My Charity System made me too OP

The world narrowed to just the two of them.

The clash outside—the screams, the echo bursts, the shattering of air—faded into a dull thrum in Leon's perception. His Shell layers compressed inward, folding space so tightly that even stray resonance ripples from nearby battles couldn't reach them.

Tharos rolled his shoulders, the Ashrend Echoblade humming like a living predator. Its edge wasn't sharp in the traditional sense—rather, it seemed to fray the fabric of the moment itself, unraveling it in strips of gray light.

Leon's gaze flicked to the blade only once. He knew staring at it too long was dangerous—it could fracture your sense of self in the current timeline.

"You always hated delay," Tharos said, stepping forward. "Always chasing that clean, decisive strike. You've learned tricks, Flamebreaker, but I wonder—can you fight without momentum?"

Leon's Shell Pulse flared once, then smoothed into stillness.

"Try me."

The first swing wasn't an attack—it was a deletion.

Tharos swept the Echoblade through the air, and a perfect semicircle of reality simply ceased existing. For an instant, the space between them was missing, the lines of the Citadel's gate visible through the void where ground should have been.

Leon stepped into that absence without hesitation, letting Absolute Return pull him through the empty moment before it closed. His fist met Tharos's shoulder in a blow layered with three pulses—impact, disruption, and recoil.

The warlord staggered half a step, but his counter came fast—faster than should have been possible in a shared now. The blade twisted in his hands, striking backward in a reverse cut that threatened to shear Leon's spine out of the timeline entirely.

Leon bent—not with speed, but with drift. His body lagged a fraction out of sync with the strike, the blade passing through where he would have been.

"Timeline Drift," Tharos murmured, almost amused. "So you did take Zein's trick."

The Echoblade came down in a vertical arc, and this time Leon didn't dodge.

He met it with open palms.

The impact cracked the resonance barrier above the Citadel. Absolute Return howled, feeding the moment into a closed loop instead of letting the blade's erasure spread. It was like holding back an avalanche with bare hands—every vibration in the weapon wanted to unmake him.

Leon's muscles screamed. His Shell flared dangerously.

Then he pushed.

The loop collapsed, throwing both of them back.

Tharos landed with one knee in the dust, blood dripping from his temple. Leon stayed standing—but his left hand shook faintly.

Both of them knew this was no longer about the army outside.

This was about who claimed the right to stand here at all.

Tharos rose, wiping the blood away, and for the first time his grin was gone.

"Round two."

The Echoblade sang. Leon's Shell brightened.

And the second exchange began.

Tharos came in low this time, the Echoblade cutting a diagonal line that made the air stutter and skip. Every object it passed—from falling dust to the faint shimmer of heat off the stone—lost continuity, breaking into frozen fragments before dissolving completely.

Leon didn't step back. He shifted sideways, just enough to let the strike brush past his Shell without breaking it. His counter came instantly—a short, brutal elbow aimed for Tharos's jaw.

It landed.

But the warlord didn't flinch. His form shimmered, and Leon's elbow passed through him. For half a second, Leon was hitting a version of Tharos that had already stepped away.

"You think you're the only one who can step between beats?" Tharos's voice carried both from in front of Leon and from just behind his left shoulder.

Leon didn't turn. He twisted into a backfist, knowing it wouldn't connect—just forcing the warlord to choose which position to hold.

The hit missed, but Tharos had to fully anchor himself to avoid leaving an opening. The moment he did, Leon's Shell Reverb flared again, sending a layered pulse directly into the Echoblade's path.

The weapon jolted, humming at an unstable frequency.

Tharos's eyes narrowed. "That's not enough to—"

It was.

Leon's Echo of Origin triggered, the delay set so precisely it landed between Tharos's words. The stored force from the earlier clash slammed into his midsection, knocking him back several meters.

The ground between them cracked.

They stared at each other in silence, the battle outside now a distant storm.

"Not bad," Tharos admitted, rolling his neck. "But you're still thinking like a duelist. Out here, power is about breaking more than a single opponent. It's about breaking the place they stand."

The Echoblade shifted colors—its gray threads deepening to something darker, like absence soaked in shadow. The air around it bent sharply inward, as though reality itself wanted to escape.

