Ger'Ain looked at Leonel's vain attempts as though he relished in them. The more Leonel struggled, the more chances he would get to make this man truly regret the things that he had done.

However...

SHIIIING!

Leonel ripped the spear through his body, curving it up and through his collarbone. Ger'Ain stood frozen in shock.

His spear was more like a glaive than it was a real spear. It only had one truly sharp edge while the other side was blunt, and at the moment, the sharp edge was pointed down to the ground.

That meant that for Leonel to pull himself off of the spear, he had actually forcefully destroyed large segments of his body with nothing more than the blunt edge of the blade.

Not only that, but he had basically cut himself in two while doing it.

He fell to the ground, trying to do so on two feet, only for half of his torso to spill over to one side, pooling out with his blackened, atrophied inner organs.

A flash of fear lit in Ger'Ain's eyes, one that he couldn't immediately suppress like the first one. The Pluto were a Race of warriors with existences that towered over all others...

But even he couldn't fathom this sort of matter.

He was only caught off guard for a brief while, and that fear only stunned him for a split second...

But it was enough.

He hadn't noticed that he had ended up over Vaelin's corpse. So when Leonel fell down, his torso blooming open with petals of sickly grey-black organs, he landed right onto the Sylvan.

Leonel released his spear from his mouth and turned his neck, taking a savage bite out of the opening in Vaelin's chest.

Ger'Ain's eyes widened, realizing what was happening a step too late.

And it was then he noticed something else as well.

In the open cavity that was Leonel's chest, there was one pulsing light.

His heart.

Ger'Ain remembered that when he pierced down into Leonel's chest, he had run into

Γ

something he couldn't puncture, and his spear ended up deviating. He hadn't thought. much about it then, but he finally understood what it was.

He couldn't pierce Leonel's heart because his heart and his Innate Node were one and the same.

Creation taken to an extreme could only be seen as Destruction.

Leonel ripped his neck to the side, pulling out a large meaty bit of golden flesh from Vaelin's Sylvan Heart. His earlier spear strike had already destroyed much of it, but there was still quite a bit that remained. And in maybe one of the most savage displays of his life, Leonel tore into it as though it was a steak rather than the corpse of a man who had just been alive.

Ger'Ain suddenly swung his spear down from above, but the moment Leonel had released his spear from his mouth, his now free hand had caught it.

A second too late, Ger'Ain realized that Leonel had already thrust his spear up before he even decided where to attack.

Leonel's cracked spear blade caught the edge of Ger'Ain's own and parried it to the side.

Ger'Ain had attacked with so much force that having his momentum deviated forward like this knocked him off balance somewhat, causing him to be unable to stop his blade at all.

It missed the side of Leonel's face and buried itself into Vaelin's body.

Spurts of power roared through Leonel's veins as he kicked upward, golden lines pulsing along his atrophied leg.

His heel collided with Ger'Ain's hip perfectly, forcing the Pluto to be flipped over Leonel's head by his own momentum.

The two halves of Leonel's torso tried to mend themselves together using the power of the Sylvan Heart, but the strings of flesh that connected them were too loose, and Leonel didn't give them any time before he rushed to his feet at the fastest speed he could muster.

Wielding his spear in one hand, he pierced down at Ger'Ain, who successfully rolled to the side.

BANG! BANG!

Ger'Ain was forced to abandon his spear in Vaelin's body and was sent taking two steps back in quick succession.

Leonel closed the distance again, his eyes filled with a furious, raging light.

The fear in Ger'Ain's heart only grew. The sight of a man fighting with a single arm while his body was both figuratively and literally falling apart was too much.

Every time Leonel made a vigorous movement, the tendrils of flesh trying to hold his torso together would snap, but it was as though he didn't notice at all.

If he didn't care about the Sylvan blood dripping down his chin, why would he care about this?

And somehow, his spear strikes were only becoming heavier. It was like he was the one who had insulted Leonel, as though he was the one who deserved to pay for all the things he had done.

And suddenly, Ger'Ain began to wonder if he truly did deserve death. Should he just accept that his life should be taken away by this blade? Was that what he deserved? Leonel's spear shot through the air again and again, becoming faster and faster. It didn't have nearly as much variation as it usually had when he wielded it with two hands, but he seemed to have adapted instantly, pressing Ger'Ain, who could only use the gauntlets on his fists to defend.

As a Pluto, Ger'Ain was more than comfortable in close combat as well, but he was quickly finding himself overwhelmed.

PUCHI! PUCHI! PUCHI!

Lines of blood erupted across his body, the heavy Pluto blood that couldn't be spilled

falling in a rain as though to satiate Leonel's spear.

Before this spear, the blood of a Pluto was absolutely worthless.

If there was one man worthy of defiling his Race, it was the man before him.

Leonel took a step, and he suddenly accelerated in a way a weak body shouldn't.. Shifting and moving like the wind, he appeared behind Ger'Ain and pierced a hole through his knee.

In a single motion, Leonel leapt up and drove a crossing knee across Ger'Ain's temple. The Pluto caught himself with a palm to the ground and tried to use it as leverage for a spinning kick from his upside-down position.

But Leonel seemed to have seen through it all, sidestepping it and slashing a deep wound across Ger'Ain's groin through a gap in his arm.

Faster.

Faster.

Faster.

Leonel howled, his spear leaving trails of deep wounds across Ger'Ain's body until the man couldn't even move anymore without a part of his body reminding him that he had long since lost the tendon that connected it to his thoughts.

Ger'Ain barely managed to prop himself up on his elbows, biting at Leonel's

approaching blade as a last effort to stay alive.

In the end, he was still a Pluto. He would die with-

Leonel's spear shifted with a twist of his wrist, under cutting Ger'Ain's bite and tearing

into his throat.

The Pluto's head was sent soaring into the air, and Leonel's spear flashed, dancing through the skies in streaks of silvery light that erupted into gold. Leonel roared, and Ger'Ain's head was split into hundreds of pieces in an instant.

Leonel raised his head to the skies.

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"