Leon knew exactly why confidence settled so easily in his chest. It wasn’t arrogance.
It was the simple truth. No one in this place could defeat him.
Not the entity hiding in the hollowed void, not the rank nines crawling out of the shadows, not even the ones above them.
The only reason he had held back from the beginning was because this was still a trial.
Contribution mattered. Rewards mattered. And every mber of his squad deserved to leave this place with more than they’d arrived with.
So he’d limited himself to nothing more than quiet observation while the others carved their own marks into the chaos.
But now that they had all delivered, nothing held him back. The lunatic was handled. Eleanor was saved. His team had proven themselves.
So why stop at simply clearing the trial?
Leon’s eyes narrowed as the idea slid into focus.
Why not take the hollow itself?
Why not make every creature here bow to him?
It wasn’t even difficult. Not when Elizabeth’s talent was crafted for exactly this sort of thing.
Across the void, the entity suddenly stiffened. Leon didn’t need telepathy to sense the shift.
A wave of dread rippled off the formless being, and its thoughts practically scread their way into the air.
’He wants to make his.’
If it had sweat glands, it would’ve drenched the floor.
If it had a heart, it would’ve been pounding.
If it had a body at all, it would be clenching every muscle it owned.
Even without any of that, its fear was loud.
It tried to pull away, but Leon was already moving.
He rose higher into the sky, the void swirling behind him like a canvas ant only to show his divine silhouette.
Void Blade ford in his right hand, shadows bending toward him, as if frightened to drift too far.
Below him, the creatures froze where they stood.
Rank nines collapsed under his released aura, their limbs trembling. Even the few stronger than them were forced to their knees.
And the entity, incorporeal as it was felt, sothing grab hold of it. Sothing that didn’t care whether it had a physical body or not.
Leon didn’t want to erase them like the lunatic.
They were far more useful alive. Useful followers. Useful assets. Useful pieces.
All he needed was a physical strike.
His voice rumbled across the hollow, bouncing through every dark corner of the void.
"Extre Art."
Energy surged. Force affinity, divine energy, origin power, everything channeled into the blade.
His gaze lifted to the void-like sky, tracing the flaw within it; the single imperfection only he and Racheal could see, yet only he could strike.
"Horizon Cleave."
He swung.
And a violet arc tore across the heavens, splitting the void itself.
For a heartbeat, reality hesitated, then peeled apart like fabric under a knife. The infinite barrier cracked, then shattered in full, the sound sharp and glass-like as it rippled outward.
A rush of cold air pulled through the break, swallowing the hollow’s silence.
The entity didn’t speak. Couldn’t. Its shock was absolute.
’With a physical attack...’
Down below, the Dowager’s pupils shrank. A chill ran across her spine as the implications hit her.
"The hollow was the tether all along..." she whispered.
Her face was drained of color, and she wasn’t even bothering with the fact that her barrier was destroyed so easily.
She had lived inside that tether, never once realizing.
And now she watched Leon shatter sothing believed to be indestructible, not with ritual or technique or divine invocation...
...but with one simple swing of his blade.
****
A tether was supposed to be indestructible.
No one had ever destroyed one directly. Leon knew that better than anyone, which was why he’d never bothered to attack one before.
Until now, he’d always taken the patient route, absorbing corruption little by little to weaken the tether’s structure before dismantling it from within.
But this ti was different. The entire Hallow itself was the tether, and that ant waiting wasn’t an option.
He’d decided to end it fast and, truthfully, to make it look good while he was at it.
With all the power he’d accumulated, the act of cutting through what was once thought eternal felt almost trivial.
When his blade fell, reality itself seed to flinch.
A deep violet light tore across the void sky, cleaving straight through.
For a heartbeat, there was silence.
Then the streaks of light began to shine through the cracks.
They were thin at first, before they began to widen and pierced every corner of the Hallow.
The once-endless void filled with brilliant beams, shattering the illusion of eternal night.
All around, the corrupt creatures convulsed and fell, their bodies disintegrating as the tether, the very source that gave them life, was destroyed.
But Leon didn’t waste the opportunity.
With a flick of his hand, he called upon [Throne of Finality] reanimating them before their souls could dissipate.
One after another, their remains stirred and obeyed, drawn into his control like tal filings to a magnet.
Elizabeth watched the scene unfold, her jaw nearly widened.
She could barely believe it.
It had taken her a long ti to gather the undead army she had now.
Yet Leon, in the span of a few breaths, had tripled her numbers as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
The realization made her chest ache with equal parts admiration and frustration.
As for the entity... comprehension struck it a mont too late.
"So this is the true power... of those from the real world," it murmured, its voice fading into static as its essence unraveled.
Even without a body, Leon caught its dissolving form in his telekinetic grip, an enormous, shifting cloud of darkness and reanimated it just the sa.
The creature twisted once, twice, before stabilizing under his command, its form absorbed into his growing dead space.
Monts later, the void sky cleared entirely.
The Hallow, stripped of its corruption and freed from its tether, stood silent and unrecognizable, liberated at last.
****
-Authors Notes-
Although not ntioned, Racheal’s contribution to the campaign was recording the whole event. To , this was the most noteworthy feat, and Racheal deserves her praise as well for carrying it out.
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