Kai stood motionless, the dagger clutched in his hand like a final answer to a question the world had asked too many times. The lightning had faded. The dust had settled. And yet, Umbra was silent. "Umbra?" he asked again, quieter now. No whisper. No pulse. No presence. His eyes searched the blade's surface: the deep black core, the lines of radiant blue pulsing like veins. It looked perfect. It felt right in his hand. But inside, it was hollow.
Kai's breath caught. "Why.....?" he muttered. "Why won't you say anything?" He gritted his teeth, frustration biting deep. His grip tightened. He shook the dagger once, twice, as if trying to rattle the spirit back into it. But it remained still, lifeless. Whatever this weapon was.....it might have been his so called True Blade, but it wasn't Umbra. At least, not yet. The Leviathan roared, closer now. The ground trembled with the rhythm of its fury. A warning.....no, a countdown!
Kai flinched, snapping his head toward the sound. The beast was barreling forward again, mouth open wide, limbs blurring in violent motion, devouring the distance between them. A fresh wave of blade-shards began to unfurl from its armored spine, spinning into the air like a swarm of razors. Not now. He couldn't afford doubt. He had to get his head in the battle. Kai inhaled sharply, then exhaled slow. His heart pounded once.....and something answered. A warm tug, not from the blade, but from within himself.
It bloomed in his chest like a star igniting, pulsing outward in waves. Kai's hand clenched tightly around the dagger's hilt as the energy swelled. A low hum resonated from the blade, not a voice, not a consciousness, but a resonance, as if something deep inside was finally listening. Then....his Temporal Aura returned to him, flaring to life. Not just a mere spark or an insignificant flicker, it was an unbridled blaze of energy.
The royal azure light exploded around him, cloaking his body like living fire. His aura didn't just return.....it had ascended. Flames of temporal power surged upward in twisting arcs, rising like a phoenix from ash. Kai staggered as the aura wrapped around him, hotter, heavier, stronger than ever before. The air around him warped, rippled, bent to his will. The Leviathan didn't slow. It bellowed, charging like a juggernaut of nightmare and rage.
Kai straightened. No longer trembling. No longer searching. "I don't know if you can hear me," he said, voice low but steady, eyes fixed on the oncoming behemoth. "But whether you're there or not..." He lifted the dagger. The aura flared with him, expanding outward like wings of fire. "I'm not going down...Lethal Tempo: ACCELERATE!" Time bent around him. The battlefield slowed, color draining from the world. The Leviathan's charge became slow as molasses. Every flurry of debris froze midair, every echo stretched into silence. In that stillness, Kai moved.
Kai surged forward, a royal azure trail blazing behind him like a comet set loose. The earth cracked under the pressure of his movement, each step a thunderclap against the trembling ground. He didn't stop until he stood at the base of the Leviathan's gaping maw: an abyss of hunger and hatred. He looked up, defiant. "Best my past failures, eh?" he muttered, a grin slicing across his face. "Very well...."
With a breath, he pulled his free hand back, energy condensing at his knuckles like the birth of a star. Time around him quivered. Then...he struck. His fist rocketed upward, crashing into the underside of the Leviathan's jaw with the force of a meteor. As time resumed it's normal pace, the impact registered with a deafening boom. The behemoth's head snapped back as its colossal form lifted clean off the ground, hurtling through the landscape like a ragdoll. Trees shattered, hills crumbled, and the sky itself seemed to ripple from the shockwave.
Kai straightened, laughter spilling from his chest, wild, unrestrained, alive. "Well, well...." he said, watching the aftermath. "Look how the tables have turned." The energy coursing through him wasn't just power....it was purpose, sharpened and refined. His aura no longer flared wildly, but pulsed with dense, focused might. Every movement he made bent the world around it, and he felt it, total control, not just over time, but himself. As he looked down at himself, he finally realized that his energy output was on a whole new level and his energy felt way denser than before.
Before the Leviathan could stir, Kai vanished in a flicker of azure. Accelerate. He was a storm. A blade. A force of reckoning. He dashed through the air, slicing away at the Leviathan with impossible precision. Every motion, fluid and lethal. Every cut, etched with the weight of everything he had become. Finally, he stood a few paces away from the Leviathan and deaccelerated himself. Time caught up.
Dozens....no hundreds of slashes registered all at once. The Leviathan howled, its armor crumbling, its form unraveling as bloodless wounds split open across every inch of its body. It thrashed, writhing in agony, desperate to regenerate. But Kai didn't give it the chance. He surged forward one last time, dodging tendrils of broken matter and decaying time. He drove the dagger straight into the Leviathan's exposed core. CRACK!
