The fury bubbling up in Leonel's heart practically took a tangible form. And soon, that was exactly what it did.

His feet smoldered, the corners of his eyes billowing with thick tendrils of smoke.

He wanted nothing more than to find someone to vent this frustration on, but there was no one but his father here before him.

And the worst part?

It wasn't even truly his father.

He had already realized it during his battle with the others, but while they might have their personalities and their quirks, they didn't have their memories, and they certainly never spoke. They might as well have been mindless husks that only knew how to swing their spears around. But this was a step too far. Much too far.

Ever since his first outburst, he had controlled himself well. He didn't mind it when the Idol Battlefield continuously targeted him again and again; he had even been willing to allow it, using it as a whetstone to sharpen himself against.

It didn't matter to him when it didn't protect him during his breakthrough. It didn't matter to him that it kept sending people to target him. It didn't matter to him when the statues of these so-called heroes of the path pressured him from above, making his steps heavier and draining away his stamina piece by piece.

But this...

"I swear..." Leonel said slowly, his voice rumbling like low brewing thunder. "... I will destroy this Idol Battlefield."

The white space sparked and clouds appeared high above.

A strike of lightning came, but Leonel's wrist only flickered once, shattering it to pieces.

His eyes blazed with fury.

The statues should represent the people who had come to the Idol Battlefield before and had made a name for themselves.

His father had never stepped foot out of the Dimensional Verse; he had never had a chance for his name to resonate.

And yet, this Idol Battlefield was using his likeness for what? A dig at him? A way to try and attack his mental state?

He would make its World Spirit pay in the cruelest of ways.

Leonel's wrist trembled once before he exhaled a breath.

His tears lit on fire, leaving streaks of embers rolling down his face that flaked away slowly. Red-gold flame mixed into his violet hair, his skin practically beginning to shine as though it had become sparkling crystal.

IIis trembling spear blade steadied, becoming no less stable than his father's.

He raised his spear. Its body had changed, looking to have become a simple wooden spear no different from his father's.

He wasn't the same man he was back in the Dimensional Verse. He had accepted the burdens that

now rested on his shoulders, and he would carry them no matter what...

Even if that meant fighting his own father.

Velasco raised his spear almost lazily. Leonel could hardly catch his movements at all, but before he knew it, the spear was at his throat.

Leonel's gaze flickered as he took a step back. He flicked the body of his spear upward, colliding with the polearm of his father's and sending the blow to the side and up over his shoulder.

He shifted his head to the side, sliding his steps and pivoting around his parry.

His blade surged in a wide arc, aiming to slice his father in two.

However, as he was performing this fluid action, he felt a spike of pain that ripped through his neck and shoulder.

His neck was half severed, and his arm was almost separated from his body. The blade he thought he had dodged seemed to have an edge to it that even he couldn't sense.

Blood spurted as he was blown backward by the sudden force. His spin missed his father's torso as a result, and he was sent into the distance.

Leonel landed on the ground heavily, his eyes half vacant. A large amount of blood was leaking from him, and worst of all, there was a difficult-to-manage corrosive force that wanted to swallow him whole.

He couldn't seem to stifle the bleeding at all, and he felt his life slipping away.

He grit his teeth as a great amount of determination surged out from him.

If he was going to fall, it certainly wouldn't be because of pain.

His Spear Force surged into his wounds and formed a delicate web of restrictions and protections that stifled the bleeding.

He was his Weapon Forces, and his Weapon Forces were him.

His body flickered and vanished from the spot it was lying in, becoming a streak of Spear Force that dodged out of the way of a follow-up strike.

He stood in the air, Spear Force swirling around his body.

The number of things his father had left behind for him were numerous. But among them, not one spoke of the spear, despite the fact he knew his father had to be an absolute master of the craft.

He had never understood why that was and could only wave it away with perfunctory guesses. After all, his father didn't follow the path set out by his grandfather or the Morales, choosing to make his own way forward. Maybe he felt Leonel wasn't compatible with his methods, or maybe he thought that the best path was precisely what Leonel was doing right now...

Forging his own.

And if he was going to do that, he was going to have to swallow even his father's.

After that exchange, he felt like he had only grasped the faintest corner of it, but it was profound nonetheless.

It was no wonder his father's spear never looked like anything special. It was all about perspective. An odd glint reflected in Leonel's eyes, and the casual aura his father seemed to have vanished. The phantom of a demon appeared around him, a dragon's body coiled around one arm, and a roaring tiger seemed to come out of another.

Above his head, a crown of Destruction flickered with a wild radiance, and his simple spear was

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twice as thick, its blade three times as large, so much so it looked more like the jagged edges of a glaive than a spear.

This was his father's true battle state.

The battle state he hid within his Destruction World.

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