My Charity System made me too OP-Chapter 326: Fighting III

The roar of the crowd hadn't even settled before the next challenge began. The arena floor darkened, and an eerie silence fell. A deep chime echoed—not from the arena master, but from the obsidian itself.

Rank 39.

The gate hissed open… and out stepped Vaer'Zhul, the Dreambane—a creature not born of the Ant Clans, but a sealed entity from the Nightmare Rift, once imprisoned for infecting floors with madness. The Obsidian Ants had long ago subdued it… and made it part of their trials.

Vaer'Zhul looked humanoid in shape, but he shimmered with translucent shadow layers. His face was hidden beneath an iron mask carved with weeping runes. Wisps of distorted memories floated around him—fragments of dreams, echoes of screams, false visions.

Leon immediately felt his head pulse. Reality bent slightly. His vision doubled… tripled… until he closed his eyes and activated Karmic Loop just to ground himself.

"Begin," the voice boomed.

Vaer'Zhul didn't move. He simply… stared.

Leon charged first—big mistake.

As he crossed the midpoint of the arena, time dilated. His breath slowed. His feet felt like lead. Every step forward seemed to pull him deeper into a sea of sand.

Illusions wrapped around his senses. Roman screaming. Roselia dying. Naval's corpse split by a phantom blade. None of it real—and yet his body reacted with genuine panic.

"Nightmare Law…" Leon whispered, struggling to center himself. He gritted his teeth and ignited Shell Reverb: Tripart Echo, trying to disperse the illusions with raw force.

Boom.

The arena quaked from the blast, pushing back the worst of the dream fog. But Vaer'Zhul was already upon him—his blade a crooked shard of anti-thought, something that could cut concepts, not flesh.

Leon blocked it with his staff, but it sheared through three of his enhancements instantly. His shoulder split open. His mind pulsed with vertigo.

"Too strong…" he coughed, falling back, barely avoiding a second strike that sliced the color out of the world where it passed.

Leon activated Destruction Mantle around himself, burning away the false emotions Vaer'Zhul planted. Then he unleashed Origin Pulse from his core, fueling it with Abyss Mana and Aether Blood.

A pulse of blue-black fire enveloped the arena.

Vaer'Zhul paused. Just a second. That was all Leon needed.

He used Shell Reverb: Absolute Return—catching the psychic residue of all illusions he had endured. Every scream, every visual distortion, every mental bleed—he turned them into compressed reversal force.

"Return to the void you crawled from," he said.

Leon launched the compressed sphere of rebounded madness into Vaer'Zhul's mask. A brief scream erupted—not from the mouth, but the memory.

And Vaer'Zhul began to unravel.

Not just physically—but conceptually.

The crowd stood in stunned silence as the masked figure faded into scattered thoughts and broken dreams.

Leon dropped to his knees. He was shaking. Not from pain—but from the sheer mental weight.

[Victory: Challenger Leon.]

[Warning: Mental Strain Critical. Rest Recommended.]

Leon was barely conscious when Roselia and Liliana rushed in from the side to carry him out.

"He nearly lost," Roselia whispered. "We've got to slow down…"

But Leon, eyes closed, still managed to smile. "Almost lost… but not quite."

***

The arena shifted once more—this time darker, quieter. The air was unnaturally still, as if the world itself dared not speak.

From the obsidian tunnel emerged a figure draped in layered bone-chime robes. Its face was a mask of empty ivory, and around it swirled an aura not of mana or essence, but of dreams curdled and forgotten.

"Vaer'Zhul the Dreambane," intoned the arena master. "The Mindshatterer. Rank 39."

Leon narrowed his eyes. Something felt… wrong. The moment he stepped into the ring, a pulse hit him—not physical, but mental. A haze blanketed his thoughts.

—You're still in your bed. None of this is real. Stop fighting. Rest. Sleep.

He shook his head violently, flaring Shell Pulse to refocus, but Vaer'Zhul was already moving. Not fast—just inevitable.

The first blow wasn't from a fist—it was a scream, a mental cry that felt like it came from inside Leon's own mind. His hands trembled. Images of failure flooded his vision: Roman dead, Roselia impaled, Naval screaming…

"NO!" he bellowed, activating Shell Reverb: Tripart Echo, catching his own spiraling pulse and snapping his psyche back.

But it came at a cost.

Blood dripped from his ears.

Vaer'Zhul raised both arms—and the floor cracked into shifting sigils, dragging Leon into a space that wasn't real, yet hurt like it was. A Dream Zone.

