Part 1: Fate
Leo lunged straight at Eiji.
His body was completely coated with a vibrant, glowing golden-yellow aura.
And his eyes were glowing a predatory, furious red.
Leo lunged with full force.
Eiji effortlessly stopped the heavy cleaver dead in its tracks.
And casually sided Leo, redirecting his momentum.
Leo flew backward and fell hard into a stone wall, cracking the structure.
Leo stood right back up.
He gathered all his remaining strength from deep within.
Then, a sudden, massive burst of golden aura spread violently everywhere, blowing away the surrounding dust.
Leo attacked again with his cleaver.
Leo swung his cleaver with relentless, desperate speed.
Left.
Right.
Up.
Down.
He slashed everywhere around him.
Eiji smoothly dodged all of his attacks, moving like water.
Leo non-stop swung his heavy cleaver.
But Eiji, with perfect evasion, handled it and every single time dodged that.
Leo then adjusted his stance.
He made his grip much stronger around the handle.
Then, transferring his force, he punched Eiji incredibly hard.
The impact sent Eiji flying across the landscape until he fell into a mountain in a far distance.
Leo ran across the terrain and closed the gap, rushing straight at him.
He was now standing right in front of him amid the debris.
"That's a little strong move," Eiji muttered, entirely calm.
"I see."
"You actually have strength."
"But now, let me see if you could survive the God's wrath," Eiji said.
Eiji calmly put his finger up toward the sky.
Then, a small, erratic spark of electricity appeared at his fingertip.
Then, with a sharp flick, he released one single lightning strike.
The bolt traveled instantly, and Leo dodged it with extreme difficulty.
Eiji didn't show any mercy or give him a moment to breathe.
He began to non-stop use his lightning strikes, raining them down rapidly.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Leo sprinted and threw his body across the dirt, barely dodging the continuous attack.
But where the lightning strikes were hitting, they completely obliterated the environment.
The sheer electrical force was destroying a huge part of the land, leaving scorched craters behind.
Some stray lightning strikes hit the distant mountain directly.
And the entire mountain got completely devoured and leveled by a trembling, chaotic lightning strike.
But how much could Leo possibly dodge against an endless onslaught?
At the end of the barrage, the radius caught up to him.
Some strikes hit him squarely on his body.
But his unique yellow aura flared up, fighting the damage and healing him on the spot.
Leo charged at Eiji once again.
But Eiji simply bent his knees and jumped high up into the sky, escaping the ground.
Then, suspended in mid-air, the atmosphere around his arms began to warp.
In his forearms, some intricate ritual circles started to rotate right there.
It's called the Ritual Zone.
It's a highly advanced technique when you put your ritual circles directly on your forearm.
Then, the raw Eco energy that fuels your ritual power forms a dense, pressurized aura entirely around you.
That will eventually increase and amplify your overall physical power, speed, and defense.
And right now, Eiji was fully using his Ritual Zone.
And violent, bright lightning was covering his entire body.
Then, Eiji charged downward from the sky.
He used a massive, concentrated beam of electricity called the Lightning Cannon.
It was absolutely massive in scale.
Leo instinctively took steps backwards as the pillar of light descended.
But the cannon didn't stop following his movements.
Leo turned and ran as fast as his legs could carry him.
The cannon chased Leo across the landscape like a heat-seeking laser.
At the end, Leo couldn't outrun the tracking radius anymore, and the attack ended up at his specific point.
And a massive explosion of total destruction happened, shattering the ground.
Eiji doesn't stop here.
He raised his hands and started summoning endless thunderbolts straight down from the sky.
Leo can't do anything to counterattack.
Just he could run for his life through the chaos.
Thunder landed indiscriminately in the whole forest.
Leo ran in the entire forest, weaving through the trees to escape the targeted strikes.
Thunder summoned everywhere around him, tearing the land apart.
It looked like an absolute storm of continuous lightning happening in the sky of Logpost.
After this total chaos, Eiji smoothly landed back on the ground.
Then, Leo suddenly lunged at him out of the smoke while screaming at the top of his lungs.
And he started moving extremely fast around Eiji's body.
He accelerated so fast that Eiji couldn't even be able to see Leo clearly.
It looked like he had completely vanished from the physical world.
Leo moved as a golden blur around Eiji.
And cut him, leaving a deep slash in him.
Not only once.
Not only twice.
Within the span of a single breath, Leo delivered at least one hundred times of consecutive slashes.
Leo slashed every single part of Eiji's body with aggressive, terrifying speed.
Leo was cutting Eiji so fast and aggressive.
Eiji's high-tier healing factor was forced to work at maximum capacity just to be able to match with him, closing the wounds instantly.
At the end of this rapid-fire blitz, the physical fallout reshaped the terrain.
