Gunlaug looked down from his throne at the young man pointing his weapon at him, without a trace of fear on his face.
Tessai, who had been standing a few steps ahead, took one forward — then immediately stopped when he heard Gunlaug's armor shift.
The Bright Lord rose slowly.
Leon's gaze remained fixed on the golden tyrant. His katana was steady.
The entire hall remained quiet, anticipating the clash in front of their eyes.
It was like watching the shoreline recede, the sea breathing in — before a wave of tsunami consumed it all.
The Mad Scythe versus the Bright Lord.
They stood completely still. Two predators in the snow, waiting for the other to move first — and neither willing to be the first to give themselves away.
Near the walls, the Sleepers pressed themselves back, giving the two men room.
Tessai, Kido and Gemma watched from one side with complicated expressions. The only ones missing were Song Seishan and Harus the hunchback.
Gunlaug was encased in that strange golden carapace of his, the liquid metal following the lines of his body like a second skin that had been worn long enough to forget the first. Before him stood a young man in a dull gray cloak, white-haired and focused silver eyes.
Leon held his katana firm, waiting for Gunlaug to summon his weapon.
Except, the liquid gold-like armor flowed forward and took the shape of a heavy battle axe, which Gunlaug then grasped and leisurely put on his shoulder.
Leon's eyes narrowed slightly.
'As expected. Destroying the weapon will be difficult.'
Whatever the Bright Lord chose to wield was an extension of his Echo — and as such, carried the quality of a Transcended weapon. Chipping away at it would be like trying to bleed the sea.
"Any last words, eye-patch?"
Leon's lips curved upwards, into a dark, insidious smile that had no warmth in it whatsoever.
His mind filled with images of the eleven heads he saw at the gate.
"Coward."
A wave of whispers moved through the crowd. People weren't sure what he meant — but they could guess. He was accusing the Bright Lord of never having tried to siege the Spire.
Of choosing a throne here over a life out there. Of wrapping his cowardice in gold and calling it strength.
The Bright Lord laughed.
"It's been a long time since anyone called me that."
Then, without wasting a fraction of a second, he lunged forward at a terrifying speed.
Each of Gunlaug's strides sent a tremor through the floor.
Leon calmly planted his feet to the ground.
The shaft of the battle axe suddenly elongated, and drew an arc mid-air, as Gunlaug swung at him like a mad ape.
Leon side-stepped.
The axe head struck the floor where he had been standing. With Effie's augmentation, Leon swung his sword at Gunlaug's torso.
The katana bounced off his golden armor, sending tremors through Leon's bones.
He immediately jumped back before Gunlaug could attack him again.
Gunlaug shot forward again, and instead of picking his axe up, the golden liquid simply flowed and reformed in his hand again.
Leon used his katana to deflect the axe, the sound of steel clashing resounding in the ancient hall.
"Tell me, golden boy," Leon said.
Gunlaug didn't pause, he kept charging at Leon like a bull, while Leon just stepped back again and again, deflecting his axe in the right moments, and dodging it. They were already running circles around each other, and no one could tell who was chasing who.
"Do you bleed?"
Leon immediately used Caster's aspect.
To the people watching, it looked like he vanished. He appeared behind Gunlaug in the same instant, his katana already flowing into the shape of a rapier.
White flames coiled over the blade alongside bright orange. His eyes found one of the bright nodes glowing faintly beneath the surface of Gunlaug's armor — visible only to him, through his Gaze of Unmaking. He bent low and drove the rapier forward.
A point-blank strike. Enough force and heat behind it to pierce most metals. And yet...
It only caused a dent in the Transcendent Echo.
Leon let out a sharp breath and shot back just before Gunlaug's axe could meet his skull.
The sudden use of Aspect slowed him for a moment — just enough for Gunlaug to swing his fist at his head.
His head jerked back as he was sent flying.
He felt his skull crack. Leon was already on the ground, blood pouring from his nose in a thin and rapid stream.
He tried to stand back up, but his vision was blurry, and his body couldn't find a balance.
Gunlaug slowly chuckled, and took a step forward.
"All bark but no bite, it seems." He tilted his head. "I'm honestly disappointed that Harus and Changing Star lost to you."
Leon's breathing grew rapid, as the crown healed his head. Leon slowly lifted his head, with a murderous rage boiling within him.
'Everyone wants to go for my nose... I'm going to kill this motherfucker.'
He stood up slowly. "Any last promises, Gunlaug?"
Gunlaug took another step forward, the axe forming again in his hand. "I promise to end your misery today."
"Well." Leon rolled his neck once. "That's rather unideal."
He didn't used Oathbound. That was because it was already deployed elsewhere, vowed before this fight had even begun.
