Elna paced back and forth in her room, unable to sit still. Today was the day Leo was supposed to return. She had already run through every calculation in her head. Only a single day would pass for her, but for Leo it would be more than a month. The difference made her stomach twist.
She froze when the door opened and Briva stepped inside.
"Are you ready?" Briva asked.
"But there's still a full day left," Elna said, her voice tight with nerves.
"Arthur wants us there early," Briva explained. "In case the timing is off."
Elna nodded, a small smile breaking through her tension. Getting closer to the exit point, closer to where Leo would appear, might make the waiting bearable.
She grabbed the supplies she'd prepared and followed Briva out the door. Soon, very soon, she would finally see Leo again.
…
Leo watched the others make their final preparations. This was the day, after twelve years in the maze, that he would finally try to leave this cursed place. His chest felt tight, not from fear, but from the weight of everything that had led to this moment. He knew the Mad God watched them constantly. The king, his queens, and the serpent would react the instant they sensed movement. Even if they didn't believe an escape was possible, they would come.
He had prepared as much as anyone could. His sword was filled with blood. His body felt heavier than it had in the early years, denser with power, steadier with discipline. Twelve years had carved him into something he barely recognized.
As he scanned the camp, Dave approached with measured steps. His armor had been patched so many times that it barely resembled its original form.
"Leo, we're ready," Dave said, voice controlled but eyes restless with the tension of what lay ahead.
Leo nodded and walked toward the waiting group. He took in each face, Vanessa tightening the straps on her gauntlets, Liane adjusting the bag on her belt, Orane and Loidon checking their gear one last time. All of them stood straighter than they had years ago. All of them looked older.
He drew in a slow breath. "Today, we either get out of this place," he said, "or we die trying. I swear on my god that I'll do everything in my power to keep you all alive."
Loidon cracked a small smile. "Remember to actually say the name of your god when we're out."
Leo gave a faint grin. "I'll do that."
With that, their escape began.
They moved in a tight formation, heading toward the location they had chosen weeks ago. It would take roughly five hours to reach it. Along the way, lesser monsters pushed out of the shadows, drawn by their movement. The others dispatched them quickly and cleanly, no wasted swings, no dramatic shouts. Leo and Paul stayed back, watching, conserving their strength for what truly mattered.
Four hours in, the soil beneath their feet shuddered. Pebbles danced across the ground.
Paul glanced back, jaw tightening. "They're coming."
"We move as planned," Leo said, pushing forward without hesitation.
Paul didn't wait. He leapt ahead, crossing the distance in a flash. A heartbeat later, the echo of his punch cracked through the air, followed by the impact of something massive hitting the ground. A violent gust surged toward them, but it slammed harmlessly into the barrier Dave had formed around the group.
Leo kept his gaze forward. For a moment, the open expanse held nothing but darkness and vibrating silence. Then, without warning, figures materialized, first the king, towering and twisted, then three of his queens emerging like shadows dragged into shape.
Their final obstacle had arrived.
Leo smiled, a sharp edge in his expression. "So the ones Ezekiel killed didn't come back."
Even the six-armed queen hadn't recovered. Her remaining limbs twitched with rage, and the damage Ezekiel had left on her were still visible.
Tears filled Liane's eyes as she stared at the damaged queen. "He did something none of us could," she whispered, voice tight.
Beside her, Vanessa nodded and drew her twin blades, the metal humming faintly with heat as she steadied her breathing.
Without warning, the three queens lunged at Leo. He didn't step back. Instead, the creation sphere burst from his palm and expanded outward. A shock of cold spread in every direction. In an instant, the ground, the air, and the queens themselves froze solid inside a thick shell of ice stretching nearly a dozen meters across.
Fire ignited under their skin immediately, the queens' bodies flaring with enough heat to melt stone, but even that would take a moment. And a moment was all Leo needed.
He raised his hand toward the queen closest to him, the one Ezekiel had already crippled, now trapped with only three arms left. He held his palm inches from the ice.
Leo had no experience with void or what it truly was. But from the basic knowledge he carried from his previous life, he knew that void was actually nothingness. Of course, it might be different here, since the void in this world seemed to have its own kind of mind. So after thinking about it for a while, he came up with the idea that the void was a dark and negative intelligence, like a hostile force woven into the world's foundation. Some people could use it, and some couldn't.
A point of total darkness appeared in his hand. Not shadow, something denser. A black orb that swallowed light the instant it touched it.
He thrust his hand forward. The orb ate through the ice and tore through the queen's head in a single breath.
At the same moment, a blue crystal in his right hand shattered with a sharp crack. A rush of stored mana surged into his body, steadying him.
The remaining queens saw what happened and immediately engulfed themselves in roaring flames. The ice around them shattered as they leapt backward, desperate to put distance between themselves and whatever Leo had created.
His trick would only fool them once, but once was enough. One queen was gone, and even if his creation wasn't true void, she wouldn't return for a long while.
"I leave the other two to you," he said, his voice steady and completely untroubled.
Then, just like before, he and the king vanished, gone in a blink, as if the air itself swallowed them.
The moment they disappeared, the queen with two hands lunged at Vanessa and brought her hammer down in a brutal arc. The weapon never reached its mark. It stopped in midair with a sharp jolt.
