Chapter 179: Central Sector [8]

The pillar began to shrink.

That massive column of blue light that had torn the sky open and vaporized a Progenitor Blood sphere like it was made of paper started pulling back into itself. The roaring thunder condensed inward toward the epicenter and the lightning that had been scattered across the horizon drew back like a tide returning to its source.

Then the dust settled.

And Leon was standing in the crater.

His hair had spiked into wild electric blue streaked with blinding cyan. His eyes burned like twin suns with lightning continuously dancing across his pupils. Glowing circuit-like markings raced from his neck down both arms and pulsed beneath his skin with each heartbeat. He wore the remnants of his Spire attire but dark blue and gold breastplate armor had formed over it and every surface of the metal reflected the electricity still coiling relentlessly around his shoulders.

Each breath he took produced a sharp resonant crack of thunder.

This was not the boy Zeus had pressed into the dirt.

The battlefield had gone completely silent.

Human soldiers stood with weapons half-raised and mouths open. The vampire vanguard that had been advancing without fear all afternoon had come to a full halt and the instinct visible in their crimson eyes was something they had not expected to feel today.

Leon raised both hands slowly and looked at them.

The circuit markings pulsed brighter. Electricity leaped between his fingers in short clean arcs that matched the rhythm of his pulse.

He closed his right hand into a fist.

CRACK.

A compact shockwave of blue lightning detonated across his knuckles.

’Is this my Spirit?’

The power that answered him did not feel like something foreign that had finally arrived.

His. Completely and entirely his.

Across the crater Zeus watched him with his arms loose at his sides and his long white hair fallen across his forehead. The cold indifference that had characterized every moment since he stepped onto this field was still there but underneath it something new had arrived.

Genuine clinical interest.

Zeus analyzed. A Spirit awakening triggered by proximity to death and the specific act of choosing not to die. He processed this without expression. He had pushed the boy to the absolute edge of his limitations.

Unexpected. Intriguing.

A cold smile returned to Zeus’s pale lips. "I see." His voice carried across the quiet field without effort. "So you were not completely hollow after all, Spire."

He spread his arms slowly. The pools of dense blood mana around his boots began to rise and swirl in dark ribbons. "Congratulations on unlocking your true form. But a Spirit that awakened thirty seconds ago does not rewrite the hierarchy of power that exists between us."

His crimson eyes sharpened. "The outcome remains unchanged."

BOOM.

The bedrock beneath Leon’s boots turned to powder.

The gap between them was ten meters. It stopped being ten meters in less time than it takes to blink. Leon’s body became a streak of pure light crossing the distance and Zeus’s ancient instincts registered the incoming force barely ahead of the impact itself.

Leon came in low with his right fist drawn back and cyan lightning coiling around his forearm in a pressurized spiral aimed straight for Zeus’s jaw.

Zeus didn’t step back. He flicked his wrist and the Progenitor Blood around him surged upward and hardened instantly into a multi-layered crimson barrier that formed directly between his face and Leon’s fist.

THOOM.

The kinetic shockwave from the impact tore outward in all directions. Lightning hammered against the crimson shell and for one microsecond the barrier held completely and Zeus’s expression began to form a smirk.

CRACK.

A fracture split the center of the barrier.

The smirk stopped forming.

CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.

The cracks spread outward fast but they didn’t shatter the barrier into debris. The center was caving inward. The dense Progenitor Blood at the point of impact was not breaking. It was being vaporized. The lightning was burning a clean circular hole straight through solid Progenitor material and the hole was widening and Zeus’s eyes were wide in a way they had not been since this battle started.

Leon’s fist came through the other side.

It stopped inches from Zeus’s face.

Zeus crossed both forearms over his chest on pure reflex. The specific reflex of something that has not had to use pure reflex in a very long time.

BOOOOOOOOOOM.

The shockwave that came from the collision didn’t behave like a shockwave from a punch. It tore through the center of the battlefield and shattered the ground beneath their feet and the dust cloud it threw up was blinding and the sparks inside the dust cloud were blue.

Zeus’s boots hit the earth and kept moving.

SKRRRRRRRRRT.

Two deep smoking trenches carved through a few yards of solid stone as he fought the momentum. His whole body was absorbing the force and it was still carrying him backward and the expression on his face was something that hadn’t been there at any point in this fight.

He stopped.

His arms came down. His white hair fell across his forehead. His crimson eyes looked across the smoking trenches at the blue-lit figure standing exactly where he himself had been standing two seconds ago.

He looked at the clean circular breach in the remnants of the Progenitor Blood barrier. At the vaporized edges where the lightning had gone through dense blood mana like it was not there.

He lowered his arms, brushing a stray lock of white hair from his forehead. His crimson eyes focused straight through the physical shell to examine the Leon’s spiritual foundation.

He looked into his mana essence... the core.

It wasn’t a red core anymore, but a swirling, volatile mixture of red and purple.

’Is his core ascending as well...?’

Not only Spirit but increased output. He straightened slowly. He raised his head. ’How did his power scale this quickly from the moment of awakening?’

Leon lowered his fist. Cyan sparks danced across his knuckles and faded. He raised his right hand with his palm facing toward himself and looked at Zeus across the distance between them.

"Your move, Vampire Lord."