Leon lunged forward again, and the one-sided exchange resumed.
In the span of several seconds, they exchanged numerous blows, but each was either deflected or dodged. There was nothing elegant or graceful about it — all there was was barbarous violence and cruel brutality.
Leon moved like a snake through tall grass, threading between Gunlaug's blows, while the Bright Lord tried to simply drive him into the floor.
Their voices sounded like wild beasts, as each of them tried to let out their suffocating bloodlust and murderous intent that were drowning in their minds.
Everyone in the throne room, in one way or another, was thinking about the same thing, a cold and sickening feeling slowly spreading through their chests.
How would they fare in such a fight? They would've been long dead by now, no. Rather, they would have never had the courage to face the golden tyrant at all.
Leon tried his best to wear Gunlaug down by moving around constantly — his stamina already being healed multiple times by now.
Yet the mad tyrant looked unbothered, and just kept charging ahead. The dent from the rapier strike had already smoothed itself back into gold.
Gunlaug eventually did grow tired though — of how annoying Leon had been the whole fight.
"Is running away all you can do?"
He turned his face to catch Leon's reflection in the mirror mask. The sound of muffled groans could be heard from the mouths of hundreds of people.
The psychotic pressure emanated by the Bright Lord suddenly increased manyfold, throwing some people to the ground and making others stagger.
Blood flowed from some people's noses, eyes and mouths.
Leon, who was at the center of the mental assault... remained indifferent.
Gunlaug paused for just a fraction of a second, his expression shifting behind the golden mask.
He absorbed the battle axe back into his armor. Then, two straight blades grew out of his forearms, creating weapons that resembled long, heavy punching daggers.
They clashed once again, this time with even more intensity.
Gunlaug's daggers flew at him from all sides, and Leon constantly tried to deflect each one, his mind already strained from using Effie's Aspect, causing his hunger to scream at him.
The clangor of metal grew in volume, turning into an almost deafening cacophony.
And then it all snapped.
He couldn't hold Effie's Aspect anymore. He was a moment too slow, and the blow he tried to deflect was too heavy. The katana spun from his grip. Leon froze for a fraction of a second.
Gunlaug shot his hand forward, gripping Leon's throat in an iron grip.
The entire hall watched in silence.
Leon's breathing went hoarse. He grabbed at the golden arm with both hands. He slashed at it, hit it, but nothing affected it while Gunlaug just watched him struggle.
"Are you done? No? Well, let me help you then."
He squeezed his hand, causing Leon to let out a stifled groan.
Gunlaug formed a dagger in his free hand, and plunged the it deep into Leon's stomach.
Leon's whole body stiffened. He grimaced in agony, with the cold blade piercing his stomach, and his neck being strangled at the same time.
"How's that? Come on, heal it again!"
He took the dagger out in one swift, gruesome pull.
The crown on Leon's head flared, closing up the wound of his stomach.
Gunlaug drove the dagger in again.
Leon gritted his teeth. Blood welled up slowly and spilled from the corner of his mouth.
"Oh, this is fun!"
The grip tightened further.
Leon let him. He'd stopped fighting it a few seconds ago — his hands had dropped, his body had gone loose, and he just hung there.
Gunlaug plunged the dagger in again.
The crown healed it. Leon exhaled slowly, and looked at him.
"You know what I find interesting."
His voice was weak, slightly hoarse, yet too steady. The words only interrupted by the sound of his own shallow breathing.
Gunlaug's movements grew still. The hall had gone quiet. The clash of steel was gone, with the only noise being Gunlaug's heavy breathing.
Leon let out a weak chuckle, and continued.
"I heard your story, Gunlaug." Leon took a slow breath, wheezing slightly. "You found a dying Corrupted by chance, because your aspect was shitty. You found that armor by chance, and your cowardice was buried so deep, you could almost pretend it wasn't there."
Gunlaug just listened.
Leon's body shook involuntarily as Gunlaug's grip shifted.
"You built all of this... because you couldn't stand the idea of trying to leave and failing." He let out a sound that might have been a laugh. "So you stopped trying... and made yourself king."
The hall was so quiet that his voice carried to every corner of it without effort.
"Hiding in that comfortable Echo. Shying away from everything you owed."
He looked at the mirror faceplate. At his own ruined reflection looking back.
Gunlaug's grip shifted.
"Still have the strength to speak, I see."
Leon let out a soft, painful laugh. "How do you bathe? How do you sit peacefully on your own throne— " his lip curled "— knowing that without that armor, you're nothing. What's the harem even for, if you're afraid of a woman killing you without it?"
Nobody dared even murmur, afraid of the Bright Lord's wrath.
