Chapter 357: Leon, The Protector of Mankind (1)
Leon and Samael faced one another amidst the ruins of the shattered domain, both breathing heavily.
Leon’s grip tightened around Ascalon, yet fractures had already spread across the sacred blade.
Across from him, Samael’s obsidian fist was no better, cracked and crumbling from the sheer force of their collision.
Their battle had lasted mere minutes.
Yet within those minutes, they had unleashed everything.
Divinity against Demonic Divinity.
God against Demon.
And neither side had prevailed.
Both had only recently ascended. Neither had fully mastered the overwhelming authority flowing through their new divine bodies. That lack of control played a part in the stalemate.
But Leon knew the greatest reason he could not finish Samael off was not that the Apostle of Chaos was too strong.
It was because something within Ascalon itself was rejecting him.
Leon lowered his gaze toward the sword in his hand. The blade trembled faintly, almost mournfully, and two familiar voices echoed within his consciousness.
[Leon... Ascalon is holding you back.]
The voice of Idrytis Solaris, the Solaris Founder, rang solemnly within his mind.
[The Goddess embedded her Holy Power deep within this sword long ago, turning it into a sacred vessel of her divinity. Now that you possess divinity of your own... the blade is rejecting you.]
Leon silently agreed.
The moment he ascended, Ascalon had begun resisting him. The sword wailed in his grasp, as though recoiling from his touch. It felt almost human—like a lover refusing to acknowledge someone they once cherished. And the two remnant souls residing within the blade noticed it immediately.
[Yes... I can feel her.]
Agios Solaris, the Solaris Saint, spoke softly.
[Hyades is nearby. Ascalon is responding to her divinity.]
As one of the Goddess’s closest aides during the First Great Demon War, Agios understood Hyades’s mana better than anyone alive. She had personally strengthened the connection between Ascalon and the Goddess thousands of years ago.
[As long as Hyades exists... Ascalon will never truly belong to you.]
Leon clicked his tongue.
"Tch... Should I find another weapon?"
But even as he said it, he knew how foolish the idea was. Ascalon was a Heroic-grade sword. Against a monster like Samael, any lesser weapon would shatter on contact. A replacement would be little better than a stick.
[There is... one way.]
Agios hesitated, sadness lingering in her voice.
[The Founder and I can purge the Holy Power from the sword. We will absorb it into our remnant souls... and expel ourselves from Ascalon. Once the blade is cleansed, you must overwrite it with your own divine imprint.]
Leon’s eyes widened.
"But if you do that... your souls..."
He was no longer the naive youth who first inherited the blade. He understood exactly what they were offering.
Death. True death. And their souls... would never see the light of day again.
The Solaris Founder chuckled softly.
[Don’t look so devastated, boy. We are merely remnants of the past. Our lives ended long ago.]
Then Agios spoke once more, her voice quieter than before.
[...If I can correct the mistake I made by trusting Hyades... if I can help stop the catastrophe she unleashed upon this era... then I can finally rest.]
No one could have imagined Hyades would betray humanity.
Not Agios. Not the Founder. Not anyone.
Agios had spent her entire life fighting demons beneath Hyades’s banner. She had witnessed the Goddess’s hatred toward demonkind firsthand.
That was why the truth shattered her so completely.
Hyades had not merely betrayed humanity. She had invited the demons into their world. And now, the very Goddess Agios once worshipped had become the enemy she sought to destroy.
So the Saint chose to spend the last remnants of her existence helping Leon win this war. Even if it meant opposing the deity she once devoted her life to.
"But..."
Leon’s voice faltered. The Founder and Saint were more than lingering souls within a weapon. They had been his mentors. His teachers. His guides. They had forged him into a warrior worthy of wielding Ascalon.
Saying goodbye was not easy.
[No more hesitation, Leon.]
The Founder’s voice carried undeniable finality.
[This era no longer belongs to us. It belongs to you.]
Agios gave one final request.
[...If you meet Hyades again... ask her for me.]
"Why did she betray us?"
Silence followed.
Then the two remnant souls released their final power.
The Holy Power buried deep within Ascalon surged violently as the Founder and Saint absorbed it into themselves. Their souls began dissolving, fragment by fragment, while the oppressive divinity restraining the blade disappeared.
And for the first time, Ascalon awakened.
The sword roared with life.
