Solflare: The Painter's Secret

Chapter 270: Vaelith vs Leon IV: The Law of Distortion

White blood pooled beneath Leon’s cracked chest plate of the darkened silver-black war suit while the chilled ground of the Hell land seeped into his skin as if it longed to have him.

Pain rattled through Leon’s bones as he pressed his palms on the shattered ground and pushed himself onto one knee.

Hitched air raveled around him as he cracked his eyes open and wiped the blood off his lips. He spat a glob of white blood onto the rocky ground and watched it slide into two cracks. "I have to change my ways of attacking."

"Are you tired?" A loud clapping sound echoed as Vaelith began closing in on Leon. "I thought your destroyer self had taken over. Or did it give up like your father did?"

A grim grin tore across Vaelith’s lips when he saw the black glow appearing back in Leon’s eyes. "This is what I want to feel."

Leon’s body lunged from the ground like a jet and slammed his shoulder into Vaelith’s stomach. "Don’t you talk about my father!"

Rocky mountains shook when Leon drove Vaelith into the very sharp, pointed stone Vaelith had saved Leon from. But Vaelith didn’t scream; he simply threw an unemotional gaze at Leon’s back.

The wings at his shoulders spread upward and dived down, gleaming like the blades of a titan. They pierced into Leon’s back, shattering the very veins beneath the armor.

Pain rattled through Leon, but he didn’t stop crashing both himself and Vaelith into the mountain.

Evaporated air gassed out when they appeared at the other side of the peak where no light could touch.

Vaelith’s feathered skin began to glow with new power. The golden rings on his head spun faster, the texture of his skin hardened, while the sharpness of the feathers piercing through Leon doubled.

"Absolute strength requires an absolute foundation," Vaelith said and pressed his palms at the sides of Leon’s head. "Fascinating."

He shoved Leon aside like a fragile, broken tree branch and brought the tip of his bloodied wings to his front. He slid his tongue on the feathers and licked the heated, old copper blood. "You successfully executed the inward compression, Leon Storm."

He vanished into a mixture of black-and-white feathers when Leon coughed and lifted his gaze upward.

Before Leon’s heart could undergo its second beat, Vaelith appeared behind him and pierced his sharp, long fingers into the wound he had created on Leon’s back.

"AHH!" A sharp wave of air blasted out of Leon when he felt his spinal cord getting pulled from the inside out.

Vaelith cracked Leon’s spine, then pulled his bloodied hands out of Leon. "Reality simply rewrites itself to ensure your physical victory is a lie."

He pulled two of his chest feathers, then blinked at them with a smile and inserted them into Leon’s body.

Every pulse in Leon died when he felt an alien force rattling through him, wrapping itself around his spine.

The Hi-no-Kami dropped from his numbed fingers and bounced on the ground. Leon moved his hands back to pluck whatever was moving inside him out, but Vaelith grabbed his wrists.

He evaluated the glowing arms and broke them without blinking. "You must learn to distort your fate with your own heart to even touch my shadow, Leon Storm."

The burning gold-red-blue-grey halo behind Leon died when his body lost its life and slammed on the ground hard.

Vaelith’s head snapped back, watching the Destroyer’s son lying there, dead. *’Is he even who I thought he is?’*

He crouched down at the side of Leon’s head, then blew a gust of wind on Leon, but Leon’s eyes didn’t even blink.

*’Hmm, well I did my best to give him something to fight me. But I guess I was wrong.’* Vaelith straightened and walked toward the tunnel Leon had created through the mountain and stopped.

His brow furrowed when he looked between the light appearing at the other side of the tunnel and Leon behind him. *’But only the Destroyer was able to do something like this.’*

Just as Vaelith turned back toward the fresh tunnel, countless feathers flew out of him. His waist folded inward while pain rattled through his back. The delayed impact forced his body clean through the mountain, making him appear at the outer front of the peak.

The moment the moon’s rays fell on him, Vaelith spread his wings and pushed himself off the ground. He leaped in the air and watched the five glowing lights pulsing hastily at the mouth of the mountain. "Finally."

A gold-yellow-hued glow seeped out of Vaelith’s stomach when his Crosshair tattoo vanished.

Leon’s stomach burned as he stepped through the unstable tunnel in the mountain, but his mind was further lost than his soul.

Every step he took sent him back in time. He saw himself standing at the front of the Granum Tower when his first step touched the ground; the ground beneath his boots cracked inward and sent the mountain trembling.

He saw himself standing at the front of the wreckage of the house of the Storm family in Dusthollow and watching his younger self fighting Tiger’s thugs off. Huge stones fell from the mountain ceiling and vaporized into ash when they reached his head.

When his last step landed outside the mountain, all the memories of him and death appeared hand in hand in his mind. The Alchemania participant he knew nothing of, Lieutenant Prince, Wu Ze, An Lang, Liu Yan, and the glowing fiery being standing in the midst of parting fire.

They all seeped into him like air and channeled his mind back to the Hell land. But his eyes didn’t glow with the gold fire or the new power he had felt. They glowed with a black essence that seemed to cage his good self inside his own body.

Vaelith’s body transformed into a fourteen-foot-tall being with bloodied wings that blocked the moon’s view from hundreds of kilometers away.

When Leon’s gaze lifted upward, Vaelith lunged and drove him forcefully down through the earth, plunging through the layers of rocky crust until they returned back in the upside-down world, releasing him right at the front of the Castle of Souls.

Vaelith’s wing flapped once and the entire land wiped out with a clean swish. His blue glowing eyes blazed with a red-gold-grey-blue-white glow while his body also hardened like unbreakable steel. "The lesson is over, Leon."

His wings unfolded to their full span and blasted the dead clouds of Tartarus from the sky. "Now, let’s see if you can actually survive the fight!"