Leo ignored the disturbances that tried to pry him from the fight. His hearing was muffled as if deafening himself as he locked his eyes on Anthony, his fists ready to act.

  He knew the friend he remembered was gone, replaced by this jealous, twisted being. There were only two things he planned on doing in order to fix this.

  Knock some sense into him or die trying.

  Despite the litter of flesh and limbs around him, Leo still believed his friend could be rescued, that he still retained his compassionate personality from the past.

  He was not ready to give up on him just yet.

  Strangely enough, this new mindset of his caused a weird feeling to wash across his body. It was uncomfortable, yet warm. Unnatural, yet empowering. A new wave of strength and knowledge surged into him, overloading his mind with his Refraction’s true abilities. Clenching his hands, he could feel the spring-like sensation spreading across his body. He got the feeling that he was no longer limited to just his hands and feet for his Refraction.

  But that was a secondary thought as he tensed his legs, preparing to charge forward as Anthony prepared his spear to be thrown once more.

  He couldn’t let Anthony throw that deadly weapon, especially not now!

  Leo charged forward in a blink of an eye, forcing Anthony to change his stance into a more defensive posture, his spear shaft brought out across his chest.

  Leo’s fist slammed into Anthony’s spear shaft, shattering the weapon. Anthony scoffed and used Leo’s charging momentum to throw a crystal-covered punch, landing straight on his face. Leaning back from the impact, Leo kicked at Anthony’s side, landing on his ribs. Immediately after the kick landed, the air vibrated near the attack, launching Anthony to the right of Leo, slamming into a wall. A cloud of dust and rubble detonated from where he landed, hiding Anthony from Leo’s sight.

  Knowing this distance was dangerous, Leo quickly ran into the grey mist. Upon getting closer, he saw Anthony on his knees as he struggled to raise himself from the crater that had formed on his landing site.

  Realizing Anthony hadn’t noticed him yet, Leo hooked around to face Anthony’s left to avoid hitting the armored portion of his body. Charging forward, he brought his knee to Anthony’s face, crushing Anthony’s nose as he did when he was being punched.

  Caught completely off guard, Anthony let out a roar as he tried punching Leo, missing completely as he had backed away from him as soon as he had arrived, causing his body to lurch forward and falling face first into the ground.

  Within the smoke, Leo waited and watched him. From what he had seen so far, Anthony had some trick up his sleeve, he just didn’t know what. It was as if he was waiting for something.

  But despite that fact, Anthony seemed to honestly be struggling as he wobbled up, his legs shaky as he looked around the slowly settling dust. Before the dust cleared, Leo kneeled down, his hands gripping the softened ground as small rocks entered his hands.

  Anthony finally saw Leo towards the ground, his face morphed with rage. He began furiously running towards Leo, keeping the armored portion of his body to the front so as to not allow Leo another clean hit like before.

  Suddenly, Joshua’s voice echoed in his mind. ‘Leo! The twins are ready!’

  ‘Now? Of all times?’

  Right before Anthony slammed into him, Leo jumped forward just barely to the side of Anthony, throwing the small pieces of rock and dust at his face as he slid across the stone floor.

  That attack was very effective as Anthony stopped in his tracks, his hands rubbing his eyes as he yelled out in pain. “Shit! You dirty bastard!”

  Using this time, Leo instructed Joshua to have the twins listen to Connie. With this small window to talk, Leo knew he couldn’t give out orders in time with Joshua. But he knew that of all the people in the group, he could trust Connie to make the right judgment. Hopefully she had reached the same conclusion as Leo had in order to win this battle.

  In the background, Claudia and Velmior still hadn’t gotten a clean hit on one another.

  Claudia had begun to actually attack as her arms emerged from the white robes, throwing punches and perhaps using her Refraction in a more concentrated manner now, resulting in indents and craters forming in anything in the path of her fists. She would do a gripping motion, resulting in a crater forming behind the demon as if a giant had taken a chunk from the dirt with their bare hands.

  Meanwhile Velmior continued to taunt her as he still hadn’t even used his abilities yet, only attacking her with his whips and words. The worst part was that it looked to be working as Leo could catch a faint hint of anger from the masked figure, with her strikes gradually becoming more aggressive.

  After the long, irritating struggle. The battle escalated within seconds.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Finally, Claudia caught the demon. Slamming him into the floor, creating a crater from the force of the attack. But all Velmior would do was laugh as his form slowly became translucent, shattering into tiny shards.

  Claudia scanned the area before ducking down to dodge one of the spines coming behind her, the column beside her cleanly sliced in half, only catching a portion of her robe behind her.

  Velmior calmly observed the girl as he threw a myriad of attacks with his whips, all while a wave of reflections came bursting out of nearby mirrors, all rushing at her.

  Seeing these attacks, Leo saw Claudia clap her hands together. With that simple action, Leo felt light vibrations in the air as he watched all the glass clones shatter and the whips knocked off course, swiping away at surviving clones around her.