Without Hyades’s divinity shackling it, the blade finally accepted Leon completely. His own divine authority flooded into the weapon, engraving itself into every inch of steel.
Blue divine flames erupted across the cracked blade, healing it instantly.
Leon raised Ascalon toward Samael.
Then, with a single motion, he expelled every last trace of the Goddess’s Holy Power from the sword like venom being purged from his body. Along with it went the two souls who had accompanied him since the very beginning.
"Goodbye."
The torrent of accumulated Holy Power blasted toward Samael like a divine judgment.
BOOOOOM!!!
Samael was driven into the earth as the holy radiance exploded around him.
The Apostle of Chaos tried to rise, only to feel his flesh melting.
The Holy Power stored within Ascalon for thousands of years relentlessly devoured him.
Yet Samael only laughed.
"Heh... So you’re still receiving help from the Goddess... Has she betrayed us?"
Disgust flashed across Leon’s face. Hearing that truth from Samael’s mouth made him sick. Still, he steadied himself.
"No," Leon pointed Ascalon directly at him. "Does it look like I serve her?"
The instant those words fell, His divinity erupted completely. Without Hyades’s power suppressing him, Leon no longer held back.
Eighty-one blazing suns manifested across the heavens. A colossal divine lion roared behind him, shaking reality itself. Then radiant armour engulfed Leon’s body alongside a flowing spiritual mantle lined with lion fur. Blue, white, and gold divine flames danced around him—the colours of his soul.
Just as Yue possessed her Spirit Goddess form, this was Leon’s true divine manifestation.
The Protection God Form.
Ascalon resonated with him perfectly now.
Leon raised the blade skyward. A pillar of blue fire pierced the heavens. Then he looked at Samael with absolute disgust.
"Samael."
"Let’s end this farce."
The Apostle of Chaos grinned wildly.
"Hahaha! So you’ve finally decided to stop holding back?"
Black demonic divinity exploded from his body as chaos consumed the skies.
"Then I shall do the same!"
The world trembled. Beyond the veil of reality itself, Leon could see the source of Samael’s strength.
Chaos.
Primordial. Endless. Eternal.
As long as existence remained, chaos would always exist beside it. It was the universe’s natural state.
Order was merely a fragile construct humanity created to restrain itself.
Everything was born from chaos.
And eventually... Everything returned to it.
But Leon refused to allow that future.
The eighty-one suns collapsed inward, merging into a single blue sun radiating near-infinite divine power. The lion roared. The sun ascended. And Leon swung his sword.
"Dawn of Protection!"
At the exact same moment, Samael unleashed his fist toward the heavens.
A cataclysmic chaos storm erupted outward, large enough to devour the world itself. The two attacks collided. The impact shattered Leon’s entire domain.
Sword against storm.
Order against Chaos.
Under different circumstances, perhaps the outcome would have been uncertain.
But not today.
With a single swing, Leon cleaved the chaos storm apart.
The blue slash continued forward without slowing and tore through Samael’s body, erasing half of him instantly. Blood and demonic mana spilt into the void as Samael’s consciousness began fading.
It was over.
"Heh..." Samael laughed weakly. "So in the end... Chaos can’t overcome Order after all."
His entire life had been spent fleeing structure and restraint.
He abandoned perfection. Abandoned humanity. Abandoned reason itself.
He embraced slaughter, destruction, indulgence—living solely according to his desires. He became the embodiment of Chaos.
And yet, in the end, he still fell before Order.
Leon stared down at him coldly.
"You could have become a hero, Samael." Leon looked at Samael with great pity and anger. "You threw away your talent for selfishness."
"Hahaha!"
Even on the verge of death, Samael showed no regret. Not even a fragment.
"I regret nothing!" His grin widened madly. "If I were reborn a hundred times, I’d still live exactly the same way!"
Why?
Because chaos was his nature.
He was... the Apostle of Chaos.
Leon’s gaze turned colder.
"You disgust me."
Samael laughed.
"I could say the same to you."
The two stood at opposite ends of existence itself, incapable of ever understanding one another.
Finally, Leon raised Ascalon.
"Goodbye, Apostle."
The blade fell. Samael’s head separated cleanly from his body. Leon granted him no mercy as a human. Instead, he condemned him as the demon he had chosen to become. Blue divine flames engulfed the corpse, reducing it to ash.
And with that, one of the greatest weapons of the Demon Empire was annihilated forever.
