My Charity System made me too OP

The moment Kaelith's halberd met Leon's blade, the world cracked.

It wasn't the sound of metal—it was the rupture of two entire tempos colliding, each refusing to yield.

Fracture Requiem tried to seize the moment, to split it into jagged shards where one strike became ten, where parry and counterattack blurred into paradox. But Kaelith's anchored rhythm fought back—each beat of his halberd's pulse welding the broken seconds back together just long enough for him to exist in them.

Sparks didn't just fly—they hung in the air like glowing snow, refusing to fall until Leon let them. The pressure was so intense that the fortress walls warped, their stone twisting into spirals before snapping back.

Leon's eyes narrowed.The Fifth Pulse writhed through him, unstable, ravenous—it wanted to devour Kaelith's rhythm entirely, erase it from the battlefield. But Leon chose restraint, redirecting the pulse into calculated slashes that forced Kaelith into narrower footing.

Kaelith bared his teeth.

"You think you can box me in with your cursed tempo?"

The warlord drove the haft of his halberd into the ground with enough force to split the earth, and the shockwave carried his rhythm outward. Every soldier in earshot—friend or foe—found their heartbeat syncing to his war-drum. The ground itself seemed to stomp in time.

Leon felt the Requiem resist. It wasn't just Kaelith now—it was an entire army's unified tempo pushing against his fractured reality.

For the first time, the Fifth Pulse faltered.

And Kaelith struck—A downward arc that carried the weight of hundreds of warriors' will, aimed straight at Leon's heart.

The halberd's descent was like a guillotine wrapped in the will of a thousand marches—unyielding, absolute.

Leon's instincts screamed to unleash the Fifth Pulse fully—to let Fracture Requiem erupt in a storm of ruptured timelines and shredded cause-and-effect. If he did, Kaelith's rhythm would be consumed in an instant… but so would everything within reach, including Leon's own pulse stability.

Instead, Leon tightened his grip.

His Shell Reverb flared—not wild, but deliberate. Absolute Return layered over Tripart Echo, looping the incoming tempo back on itself. Each beat of Kaelith's war-drum was sent back into him threefold, like a tide reversing mid-crash.

The halberd struck—

And the moment it connected, the world stuttered.

One strike became three.

Three became nine.

Nine became… nothing.

Kaelith's blow landed, but only in a reality Leon allowed to exist for a heartbeat before erasing it.

The warlord staggered, eyes widening.

"You—"

Leon didn't let him finish. The Fifth Pulse flared inside Kaelith's own rhythm, shattering its structure like glass. The army's heartbeat faltered. The war-drum silence was deafening.

Leon's voice was low, steady.

"This is my tempo now."

And with that, he stepped forward—one clean motion, one singular cut—so precise it carried every fractured second that had been denied to Kaelith… all collapsing on him at once.

The fortress shook. The air screamed. Kaelith's rhythm was gone.

Kaelith staggered but did not fall.

The halberd's blade, still glowing with embers of his shattered tempo, trembled in his grip. His breathing was ragged now—not from fear, but from the shock of having the battlefield taken from him.

And then… the warlord laughed.

It was low at first, but it rose—raw, unrefined, like steel dragged across stone.

"So… that's how you want it."

He tossed the halberd's shaft against the stone with a heavy clang. The weapon didn't fall—it stayed upright, wedged in the cracked floor like an anchor. Kaelith's gauntleted hands went to his own chest, and with a vicious wrench, he tore free the chains of the ceremonial war-banner strapped to his back.

The banner fell. The air shifted.

Without the tempo of the army's war-drum, Kaelith's aura changed—no longer the calculated, disciplined pulse of a commander, but something far older. This was not the Warlord of Upper Thrones. This was the chieftain of the burning plains, the lone hunter who had survived storms and starved winters long before armies marched at his command.

He came at Leon bare-handed.

Each step was a quake. Not technique—just raw force, muscle and instinct honed for killing without rules. The first swing was a backhand that would have pulped stone. Leon pivoted, Absolute Return folding the force back into Kaelith's ribs—

But the warlord absorbed it, grunting, taking the hit like an animal taking a spear and refusing to die.

Then came the knee strike—

The elbow—

A headbutt that sent a crack racing through Leon's shell armor.

No rhythm. No predictable beat. Just violence in its purest, most chaotic form.

Leon's pulse discipline screamed at him—his techniques were made to manipulate tempo, but Kaelith had abandoned tempo entirely.

The warlord's voice came between blows, ragged but burning with will.

"Strip away the drums, the banners, the rank—"

"—and you'll still find me standing."

Leon blocked another strike, but the force still drove him back half a step.

And for the first time in this duel… Leon realized Kaelith was not trying to win.

He was trying to see if Leon could kill a man who refused to march to any beat but his own.

Kaelith lunged again, this time with no wind-up, no tell—just a blur of muscle and fury.

Leon's instincts screamed. His Shell Reverb couldn't predict an attack with no rhythm, no anchor point. He shifted into Tripart Echo, layering three defensive returns in quick succession—

The first redirected Kaelith's right cross.

The second turned the knee strike aside.

The third—

Failed.

Kaelith slammed his forehead into Leon's faceplate.

The impact rang through his skull like a bell struck too close. His vision shuddered. Blood rushed in his ears.

Leon staggered, but Kaelith didn't relent—his left hand clamped onto Leon's shoulder plate, dragging him forward as the warlord's right fist drove like a hammer into Leon's stomach. The armor caught most of it—most—but Leon still felt the shockwave hammer his ribs.

Leon tried to reestablish the beat, to force Kaelith back into something measurable, but every time he moved, Kaelith was already there—cutting him off, breaking his flow.

"You fight like the sky—" Kaelith snarled between strikes, his voice raw. "—but I fight like the earth. You can shake me… but you will never move me."

Another blow came—Leon caught it, twisted—Absolute Return!

Kaelith didn't dodge. He took the return, let it break the bone in his arm, and used the recoil to headbutt Leon again.

Leon's Shell Armor cracked at the brow.

The warlord's own forehead split, blood running down into his eyes—but he kept moving, kept pushing.

They were no longer two warriors in a measured duel.

They were animals locked in a cage, trying to see whose body would give out first.

Leon's hands curled into fists. No Shell Pulse. No Karmic Loop. Just raw, unfiltered strikes.

The first hit caught Kaelith across the jaw.

The second slammed into his ribs.

The third drove into his throat—Kaelith choked but grinned, spit blood, and swung back.

Every hit now was personal.

The Upper Thrones roared above, but their voices were fading beneath the sound of fists meeting flesh, of boots scraping against stone, of two men refusing to step away.

And Leon felt it—beneath the chaos, beneath the pain—Kaelith was forcing him somewhere.

Somewhere beyond the Shell Reverb.

Somewhere where he fought not as a conductor… but as a survivor.