The core shattered like glass under a hammer. Energy spilled from the wound in a blinding burst, as the Leviathan let out a weak roar of defeat. As Kai slowed once more, time settling like dust around him, the beast began to dissolve. Its form unraveled into motes of black and silver, vanishing into the ether. Silence followed. Kai stood with his back to the fading monster, lifting the dagger overhead. The kite-shaped blade gleamed like a young star, pulsing with azure fire. He grinned. "Feels good," he said softly, "to win like this." But the Leviathan wasn't done. Even in death, it refused to go quietly. The few lingering remnants of its shattered form twisted inward, folding like wounded wings. Then....BOOM!
They surged together in one final act of defiance. A spike of corrupted matter, pulsing with unstable temporal energy, launched toward Kai like a cursed spear fired from oblivion itself. But this time..... Kai was ready. No hesitation. No panic. The moment the projectile screamed toward him, he vanished. A blur of royal azure flame, gone before the attack could taste his shadow. ACCELERATE.
The Leviathan's fragmented eye flickered. For the briefest second, a twitch of recognition. Then.....nothing. A new storm of slashes appeared in the blink of an eye, arcs of blinding blue cutting through the last wisps of the Leviathan's existence. The corrupted mass seized, frozen in disbelief, then exploded into radiant nothingness. The silence returned. Final and Absolute. Kai stood behind the dissolving remnants, breath slow, steady, a quiet fire burning behind his eyes. The kite-shaped dagger gleamed in his hand, still humming with the aftershock of power. He didn't need to look back. He knew it was over.
A confident smile tugged at his lips. "No you don't," he said softly, voice filled with certainty and quiet triumph. "Not now.....never again." The last flickers of the Leviathan dissolved into the ether like ashes scattered on the wind. Kai exhaled, one long breath, and the battlefield was still. Kai stood in the quiet aftermath, the weight of the battle settling around him like the last breath of a storm. The glow of his aura had not dimmed the slightest, just like the fire within him. He wasn't panting. His muscles didn't ache. In fact.....he felt alive. Not just energized, but clear, as if something in him had clicked into place, like the world had aligned with his pulse.
He blinked. No exhaustion? He'd used the Drakon Dankana multiple times in succession, techniques that had previously left his limbs numb and his body screaming for rest. But now.... His gaze turned skyward, to the soft rays filtering through the battle-torn clouds above. The wind brushed against his face, and for a fleeting moment, it felt like.....
The high hills behind the old house. The ones blanketed in soft green, just beyond the creek. The sky overhead was always so blue there, and the air smelled like wildflowers and earth. Mom would be walking a few paces ahead, humming that same off-tune melody. Her laughter would drift back to him....."Kai, keep up! The view's worth it, I promise." A smile tugged at his lips, unbidden. That memory felt like sunlight warming his skin. Then, without warning....
"THE FIRST TRIAL HAS BEEN BESTED." The sky split with sound, thunderous and absolute. Kai flinched as the disembodied voices boomed from all directions, shaking the very earth beneath him. "LET THE SECOND TRIAL BEGIN." He scowled. "Are you serious?" he muttered, irritation rising. "Can I breathe for half a seco-?" But the moment the words left his mouth, something changed.
A crushing weight slammed into his chest. His throat seized. The air turned thick, like liquid metal pressing down on his lungs. "Agh-!" he gasped, dropping to one knee. His hand clawed at his neck instinctively. The pressure kept rising, curling around his body like an invisible fist. C'mon..... why now! The battlefield blurred. Reality folded inward, collapsing into a swirl of shadows and violet light. His feet stumbled. The sky melted. His vision spun....
Then it stilled. Kai found himself upright again, but the world had changed completely. He now stood at the center of a towering, circular senate chamber, an arena of impossible scale and order. Smooth obsidian columns ringed the colossal structure, arching high into a dome that sparkled like a void filled with starlight. Rows upon rows of figures sat in ascending circles all around him, masked and motionless. Their seats rose like concentric ripples in a pond, each one elevated above the last, stretching so high they faded into mist.
Each figure wore a mask, some shaped like beasts, others like saints, demons, or blank-faced deities. Some were cloaked in flowing robes, others armored in strange metals or intricate patterns of light. Their bodies varied in size, form, even species, but one thing bound them all: the shimmering violet aura that pulsed around them like a shared heartbeat. A presence of intellect. Of judgment.
Kai's mouth opened slightly, trying to process the scale of it all. Then....every figure spoke at once. In perfect synchronization, they spoke: "THE TRIAL OF WITS SHALL NOW COMMENCE." The words reverberated across the chamber like a divine edict. Cold. Precise. Final. Kai's hands curled into fists. He swallowed once, trying to steady his breath. "Trial of wits, huh?" he muttered, "Great. Just what I needed after fighting a demonic time-god lizard."
He glanced around, the weight of hundreds, maybe thousands, of unseen eyes on him. No weapons. No terrain. Just this platform beneath his feet and the endless ring of masked observers. This wasn't a test of strength anymore. It was a test of mind. And in this place, even a single wrong answer could carry consequences far worse than death.