A/N: Next chapter will be out in about 24 hours or less.
-x-
A few hours after he had spent 22k points, Leon decided it was time to rip the Heavenly Tribulation Ticket and give himself an upgrade.
He'd already fused Voltaic Reinforcement and Flow Method, placing The World card on a five-days cooldown. Only four days and some hours were left until he could fuse the new ability with Reinforcement. Said ability's description and effects were incredible. It was so good, it had him grinning from ear-to-ear and feeling like a new man.
[Stormflow]
|Epic Ability|
Energy circulates through your body in a continuous loop, passively enhancing your physical capabilities, senses, and cognitive ability. Actively intensifying the circulation pushes your capabilities to far greater extents and generates a cloak of visible lightning, supercharging your speed and reflexes to a degree that scales with the energy invested. The cloak discharges electricity through every strike and shocks anything that makes uninvited contact.
The circulation and the cloak exist as a single system, each amplifying the other to a limit that can be improved through experience and mastery. You can infuse any object you touch with energy, enhancing and/or electrifying it. You can use Alteration to reshape or repair objects. Advanced mastery allows for the creation of special techniques.
Everything was so vivid.
He could count the threads in the mat under his bare feet without having to kneel and get close. The Suite's ventilation system split into three distinct notes instead of one steady hum, each vent its own pitch, and underneath those sat Lily's breathing two rooms away and the tick of a clock he'd never once noticed before today. Some dust drifted through the room, and he tracked each mote rising and falling on its own path. The faint ozone his own lightning left hanging in the gym was as clear to him as day.
His thoughts kept pace without effort. Nothing blurred together anymore. The world had become brutally clear and colorful, and his mind was fast enough to hold all of it.
Getting used to it was going to take a while.
Taking out his communicator, Leon dialed Cecil, but the man didn't answer. The director was probably busy with something, so he dialed Donald next.
"This is Donald speaking."
"Yo, Donald." Leon paced around his room. "Just wondering... Can Ms. Popper take me somewhere? If she's not available, your teleporter machine would be nice, too. The one that makes the door-shaped portal, preferably."
"Where do you plan on teleporting to?"
"Saint Matthew Island."
"Saint Matthew Island? May I ask why?"
"I'm going to try something out that might cause a lot of collateral damage," Leon said, wondering why this felt like he was asking his parents for permission to go out with friends. "Thought it would be best if I went to a remote location for people's safety."
"If that's the case, we can provide an isolated underground facility equipped for such situations," Donald said. "In fact, there's one-"
"No, no, no." Leon shook his head as he crossed his hands together in an 'X'. "I need clear skies. If I do it underground, it could cave the entire place in."
"Oh..." Silence fell for a moment. "Be on standby. Ms. Popper will reach your room in approximately fifteen minutes."
"Sweet. Thanks, Donald."
-x-
Space distorted as Leon and his familiars found themselves standing in a field of grass. A constant, cold breeze brushed their skin, carrying with it the scent of the sea. Though they were from shore, his ears picked up the sound of waves hitting the shore and the sheer cliffsides.
The skies were clear, but it wouldn't be for long.
"This place is pretty nice," Leon said, eyes narrowing as he looked towards their left and spotting birds that vaguely looked like penguins standing on rocky slopes. He clapped his hands. "Welp, that's enough sightseeing for me. You guys ready?"
Stoic and silent as ever, Lily simply nodded with the Portal Gun held against his chest. The Bag of Holding also dangled from his hip.
Nyx perched on Leon's shoulder and cawed her agreement. "Ready!"
"Then let's get to flying. Vamos!"
Leon and Lily activated Aera before soaring into the sky. Nyx followed right behind them as they headed southwest, far from the island. Leon would've preferred just ripping the ticket on the island, but Donald advised him about not disturbing the local wildlife there.
He hadn't taken that into account. And as the child of Mother Nature herself, he felt obligated to ensure his actions didn't negatively affect the wildlife. But doing it over the water wasn't too bad. His lips curved as he savored the experience of watching waves travelling across the seemingly endless sea as he flew above it.
It wasn't until the island was barely visible on the horizon that he stopped.
"This is far enough," he communicated through their Master-Familiar connection. "Alright... Stand back. I'm about to begin."
Fight Mode, Removal, Stormflow, and Reinforcement activated in quick succession.
Hormones filled his body. Skin turned bruised purple. Muscles and veins bulged. Eyes blackened.
Lightning wrapped around his body, though it was far more intense than before, turning him into a searing source of light and heat among the waves. Not a moment later, golden armor erupted across his entire body in interlocking plates, sealing over his limbs and torso while jagged ridges crowned his shoulders and helm. His hair drained white, rose from his scalp, and burned upward in restless streams.
