Chapter 44: Elara, The Weeping Goddess

The woman’s eyes snapped open.

They weren’t human eyes. They were solid, glowing orbs of emerald green, completely devoid of pupils or sclera.

She slowly stood up. As she rose, the earth around her trembled. Thick, thorny vines erupted from the ground, wrapping around her naked form to create a set of jagged, organic armor. Her golden hair began to writhe and hiss, twisting into long, serrated tendrils of razor-sharp grass.

She turned to face him, floating six inches off the ground, an aura of terrifying, oppressive power radiating from her body.

Ding!

[Monster Detected: Elara, The Weeping Goddess]

[Level: 38]

[Type: Sylvan Monarch - Zone Boss]

[Innate Talents: Aura of Flourishing, Nature’s Wrath, Parasitic Seed]

[Threat Assessment: Critical. High probability of death.]

Level 38.

Eleven levels above him.

Leon exhaled a slow, focused breath, letting the heavy Platinum fabric of the Sovereign’s Mantle fall back slightly to free his arms.

"Level 38," Leon said, a feral grin pulling at the corner of his mouth. "Let’s see if you bleed."

The Willow Goddess didn’t speak. She simply raised a hand.

The ground beneath Leon exploded.

Four massive, spear-thick roots erupted from the dirt, shooting directly toward his chest with the speed of fired ballista bolts.

"Wraith-Step!"

Leon folded into the shadows, vanishing a fraction of a second before the roots impaled the space where he had just been standing. He reappeared twenty feet to her right, already raising Stormcaller’s Conduit.

"Arcane Requiem!"

A massive, compressed bolt of poison, decay, and lightning tore across the clearing.

Elara didn’t dodge. A wall of incredibly dense, glowing green wood instantly grew in front of her. The Gold-Rank spell slammed into the barricade, detonating in a shower of rotting splinters and black decay.

But as quickly as the decay ate the wood, the Aura of Flourishing instantly regenerated it. The wall repaired itself faster than the spell could destroy it.

"She can out-heal the decay," Leon realized instantly. "Fine. Let’s fix that."

"Domain of the Dead!"

The freezing, necrotic aura blasted outward from Leon, plunging the clearing into a suffocating field of death. The lush green moss instantly withered and turned to ash. The air grew freezing cold. The suppression field slammed into Elara’s Aura of Flourishing, the two conflicting domains violently clashing in the air, sending sparks of green and black energy raining down on the clearing.

Elara’s glowing green eyes narrowed. She let out a sound that resembled the shrieking of tearing timber.

She swept both arms outward.

Nature’s Wrath.

The entire clearing came alive. The ancient white trees surrounding the pool suddenly bent inward, their massive branches whipping toward Leon from every conceivable angle. Hundreds of razor-sharp leaves detached themselves from the canopy, swirling into a massive, localized hurricane that shredded everything in its path.

"Obsidian Carapace!"

Leon’s skin turned into pitch-black volcanic glass just as the hurricane of razor-leaves hit him. The leaves struck his body with the force of thrown daggers. Sparks flew wildly as the serrated edges dragged across his hardened skin, failing to cut his flesh but pushing him backward with sheer kinetic force.

A massive branch, as thick as a pillar, swung down from above to crush him.

"Gale Weaver!"

Leon compressed a pocket of air beneath his boots and detonated it, launching himself diagonally out of the branch’s path. He soared into the air, aiming directly for the floating Goddess.

"Gorgon’s Decree!"

His eyes flared with pale grey light. The deathless petrification washed over Elara.

The Goddess shrieked as the petrification began to aggressively turn her organic armor and lower legs into brittle, lifeless stone. The deathless property of the talent bypassed her immense life-force resistances, locking her in place mid-air.

"I’ve got you," Leon snarled, bringing the Bloodfang Edge back for a devastating strike.

But Elara was a Level 38 Boss. She wasn’t going to die to a single combo.

Her mouth opened unnaturally wide, and she exhaled a cloud of glowing, pink spores directly into Leon’s face as he closed the distance.

Ding!

[Parasitic Seed has been implanted!]

[Warning: Massive vitality drain detected. Roots are attempting to grow within your internal organs. HP is dropping critically!]

Leon gasped, a sudden, blinding agony erupting in his chest. It felt as though a hundred tiny knives were carving their way through his lungs and heart. His HP bar, which had been full only seconds ago, instantly plummeted by a staggering forty percent.

He didn’t abort the strike. He pushed through the blinding pain, his eyes locked onto her core.

"Verlimon’s Judgment!"

Slash!

The Platinum-tier crescent of wind sheared cleanly through the air. The Corrosive Edge melted her remaining bark armor, and the blade buried itself deep into her chest.

Ding!

[Bloodfang Edge: Severance Effect triggered!]

