"The Age of Man will end soon? What does that mean?"
The Solaris Founder remained silent, wholly ignoring Leon's confused question. Rather, he was fully concentrated on the battle in the skies. It seemed that Amon was overwhelming Thalassa with his skills and mastery, but in truth, if the struggle continued for much longer, Amon would suffer a tremendous defeat.
Thalassa's actions may be crude, as it was only relying on its superior size and mana pool to counter Amon's attacks, but it was going to work in the end.
As powerful as Amon was, there was a limit to his mana pool. As compared to Thalassa, a Sky Whale that once served as a mount to the Titans as well as the being who hosted the Ocean's Divinity for thousands of years, it was practically a no-contest.
Thalassa would win in a war of attrition, and everyone began to realise it.
[Child, you'll need to help your friend.]
[Use Ascalon and weaken Thalassa. With your soul being born from Thalassa's seed, you should be able to absorb parts of it and strengthen yourself.]
Leon was a child of two legacies: the Solaris bloodline and the seed of Thalassa, the former Ocean Divinity.
Within him flowed a heritage both radiant and abyssal, a duality that marked him as something more than mortal. With the aid of the Holy Sword, Ascalon, he held the potential not only to wound the leviathan but also to strengthen and nourish his own soul in the process.
Yet uncertainty lingered. Ascalon was no ordinary weapon, and Leon had yet to master its vast, sanctified power fully.
Fortunately, fate had placed at his side a mentor of extraordinary calibre—one who stood ready to guide him through the trial.
Leon held Ascalon firm and rushed to the skies to fight alongside his friend and mentor. Amon, sensing Leon's approach, paused his heavy strikes, only to shoot Leon a perplexed grimace. Truth be told, he wished to eradicate Thalassa by himself, to minimise the casualties. But if Leon joined the fray, Amon would be forced to hold his punches.
Alas, his worry was about to be unfounded.
With the Solaris Founder's voice guiding him like a shining beacon, Leon masterfully manoeuvred himself through the water vortexes and tornadoes that surrounded Thalassa. At the same time, he used Ascalon's divine power to subdue the Sky Whale's onslaught, allowing him to slip through its defences and land a devastating blow onto its head.
Thalassa groaned in agony, as if the blow from Ascalon had halved its lifespan. Despairing from the pain, it retreated slightly, shooting wary looks to both Amon and Leon.
"Leon… what was that?"
"I'll explain the details later, but I have a way to weaken it. Please believe me."
Amon didn't have to hear the details anyway. In [Bright], Leon would have resolved the Second Calamity on his own, so it wasn't weird that he knew how to use Ascalon to subdue Thalassa.
"Tell me what you need from me."
"... please clear the path for me to land clean strikes on it."
Without pause, Amon summoned thousands of celestial blades in the same manner the Sword Saint would. With the flying swords, none of Thalassa's created catastrophes were able to injure Leon, let alone touch him. Lightning and rain failed to strike Leon down, giving him the perfect opportunity to rush forward.
Ascalon glowed with heavenly light as a mixture of holy power and solar mana merged into one. Burning with a golden flame, Leon struck Thalassa's nose, creating a sacred wildfire that spread throughout the Sky Whale's body. It clicked in pain, but its overwhelming mana managed to extinguish the flames before it did any lasting damage.
However, Leon's plan worked.
From the extinguished flames came vast amounts of lost mana in the form of smoke. Leon immediately rushed to absorb the smoke with Ascalon, completely merging that lost mana into nourishment for his growing soul.
At the same time, Leon recited his modified version of the Nine Suns Heart Mantra, the Eighty-One Suns Heart Mantra. Five Suns orbited around the young hero as five smaller luminescent spheres orbited around them.
Theoretically, with Leon's special body, he was able to condense eighty-one Suns. However, that amount of heat and mana would have vaporised the average human. Therefore, Leon need a vast amount of hydro mana as a counterweight.
And Thalassa's mana was the perfect source.
Step by step, Amon steered Leon along the path of battle, guiding his strikes so that the young knight could draw in every thread of Thalassa's exposed mana. Steel met flesh in a relentless exchange; slashes, thrusts, and counters that carved through the leviathan's defences.
For minutes the rhythm held, until at last the ancient Titan's patience shattered. With a roar that split the heavens, Thalassa unleashed its fury. Mana erupted from its core in a torrent so vast it rose like a tidal wave reaching for the sky itself.