  The human wave that had appeared was cleared out in a matter of seconds.

  Velmior clapped at the grand display, his face not too impressed. “Couldn’t kill them all, huh? How disappointing!”

  He suddenly shot through the air, the ground that he had stood on giving way as it got crushed down, raising a plume of dust.

  Within the smoke, Leo could tell from the tremors that the two continued their game of cat and mouse.

  Refocusing on Anthony, Leo closed the distance, not letting him create any more weapons again. Once in reach, he grabbed onto his shoulders and tried ramming a knee into his ribs.

  This time, Anthony was prepared, stopping the knee midair with the palm of his hand, a smirk appearing on his face. “Stop with that already…”

  Leo mirrored Anthony as a smirk grew on his face as well. “You really should’ve dodged, Anthony.”

  Anthony looked perplexed for a split second before the palm of his hand rippled, launching him up headfirst into the ceiling. He groaned for a moment before falling back down to the ground slightly farther from where Leo was. He got up with the armor covering half his body still intact, his unprotected side riddled with small cuts and bruises from the fight so far.

  Despite the wounds, Anthony remained optimistic with a vicious smile plastered on his half-covered face.

  ‘He really wants to kill me, huh?’

  Leo didn’t come out of that little encounter unscathed, however, as his knee was bruised from the armored palm that had blocked him. He most likely had broken something from hitting that rough surface, pain exploding in his leg.

  Leo slapped his leg in hopes of pushing past the pain as he limped towards Anthony. His entire body ached from the sudden continuous usage of his Refraction, his bones feeling brittle as if they’d snap at any moment. Not only that, the attacks he had sustained throughout the battle had finally caught up to him as he made a pained expression, clutching his ribs, but keeping his posture up not wanting Anthony to notice the significant weakness.

  Unfortunately, the limp gave Anthony the time to create a mirror right next to his feet, a spear springing up into his hands. By the time Leo had recovered, he was already in the motion of releasing it from his hands, the tip pointing straight at him as he barely saw it in the air.

  Noticing just in time, he forced his body to the side, the limping leg giving way as he fell over. The spear barely missed as it embedded itself into the stone wall behind.

  Leo didn’t fail to notice Anthony clutching another spear right after hurling the projectile at him. This one was slightly different though as it had guards to the sides of the speartip, the tip itself being much thicker and condensed, unlike the needle-like end from the one before.

  ‘No, now’s not the time to be standing here!’

  Before Anthony snapped his fingers, Leo rushed behind a stone pillar as the glass spear condensed itself into a sphere, detonating itself sending the glass shards everywhere as they sliced the room apart. Some even scratched him as they shot through the thinner areas of the pillar.

  ‘Whew, too close…’

  Glancing over to the group, he saw the twins doing exactly as he had planned as they aimed the arrow towards Teddy’s foes.

  ‘Looks like Connie caught on. Thank the stars for that! I’ll buy you dinner if we get out of this alive!’

  If things go as planned, the twins will be able to break an opening for Teddy to rush out of and defeat the trio. And if he does that, it means he’ll be able to assist Claudia, who remained unhurt, but the same could be said for her enemy. If anything, it seemed like the enemy was just having fun throwing his whips around her.

  Peeking his head out, Leo took a look at what Anthony was doing. It seemed Anthony had lost sight of him as he scanned the area. But he didn’t just look around, Leo noticed the crystalline armor slowly creeping across towards the exposed side of the body.

  ‘So…the armor regenerates…Great.’

  Something shook the room, causing both Leo and Anthony to turn towards the source. The twins had launched their arrow, landing straight on one of the glass serpents. Surprisingly, the serpent completely froze before letting out a high pitched screech, making him cover his ears. It cried out in pain, wriggling its body around on the ground before it went limp, the glass shards that had made up its body falling to the floor, with the fragments that had been in contact with the green arrow melting into a bubbling liquid.

  Not wasting this opportunity, Teddy backed away over the shattered pieces of the fallen serpent, ensuring the remaining two remained in front of him. The serpents pursued, trying to reform their encirclement, but it was too late.

  With quick and deadly efficiency, Teddy slid his fingers across his blade, causing the white aura that had wildly spread around the area to condense, encompassing the blade as it took the katana’s shape. With a white hue outlining the sword, the blade created a quiet buzzing sound like a saw.

  After he completed the strange technique, Teddy sheathed his katana, taking a knee faced towards the snakes as if he was about to launch himself. Without a sound, the Lieutenant’s form blinked behind the two serpents, the duo completely frozen before the shards melted into a clear puddle, their forms disappearing along with the glass.

  The Lieutenant let out a sigh, standing up straight with the katana hanging from his hip.

  The plan had worked! The Lieutenant was free now.

  All that was left was for the Lieutenant to go help Claudia.