Immortal Kingdoms

"Charge this bastard! What are you waiting for?!" A commanding officer yelled out as he brandished his saber and pushed through the array of soldiers.

The remaining soldiers snapped out of their momentary shock and shouted out their diverse battle cries, flooding Leonardo's immediate surroundings.

Leonardo was caught in the marvelous sense of satisfaction as four ephemeral wisps of blood danced within the confines of his invisible domain like threads of silk, fusing into his body the instant he killed the four soldiers. He assumed this was the necessary essence accumulated to cultivate his bloodthirsty intent, and this information instinctively transmitted to his mind.

He now understood the merit behind those bloody traditions Pandora spoke of when they discussed House Hestia by that beautiful lake.

Leonardo yanked the spear from the stacked soldiers and swept the shaft in a full circle, clearing the perimeter of his immediate surroundings, or rather further tarnishing it with the splatter of blood and gurgling noises of these throat-cut men.

Weapons dropped to the ground as one man after another clutched their slitted necks, tumbling into the blood of their fallen brethren. Leonardo knew better than to allow the formation to lock him in place as hundreds and thousands of desperate, suicidal maniacs rushed to the throes of death in hopes of anchoring him down into their graves.

For reasons unknown, Leonardo focused, instinctively wrestling out one spear at a time while overlooking the swords and sabers as he rushed the narrow cracks in the formations hampering his advances. Blood stained his face and once immaculate white robes, dying him an utter madman.

He got so accustomed to the cries and heinous shouts of people struggling with death, his mind began to automatically filter out these noises, all he could see was a bunch of savages screaming silently to his face and back while heads rolled down bodies embellished in lacerations blanketed the ravine in his wake.

The three saints watched with grave expressions as Leonardo befell their men in the dozens and seemingly without effort on his part. Pandora and Juvia were gobsmacked with how efficiently and without an ounce of hesitation or a margin of error Leonardo's close quarter combat disposed of one life after another.

This was no display of magic or overwhelming destructive force that a saint could unleash on large scales, this was but a brutal massacre with no more than the combat techniques they've trained in daily for the past three months of travel.

As for Aria, she sat on Leona's small head while stretching her paws to cover up the little girl's eyes. Of course, she was also obstructing the psychic waves from approaching the little girl, otherwise simply covering her eyes would have been pointless.

Leona could only cross her arms and pout in protest because she knew how intelligent the adorable little fox was, and she could feel the good intentions behind her actions.

Back on the battlefield, hundreds of thin ephemeral threads of blood swarmed across Leonardo's body. His now drenched robes were torn and tattered as they weighed down on his movement due to their viscous nature. His eyes gleamed a dangerous crimson as his blood boiled over and overclocked his heart with every thumping pulse. At some point in time, all Leonardo could see was a bleak red and bodies attached to mismatched limbs.

The heavy blood on his clothes and in the ground mired down his speed to a point where he got locked in place for the briefest of moments enough for a platoon of soldiers to swarm him like locusts. With a fierce roar, Leonardo punctured through seven men with the stab of a spear, but the force was so great the shaft snapped apart in his grasp.

He immediately gave up the weapon, driving his elbow into a would be sneak attacker before twisting his waist enough to face the concussed soul, his fist running through the man's plate armor and chest, dark gray and red threads intertwined along his palm and forearm when he crushed the man's heart.

A flash of desolation washed over Leonardo's eyes, and a glimmer of anticipation welled up within Aria's.

The next moment, Leonardo drew his hand back from the man's chest, a dense collection of crimson gray essence energy swirling within his hand. Instinctively, he motioned with his empty hand as though he smashed down with some heavy polearm, but that illusion didn't live long as a woeful weapon of mass destruction snapped into existence.

The entire bloodthirsty domain contracted like the snap of a shutter, condensing into the shape of a two meter long halberd crowned by dual edged serrated blades radiating a sense of death and ruin.

An elastic crimson shaft stretched from the crown and into Leonardo's fair, bloodied hand, and a twisted spear tip emerged from between the symmetrical semicircular blades of the halberd.

The bloodthirsty domain shrunk to engulf the halberd so much that the crowds of suicidal soldiers were spared the despair its aura entailed. However, that didn't last long as runic scripts of a language long forgotten jutted out over the surface of the weapon, etched in a deep dull gray that didn't taint the crimson beauty but further enhanced it.

All of this took place within the split second of Leonardo's motion from clenching his empty fist and smashing down into the bloody soil at his feet.

BOOM!

The halberd struck a deep crevice into the ground, a bloodthirsty domain intermingled by desolation exploded outwards, death washing over the soldiers in the thousands as what they've experienced was no mere illusion of their souls waning and their bodies going decrepit, but a hard reality.

They gasped in horror as their internal energies went still within the confines of their mortal vessels, the mere fact they couldn't project their energy outward being the sole reason they couldn't prevent the damnable essence of desolation from infiltrating their systems.

What was a sure kill encirclement flipped into a one way ticket to the underworld. The desolate domain pulsed out once before it crumbled under the suppression of Arcadia's natural laws, catching Leonardo by surprise, but he quickly understood.

His desolate intent and the essence of planet Arcadia were two opposing poles, the only way for one to exist is by utterly demolishing the other. However, that single pulse of desolation swept the battlefield only once, and the erosion struck like cancer, snuffing out every trace of energy within the ranks of the opposing armies.

Within moments, an unnatural silence enveloped the ravine as thousands of soldiers far and near dropped dead, their eyes betrayed their confusion. Although the desolate domain crumbled to bits, the bloodthirsty domain was still in full structure, galvanizing the thousands of ephemeral blood threads from the deceased and molding them into Leonardo's bloodthirsty armament.

Leonardo stared foolishly at the sea of corpses littering the ground, the majority of them died without the trace of a wound or blemish on their bodies. Not only Leonardo, even the saints be it his allies or not, they simply gaped in shock.

Pandora couldn't believe her eyes. Only now did she believe what Leonardo said when he mentioned how his martial intent is a natural nemesis to Arcadia, and that was putting it humbly.

That was practically the nemesis to all life. She couldn't help but side eye Juvia, who gained the death essence of Leonardo's martial intent.

Juvia wasn't faring better, she couldn't believe her eyes either.

As for Aria, her little heart went into overdrive with jealousy when she thought about how lucky her daughter was to get her hands on such an overbearing martial intent practically for free.

Only when Leonardo brandished his long halberd and slanted it across his shoulder, taking one steady step at a time in the direction of the three saints, did everyone snap back to their senses.

Leonardo's figure blurred, crossing a distance over a kilometer to arrive about a hundred meters away from the three saints in their post-shock state, scaring the living daylights out of them as they observed those scarlet eyes trained on their bodies.

"Gentlemen… I haven't kept you waiting for long, have I?" Leonardo asked in a flat tone reflective of his flat smile.

Two of them gulped nervously whilst the third took a step back involuntarily.

Their first thought was; this was no human being.

Their second thought was; escape.

Their third and last thought was; I can't move…

Having assumed the trio were frozen stiff from shock and fear, which couldn't have been further from the truth, Leonardo took advantage of what he deemed a chance and swung his halberd without hesitation.

Heads rolled, and three saints lay strewn across the ground, their eyes betraying their helpless confusion.

Leonardo sighed, falling to one knee, and began to vomit in disgust from the stench of blood as the crimson glimmer faded from his eyes and a lifeless swarm of midnight darkness consumed them.

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