In that instant, Amon understood why the world had once named Thalassa the Second Calamity. The skies blackened as storm winds gathered; a typhoon was born overhead. Vortexes of water twisted into colossal whirlpools suspended in the air, while seaquakes tore through the Veil, flooding valleys and shattering mountains.
What had once been rugged highlands was drowned in moments, reshaped into a vast, storm-tossed basin. Thalassa no longer cared for ascension, nor for its original designs. Wrath consumed its ancient heart.
Its gaze was fixed only on Amon and Leon—two mortals who had dared not only to wound it, but to make it feel pain.
"Even without its divinity… It's still a monster."
Amon remarked, amazed by Thalassa's immense strength. If he were alone and if his goal was to defeat it in a one-on-one battle, it was hard to say if Amon would have emerged victorious. But, fortunately his goal wasn't to defeat Thalassa, but to weaken it and prevent it from intefereing with Aluria's ascension.
And in part, he succeeded in that goal.
Thalassa now no longer cared about the two women hidden and well-protected in the distant barrier. All of its wrath was on Amon and Leon, which made it all the more dangerous.
But fortunately, they weren't alone.
From the heights of the heavens, a searing brilliance split the storm. A shaft of solar light cleaved through the grey clouds, scattering the rain until the tempest itself dissolved. In its place, a blazing sun ignited the sky, its radiance burning with unyielding majesty.
The world seemed to freeze beneath that heavenly glow, time itself pausing in reverence. Even Amon and Leon halted mid-battle, their gazes drawn upward.
There, wreathed in divine brilliance, stood Lucas, invoking the Solaris secret art: [Embodiment of the Sun].
Though he had fallen to obscurity, Lucas remained a true Sun Knight, one who had condensed the legendary Seven Suns within his soul—a Commander-class Knight—one of the pillars of strength in the world.
And now, for the sake of his child, he would unleash that power without restraint.
Flames that seemed to vapourise oceans descended upon Thalassa, and it was forced down to the ground like a comet falling. The disasters that swirlled around the beast all but disappeared, vapourised by Lucas's all-out strike.
Speaking of, that move cost Lucas all of his mana and his body, which had turned from flesh to fire, was now rapidly losing colour. However, he'll live, and that was enough for Amon and Leon to continue their onslaught.
Nyx was bathed in silver light as he aimed to dissect Thalassa for Leon to absorb its mana meticulously. As a last-ditch attempt to protect itself, the ancient beast created a swirling water sphere around its massive body.
But Amon was ready for it.
The blade that transcended space and time, a technique Amon had perfected since his battle with the Abomination, unleashed its devastation. His strike ignored the barrier entirely, as though reality itself had yielded to his will.
In a single motion, Thalassa's gargantuan body was carved apart, cleaved into more than a hundred fragments that tumbled across the sky and sea. But the leviathan was ancient and relentless. Mana surged through its sundered flesh, the pieces straining to mend and rejoin.
Yet before its regeneration could take hold, Leon struck. Ascalon blazed with holy fire, its sanctified edge searing into the whale's blubber. Smoke and ash poured from the wounds, the stench of burning mana rising as the carcass writhed in agony.
Leon did not hesitate.
He turned greed into strength, channelling every wisp of that acrid smoke into Ascalon.
The sword drank deeply, its brilliance swelling with each breath. With every fragment consumed, Leon's bond with water deepened—until at last, he felt himself brush against a new threshold.
'Shit, I reached my limit too…'
Leon's body was now filled with mana, both hydro and solar. This update ıs available on novelꞁire.net
If it were any other circumstance, it would have been the perfect opportunity for him to break through and ascend to a greater level. But, alas, he was amid a life-and-death battle, one that could change the fabric of the world.
He couldn't afford to go down here… not yet, at least.
So, even if his body explodes, Leon was determined to absorb as much mana as he could, to lessen Amon's burden and to give his mom just a few more minutes to assimilate Ocean's Divinity.
However, just before he was going to make the ultimate sacrifice…
A ray of azure light pierced the heavens, and a single ripple of brilliance rolled outward, silencing the sky itself. In that instant, the clash between Amon, Leon, and Thalassa came to an abrupt halt. All eyes were drawn to the transcendent radiance that eclipsed even their battle.
There, suspended high above, stood an ethereal woman. She was draped in immaculate white, a translucent shawl flowing from her shoulders like woven starlight. Her posture was imperious, her presence undeniable, as though the very air bent to her will.
No aura of mana flowed from her form. What emanated instead was something beyond comprehension—greater, higher, ineffably divine.
It was Aluria… the new Ocean Goddess.