CHAPTER 301: EX 301. OVERPOWERING

Leon and the others, Adrian, Racheal, and Lieutenant Lancelot, made their way east toward the next city. The journey didn’t take long. Gandam lay close to Harlot’s Paradise, part of the ring of cities encircling the Capital.

Unlike the chaos they’d faced before, Gandam was quiet. Too quiet. The corruption here hadn’t grown wild yet, and the creatures that infested the streets matched the expected strength of a cluster that had been active for such a short time. Compared to their last fight, this was almost peaceful.

The team split up along the city’s central plaza, the cracked stone roads glinting faintly under Pandora’s long morning light. The air trembled with insect-like chirps as hundreds of bipedal ants, each the height of a man scuttled out from the ruins. Their bodies gleamed with a slick black sheen, and their mandibles clicked with a rhythm that would have unsettled any normal soldier.

But to Adrian and Racheal, it was barely a challenge.

"Lieutenant," Leon said, his voice calm, "Hope I am not inconveniencing you."

Lancelot raised a brow. "You’re using a cluster as training grounds—" He watched as Racheal shot down two ants with a single shot, while Adrian dashed forward, crushing another creature’s skull with his shield bash. "—There are safer methods, you know. This is... unorthodox."

Leon didn’t answer. He only watched the pair with quiet focus, arms folded across his chest.

Lancelot exhaled through his nose. "I suppose I’ll have to get used to nothing making sense when I’m around you," he muttered.

Leon, meanwhile, was lost in his own thoughts. ’I thought insectoids were supposed to be powerful,’ he mused. ’But this... this is just pitiful.’

Despite their corrupted nature, the creatures barely put up a fight. Racheal’s movements were clean and efficient, while Adrian’s raw strength tore through the lines of monsters like a storm through sand. Even when the insects regenerated, the two were relentless, cutting them down again and again until fatigue finally began to show.

Leon glanced at the lieutenant. "It’s about time."

Lancelot nodded, unclenching his right hand.

The air trembled.

And in the next moment a massive ant-like creature crashed onto the plaza from above, the ground shattering under its weight. It was the size of a five-story building, its grotesque abdomen pulsing with a glowing sac, the source of the endless insectoid spawn.

The lieutenant had held it captive the moment they arrived as Leon didn’t want it interrupting Rachel’s and Adrian’s ’training’. He gestured toward the creature with a faint smirk. "I guess it’s time for you to take over."

He stepped back, his control fading as the giant monster shrieked, a sound like rusted metal scraping against bone.

Leon nodded once. "You two did well," he said to Adrian and Racheal, who were both catching their breath, sweat slicking their faces. "Rest. I’ll handle the rest."

Neither argued. They staggered back toward Lancelot, collapsing near the remnants of a fountain as Leon walked forward.

The minor bipedal ants swarmed to protect their queen, their hollow eyes glowing with violet hate. The giant ant reared back, its forelimbs slamming into the cracked earth.

Leon moved at a calm, measured pace, each step deliberate.

Then, he summoned Void Blade. The black edge materialized in his hand, drinking in what little dawn light pierced the gray sky.

The air shifted.

The creatures hesitated for only a breath before surging toward him, a tidal wave of chittering death.

Leon’s eyes hardened. As his voice cut through the chaos.

"Extreme Art—Cross Impact."

Void Blade slashed through the air, once horizontally, once vertically, forming a blazing black cross that carved through the charging monsters in a blink. The explosion of energy that followed turned half the horde into dust before they could even respawn.

And with that, the massacre began.

****

It was a total massacre.

Every step Leon took painted the battlefield in silence. The bipedal ants charged in waves, hundreds, then thousands but none reached him. Each swing of Void Blade erased them before they could even brush the hem of his coat. The corrupted ichor that burst from their bodies never touched him; it was as though an invisible barrier kept the blood at bay.

Seventy centimeters. That was the farthest any of the creatures ever got before being sent back to whatever dark womb had spawned them.

Leon didn’t even need to use the weapon’s full reach. He’d shortened Void Blade’s length to its base form, fighting at close range purely out of choice. Sometimes, overpowering a foe wasn’t about efficiency, it was about the satisfaction of control. The rhythm of motion. The ease of destruction.

’Not every battle has to be a struggle,’ he thought, stepping through another burst of violet ash as an ant split in two. ’Sometimes, it’s fine to just enjoy the power you’ve earned.’

But the corruption these creatures released was pitiful, thin, weak and barely a spark of the energy he needed. Leon could already tell that even after slaying the guardian, it wouldn’t be enough to push him closer to ranking up. His thresholds kept rising, each gain demanding more from him than the last. Still, he didn’t mind. This wasn’t about growth. It was about rhythm and release.

And now, only one opponent remained.

The guardian.

It loomed over the ruins, its massive form trembling with fury. The air buzzed as its mandibles clicked together in a rapid, stuttering rhythm, producing an almost metallic shriek that rattled the stones beneath Leon’s boots.

Leon raised his sword, pointing it at the creature with a faint smirk. "Now that all your followers are gone... what else do you have?"

The creature roared, its distorted voice echoing through the broken city.

Leon tilted his head slightly, pretending to listen. "Language," he said with mild amusement. "You’re acting like I killed your children or something."

In the next heartbeat, he vanished.

Their was no sound or lash. Just a ripple of displaced air.

And in the next moment a shadow appeared high above the guardian’s head, it was Leon, his form descending in silence, his blade glowing faintly violet as it cut through the air.

Shing

One clean, vertical strike.

The head of the monstrous ant fell before the body even realized it had been killed. The guardian’s legs twitched once, then dissolved into black dust that scattered into the air like dying embers.

Leon landed softly amidst the drifting ash, Void Blade humming faintly in his grasp. The corruption left behind rushed into him, swallowed whole by his void-born nature.

It wasn’t much. But it was something.