CHAPTER 62 – THE FALL OF 81
The battlefield was a graveyard of silence. Limbs twisted unnaturally, wings scorched, bodies scattered across the wind. The eighty-one demigods who had once hovered with arrogance were no longer a unified force. Greed had consumed them, stripped them of reason.
They no longer fought for cores; they fought for whatever flicker of desire blazed in their minds.
"Jarel… your life is mine!" one screamed, teeth bared, eyes wide with madness, lunging at a comrade who had shared victories just yesterday.
"Do you even remember why we're here?" hissed another, snapping, slashing at his neighbor's neck. No answer came. Only greed..pure, unthinking, contagious.
Leylin sat cross-legged in the center, untouched, unflinching. His eyes traced each twitch, each desperate strike, each violent arc of madness. Interesting, he thought.
The cores are no longer the goal. The hunger to consume, to dominate, has replaced them entirely. Power is secondary; desire is everything. How… predictably human.
One demigod lunged at another, claws aimed at the Greed Core hovering in the chaos. Misjudged distance.
The strike collided with another hand..violence begetting violence. Limbs snapped, wings tore, energy flared. Bodies fell.
Leylin's hands rested on his knees. He did not move.
Yet he could feel every ounce of energy spilling from the dying and the dying-to-be. Subtle, almost imperceptible. Collected. Redirected. Somewhere. Elsewhere. Not now. Not yet.
A body fell midair, neck twisting in a horrifying arc, limbs flailing as the energy from the Greed Core anchored itself to her.
The green light pulsed faintly, in rhythm with her final heartbeat. Leylin's thoughts drifted: Even desire obeys structure, even chaos is bound by laws if observed carefully.
Bodies continued to rain down. One by one, a rhythm emerged. Not the chaos of battle, but the quiet inevitability of entropy. Each strike, each death, each flailing attempt to seize the cores fed energy into Leylin's unseen collection.
The slaughter resumed, more vivid, more terrifying. Demigods attacked others with no strategy, no restraint
some even turned on themselves, rending flesh in blind, frenzied greed. Limbs tore. Wings snapped. Blood coated the air, thick and hot, as if the battlefield itself had become a living nightmare.
Every strike, every desperate lunge, carried only one purpose: to seize life, to feel possession, to consume.
One demigod, eyes wild and unseeing, raised his hands toward an unsuspecting comrade.
But mid-motion, he froze. Every muscle locked as if gripped by an external will. Slowly, unnervingly, he turned. His head tilted unnaturally, gaze empty yet focused.
Then, with a movement both deliberate and horrifying, he lunged..not at the core suspended in the chaos, but toward the barrier itself. Teeth bared, jaw snapping, hands clawing…
Boom.
The barrier shuddered violently, a pulse of energy rippling across the battlefield. Dust and green light from the Greed Core intertwined.
casting eerie shadows across the corpses of the fallen. The sound..or lack thereof..felt like the battlefield itself had gasped.
Crimson Six's eyes widened.
Her calm veneer cracked, expression warping in subtle, human disbelief. She turned slowly, gaze drawn irresistibly to the seated figure before her. Leylin. Calm, composed, cross-legged. .
That faint, mocking smile lingered on his lips, eyes calm, almost bored.
As if he had already foreseen everything. As if every act of chaos, every spike of violence, every tortured mind had followed the script he alone had written.
Her pulse quickened. Subtle muscles twitched. She had planned for contingencies, calculated probabilities, and yet… she felt the tiniest tremor of helplessness. Nothing moved him. Everything moved around him. How?
Leylin tilted his head slightly, observing her as though reading the storm brewing in her mind. Yes, he thought, observe.
They destroy themselves. They fight not for cores, but for their own unrestrained hunger. Every mind a mirror of desire. Even the strongest among them are toys to their own greed.
The battlefield groaned under the weight of falling bodies and shattering wings, but Leylin did not stir. He simply watched, calm as a still pond, while the chaos consumed itself.
And yet, somewhere in that silence, a subtle pulse of energy moved outward from him. Faint. Imperceptible. Collected from the destruction, flowing..where, he did not reveal. Not yet.
Crimson Six's expression hardened. The calm was gone. Fear and calculation mingled now, just beneath the surface.
He has anticipated everything… controlled everything… and yet… he does nothing. How?
In the midst of the carnage, demigods no longer fought for cores.
They attacked for possession, for blood, for the life within each other. One screamed, teeth sinking into another's arm, shouting, "Your life is mine!" as green light flickered in their eyes.
. Another lunged at himself, claws raking across his chest, greed gnawing from within, a grotesque parody of self-preservation.
The battlefield had become a living, writhing organism of greed, hunger, and madness. Explosions of energy..yet Leylin remained motionless. Passive. Observing. Calculating.
He allowed himself a thought, subtle, like a whisper to no one: "So predictable. So human. They always betray themselves first... "
Crimson Six's gaze flicked back and forth. Her hand twitched, ready to command or intervene..but the field's law had shifted. His calm was the only constant.
His presence the only structure. She could feel it in her bones: the fall of the battle was complete, and yet, she had no control over the outcome.
And somewhere, far beneath the surface of chaos, Leylin's collected energy pulsed, coalescing quietly.
The battlefield trembled. Dust swirled with blood and scattered light. Corpses continued to fall, one after another, until the field itself seemed to sigh with the weight of entropy. Leylin did not move. He only watched, waiting.
And then… silence.