and creations that tore chunks from the battlefield. Rocks and debris exploded outward as their power clashed, and in an instant, it reached him. Their swords met, but the corrupted Leo felt no resistance; the strike passed through him like a hollow illusion.
Before he could even register the deception, a massive stone hand erupted from the darkness behind him. It grabbed him effortlessly and hurled him toward one of the gaping mouths suspended in the air. At the same moment, yellow lightning shot from the maw like a concentrated beam, searing through the air and striking him directly. Sparks of energy danced across the ground where the beam grazed.
Zahhak's eyes narrowed, scanning the scene intently. That attack should have been fatal, even for an S-rank. Yet the corrupted Leo remained alive, battered and bleeding dark energy, but still moving, still fighting, coiling shadows twisting around him like living armor.
Suddenly, shadows burst outward from around him, obliterating everything in the immediate area. But the explosion didn't stop, it continued to spread, coalescing into a massive, pulsating shield that expanded across nearly the entire battlefield. Every strike, every spell, every fragment of debris from outside hit the shield and shattered or bounced harmlessly. Energy crackled along its surface as the force of countless attacks collided with it, but the barrier held.
Zahhak rose to his feet, leaning forward slightly. Even his keen eyes were blocked by the overwhelming wall of shadow. The sheer size and density of the shield made it impossible to anticipate what the corrupted Leo would do next. The battlefield had become a dangerous, unpredictable storm of magic and power, and the corruption itself seemed unstoppable.
…
Inside the shield, complete darkness swallowed everything. Vision spells flickered and failed, swallowed by the dense, mana saturated air. Every inch of the space pulsed with raw energy, making it nearly impossible for Leo to use his creation spell. Each attempt drained him faster, and his mana was running dangerously low.
The corrupted version of Leo sensed this. The shadow sword in his hand trembled slightly, a smirk creeping across his face. He was about to charge, when hundreds of phantoms materialized in front of him, spreading across the darkness like a sea of identical threats.
The smirk widened. He wasn't charging. He could teleport anywhere inside the shield at will, and Leo could never anticipate his movement.
In an instant, the corrupted appeared in front of the first clone, slicing clean through it. His eyes flicked to the next target, and he leapt, cutting down one after another. In just ten seconds, nearly all the clones lay in shattered fragments, their forms dissipating into the darkness.
Then he lunged at another, driving his sword straight into it while scanning the surrounding for the remaining threats. That's when he felt resistance.
He froze, and his eyes darted backward in surprise. The one in front of him was the real Leo, standing there bleeding, sword raised and aiming directly at him.
"Blood Calamity," Leo whispered. The tip of his blade swelled with gathered blood, dark and glistening, expanding into a massive, jagged weapon of crimson steel.
…
Zahhak hesitated, weighing whether to intervene, when a massive force burst out from the shield. It drove straight into the door behind him with a deafening impact. The door didn't move. It didn't crack or bend. It absorbed the blow completely, standing unchanged against the overwhelming force.
The shockwave, however, didn't stop there. It rolled outward like a tidal wave, tearing through the surrounding valleys. Rock formations collapsed, the ground split apart, and everything in its path was flattened by the released energy.
Zahhak's eyes lifted, widening slightly as he focused on the source.
From within the darkness of the shield, a colossal sword pushed forward. The blade was massive, larger than mountains, thick and dense, its surface pulsing with gathered blood and compressed mana. The tip wasn't still. It drove forward with relentless force, pressing into the corrupted Leo and forcing him back.
The air around it trembled under the weight of its power. Every inch it advanced carried enough force to tear apart the battlefield. The corrupted Leo was being pushed straight toward the door, his form straining against the pressure, the sword's tip digging into him as it tried to crush him completely.
…
Leo realized that none of his previous attacks had fully stopped the corruption. If he didn't finish it now, it would recover and strike again. There was only one option, a final, decisive strike, one that risked everything he had.
When he used Blood Calamity, he didn't unleash it as a sweeping slash. Instead, he concentrated all its power into the tip of the sword. The corrupted Leo staggered, clearly injured, chest smoking with fractured shadows, but he was still alive. That wasn't enough. Leo wasn't done.
He whispered the next spell.
"Blood Destruction."
A wave of crimson energy erupted from the sword, a rolling explosion of blood and raw mana that tore through the Underworld like a tsunami. Rocks shattered, smoke and debris filled the air, and even the remaining shadows scattered in every direction. The ground quaked under the force, and the valleys around seemed to buckle as the wave surged outward, swallowing everything in its path.
In the next heartbeat, Thorn shrank back to its normal size, and Leo reappeared directly in front of the corruption. The tip of his sword pressed into the corrupted Leo's chest, glowing with concentrated blood magic, humming with lethal energy.
He poured every ounce of his remaining strength into the blade and whispered again.
"Fracture."
The corrupted Leo's eyes widened in shock. His mouth opened in a scream of pure agony as cracks of blinding light raced across his body, glowing veins of energy tearing through the shadows that composed him. The light pulsed and expanded, starting from the point of contact, shattering his corrupted form from the inside out.
A deafening shatter echoed across the battlefield. Pieces of shadow and dark mana exploded outward like broken glass, scattering into nothingness. The corrupted version of Leo was gone, utterly destroyed. Silence followed, broken only by the faint hum of residual magic and the settling of the devastated terrain.