Leon stood there, frozen, the void pressing in from all sides. In that stillness, understanding finally settled in.
'So this was the reason.'
He had tried to bring Valeria back more tis than he could count. He had pushed his authority, bent laws, forced reality to comply and failed every single ti. Now he knew why. Her soul had never been free to answer his call. It had been in its grasp from the very beginning.
Leon's gaze lifted to the Demon God.
"So everything was planned."
The Demon God smiled, amused, almost indulgent.
"You humans are the easiest race to manipulate. Pry open a little jealousy, give anger a direction, and suddenly you have loyal puppets."
Leon's jaw tightened. Even now, that insignificant parasite called Gordon hadn't stopped being a problem, not in life, not in death. The thought tasted bitter.
'What kind of sick joke is this?'
He let out a slow exhale. It wasn't needed. His body had long since surpassed such limitations. Still, the habit remained, a small, human way of keeping himself anchored.
"I guess," Leon said calmly, though his eyes were anything but, "if I ask nicely, you won't hand her over."
The Demon God's smile vanished, replaced by sothing cold and absolute. "No. You know what I want."
Leon fell silent. He did know. This battle would only end one of two ways. Either he would be consud, becoming the final piece that allowed imperfection to achieve perfection, or he would sohow force imperfection to rember what it truly was.
One path ant the end of everything.
The other ant fighting a being that already held all the leverage.
The Demon God had played its hand well.
"…Alright," Leon said at last. He stepped forward.
The Brightest Star, who had remained silent until now, called out to him, her voice tight with alarm.
Leon didn't look back. "Don't worry," he said evenly. "I know what I'm doing."
And with that, he continued toward the Demon God, alone, steady, and unflinching.
Leon approached the Demon God slowly. Its eyes never left him, burning with naked obsession.
This was it, the missing piece. The final fragnt it needed to beco what it believed it was always ant to be.
Leon's gaze stayed fixed on the soul cradled in its grasp. Valeria. Everything else blurred into irrelevance.
The Demon God's voice slid into his thoughts, cold and sharp.
"If you try anything foolish, I will extinguish this soul from reality."
Leon didn't doubt it. The being before him was the embodint of imperfection, volatile, unstable, and cruel by nature. And Leon, standing at the pinnacle of perfection, understood exactly what such a creature was capable of when cornered. One wrong move and Valeria would be gone forever.
He moved closer anyway. Carefully. asured.
When he was within arm's reach, the Demon God laughed, a sound filled with manic ecstasy.
"Don't move."
The next instant, its hand pierced through Leon's chest.
The strike was so sudden that Leon's body barely had ti to react. Blackened fingers erupted from his back, slick with false blood and distorted law energy.
Leon looked down at the hand impaling him, then back up at the Demon God's face.
The creature smiled cruelly.
"Now I can see what makes you tick. Now I can beco—"
Its voice faltered. "…perfect?"
Leon smiled.
"I've been using this technique ever since the first ti my chest was impaled," he said calmly.
The Demon God didn't move. It should have. Every instinct scread danger, yet it listened. This was Leon, undeniably real. It could feel him. But sothing was wrong.
"The first ti wasn't funny," Leon continued.
"So I swore it would never happen again." He chuckled softly.
"Then it happened again."
The Demon God's senses sharpened, scouring Leon's existence for inconsistencies.
"The second ti, it was a soldier blinded by duty," Leon said. "That's when I realized the technique wasn't mastered yet."
Still no substitute. Still no deception detected.
"Then I got impaled by a prostitute," Leon added casually. "That ti, the technique worked, barely. I managed a substitute."
The Demon God's perception flared to its limit. Nothing. No replacent. No illusion. Leon was still there.
"But that wasn't enough," Leon finished. "I think I perfected it now."
The Demon God's eyes widened. It didn't understand, and that alone was unacceptable. Panic flickered through its unstable law. Without hesitation, it moved to erase Valeria's soul.
Too late.
Leon's body exploded into a cloud of smoke.
The Demon God froze.
In its hand, where Leon's body should have been, sat a chocolate donut. Perfectly round. Glossy. Entirely real.
For a fraction of a second, the absurdity shattered its thoughts.
That was all the opening they needed.
A kick slamd into the Demon God's face with cataclysmic force, warping space on impact. At the sa ti, the Brightest Star flashed in, her movents precise and ruthless. She wrapped Valeria's soul and the donut in radiant light and leapt back instantly, creating distance in a single breath.
Leon reford in the next heartbeat.
The donut twisted, stretched, and snapped back into flesh as if reality itself had been embarrassed by the joke.
The hole in Leon's chest sealed shut, skin knitting together without a trace, origin light fading beneath it like a closing eye. Before the demon god could even finish recoiling, the Brightest Star was already there, moving with a precision that betrayed her status. She pressed Valeria's soul into Leon's waiting hand, then passed him his core in the sa fluid motion.
Leon didn't hesitate. Valeria's soul vanished into safe containnt, and his core returned to its rightful place within him. The sensation settled instantly. Whole. Complete.
The void shook.
The demon god staggered back, its roar tearing through the space like a wounded star collapsing.
"You tricked !!!"
Its fury wasn't subtle. It wasn't controlled. It was raw, volatile, imperfect.
Leon rolled his shoulders once, testing his restored body, then looked up with a flat expression.
"That's what happens when you leave the work to others," he said calmly. "You get sloppy."
The Brightest Star exhaled sharply beside him.
"I can't believe it fell for that," she muttered. "And here I thought we were the dumb ones."
Leon just shook his head.
What he had done wasn't complicated. It was timing. Misdirection. Habit.
With a sleight so subtle it bordered on instinct, he had passed his core to the Brightest Star before advancing.
The demon god hadn't noticed. It couldn't afford to. Their strengths were too close, their attention locked on one another. That was the first mistake.
The second was assuming absorption would be instant.
Without the core, there was no perfection to consu. Leon's body, temporarily hollow, couldn't sustain itself for long, like a man moving without a heart. That was why he needed the next step to land imdiately.
And then ca the final blow.
The donut.
An act so absurd, so utterly detached from the grandeur the demon god had prepared itself for, that its mind stalled. Authority, instinct, dominance—none of them had prepared it for nonsense.
For sothing that didn't fit the narrative it believed itself to be in control of.
That hesitation lasted only a mont.
For beings like them, a mont was a century.
Now the demon god burned. Rage poured off it in waves, violent and unrefined, revealing the truth Leon had already seen. For all its power, it was inexperienced. Emotional. Still learning how to exist.
Leon stepped forward, eyes cold, smile sharp enough to cut.
When he had said the word before, it had been fierce; this ti, it was casual—almost polite.
"Submit."
Reviews
All reviews (0)