My Charity System made me too OP-Chapter 337: Fighting XIV

The moment the battle began, the gravity lifted completely—replaced by microbursts of acceleration. The floating platforms twisted and rotated. Windless heat howled from all directions.

Vaelis moved like a meteor fragment, teleporting short distances in flashes of orange light. Leon barely raised his guard before a saber nicked his arm, carving through his Shell Armor with frightening ease.

Leon retaliated with Shell Reverb: Flicker Echo, blinking behind Vaelis with a swift palm strike—but the Emberlight Duelist melted into a spiral of flame and emerged behind him, slashing again.

Cut. Twist. Dash. Blink. Strike.

The fight became a dance of kinetic intelligence. Both warriors used movement as offense, prediction as defense. It was no longer about who was stronger—but who could read the rhythm of the battlefield first.

Leon knew that brute force wouldn't work. So he stopped trying.

He closed his eyes for three seconds and activated:

Shell Reverb: Tripart Echo.

Past Strike. Present Reverb. Future Motion.

Vaelis charged. Leon didn't move.

He let the first strike land—but it passed through an afterimage.

"Shell Echo: Return."

Leon appeared behind Vaelis mid-slash and struck upward, embedding a golden pulse into his ribcage. Vaelis grunted but vanished, reappearing high above.

Flames gathered in his palms—Stellar Combustion.

Leon countered with Gold Magic: Crownfall Domain, lacing the air with refracted light-mirrors, turning every photon into a weapon.

The clash was explosive. The sky turned white.

Smoke and fire tore across the arena. Leon's left arm was scorched, his body riddled with microfractures from dodging too late.

He had one shot left.

"Time to rewrite the beat."

Leon slammed his staff into the floating platform and drew upon the Shell Fracture Pulse for the first time. He channeled Destruction Core + Aether Blood into it—and then folded the timing.

A fracture line burst through the floating coliseum—slicing time into frames.

He caught Vaelis mid-flash-dash and used Absolute Return to reflect all kinetic data from the last ten exchanges.

Ten punches. Ten echoes. Ten delayed detonations.

They struck Vaelis in unison.

The Emberlight Duelist's armor cracked—his sabers snapped—and with a final echo of fire, he fell.

[Rank 27 Champion Defeated: Vaelis the Emberlight Duelist]

[Shell Reverb Mastery: 99.3%]

[Gold Magic Mastery Increased]

[New Skill Obtained: Lightfract Waltz]

[Level 604 → 606]

Leon fell to one knee. Not from pain—but exhaustion at the edge of transcendence.

Roselia and Naval ran up to him as the platform stabilized.

"Seriously? Another light-user duel?" Naval grinned. "You're gonna start glowing permanently."

Milim landed beside them, arms crossed, impressed. "That was a duel. A real one."

Leon just breathed slowly, wiping ash from his eyes. "He was fast. But I remembered faster."

The air turned cold—not with frost, but with silence.

There was no cheering crowd in the Rank 26 arena. No floating fire. No elemental spectacle. Just stone—unmoving, unfeeling, and impossibly still. The chamber was a dim hall of obsidian-gray, perfectly symmetrical and deafeningly quiet.

Leon stood alone at its center, his heart still beating to the rhythm of the last fight.

But something felt… wrong.

"Where's the champion?" Roselia's voice echoed faintly from the viewing platform.

Then the silence breathed.

A whisper touched Leon's mind.

"No echo. No rhythm. No prediction."

From the far wall, a figure emerged without footsteps—not teleporting, not walking. Just existing, where it hadn't been a second before.

It was featureless. A tall, ash-white humanoid shape clad in a robe of gray noise, and bound by dozens of broken golden rings hovering around its limbs and spine.

"Rank 26 Champion: Varthos, the Echoless Warden."

Shell Pulse does not resonate here.

Leon's eyes widened.

Shell Reverb... disabled.

Leon leapt back instantly, drawing on Body Force and Gold Magic, hurling three prism spears at the warden.

Varthos raised one hand.

The spears unraveled mid-air, not shattered—erased.

Leon charged with a Shell-enhanced punch, knowing Shell Pulse wouldn't guide him—but his combat instincts might.

The strike passed through Varthos.

And then a hand caught him from behind.

Leon twisted—but he hadn't even seen Varthos move.

A devastating blow landed on his spine, slamming him to the ground. Before he could rise, a second strike pounded into his ribs.

-32% HP

-Gold Magic seal disrupted

-Momentum block detected

Leon blinked rapidly, using Tripart Echo's vestiges, trying to store motion—but no feedback. No sound. No tempo. Nothing to anchor to.

He was truly fighting blind.

Round Two: Fighting Without a Beat

Leon wiped blood from his lips, rising.

"Fine. No Shell Reverb. No echoes."

He slid his staff into a reverse grip and activated Aether Blood + Destruction Core manually.

His vision turned violet and red.

Now he didn't need the world to sing—he'd burn it silent.

Varthos rushed him again, but this time Leon didn't dodge—he countered.

With Destruction Clad, every contact point was reversed—Varthos's strikes began taking collateral damage from their own momentum.

A flicker of surprise crossed the faceless champion.

Leon dashed sideways, snapping a line of Gold Bindings around the floating rings that hovered around Varthos's limbs, locking two of them.

Then—

"Core Surge: Tandav Form."

Leon's skin cracked with flowing red-orange light as Void Destruction, Aether Clarity, and Abyssal Mana interlocked.

The silence shattered for a single moment.

And Leon unleashed a flurry of untraceable strikes: palms, elbows, knees, staff-twists—each blow targeting the broken rings floating in defiance of the natural world.

Varthos began to falter.

The Final Strike

Varthos flickered again, reappearing above Leon with both arms raised—a massive compression field forming, trying to delete Leon entirely.

Leon clenched his jaw, drew on everything he had learned—from his lowest floor to his highest moment.

He activated a secret fusion technique:

Shell Pulse: Echo of Origin + Absolute Return + Tripart Echo + Destruction Echo Chain.

The entire battlefield paused.

Every suppressed echo, every stolen vibration, every muted movement Leon had suffered since the beginning of the fight—

Came back all at once.

He thrust his palm into the sky—a backlash tsunami of memory, pressure, pain, and motion. A perfect inversion of silence.

"RETURN!"

The golden rings shattered. Varthos disintegrated—reverberated out of reality.