Leon continued grinning.
Gunlaug's grip tightened further, as he lifted Leon into the air, and slammed him into the ground with one terrifying swoop. The strength was so monstrous, that the entire hall shook.
Leon let out a short, stifled scream, and went quiet. Then, after a moment, his eyes focused back onto Gunlaug's face.
"You're standing in the exact same place you've been standing for years." A cough slipped through. "How long has it been since you went past the walls?"
Everyone knew the answer.
"When's the last time anyone here actually saw your face?"
"Enough."
Gunlaug raised his free hand into the air, while Leon just smirked and looked back.
The hand came down.
The hall shook again. Dust cascaded from the ceiling in thin streams. Leon lay in the crater his body had made, staring up at the golden figure above him, and started laughing.
Gunlaug grabbed him again.
"The armor does all the work, doesn't it." His eyes moved across the golden surface slowly. "Take it off and what are you? A scared old man who found something shiny in the dark."
"You're going to die very soon."
"You keep saying that." Leon coughed blood onto the golden arm holding him. "Still waiting."
Gunlaug's hand pummeled him again, and this time, Leon did not bother healing himself.
Leon's face went white. His fingers curled. He made a sound that was almost a scream, and for a long moment, there was nothing in him except the pain.
He exhaled.
"Does it ever get lonely?" Leon asked. "In there."
"I said enough—"
"The armor, the throne, the title." Leon's voice dropped. "Out there, you're just a man who found a dead monster and put on its skin. That's the whole story." He looked up at him. "In the real world, you're just an insect."
"There is no real world. Not for us."
Leon reached out and poked the armor with one finger.
"Coward."
Gunlaug knelt down and started hammering his fist.
Combined with Leon's armor to wear down Gunlaug's will, the golden tyrant had finally grown mad.
Unseen by anyone, Leon's mind was crumbling while using his Aspect once more. The crown also kept flaring, but Leon's injuries never healed.
Gunlaug's golden fist kept rising and falling and the floor kept shaking with it.
Everyone in the hall watched in silence. The winner was obvious to all of them by now. So now they just waited to see how fast it would end.
Gunlaug raised his arm once more, his breathing already rapid.
But before he could land it—
BOOM
The armor exploded near Gunlaug's back. The liquid gold unraveling like glass meeting a hammer, the elegant surface simply ceasing to exist anymore.
Lyka immediately lunged and bit down at Gunlaug's neck, while Leon pushed his bloody body up.
***
BEFORE THE BATTLE
Birdie flew upward, ascending at a pace that made the world shrink fast beneath her.
Seishan pressed her eyes shut, gripped the raven feathers and didn't look down.
They flew for nearly half an hour. When Birdie finally positioned itself, fighting to remain in the floating against the cold air and the height, Seishan opened her eyes.
She summoned a bow, and the arrow Leon had given her specifically.
An arrow made completely out of black material, with strange wings instead of feathers at one end.
The fight hadn't started yet.
But Seishan was already in position.
Her strength and her eyesight had both been made sharper by the promise she'd made that she wouldn't miss. Her body held itself steady against the wind, even as her nervousness kept quietly climbing.
She knocked the arrow, drew with her full strength and her beast transformation both.
Looking down, she saw a small, tiny light far away from her. The light was continuously blinking — it was Leon repeating explosions at a specific point in the air, signaling Seishan, and guiding her.
Seishan took a deep breath, and aimed at the blinking light, directly below her.
She let the arrow loose.
The arrow had been in the air the entire fight.
Every exchange of blows, every dodge, every time Leon had taken a hit and dragged himself back up.
While the Mad Scythe and the Bright Lord were chasing each other through a throne room on the Forgotten Shore, the arrow had been above them, traveling through atmosphere.
With every breath that passed, the Reaver's Descent enchantment was doing what it promised.
Speed.
By the time Gunlaug was beating Leon into the floor, the arrow had become something that moved like an asteroid breaching the upper atmosphere.
It had caught on fire, and moved through the sky, covering distance like it was skipping it.
Perhaps only Leon's Gaze of Unmaking could have tracked it by then.
And he was watching for it. His eyes were fixed on the sky while Gunlaug's fist kept landing. His mind fracturing, bleeding from the effort of holding the Aspect open, the hunger screaming at him from somewhere below thought — and still he watched.
Up above, Seishan was trembling now, as Birdie began its descent. The bird's speed was nothing compared to the arrow by now.
Then the Spell spoke into her mind.
[Your Memory has been destroyed.]
***
It was a gamble.
Leon had to position Gunlaug precisely where the arrow would fall. He had to survive long enough for it to arrive. And he had to augment it at the final possible moment, in the window between arriving and hitting.
