My Charity System made me too OP

Leon stepped through.

The moment he crossed the threshold, the world exploded with sensation.

Heat. Roaring heat, like standing inside a sun that had learned how to breathe fire. The air shimmered, thick with golden motes swirling like embers. Beneath his boots was not stone, but a battlefield carved from molten glass—its surface cracked and glowing with veins of molten light.

And in the distance, rising like a fortress of gods, were the Thrones.

Not chairs—not in the human sense. They were colossal constructs, each shaped from different elements of reality itself. One shimmered with ocean depths locked in crystal. Another was a lattice of black steel that bled lightning. A third seemed carved from the night sky, its surface studded with stars that burned and died in seconds.

They weren't empty. Figures sat upon them—impossibly vast, their features obscured by distance and radiance. Yet even from here, Leon could feel their attention the moment he arrived.

The nearest Throne stirred.

A voice rolled across the battlefield—not in words, but in the deep vibration of command.

"New Flamebearer."

Leon's chest tightened. Not because of fear, but because the moment that voice touched him, his Shell Reverb flared instinctively, every layer resonating like it had been waiting for this frequency.

Another Throne leaned forward slightly, the space around it bending inwards.

"You come with titles already—Flamebreaker, Sovereign-Bound, Echo of Origin. Will you add another?"

Leon exhaled slowly, keeping his eyes locked ahead. "That depends on what it costs."

The Thrones seemed to ripple—some with amusement, others with impatience.

A third voice cut through, sharper, colder.

"The cost is survival. We do not offer duels. We ignite wars."

The molten battlefield began to shift, tilting like a board being set for play. Shapes began to rise from the glass—armored soldiers of light and shadow, carrying weapons forged from the same elemental thrones behind them.

Leon tightened his grip on the hilt of his blade. His Shell Reverb pulsed in response to the growing storm.

Somewhere deep in the tower's memory, something old was waking.

The first Throne's voice came again—final, absolute.

"Prove yourself in the Throne War, Leon Aetheren."

The armies charged.

The molten glass cracked under the first impact.

A spear of pure lightning slammed down where Leon had been standing a heartbeat ago, shattering the ground into a spray of glowing shards. He pivoted, Shell Reverb flaring in Tripart Echo, each afterimage cutting into the approaching phalanx.

The enemy soldiers weren't human—each was a construct of their Throne's will, moving with unnatural precision. The first wave came from the steel-and-lightning Throne: towering warriors with segmented armor that hissed arcs of energy between plates. Their eyes glowed like captive suns.

Leon didn't meet them head-on. Instead, he wove through their formation, using Timeline Drift to flicker between moments—each time emerging just far enough to sever a joint, break a stance, or redirect a spear. Sparks and molten fragments followed him like a comet's tail.

A deep hum built overhead. He glanced up—just in time to see the ocean Throne's army surge forward. Liquid titans rose from the molten glass, every step hardening the battlefield beneath them into reflective, frozen seas.

Water against heat. Steel against lightning. Element against element.

Leon's mind calculated rapidly—too many fronts, too many vectors. This wasn't a duel. It was an orchestration.

Echo of Origin—release.

The pulse rippled outward, not to destroy, but to tune. The molten battlefield's resonance shifted to match his Shell Pulse. The surface beneath him hardened in rhythm with his steps, giving him stable ground while slowing the advance of the liquid titans.

The Thrones noticed.

The night-sky Throne leaned forward. A shadow detached itself from the black starfield behind it—a single, cloaked figure wielding a scythe longer than Leon was tall. Unlike the other constructs, this one walked toward him, each step erasing a little more of the battlefield into void.

Leon's pulse stuttered. This one wasn't a soldier. This was a champion.

And it was coming straight for him.

The cloaked champion stopped ten paces away.

No heat shimmer. No sound. Just the faint distortion of reality curling around its form, like the air itself was afraid to touch it. The scythe's blade gleamed—not with light, but with the absence of it, an edge so black it seemed to cut through perception.

Leon felt the pull in his chest immediately—Fracture Requiem stirring, recognizing something in the champion's resonance.

Not yet, he told himself, forcing the unstable Fifth Echo back down.

The figure tilted its head, as if amused by his restraint. Then it moved.

No warning, no build-up—just a blur of absence that appeared behind him, scythe already mid-swing. Leon's Absolute Return triggered instinctively, snapping his position back three frames in time. The blade still grazed his side, slicing through Shell Pulse layers like wet paper.

Pain bloomed white-hot.

The champion didn't pause. It reversed the swing in a single motion, the shaft folding like an arm to strike with the butt. Leon ducked, his Timeline Drift flickering erratically to throw off the champion's sequence reading.

Too fast to read directly… has to be broken rhythm.

He let his pulses stutter—one long, one short, one missing entirely. The battlefield around them warped in response, the molten glass and frozen sea shifting unpredictably.

The champion slowed—not out of hesitation, but recalibration.

Leon seized the opening. Tripart Echo unfolded—three afterimages lunging from different vectors, each armed with a fragment of his Shell Reverb. They struck together, aiming not for the body but the resonance points at the champion's joints.

The scythe intercepted the first. The second was cut in half mid-strike.

The third connected.

A single crack echoed through the battlefield—the first sign the shadow was not untouchable. Its shoulder twitched, the rhythm faltering.

The champion straightened, the void-light in its hood intensifying. And for the first time… it spoke.

"You are not yet a Sovereign… but you are close."

Then it came at him again, this time faster.

The scythe's next swing didn't come from an angle Leon could predict—it came from everywhere.

A mirrored arc cut through space itself, bending around him in a crescent that sought to cleave every possible escape path at once.

Leon's instincts screamed.

Karmic Loop flared—his body vanishing into the echo of a moment where the blade hadn't yet reached him. In that same instant, he chained Absolute Return, snapping into a position inside the champion's guard, palm already glowing with Echo of Origin.

The pulse landed.

A shockwave rippled out—not physical, but temporal. The champion's forward momentum fractured, movements desynced from reality for the span of half a heartbeat.

Leon didn't waste it. He drove his knee upward, layering it with Shell Pulse: Tripart Echo, striking three resonance points in quick succession—hip, ribs, throat.

The champion staggered. Not much… but enough for Leon to feel it was mortal, even if barely.

From above, high in the fractured sky, other Thrones watched. Massive silhouettes of beings too far beyond the human form—some crowned in flame, others draped in oceans of living light. Their voices weren't spoken but pressed into the air like the weight of storms.

"Candidate 17 survives the Reaper's first chain."

"He bends time, but does not yet own it."

"We shall see if he learns in the midst of the blade."

The champion's hood tilted, and the void where its face should have been seemed to smile.

"You adapt. Good."

And then, without any visible movement, Leon's world inverted—sky where the ground should be, sea above, glass below. The scythe was already mid-swing again… from both sides at once.

Leon's hand twitched toward his Fifth Echo.

If I use Fracture Requiem here, it might end this… or end me.