Zagan's shadow swelled across the battlefield like a living tide. Suddenly, the ground beneath Leo and Helmond erupted with razor-sharp spikes of darkness, bursting upward with terrifying speed.
Leo reacted instantly. His instincts took over as he leapt backward, light flashing beneath his feet. One spike narrowly missed his leg as it shot past him like a spear.
"Move!" Leo shouted.
Helmond twisted his body at the last second. A shadow spike tore through the ground where he had stood, grazing past him as he rolled away. For a moment, the entire battlefield became a forest of jagged black spears.
At the center of it all stood Zagan, surrounded by a massive ring of towering shadow spikes, his form barely visible behind the storm of darkness.
Then—silence.
One by one, the spikes began to fade into black mist, dissolving back into the earth.
Leo narrowed his eyes.
Something felt wrong.
The moment the shadows thinned—
Zagan struck.
From the dissolving darkness, a barrage of needle-sharp tentacles shot forward faster than lightning.
Leo barely had time to react.
Thud.
One pierced straight through his shoulder, pinning him in place for a split second.
Another drove into Helmond's thigh, forcing him down to one knee.
"Ghh—!" Leo gritted his teeth. Without hesitation he raised his glowing sword and slashed through the tentacle impaling his shoulder, light bursting as the shadow limb was severed. The moment it broke free, more tentacles whipped toward him from every direction.
Leo spun his Ethereal Rapier in a defensive arc, cutting and deflecting the incoming strikes, sparks of light clashing violently against shadow.
Helmond wasn't as fortunate.
Blood stained his leg as he ripped the piercing tentacle from his thigh with a growl. The moment he pulled it free, his leg buckled beneath him.
"Damn it…"
Zagan's remaining tentacles lashed out again.
Helmond forced himself to move despite the pain, barely twisting and weaving past the strikes, each shadow blade slicing the air inches from his body. One wrong step and he would be skewered.
Around them, the battlefield trembled under Zagan's overwhelming presence.
High above the chaos, Alice clung desperately to a tree branch, holding the unconscious Rein close. Even from that distance, the violent shockwaves of the battle shook the forest like a storm.
Below, Leo steadied himself, light burning fiercely around his blade.
Across from him, Zagan's shadow writhed with countless tentacles, ready to strike again.
The fight was only getting more brutal.
Helmond staggered, blood dripping from his wounded thigh as another shadow tentacle ripped past his shoulder. The ground around him was torn apart by Zagan's relentless assault. Every second felt heavier than the last.
For a brief moment, his vision blurred.
So this is it…?
The thought crept into his mind as the battlefield roared around him. The pain in his body, the overwhelming power of Zagan—it all felt like it was closing in.
But then something else surfaced in his thoughts.
Leo standing in front of him when no one else would.
Rein trusting him despite his chaos.
Alice defending him when others called him dangerous.
They had accepted him from the very beginning.
Helmond clenched his fists.
"I'm… not dying like this."
sudden calm washed over him. The noise of the battlefield faded, replaced by a sharp clarity. His breathing slowed, his senses sharpened, and instinct took over.
Another barrage of tentacles shot toward him.
But this time—
Helmond moved.
His body flowed forward like water slipping between rocks. Every strike that should have pierced him instead slid past empty air. His injured leg moved as if the pain no longer mattered.
A tentacle lunged at his chest.
He twisted.
Another aimed for his head.
He ducked.
Then his claws flashed.
Slash.
One tentacle fell.
Another followed.
Slash.
A third shattered as Helmond spun through the air, his movements fluid and unpredictable. It was no longer desperation—it was pure instinct, his body reacting faster than thought itself.
Zagan's attacks grew faster, more aggressive.
But Helmond was already moving.
To anyone watching, it looked like water flowing through a storm—untouchable, shifting, impossible to pin down.
Tentacle after tentacle fell apart under his strikes.
For the first time since the battle began—
Helmond wasn't surviving.
He was fighting back.
Zagan's shadowy form loomed over the battlefield, tentacles writhing like serpents in the air. He watched Helmond with something close to amusement.
A low, mocking laugh echoed from the darkness.
"So… this is all you've become?" Zagan sneered. "You were created to stand equal to our true master, yet all you show is speed? No chaos… no true power. Just a desperate animal flailing to survive."
Helmond's eyes narrowed, his chest rising and falling as he steadied himself.
"You are a failure," Zagan continued coldly. "A discarded attempt. A hollow shell that was supposed to become something greater."
Another tentacle lashed forward, but Helmond slipped past it with that same flowing movement, his body moving purely on instinct.
Zagan tilted his head, unimpressed.
"Pathetic."
He slowly raised one shadowed arm, the darkness around him pulsing.
"You and I were never meant to be enemies," Zagan said, his voice lowering into something far more ominous. "Our bodies react the way they do because we were designed that way."