The pitch-black true-damage effect exploded outward. The shockwave of Tremor Impact detonated simultaneously inside her body.

Elara let out a deafening, earth-shattering scream as her core was ruptured. The shockwave blew her out of the sky, sending her crashing violently into the crystalline pool below.

Leon hit the ground hard, dropping to one knee as he coughed up a splatter of blood mixed with glowing pink spores.

Ding!

[HP: 310/1,020 - CRITICAL!]

The seeds were still draining him, aggressively trying to bloom inside his chest.

"Vitalis Mend," Leon choked out, slamming a glowing, runic hand directly against his own chest.

The S-Rank healing talent flooded his body with overwhelming vitality. It didn’t just heal the damage; the pure life energy violently overwhelmed the parasitic seeds, burning them out of his system before they could take root.

Ding!

[Parasitic Seed purged. HP: 850/1,020.]

Leon pushed himself back to his feet, ignoring the lingering burn in his lungs.

The pool was boiling.

Elara rose from the water. Half of her body was petrified stone, her chest was split open from the Severance strike, and her beautiful face was twisted into a mask of pure, demonic rage. The water of the pool began to rapidly drain, absorbed directly into her body as she triggered a final, desperate healing surge.

"No, you don’t," Leon said coldly.

He raised Stormcaller’s Conduit to the sky.

He didn’t fire a single bolt. He triggered Gale Weaver, creating a massive, swirling vortex of wind directly above the pool, pulling all the ambient air into a tightly compressed sphere. Then, he channeled the entirety of his remaining mana into Arcane Requiem, feeding the poison, decay, and lightning directly into the eye of the hurricane.

The sphere of compressed, corrupted wind expanded, glowing with a terrifying, apocalyptic light.

Elara looked up, her glowing green eyes widening in absolute terror.

"Fall," Leon commanded.

He brought the staff down.

The sphere dropped like a meteor. It struck the center of the pool and detonated.

The explosion was catastrophic. A shockwave of pure, unadulterated destruction leveled the entire clearing. The ancient white trees were instantly vaporized. The ground was ripped apart, leaving behind a massive, glowing crater of rotting earth and crackling lightning.

Leon stood at the edge of the crater, Obsidian Carapace and Sovereign’s Mantle absorbing the backlash of his own spell.

Silence fell over the Weeping Hollows.

Deep inside the crater, the remains of the Willow Goddess slowly dissolved into millions of glowing green particles, floating up into the dark canopy.

Ding!

[You have killed "Elara, The Weeping Goddess (Level 38, Zone Boss)"]

[Calculating Experience...]

[You have gained 125,000 experience points.]

Leon stared at the number. One hundred and twenty-five thousand.

The system notifications didn’t stop. They cascaded across his vision in a blinding flurry of golden text.

Ding!

[Congratulations, you have leveled up to Level 28!]

[You have gained 5 Stat Points and 2 Evolution Points.]

Ding!

[Congratulations, you have leveled up to Level 29!]

[You have gained 5 Stat Points and 2 Evolution Points.]

Ding!

[Congratulations, you have leveled up to Level 30!]

[You have gained 5 Stat Points and 2 Evolution Points.]

Leon’s breath hitched.

Level 30. He had done it.

The air around him suddenly grew impossibly heavy. The ambient mana in the forest seemed to freeze, entirely suspended by a higher power. A massive, golden pillar of light descended from the sky, crashing through the dense willow canopy and enveloping Leon completely.

He felt his soul expanding. The sheer density of his existence was being forcibly rewritten, elevated to a fundamentally higher tier of existence.

Ding!

[Condition Met: Reach Level 30.]

[Rank Upgraded: Initiate -> Adept]

[All base attributes increased by +20.]

[Maximum HP and MP capacity greatly expanded.]

Leon closed his eyes, basking in the overwhelming, god-like power rushing through his veins. The title of Adept wasn’t just a word; it was a physical, biological ascension.

But the system wasn’t finished.

A final, blinding notification appeared directly in the center of his vision, glowing with a unique, platinum-colored font.

Ding!

[Unprecedented Achievement Unlocked!]

[You are the FIRST player among 100,000,000 to successfully cross the Initiate Rank and become an Adept.]

[Your extraordinary progression has pleased the System.]

[Reward Granted: For the next 12 hours, all Experience Points (EXP) gained will be multiplied by 10X.]

Leon opened his eyes. The golden pillar of light slowly faded, leaving him standing alone in the ruined crater of the Willow Goddess.

He looked at the final notification floating in the air.

A 10X EXP multiplier. For twelve straight hours. With his new Adept-tier stats, he could slaughter entire regions of high-level zones without breaking a sweat.

Leon Wes threw his head back and laughed, the sound echoing through the shattered forest.

The break was officially over. It was time to break the world.