"Woah." Leon clenched his hands as he basked in the power filling every cell of his body. "Damn, this feels good. I hope this is enough to get through this."
The Heavenly Tribulation Ticket appeared in his hand and it was more mundane than he imagined. A rectangular piece of paper with the words "Heaven's Will" printed on both sides. It even felt like bond paper. How misleading.
A drawn out breath left his lips. Would he get out of this alive or dead? Even with all his buffs, he wasn't certain.
"Fuck it."
The instant he ripped it in two, the sound thundered across the sky. The pieces froze mid-air and glowed, fusing into a sphere of energy before shooting into the sky.
Dark clouds formed, blanketing the sky in all directions. And for a while, the storm did nothing.
Leon waited beneath it, abilities waiting and every muscle ready for an attack that refused to come.
One minute passed.
Then two.
The clouds continued gathering until not a spot of clear sky remained. Wind tore across the ocean, lifting spray from the surface and carrying it hundreds of feet into the air. Black clouds rotated around a vast hollow directly above Leon. Lightning filled its edges, each white streak appearing and disappearing between layers of cloud.
The storm had opened a colossal mouth over the sea.
Leon gulped. "...Any day now."
He sensed that Lily and Nyx had retreated several miles toward the island. Even from that distance, Leon could feel their attention fixed on him through their connection.
He looked down at the water. Waves rolled beneath him, their tops shredded by the sharp wind. The storm had grown large enough to cover everything he could see.
Why hasn't it struck yet?
The gacha answered.
[Heaven's Will has judged Epic rank attacks as insufficient for your tribulation due to your high power level.]
Leon stared at the message.
"What?"
[You will now be struck by Legendary rank attacks.]
[The reward for surviving has improved accordingly.]
Leon slowly raised his head. A point of white light had formed inside the clouds.
"Oh, you've gotta be fucking kidding me."
The light expanded.
Stormflow screamed through his veins. Lightning wrapped around his armor in violent arcs while every cell of his body warned him of the charge building overhead. His skin prickled beneath the plates and his hair stood higher. The air tasted of metal.
Lightning struck.
Leon moved his arms immediately.
His left hand swept across his body while his right followed, catching the descending current and guiding it toward his stomach. He went through the full motion for lightning redirection, already prepared to send the attack back into the sky.
The tribulation lightning did not bend to his will, and a white pillar forty feet across swallowed Leon. The thunder arrived a fraction later.
The sound struck the ocean hard enough to flatten the waves beneath him. Water collapsed into a deep bowl before exploding upward in a ring of steam and spray.
Leon dropped.
He couldn't hear anything. His vision had become a white field filled with dark spots. Every muscle had locked, and his lungs refused to draw air.
Stormflow forced energy through the paralysis.
His body jerked back under his control. Leon caught himself on the air seconds before hitting the ocean, his feet landing on an invisible surface.
"F-Fuck..."
The armor covering his chest had split. Black smoke poured from the glowing cracks while scorched skin showed beneath them. His arms shook when he raised them.
Greater Healing Light flooded his body. Green light forced its way through the breaks in his armor. Charred flesh peeled away. Torn muscle pulled itself together. His ribs shifted back into place one painful inch at a time.
The Brand of Tzeentch on his chest burned and knowledge drove itself into his mind.
The lightning carried judgment instead of an ordinary electrical charge. Conductivity did not matter. Direction did not matter. Heaven's Will had declared that the lightning would strike Leon Grayson, and the space between them existed only to mark the distance.
The tribulation lightning never possessed anything he could redirect.
"Okay," Leon coughed out. "That's fucking bullshit."
Lightning gathered above him once more.
He pulled the Guardian Shield from his storage. The bracelet unfolded across his forearm, metal plates locking together before he raised it over his head.
The second, far smaller bolt descended and struck the shield. For a fraction of a second, the Guardian Shield held. But that was before the lightning coiled around it and buried itself in Leon's body.
His back arched while the lightning tore through his armor, flesh, bones, and organs at the same time. Stormflow's circulation broke apart. Energy stopped in several points across his body, then violently forced itself through each obstruction.
Leon screamed.
Smoke trailed behind him until he managed to catch the air again.
It... went around it.
The Guardian Shield did not have a mark on it. His arm underneath had been burned to the bone.
Greater Healing Light poured into the injury. Skin and muscle formed over blackened bone while Leon fought to keep himself in the sky.
"That's cheating," he rasped. "You fucking bitch."
The storm gave him two seconds before it struck again.
-x-
After the sixth strike, Leon stopped counting.
The Heavenly Tribulation gave him enough time to recover from each attack, but never enough to finish. Every injury accumulated beneath the repairs. Greater Healing Light closed wounds and restored organs, yet the exhaustion remained. Stormflow kept energy moving through his body while the lightning repeatedly destroyed the paths it used.