Helmond froze for a moment.
"What are you talking about…?"
Zagan's grin widened within the shadows.
"We were created to be bound together. Two fragments meant to become one. That is why our presence drives our bodies mad when we are near each other."
The wind across the battlefield seemed to grow colder.
"When the time came, we were supposed to merge… become a single entity. A being powerful enough to stand beside—"
He paused.
"—or perhaps even equal…"
The name left his mouth like a curse.
"Kharous Raine."
For a moment, the battlefield fell silent.
Leo's eyes widened in disbelief.
"…That name…" he muttered under his breath.
From the distant tree line, Alice gripped the branch tighter, her expression pale.
"No… it can't be…"
But Helmond—
Helmond felt something far worse.
Helmond staggered as the memories flooding his mind finally began to take shape.
Zagan watched him carefully, a dark smile forming beneath the writhing shadows.
"Ah… so the truth is finally reaching you."
Helmond's breathing became heavy as fragments of his past aligned into a single realization.
"I remember…" he muttered.
Zagan's tentacles slowly curled around him like a predator circling wounded prey.
"You were never born, Helmond," Zagan said coldly. "You were forged."
Leo stiffened.
Alice's eyes widened from afar.
Zagan continued, his voice dripping with mockery.
"Our master, Kharous Raine, created you through a forbidden spell. A spell woven from the power of the Phantom Curse bound within the Chain."
Helmond's mind flashed with images—dark rituals, cursed energy coiling like smoke, a chain glowing with unnatural power as magic poured into it.
"You were nothing but raw cursed power shaped into a vessel," Zagan went on. "A living weapon meant to embody the Phantom Curse itself."
Helmond clenched his fists as the memories continued to surface.
"And I?" Zagan laughed softly. "I was created after you… a second construct. A stabilizer. A counterpart."
His voice grew darker.
"A fragment meant to merge with you when the time came… so that together we would form the perfect being."
Zagan leaned forward slightly.
"A being worthy of standing beside our creator."
Helmond slowly lifted his head, his eyes burning with anger and confusion.
"So that's it…?"
The wind around the battlefield shifted.
"I was just an experiment?"
Zagan's shadows writhed violently.
"Not just an experiment," he said with a twisted grin.
"You were supposed to be the masterpiece."
Helmond's fists trembled.
But instead of fear—
Resolve began to form in his eyes.
"Then he made a mistake," Helmond said quietly.
Zagan's grin faltered slightly.
"Because I'm not his weapon."
Helmond's gaze hardened as he looked at Leo in the distance.
"I choose my own reason to exist."
And this time—
Zagan did not laugh.
Zagan's shadowed form loomed over the shattered ground, his many tentacles slowly swaying as he studied Helmond. For the first time, his voice carried something other than mockery.
"…You shouldn't have come here."
Helmond narrowed his eyes.
"If you had stayed wherever you crawled out from," Zagan continued, "we could have existed separately… lived our own lives without this curse dragging us back together."
The shadows around him rippled.
"I don't want to merge with you either."
Leo glanced between them, confused.
Zagan's voice hardened.
"You think I want to disappear inside you? To become nothing more than a piece of your power? After everything I've built… after surviving on my own for all these years?"
His tentacles scraped against the ground like claws.
"I carved my own existence out of the world. I chose my own path."
His glowing eyes fixed on Helmond.
"But you… you walked the opposite road."
Helmond remained silent.
Zagan continued, almost bitterly now.
"We were meant to become one being… the masterpiece of Kharous Raine. But if we merge now, one of us disappears. One of us becomes nothing more than a shadow inside the other."
The wind across the battlefield grew still.
"And I refuse to vanish."
Helmond finally spoke.
"I don't care."
Zagan's expression twisted slightly.
Helmond stepped forward, despite the blood on his leg.
"Your reason for living… your independence… none of that matters to me."
His eyes burned with cold determination.
"Because the path you chose…"
He pointed his hands toward Zagan.
"…looks exactly like his."
For a brief moment, Zagan didn't move.
Helmond's voice grew sharper.
"Conquering lands. Manipulating people. Turning the world into another experiment."
His grip tightened.
"That's exactly what Kharous Raine did."
Even Leo felt a chill hearing the name again.
Helmond took another step forward.
"I won't let that cycle repeat."
Zagan's shadows flared violently around him.
"So that's your answer?" Zagan asked quietly.
Helmond's gaze didn't waver.
"Yes."
His voice became cold and final.
"You said we were created to merge into one being."
The air between them felt heavy.
"But that won't happen."
Helmond raised his claws, ready to fight again.
"Because I'm going to kill you first."
For a moment, Zagan stared at him.
Then slowly—
He smiled.
"…Then come try, failure."
The shadows exploded outward as the battlefield erupted once again.