(Planet Omega, 24 hours later, Leo’s POV)
It took Leo roughly twenty four hours to arrive at Planet Omega from Nemo, however, once he arrived there the situation turned ugly real fast for the Righteous Faction soldiers stationed on the planet.
Almost as soon as his feet touched Omega’s soil, men began dying by the thousands, their lives snuffed out by the weight of his aura alone.
The equatorial fortress band that stretched endlessly along the planet’s midline became his designated kill zone, a continuous chain where seven hundred and ninety million soldiers, one Monarch tier Commander and dozens of Transcendents awaited slaughter.
*Sniff*
Leo inhaled once as his aura unfurled, rolling out gently at first before sharpening into something cold, heavy and lethal, as the nearest fortress shuddered beneath the crushing pressure of it.
The soldiers stationed inside felt the weight of his aura descend on them before they even saw him, their bodies stiffening, their lungs locking, their thoughts scattering, while Leo walked through the main gate without slowing his steps.
*Step*
*Step*
The first base fell in under five minutes.
Dozens of dagger slashes swept through the defensive bunkers..... shredding towers, slicing open barriers and carving straight through bodies with lethal precision as hundreds of thousands died before their screams could even form.
However, as if dissatisfied with how slow that felt, Leo made the second fortress run even faster.
*Slash*
*Slash*
*Boom*
The second fortress collapsed harder than the first.
Soldiers scrambled to seal gates, to activate internal shields, to buy even a few seconds of time, yet the moment Leo activated [Enhance], he slipped into their corridors like a streak of silver and shadow, executing everyone inside with unhesitating brutality.
One swing.
A thousand bodies.
One leap.
An entire courtyard caved beneath him.
His aggression only intensified with bases three and four, his rhythm accelerating, his precision sharpening, his aura growing colder by the minute.
The speed of his kills rose exponentially, until by the time three hours had passed since his arrival, Leo had already carved through more than nine million lives.
*BOOM*
It was at this moment that a shockwave rippled across the seventh fortress he was attacking, as a large fleet descended from the upper atmosphere, their formation tight and disciplined, their weapons primed in perfect sync.
At the center of the formation flew Leslie Wales, a hulking Monarch with a long halberd for a weapon, who looked particularly displeased about Leo deciding to attack his planet today.
"Skyshard!"
His voice rolled like thunder.
"I was informed about your arrival by my subordinates a few hours ago.
However, I waited until I gathered all my most capable men to come attack you.
I’m not stupid like Yu Zu.
I won’t attack you in waves.
You will instead feel the full wrath of the Omega defensive forces all at once!"
He said, as Leo couldn’t believe the good news that fell into his ears.
"Awww.... Really? You’d do that for me?"
He said, sounding mock touched, as Leslie’s face turned sour, the Monarch unable to understand as to why Leo felt happy about something that was so obviously disadvantageous to him.
"You’re a weird one, Skyshard, but you will fall nonetheless....
Men! Burn him!"
Leslie ordered, as his fleet opened fired at once.
*Boom*
*Booom*
*Booooom*
Thousands of mana Cannons.
Millions of rounds.
The sky itself lit up with destructive light as the bombardment swallowed Leo’s location whole.
However, when the smoke cleared, Leo was nowhere to be found.
"Where.... Where is he?"
Leslie wondered aloud, his eyes desperately scanning the entire battlefield for any signs of Leo.
However, while he looked for him underneath, Leo instead appeared from above him, descending from the sky with both daggers drawn, as he used the move [Crown Fall] to claim his head.
*Slash*
The Monarch’s head rolled from a single attack.
As Leo timed this entire saga to perfection.
"HE IS DEAD... THE COMMANDER IS DEAD!"
The internal comms of the Righteous fleets crackled with panic, voices overlapping in terror as every soldier felt the moment their strongest pillar vanished.
Lieutenants shouted orders.
Legion Commanders tried to seize control.
But Leo did not grant them even a heartbeat of recovery.
His aura suppressed them, yes... but it was his daggers that delivered ruin.
*Slash*
A crescent blade of condensed force ripped upward, cleaving straight through a destroyer’s hull as though it were made of cloth.
*Slash*
Another dagger arc flew across the sky, splitting two carriers in half, their engines detonating as burning debris rained across the battlefield.
*Slash*
*Slash*
*Slash*
A rapid series of flicks shredded an entire squadron at once, as ten ships ruptured in synchronized explosions, their metal frames disintegrating into molten fragments.
*KABOOM*
Without their Monarch, the fleets unraveled almost instantly.
Formations broke.
Cohesion vanished.
While fear drowned every remaining command structure, as Leo moved through that chaos like a living executioner.
He pierced one cruiser after another, slashing through reinforced armor as if it were foam, killing a million soldiers every five to ten minutes with terrifying consistency, as his killing intent sharpened with every life extinguished beneath him.
It took him roughly another couple hours to completely wipe off the fleet that Leslie arrived to contain him with, however, once he was done defeating them, there was no resistance worth mentioning left on Omega.
Every battalion that he encountered from that fight onwards fell in under two minutes.
Every fortress he descended upon collapsed in under five, as Omega itself seemed to devolve into a landscape of broken bones, melted steel and drifting ash.
The mighty equatorial band that once represented Omega’s military pride gradually thinned under his assault, base by base, fleet by fleet, until the entire planetary defense line resembled nothing more than a ruptured spine broken along its length.
What began as organized resistance soon became scattered pockets of panic.
Then scattered pockets of corpses.
And eventually, not even that.
So by the time the thirty two hour mark quietly arrived, there was nothing left on Omega that could still call itself an army.
The world had been emptied, and the only thing that surrounded Leo was a horizon of wreckage and drifting smoke.
"Alright. I feel like that’s enough.... But what does the manual say? How much progress have I really made?"
He wondered, as he lifted the [Emperor Suppression Manual], and watched the progress numbers update themselves.
[Progress: 1,032,200,040 / 2,000,000,000]
The book displayed, as with a small nod he closed the book.
*Thud*
"I’ve crossed the 50% mark...."
He mused, as his kill count for Omega exceeded 600 million, which although was not a 100% of soldiers present on the planet, was still good enough for him to be satisfied and move on to the next planet.