His natural regeneration accelerated over the open ocean, but that wasn't all. Behind all the pain, he'd been drawing strength from the living world surrounding him, feeding energy back into his reserves. It seemed to be a new function of Gaia's Child he could take advantage of.
Unfortunately, the tribulation forced him to burn through it nearly as fast.
Another bolt struck. His left arm went limp, and half the armor covering his back shattered into fragments.
Leon forced the arm forward. Green light wrapped around it while bones ground back into place. A minute later, two charges formed inside the clouds.
Leon looked up through one bleeding eye.
"...Two? Son of a-"
Both bolts descended.
Leon's armor ruptured. He dropped toward the water, surrounded by falling broken armor plates and streams of white lightning. He stopped himself above the waves, though his legs dipped into the ocean before he could regain control.
Stormflow intensified.
The energy circulating through him became a violent current once more. His heart hammered, pumping power through every limb while his lightning cloak burned bright enough to turn the water beneath him white.
Greater Healing Light covered his entire body.
"Come on!" Leon shouted at the sky. Leftover blood stained his teeth red, dripping from his mouth. "Is that all you got?!"
The clouds answered with three points of light.
His bravado died immediately.
"Oh, fuck me."
The first bolt hit his right side. The second tore through his left shoulder. The third struck his back and drove him crashing into the ocean, sending a spray of water five stories tall into the air.
The tribulation lightning continued through the sea, turning everything around him white. Steam erupted from the surface while Leon sank inside a cloud of bubbles and burned fragments of armor.
Leon could feel his body trying to shut down, but he refused. He held his mind together, forcing himself to endure the pain as he healed his body.
He opened his eyes underwater. Tribulation lightning still crawled across his skin as he jumped off an invisible platform.
The sea exploded as Leon broke the surface. The force behind his movement hurled water in every direction while he shot back into the sky, gasping for air.
His armor rebuilt itself through Alteration. New plates spread over his chest and legs, but they were thinner now. He lacked the concentration and energy to restore them fully.
How many strikes are left?
The gacha did not answer. He wiped blood from his eyes.
"Fine. You know what?" he said through gritted teeth. He flipped off the heavens. "Fuck you."
Leon pulled every remaining thread of energy into Stormflow. The circulation accelerated until his entire body trembled. White lightning poured from the gaps in his armor, arcing across the air and the ocean.
Greater Healing Light continued underneath it, consuming whatever Stormflow did not.
His reserves dropped. The natural world fed him, but he spent that energy too.
The next volley contained four bolts. Leon survived.
The one after that contained five. He survived that as well.
By then, both of his eyes and his mouth leaked rivers of blood. Most of his armor was gone. The remaining plates burned skin along his chest and thighs. The Guardian Shield still hung from his left arm, untouched and completely useless.
Leon dismissed it.
His breathing came in ragged pulls. Every heartbeat hurt. Greater Healing Light had stopped covering his entire body and now moved from one critical injury to the next.
Lungs. Heart. Brain. Spine.
Everything else had to wait.
The storm began rotating faster, and Leon felt the change immediately.
Lightning spread throughout the clouds until the entire sky glowed from within. Each flash revealed a vast network of white veins stretching to the horizon. The hollow above him tightened.
This was the end.
Leon straightened in the air. When his right leg refused to move, he grabbed it and forced it to a standing position. Stormflow burned at full output as green light filled the breaks in his body.
"Do your worst."
Seven bolts descended together.
There was no gap between them. No sequence he could react to. They merged during the fall, forming one vast column that consumed the clouds above him and the ocean below.
Leon vanished inside it.
His armor lasted less than a second.
The helm disintegrated first. His chest plate split into glowing fragments before those disappeared as well. Every remaining piece of clothing and equipment burned away. The lightning filled his body, tearing through every cell while Greater Healing Light fought to rebuild them.
His skin burned and muscle vanished from his arms? New skin and muscles replaced them.
His heart stopped? Stormflow struck it from within and forced it to beat again.
Leon remained conscious through all of it, unable to spare a single thought towards anything else.
Silence fell, signaling the Heavenly Tribulation's end.
The clouds stopped rotating. Their central hollow loosened and began collapsing. Thin streaks of sunlight broke through the black cover and touched the disturbed ocean beneath him.
Leon hovered in the clearing sky, naked and smoking.
He could no longer feel anything.
His energy reserves were empty. Greater Healing Light faded from his chest. Stormflow slowed until only its passive circulation remained.
The pressure that had held him beneath the storm disappeared.
Finally...
Leon fell.
The ocean rose beneath him while darkness closed around the edges of his vision.
(Leon!) Lily's voice reached him through their connection.
Everything went black.