There was also no saying whether even all of that would be enough.
The arrow fell onto Gunlaug's armor like a pillar of flame. A judgement from the heavens descending upon a mortal encased in gold.
As it entered the hall — coming through stone and ceiling, there was a window of 0.7 milliseconds before it reached Gunlaug.
Leon's remaining consciousness was balanced on a knife's edge, the pain consuming everything else, the fist still coming down on his face, but his eyes were fixed at the sky.
And there it was.
At the final moment, he pushed Neph's flames into the arrow. Then Aurelia's flames behind that, layering them, accelerating what was already beyond acceleration.
The armor shattered where it landed.
A large section of the golden carapace simply ceased to exist, breaking apart like glass shattering — the previously flowing liquid gold breaking like a solid.
Lyka moved immediately, digging her teeth into Gunlaug. Leon also used whatever ember remained into healing himself and pushed up.
The broken halo wrapped around his fist like a gauntlet, and he channeled the crown's essence into it.
Soul Shear: [When the weapon makes direct contact with flesh, it bypasses physical resistance entirely and strikes the soul beneath. The effect requires essence flowing through the weapon at the moment of contact.]
His fist slammed into Gunlaug, and pushed him back.
Everyone in the hall held their breath witnessing what was happening.
Gunlaug, overwhelmed by the physical and soul pain he faced, staggered back.
He pounced, and threw himself onto the Bright Lord, and hit him again. And again. And again. Each punch landed somewhere the armor couldn't protect, hitting the thing beneath flesh and bone.
Every punch struck the soul, breaking it apart.
Gunlaug wanted to scream, but couldn't.
Eventually, the golden armor flowed again, but fell to the ground.
Combined with the efforts of Verdant Mnemosyne's [Will Pressure], Soul Shear, and Lyka's poison, Gunlaug had lost the will and mental capacity to keep his armor in form.
Leon's mind was already broken. It was surprising, really. Surprising that he wasn't dead already — that a fully Saturated Sleeper wrapped in a Transcended Echo had beaten him for as long as he had, and he was still here, still moving.
He used Effie's aspect again, fighting through the searing pain in his head and the hunger clawing at him.
He coiled his hand around Gunlaug's throat and lifted him.
"Is this your Bright Lord?!"
He slammed his fist into Gunlaug's face. The soul cracked further.
Leon dropped Gunlaug to the ground, and looked at the people surrounding them.
Hundreds of faces. Every single one of them staring back.
Without taking his eyes off them, Leon reached down and gripped Gunlaug by the hair, and began to walk, dragging Gunlaug along.
The golden tyrant's boots scraped across the stone as Leon moved toward the throne, bright orange flames whispering across his skin
He reached the throne.
He threw Gunlaug into it.
He formed a katana in his palm.
Leon took a deep breath.
"Your greatest sin... was weakness."
The face beneath the armor was unexpectedly good-looking. With his blue eyes and long blonde hair. Yet all of that was buried beneath layers of pain he expressed on his face.
"Gunlaug." He let the silence sit for a moment. "Any last words?"
Gunlaug's eyes barely found him. They were dull and unfocused. "...I tried... At first, I really di—"
Before the words were even finished, Leon performed a clean swipe, and beheaded the golden tyrant.
The head rolled from his shoulders onto the ground, rolling down the steps one at a time, each impact painting the floor red.
As the head came to a stop, Gunlaug's lifeless eyes stared at the crowd of Sleepers, who were staring back at it.
Then Birdie swept in from the height it'd been descending from all this time, came through the open upper windows of the hall in one decisive arc, and landed directly on Gunlaug's head, splattering it without mercy.
Leon slowly turned back to the crowd.
"Now, then."
The crowd that had already backed against the walls pressed against each other harder.
"Who else wants to challenge me?"
Not one person moved. Not the Sleepers pressing themselves into the walls, not the lieutenants. The entire hall stood like it had been carved there in stone.
Tessai wanted to step forward, but after witnessing how mercilessly Leon had beaten Gunlaug, he hesiated to.
Gemma and Kido has already known that Leon would eventually challenge the throne. They were convinced by Seishan, but hadn't believed a big part of it.
The Sleeper crowd just stared at the headless corpse sitting on top of the throne with terrified expressions.
Naturally, no one stepped forward.
But then...
From within the crowd, someone walked forward.
Leon saw who it was, and laughed loudly, the sound of it mad and chaotic.
His body screamed at him with maddening bloodlust.
The person that had just walked forward, encased in silver armor, her hand resting on the hilt of a longsword, was none other than his sister — a fact he was still unaware of.
Changing Star.