The entire forest within a 200-meter radius of Leo and Eiji's location got completely destroyed.
It looked like a forest never even existed there in the first place.
And not only that, Leo gathered the peak of his golden Eco into his weapon and used a massive, giant slash from his cleaver.
"Wolf Eater!"
That energy slash should be around a 200-meter giant slash tearing through the air.
And when it hit the ground, the total area of destruction of the slash was even more massive.
That slash destroyed everything in its direct path.
And destroys absolutely everything around his way, turning bedrock into fine dust.
Then, Leo stood out in the middle of the clearing.
Taking deep, desperate breaths fastly to cool his burning lungs.
Eiji was still standing firmly in the dust.
But he was bleeding heavy from multiple deep wounds where his regeneration hadn't fully caught up.
"Want to fight more? I am not done yet," Leo said, tightening his grip on his weapon.
"See..."
"Who are saying that."
"I would say that," Eiji replied smoothly, looking down at his blood.
Eiji let out a low, condescending chuckle.
"You hardly could able to go toe-to-toe against my base form."
"Now, I will show you what the true God's wrath actually is," Eiji says.
Then, Eiji's deep wounds instantly closed up, and he got completely healed back to full health in a second.
A massive surge of lightning summoned directly into his hand.
His soul-bound ritual weapon, Kama, appeared in his hand.
Before Leo could even process the movement or react.
Eiji used his Kama.
And summoned a high-velocity lightning arrow.
Leo's instincts flared, and he jumped high in the air.
And barely dodged it as it flew past.
"I know how fast your attacks are now," Leo said from mid-air.
"I adapted to it," Leo says.
"Then try this," Eiji says.
Then, he instantly summoned another lightning arrow.
The next second, before Leo could even blink his eye, the attack traversed the distance.
It hits Leo squarely in the chest.
Leo coughed blood from the immense impact force.
And another second later, before he could land.
2 more lightning arrows hit exactly at Leo's both hands, pinning his arms wide open.
Then, Eiji immediately used his weapon to summon a heavy, crackling lightning chain.
And tied them tightly with Leo, binding his mangled body completely.
Leo doesn't understand what is happening to his body.
Suddenly, the movement speed of Eiji increased so incredibly fast that it defied perception.
The lightning arrows that were pinning him disappeared right now.
Then, in another second, Eiji materialized right in front of him.
Eiji touched Leo's shoulder gently.
And instantly lunged backwards to create a wide distance from Leo.
Leo instinctively tried to lunge forward at Eiji to retaliate.
But Eiji simply raised his hand and snaps.
The moment his fingers snapped, Leo's entire movement suddenly became extremely slow.
And the heavy lightning chain that is attached with Leo stretched hard in the opposite direction.
Under the immense kinetic tension, Leo's muscle tissue started to break out and tear beneath his skin.
Leo screamed in agonizing pain.
The lightning chain then disappeared into thin air.
Then, Eiji immediately summoned a dense, glowing lightning web.
Then, it flew across the gap and covered Leo's entire trembling body.
Then, it discharged continuous shocks.
Leo feels the absolute lightning pain frying his nerve endings.
In some time, the suffocating electrical web disappeared.
Then, Eiji formed a single, highly powerful lightning strike between his palms.
And launch it directly at Leo.
It hits him dead center.
And it shocked and burned Leo completely from the inside out.
His delicate internal organs got a massive electrical shock and burned out under the extreme heat.
Leo was vomiting blood continuously onto the dirt.
And his internal organs got damaged so badly that he feels like he is genuinely gonna die right there.
Then, Eiji summoned a localized thunderbolt with his Kama.
And thrusting it forward, it pierced cleanly through Leo's pancreas area.
Leo's legs gave out, and he fell into the ground, unable to support his weight.
Another targeted thunderbolt summons right on Leo's face, striking his eye.
Leo's one eye got completely damaged and blinded by the high voltage.
Although the golden-yellow aura from Leo's cleaver desperately tried to flare up to heal him.
But the sheer scale of the internal and external damage was simply too huge for the regeneration to overcome.
Eiji walked over slowly and came right at Leo's broken body.
He looked down at him with complete, cold disgust.
"Look how disgusting it is to see a person die," Eiji said, his voice entirely flat.
He shifted his gaze slightly toward where the other boy lay.
"What did you get to save this boy?"
"What is your profit to save him?"
"At the end of the day, you and him will both die right here," Eiji says.
He raised his weapon to deliver the final execution.
Then, in another single second, a barrage of sharp diamond spikes attacked at Eiji out of nowhere.
Sensing the lethal intent, Eiji quickly stepped backwards, dodging the piercing trajectory.
He stabilized his stance and looked up toward the source.
And saw a girl standing defiantly in the path, wielding a sharp sword in her grip.
She was Marin.