CHAPTER 69 – WRATH
The battlefield had not yet settled.
Fragments of the shattered formation still drifted through the air like fading glass, dissolving into motes of pale light before they could fully disperse. The shockwave from Leylin's strike had flattened the surrounding terrain, leaving a wide circle of fractured earth and broken stone that stretched for kilometers in every direction.
Leylin stood at the center of it.
The crimson fractures beneath his skin had dimmed, but they had not vanished. Faint lines of heat still pulsed beneath the surface of his arms and chest, reminders of the enormous energy he had forced through his body only moments earlier.
The silence that followed the destruction of the formation was heavy.
Too heavy.
Leylin's gaze lifted slowly.
Crimson Six had not moved far from where she had reappeared. She stood on the edge of the broken battlefield, coat swaying softly in the wind as if nothing remarkable had occurred.
Her eyes were fixed on him.
Watching.
Studying.
Leylin took a single step forward.
The crushed ground groaned beneath his boot.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
Then Crimson Six sighed.
It was not a dramatic sound. It carried no anger, no urgency. Just quiet, tired patience.
"So we arrive here," she said.
Her voice carried easily across the ruined field.
"You see an obstacle, you destroy it. You see a structure, you break it. Every time." Her head tilted slightly as if observing a particularly stubborn animal. "Violence again."
Leylin did not respond.
His eyes moved briefly across the battlefield.
The shattered remains of the resonance array had dispersed… yet something about the air still felt wrong. Threads of faint light continued flowing through the dust and debris like veins beneath skin, slipping quietly into the earth.
The formation had shattered.
But the energy had not disappeared.
Crimson Six stepped forward.
"You know," she continued, her tone almost conversational, "this was the least elegant path you could have taken."
Another step.
"Predictable."
Another.
"But predictable things are useful."
Leylin watched her carefully now.
The sense of danger had not vanished after destroying the formation.
If anything...It had deepened.
Crimson Six stopped a few dozen meters away from him.
Then, to Leylin's mild surprise…
She bowed her head slightly.
"Thank you."
The words were simple.
Sincere.
Leylin's eyes narrowed.
"…For what?" he asked quietly.
Crimson Six lifted her gaze again.
"For completing my experiment."
Behind them, the faint threads of light continued sliding across the broken battlefield, slipping between the bodies of the fallen demigods like invisible rivers.
Leylin's mind moved quickly.
Experiment.
The eighty-one bodies.
The resonance formation.
The energy.
His gaze flicked briefly toward the ground again.
The lines of power were still flowing.
Still transferring.
But not toward Crimson Six.
Toward something beneath the battlefield.
Leylin said nothing.
Instead, he relaxed slightly.
The movement was subtle, almost casual.
Crimson Six noticed it immediately.
"You're calmer now," she observed.
Leylin folded one hand behind his back.
"Should I be rushing?" he asked.
Crimson Six smiled faintly.
"No," she said. "If you rushed now, it would only prove you learned nothing."
Leylin tilted his head slightly, studying her.
His senses continued spreading quietly through the battlefield.
The lingering energy from the destroyed formation still hovered in the air like mist.
And the Gluttony Core inside him..
Hungered.
The strike that shattered the formation had cost him a tremendous amount of energy.
The clone's accumulated reserves had been emptied in that single punch.
What remained now was residue.
Scattered fragments of power.
Small.
But still useful.
Leylin spoke again, voice calm.
"You thanked me," he said. "That suggests I helped you accomplish something."
Crimson Six clasped her hands loosely behind her back.
"You did."
"And you're willing to tell me?"
"I might."
Leylin's gaze drifted briefly to the sky, as if considering something trivial.
In reality, the Gluttony Core had already begun working again.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Tiny threads of energy from the battlefield began slipping toward him, pulled through the faint fractures still glowing beneath his skin.
Crimson Six watched the movement.
She did not interrupt.
Leylin returned his gaze to her.
"So the slaughter of eighty-one demigods was merely… preparation?"
"Of course."
"And the formation?"
"A catalyst."
Leylin nodded slowly.
"I see."
The silence stretched for several seconds.
Then Crimson Six's smile widened slightly.
"I can see that you're stalling, little anomaly."
Leylin's expression did not change.
"But the real question," she continued lightly, "isn't why you're stalling."
Her crimson eyes sharpened.
"The real question…"
"…is what you're stalling for."
Leylin said nothing.
Crimson Six stepped forward again.
Dust shifted beneath her boots as she moved.
"Well," she said quietly, "let's end this."
She reached up.
And removed her coat.
The long crimson fabric slipped from her shoulders and fell lazily to the shattered ground behind her.
For the first time. .Leylin understood.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
It had never been Crimson Six herself that triggered the quiet warning in his instincts.
It was what she had been wearing.
The armor beneath the coat absorbed the surrounding light like polished obsidian. Smooth black plates curved along her body with unnerving precision, the material bending the air around it as if reality itself struggled to settle near its surface.
The design was strangely familiar.
The subtle patterns across the armor echoed the same geometric scars that occasionally appeared across Leylin's own skin when the cores awakened.
Yet the armor did not appear heavy.
It clung to her form like a second layer of flesh.
Crimson Six was not the frail scientist many would have expected.
Up close, she appeared far younger than her reputation suggested. A woman perhaps in her early forties, her posture straight, her physique lean and controlled like someone who had spent years mastering her body rather than neglecting it.
Her hair flowed behind her in dark crimson strands that matched the color of her eyes.
Only one feature broke the symmetry of her face.
A long scar ran from just beneath her left eye down toward her jawline, pale against otherwise smooth skin.
Leylin barely noticed it.
Because his gaze had already fixed on something else.
At the center of the armor's breastplate...A core pulsed.
Red.Violent.Alive.
The energy radiating from it was unmistakable.
It did not feel like Gluttony.
It did not resemble the quiet pull of Envy.
It was something far more direct.
Something brutal.
The core pulsed once.
The air around them trembled.
Crimson Six watched Leylin's reaction carefully.
Then her smile returned.
"Ah," she said softly.
"So you finally noticed."
The red light flared brighter for a moment.
And Leylin recognized it instantly.
Wrath.
The Core of Wrath pulsed at the center of her armor like a living heart.