Vanessa had caught it between her dual swords. The impact cracked the ground beneath her feet in a web of fractures, yet she didn't move an inch. With a sharp exhale she forced her blades upward, knocking the queen off balance and driving her a step back.
"It's not going to be as easy as before." Her voice carried raw anger, anger that had been waiting years for this moment.
…
Leo and the king appeared in midair.
The moment their bodies fully formed, the king kicked off the air and shot forward like a spear. Leo didn't move. A heartbeat later, a slab of stone the size of a mansion materialized between them and slammed into the king, knocking him back through the air. Leo's right hand was raised, fingers pointed directly at the enemy.
He clenched his fist, and the space beneath them shifted. A massive stone platform built itself out of nothing, forming under their feet in thick, rising chess board like platform until it became a wide battlefield suspended in the air.
The king burst out from under the fallen boulder, shards of stone falling from his armor. His unfocused eyes scanned the platform, then locked onto Leo with sudden clarity. He leaned forward to charge, but the entire platform lurched. He stumbled.
Leo sliced his hand sideways through the air as though cutting through fabric, and the platform responded at once. The colossal surface beneath them shifted, each square a towering fifty-by-fifty-meter slab of stone, rising and dropping like titanic pieces of a living puzzle. Some blocks shot upward dozens of meters, others sank just as fast, turning the battlefield into a chaotic landscape of uneven pillars and sudden chasms. Every time the king tried to sprint, one of the massive squares surged up in his path or collapsed under him, breaking his momentum and forcing him to readjust mid-stride. The unstable terrain slowed even him, if only for seconds,
Frustrated, the king's greatsword ignited with white flame. He hacked through the moving stone squares, carving a path straight toward Leo with brute force. The moment he stepped onto the square right before Leo, ten Mana Surge Snares snapped open around him like glowing chains, and a Gravity Trap triggered from beneath, dragging at his body.
Even the king of madness slowed. His burning blade swung forward, but the decrease in speed turned it into a wide miss.
Leo vanished from the front of him and reappeared above, inverse. The tip of his sword pressed against the king's back as he whispered, "Blood Explosion."
A sphere of blood ignited. The king dropped like a stone, then the square under him activated a massive Explosion Trap. Fire shot upward, swallowing the king in a violent blast.
Leo was already gone, hovering higher in the air. Dust and flame rolled across the platform until a wave of mana burst outward from within it, clearing everything in an instant.
The king stood again. White flame curled along his body like living armor. His expression had changed. He was fully focused now.
Leo didn't hesitate. He charged with his sword stretching and reforming until it became a massive blade suited for a giant. Blood wrapped around it in a thick, pulsing layer as he shouted.
"Blood Calamity!"
The king's own blade burned brighter, turning completely white. He swung forward, and the tips of their swords were about to meet, when both figures vanished again.
…
Paul blurred from one patch of ground to another, each movement sharp and effortless as the serpent's colossal body twisted and crashed after him. The monster struck with enough force to shatter hills, but Paul treated it like a warm-up drill, never letting it touch him, never striking unless the serpent angled toward the others. When it did, he intercepted with a quick punch or kick, redirecting its attention like he was scolding a misbehaving pet.
In the middle of another dodge, a familiar voice echoed in his mind. "It's time."
Paul's grin widened. He shot forward, landing a clean punch to the serpent's skull before springing back out of reach. The serpent recoiled, furious, and snapped its head forward to crush him, but Paul vanished.
In his place, the king materialized.
The king's blade, now glowing a harsh, complete white, slammed into the incoming serpent. The blow staggered the creature, and as it tried to pull away, a massive sword tip, Leo's, drove down into the back of its head. The serpent was caught between the two forces, crushed in a perfect pincer.
The king's white wave and Leo's Blood Calamity detonated together. The world shook violently, a storm of dust and torn earth exploding outward. When the air finally cleared, the serpent collapsed in a ruined heap, blood pouring from both sides of its skull.
It wasn't dead, but it was broken, barely able to twitch. Against normal S-ranks, Leo could never have forced such damage, but these creatures weren't built with survival in mind. They were built for violence, and that was their weakness.
The king stared at the serpent for one brief moment before turning his iron-masked face toward Leo again. Even without seeing eyes or expression, Leo felt the fury radiating off him. What the king didn't sense, until too late, was Paul behind him.
Paul was already fully unleashed. Mana surged off him in a thick, rolling wave, and he drew his fists back with enough force to make the air ripple. The king sensed him at the last possible instant, but there was no time to move.
Paul's two fists crashed into the king's back at different angles, one driving into the upper spine, the other hammering the lower. One of his most powerful attacks.
Boom.
The king shot forward like a thrown doll, smashing into the serpent. The impact was so brutal that both bodies were hurled hundreds of meters away, only stopping when the serpent's immense weight dragged them to a halt.
The king trembled, struggling to rise, while the serpent lay completely still.
And then the shadow of a gigantic blade fell over them.
Leo brought the sword down.
"Blood Destruction!"
A massive blood sphere exploded outward, swallowing both the king and the serpent and ripping into the terrain for thousands of meters.
When Leo finally landed beside Paul, the battlefield was silent.
Both enemies were down.