My Charity System made me too OP

Leon didn't trigger Fracture Requiem.

Not yet.

He inhaled slowly, letting the chaos around him blur into nothing but threads of movement.

Timeline Drift—full resonance.

The two scythe swings overlapped in an impossible rhythm, each a fatal strike no matter where he stepped. But Leon wasn't stepping into space. He was stepping into moments—shifting his body through micro-instants that the champion hadn't cut yet.

Every breath was a gamble. Every slip between frames scraped against the edge of the blade.

The world's inversion began to correct itself, but Leon forced it to stay broken, embedding an Echo of Origin into the skewed reality so the champion's own perception stayed one beat behind.

For a moment, he was fighting in a world where the enemy's reactions lagged just enough for his hands to find the right points—strikes, pulses, feints—each shaping the tempo in his favor.

The champion's scythe slowed, not from weakness, but because Leon had stolen its initiative entirely.

Their weapons—scythe and nothing but Leon's bare hands—met in a clash that shattered the last remnants of the warped horizon.

The champion leaned in, voice almost amused.

"You're learning dominance."

Leon's pulse didn't slow. "And I'm not done."

Above, the Thrones whispered again.

"Candidate's tempo control has increased by 17% mid-battle."

"The blade will force him higher… or break him."

The champion's aura surged—and suddenly, Leon could feel every future where he lost.

One by one… they began to collapse.

Leon clenched his jaw.

Those futures—hundreds of them—loomed like jagged mirrors, each one showing his death in a slightly different way.

A cut across the ribs.

A blade through the throat.

A sweep that took his legs before the scythe finished him.

They weren't predictions. They were certainties—at least, until he decided otherwise.

Karmic Loop.

He reached into the nearest losing timeline and pulled, folding it into the present. The pain hit instantly—a phantom cut across his side from a future that hadn't happened yet.

But now it never would.

The champion faltered. Just slightly. A single losing thread had been removed from the weave.

Leon moved to the next.

Another loss erased.

Another wound taken.

The world began to shiver as cause and effect buckled under the weight of his defiance.

The champion's scythe blurred faster, as if trying to multiply the number of inevitable defeats—but each one Leon touched collapsed into nothing.

Blood trickled from his lip. His heartbeat hammered in his skull. The cost of overwriting fate was gouging at his core.

And then… silence.

No futures remained.

The champion stood before him, scythe raised—yet with nowhere to swing. Every path forward ended in Leon's favor.

"You…" the champion said, voice low with something between respect and warning, "just turned inevitability into choice."

Leon wiped the blood from his mouth. "That's dominance."

The Thrones stirred again, the sound like an ocean reversing its tide.

"Candidate is cleared for the Throne War."

The floor beneath them began to fracture, light pouring upward as the gate to the next challenge formed.

The light swallowed Leon whole.

For a heartbeat, there was no sensation—no air, no weight, no sound. Then the world slammed into place.

He stood on an expanse of white stone, stretching endlessly in all directions. Above, the sky was neither day nor night—a swirling firmament of gold and black, split by cracks of raw starlight.

Before him, a massive ring of Thrones floated in the void, each one carved from different material—obsidian, crystal, bone, molten metal, ancient wood. Upon each throne sat a figure, their presence so heavy that reality bent subtly around them.

Some looked human. Others… decidedly not. A few were little more than silhouettes of concepts given form—war, hunger, silence, inevitability.

Leon's instincts screamed. These weren't just champions. These were Sovereigns of Domains. The type of beings that didn't merely fight—you stepped into their world when you faced them.

From the center of the ring, a voice rolled like a tide of iron.

"Welcome, Candidate."

A man rose from the largest throne, forged entirely of blackened gold chains. His eyes glowed like fractured suns.

"I am Throne Arbiter Vael, Keeper of the Throne War. You have been summoned not to fight for survival… but for claim. Should you succeed, a Throne becomes yours."

Leon's gaze swept the ring. Some Sovereigns stared at him with mild curiosity. Others didn't even acknowledge his existence.

Vael gestured, and the white stone under Leon's feet rippled outward, forming a massive dueling ground.

"Your first opponent is already waiting."

From the opposite end of the arena, the air twisted. A tall, silver-armored warrior stepped forward, dragging a sword that looked like it had been hewn from the spine of a god. Every step left cracks in the stone.

"I am Kaelith, the War-Tide Sovereign." His voice was calm, but each word dripped with the weight of a thousand battlefields. "Show me if you deserve to stand here."

The moment he finished speaking, the sky bled red.

The sky's sudden crimson shift wasn't just visual—it pressed down on Leon's lungs like a tide of iron.

Kaelith's Domain had descended.

The air filled with the stench of smoke and blood, and the sound of distant war horns howled from nowhere and everywhere. Shadows twisted into spectral soldiers, each armed with rusted weapons, marching endlessly in the background.

Leon's boots scraped against the stone as he steadied himself. So this is the War-Tide Domain…

Kaelith's sword rose slowly, the weight of its presence enough to make the ground sag.

"In my Domain, there is no such thing as hesitation. Every heartbeat is a blade."

Leon's eyes narrowed. "Then I'll just have to own the tempo."

He activated Shell Pulse: Echo of Origin—the battlefield's pulse shifted, folding Kaelith's roaring war-horn rhythm into Leon's personal measure. The red sky's pressure faltered for an instant, and the spectral soldiers' march staggered out of sync.

Kaelith noticed. His lips curved in the faintest smile.

"Good. But tempo is only one current in the tide."

He vanished.

No—Leon realized—he didn't vanish. The entire Domain's flow pulled Kaelith forward in a blur, as though the battle itself had chosen to carry him to the next strike.

Leon ducked the first swing, but the second strike came before his body finished moving.

Timeline Drift—instant trigger. Micro-pulses staggered Kaelith's motion, just enough for Leon to angle away, planting his palm against the Sovereign's armored wrist.

Shell Reverb: Absolute Return.

The blow Kaelith had meant for Leon snapped back toward his own side—only for Kaelith to twist his sword in a reverse grip, redirecting it mid-motion without losing balance.

Sparks showered as the redirected strike tore a gash in the arena floor.

"Interesting…" Kaelith's voice was still maddeningly calm. "But your return is incomplete. The Thrones will not spare the half-formed."

And then, with a single step, he drowned the field.

Water—black and churning with the screams of battles past—rushed in from all sides. The arena sank beneath waves that glowed faintly with ghostly silhouettes. Leon's footing vanished, and every movement dragged against the pull of a thousand unseen warriors.