Leon realized what was coming an instant before it began.

Tharos wasn't aiming at him.

He was aiming at the Citadel's core.

The Echoblade came down in an arc that didn't just cut stone—it sheared through the rules holding the plateau together.

The air collapsed toward the blade's path, pulling loose debris and even stray motes of mana into its wake.

Leon didn't have the luxury of distance.

If the strike landed on the Citadel's core, Arkhe would unravel. Every Sovereign here would scatter, and the Council's balance would break.

He stepped in, not away.

Shell Reverb surged, but not as a shield this time—he inverted it, pulling the shock inward and layering it into his own frame. The air around him distorted, each breath thick like he was standing in liquid glass.

Tharos's eyes flickered. "You're going to meet it?"

"Not meeting it," Leon said quietly. "Redirecting it."

The blade fell.

Leon's left palm pressed against its edge—not stopping it, but sliding with it, bending the strike's path by degrees. Every fraction of motion cost him. Sparks tore across his arm, the Shell screaming under the weight.

The redirected cut missed the Citadel's core by less than a meter, gouging through a cliffside instead. The wound in the rock didn't just break it—it erased it. The cliff was simply gone, the absence still humming like a silent bell.

Before Tharos could reset, Leon's right hand struck forward, Echo of Origin detonating point-blank. The delayed impact from every redirection he'd performed in the fight hit all at once, hurling Tharos back through a stone arch.

The warlord landed hard, the Echoblade spinning once in his grip before he stabilized. His grin was sharp.

"You can bend a killing strike. That makes you dangerous."

Leon exhaled once, slowly, his Shell flickering.

"Dangerous enough to keep you from touching this city."

The plateau was quiet for three heartbeats—then the air shimmered, and three more presences stepped into view behind Tharos.

Not soldiers.

Not disciples.

Other Throne Claimants.

The three newcomers didn't bother with introductions.

Their presence was enough.

Each one carried the same weight as Tharos—different in flavor, but equally sharp.

One radiated heat so intense the stone under her feet darkened and cracked.

Another's outline blurred, shifting between a dozen stances as if her body existed in overlapping moments.

The last didn't move at all—just stood there, yet the mana around him felt like it could suffocate an entire district.

Tharos rested the Echoblade on his shoulder, looking over them.

"Council sent you?"

The heat-wreathed woman's voice was low. "No. We came because the Council won't touch this one yet." Her eyes locked on Leon. "We want to see if he's worth the rumors."

Leon's stance didn't change.

"You could've just asked."

The blurred figure stepped forward, and for a moment her face lined up into focus. "Asking doesn't tell us how you fight."

They moved together—no countdown, no signal.

Heat flared, the ground buckled, and Leon was already gone from where he stood.

Shell Reverb bloomed in layers, redirecting the heat wave into the sky while the blurred fighter's strike passed under his guard. But the still one—he didn't swing. He pulled.

Mana surged inward like a vacuum, trying to drag Leon's defenses apart from the inside.

Leon's pulse shifted, drifting just enough to slip the pull's timing, but the heat-woman was already above him, her fist glowing white.

He met her midair, left hand catching her strike, right hand countering—only for her to feed the heat through his grip, turning his Shell into a burning conduit.

Pain shot up his arm. He twisted, redirecting it into the blurred fighter closing from the side, forcing her to split apart into echoes to avoid being scorched.

Below, Tharos hadn't moved yet. He was just watching.

Leon landed lightly, rolling his shoulder despite the burn.

"So it's three against one now?"

Tharos grinned. "Not yet."

The ground cracked again as he finally stepped forward.

Four against one.

The air between them compressed until the sound seemed to vanish.

When Tharos moved, it wasn't with speed—it was with inevitability. Each step carried the weight of someone who had never needed to rush.

Leon's Shell Reverb flexed instinctively, mapping every approach vector, but Tharos's Echoblade didn't swing for an opening—it made one.

The downward cut forced Leon to block high, but the blurred fighter was already at his left flank, her body splitting into three mirrored strikes.

He pivoted, letting one illusion pass through him, but the real blade grazed his ribs before his counter-pulse landed.