Inside it, time distorted. Vaer'Zhul became many, each striking from different angles. Leon blocked, evaded, parried—barely. He used Karmic Loop to reverse a feint and land a solid punch to one illusion—only to feel the real Vaer'Zhul hit him from behind, slamming him into the floor.

His ribs cracked.

He coughed blood.

"Shell Reverb: Absolute Return!"

The kinetic memory from the last few strikes surged back through his muscles. He twisted, caught Vaer'Zhul's next attack, and redirected it with triple-stacked force.

Boom.

The Dreambane was flung across the arena, his mask fractured. For a moment, Leon thought it was over.

It wasn't.

The fragments of the mask lifted, hovering, chanting.

"Dream-Shatter: Mindgate Opened."

Leon felt his mind split in two. Suddenly, he wasn't just himself—he was every version of himself who had failed. Every nightmare he'd buried.

His legs gave way.

Until—

The Origin Pulse inside him flared. Aether Blood roared. Destruction hissed in protest. Gold Magic pulsed a divine note.

Leon rose, face covered in blood, eyes blazing. ƒreewebɳovel.com

"I don't care what version of me you try to break… I'm the one who survives."

He slammed his palms together—Trinity Invocation—merging Aether, Destruction, and Gold. The result: a spear of raw, fused law.

He hurled it.

The dream shattered.

Vaer'Zhul screamed.

The arena cracked.

And silence followed.

Then—

"Victory: Challenger Leon. Rank 39 defeated."

Leon fell to one knee, breath ragged, vision blurred. That fight hadn't just tested his body—it nearly broke his mind.

But he'd won.

Just barely.

And now, Rank 38 awaited.

Leon sat slumped at the edge of the arena, blood crusting at the corners of his mouth, hands trembling slightly despite his victory. The obsidian beneath him pulsed with residual Dream Energy, still lingering from Vaer'Zhul's illusions. For a moment, he let the silence embrace him—a rare pocket of stillness amid the chaos of his ascent.

Roselia and the others rushed down from the observation platform. She dropped to her knees beside him, arms wrapping tightly around his shoulders.

"You idiot," she whispered into his ear, voice cracking. "That thing nearly killed you."

Leon chuckled dryly, coughing mid-way. "Yeah, it almost dreamed me to death."

Roman stood over him, eyes sharp. "You were twitching before you even moved. That thing was in your head from the start."

Leon nodded slowly. "It wasn't just illusions. He made me feel every failure I've ever feared. It was like fighting my own ghost... times a thousand."

Milim patted him on the back, grinning despite the tension. "But you beat it. You beat yourself. That's gotta count for something."

Naval crouched beside him, her eyes serious. "That's two opponents now that nearly broke your psyche. You're pushing too far, too fast."

Leon met her gaze. "I know. But I have to."

Naval looked like she wanted to argue, but Roselia held up a hand. "Let him rest. He needs to recover before we go further."

Liliana approached quietly and knelt beside them, placing a cool hand on Leon's forehead. Light magic pulsed through her fingertips, numbing the deeper bruises and calming the tension in his nerves. "You've pushed your body. You've scarred your spirit. Rest tonight. Rank 38 can wait a few hours."

Leon closed his eyes for a moment, letting the healing energy seep in. Every nerve in his body still screamed, but he nodded.

"…Alright. Just a few hours."

They helped him up and led him back toward the sanctum's quarters carved into the obsidian cliffs. There, beneath the amber glow of the Dreambane's broken starlight, the party laid low. A rare moment of peace in the warpath they'd chosen.

As Leon lay in bed, Roselia curled at his side, he opened his menu with a flick of his thoughts.

[Shell Reverb Mastery: 48%]

[Mental Fortitude Skill Gained: Dreamshard Resilience - Passive]

"Reduces mental invasion effects by 35%. Grants resistance to psychic and dream-based illusions."

Leon smiled faintly.

"I'm getting harder to kill."

Then, at last, he slept.

Leon awoke to silence—not the usual tense quiet of a battlefield or a dungeon about to erupt, but a real, complete calm. The kind that settled over the obsidian cliffs only during the rare hours when the Ants themselves rested.

He sat up slowly. His wounds had scabbed over, muscles still sore but responsive. Roselia lay beside him, still sleeping, her hand loosely clasped around his. The room was lit by soft glows pulsing from carved runes in the wall—life-glyphs that resonated with the Obsidian Temple's mana.

He stood, dressed, and stepped outside.

There, on a ridge just above the temple complex, a familiar figure stood waiting—an elder Obsidian Ant draped in ceremonial exo-weave robes, his carapace etched with centuries of battles.

"Elder Kha'reth," Leon greeted, his voice hoarse.

"You've survived Vaer'Zhul," the elder said, without turning. "Barely."