Chapter 86: Chapter 86: Eclipse
The upward path of violet light climbed in a long, straight incline across the dark metal plain.
Leon followed it without deviation. Behind him the ruined authority fortress continued its quiet collapse, lights dying section by section. Ahead, the primary gate nexus of Floor 9 rose like a black needle against the starless sky—taller than any structure he had seen on this layer, its surface covered in dense, moving circuits that flowed in constant vertical rivers of silver and white.
The new weight of his class settled deeper with every step.
Eclipse Presence required no conscious effort. The Aura of the End-Game now hung around him as a natural condition of his existence rather than a projected skill. Circuits in the metal plain dulled permanently as he passed. Residual energy fields simply ceased. Even the violet walls of the transit path flickered at the edges where his presence brushed them, the structured light eroding under the constant, passive pressure of Ashen Eclipse.
He did not suppress it.
The floor needed to understand what had changed.
Halfway to the nexus, the path’s protective barriers intensified. Geometric warning sigils formed in the air ahead, rotating in complex layers. A deep system tone rolled across the plain—an automated challenge protocol triggered by an unregistered high-tier signature approaching the primary gate.
Leon walked through the sigils without slowing. They blackened and collapsed into drifting ash the moment they entered his radius.
The response came immediately.
From recessed bays along both sides of the path, heavy constructs rose in coordinated sequence—twenty units of a denser design than the earlier enforcement models, their frames reinforced with additional plating and their sensor bands glowing a hard, focused white. Behind them, four floating artillery platforms lifted into the air, weapon arrays already charging.
They opened fire the moment they reached full deployment.
A storm of silver beams and concentrated pulse lances converged on his position. Leon continued walking. The attacks entered the radius of Eclipse Presence and lost structure almost at once, unraveling into harmless motes of fading light. The few beams dense enough to retain coherence scored only brief, shallow lines across the outer plates of the Void Monarch Set before the ash-gray undertone of his new class erased the residual energy.
The constructs adjusted, spreading into a wider formation and switching to synchronized barrage patterns. The floating platforms climbed higher, attempting to strike from angles outside the core of his domain.
Leon raised one hand.
Ashen Tide.
The evolved skill answered with greater density than the old Calamity Tide. A wide wave of dark violet fire laced with drifting gray ash swept outward along the path. It did not simply burn. It unmade. The front ranks of constructs lost cohesion as the tide passed through them—plates blackening, internal systems failing in cascading sequence, frames collapsing into heaps of inert metal and fine ash. The wave continued onward, reaching the nearer floating platforms and stripping their barrier fields before the units could reposition.
The surviving constructs tried to close into melee.
Leon met them directly.
The Abyssal Stinger moved with the same economy as before, but every cut now carried the deeper weight of Absolute Eclipse. Where the blade pierced, the effect spread farther and faster. Necrotic Injection no longer simply shut systems down; it accelerated the collapse of the surrounding structure. Constructs fell in rapid succession, their frames crumbling even after the dagger had already moved on.
When the last unit collapsed, the path was littered with broken metal and settling ash.
Leon continued upward without looking back.
The gate nexus grew until it dominated the sky ahead. Its base was a massive hexagonal platform of layered black alloy, surrounded by multiple rings of orbiting barrier nodes. The primary gate itself stood at the center—an enormous vertical frame of pure black metal filled with deep, stable violet light that rose more than fifty meters high. This was no ordinary transit portal. It was a controlled nexus linking multiple sectors of Floor 9 and the pathways leading higher into the Obsidian Firmament.
As Leon stepped onto the outer edge of the hexagonal platform, the orbiting barrier nodes accelerated and aligned into a dense defensive lattice. A single, concentrated authority signature ignited near the base of the gate frame—heavier and cleaner than the sector authority he had already erased.
The true gate guardian of this nexus had activated.
Leon stopped a short distance from the lattice and let Eclipse Presence press outward.
The nearest barrier nodes dimmed. Silver light developed spreading patches of gray. The lattice held, but the strain was visible.
He opened his status once, confirming the new baseline.
[STATUS MENU]
Name: Leon Graves
Class: Finality Sovereign – Ashen Eclipse (Rank: SSS)
Level: 50
Health: 21,600 / 21,600
Mana: 13,150 / 13,150
[ATTRIBUTES]
Strength: 782
Agility: 561
Constitution: 794
Mana: 698
Perception: 156
Everything remained stable after the recent engagement. He closed the panel.
The gate guardian fully manifested.
It rose from a recessed platform at the foot of the gate—a towering frame nearly twelve meters tall, built from the same refined black alloy as the nexus itself. Its design was more elegant than the previous authority construct, the plates fitting with seamless precision, the sensor crest a tall, branching structure of pure white light. Both arms ended in heavy, adaptive weapon arrays that shifted configuration even as the unit settled into a combat stance.
No challenge was issued.
The guardian simply opened fire.
Leon walked forward into the barrage.
The fight for the primary gate of Floor 9 had begun.
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