Leon's eyes twitched frantically and his poor self fell back, perhaps in an attempt to wake up from a nightmare, as the monster before him looked at him curiously, its yellow eyes reflecting the soul of a soon-to-be broken hero.
"Wh-What... What..."
"Hm?... Curious, it's too early for you to be afraid of us. Take a breath and calm down."
Leon took a step back, feeling a shiver across his back.
"How do you plan to reach me if you keep walking away? You wanted to play the hero, so I'm just giving you a suitable opponent. Let's play."
He took a step forward and spread his arms.
"Hello, Hero. We are the monster with the yellow eyes, and our name is... ◼◼◼◼◼"
A powerful wave of energy emanated from his body, spreading across the plain.
Leon felt his body burning and freezing to the extreme, several times in the blink of a second and instinctively dropped his sword... Or so he thought.
"....?"
He tried to move his body, to move backward, but nothing happened. He realized he could no longer control his body.
"A hero needs a sword to be glorious."
Dora clenched his fist in front of his face and Leon found himself in a bubble with his sword.
The bubble gradually narrowed, compressing Leon and his sword against each other. Imperceptible screams vibrated the bubble, the walls of which had become black again and soon the bubble was less than a meter in diameter.
"What a beautiful work of art... But you can't die yet."
He snapped his finger and the bubble exploded, scattering pieces of the sword everywhere.
In this mess, Leon was kneeling, bleeding from several places on his body, and holding his ear, bleeding profusely.
"You can fight without a sword right?"
Leon offered him a death stare, a burning rage growing in his chest.
"It won't matter anyway, we need you to be tough enough for our experiments. Let's see."
The system screen reappeared in front of him, but very different from usual, this time it glowed yellow, but still invisible to Leon.
"Look at all these skills, these stats, it's the result of our greed, our thirst for more... Please, hero, don't break until we've tried them all."
"... Ngh... You... Son of a-AAAARRRH!!!!"
His body burst into purple flames. He fell to the ground and turned to put out the fire, which disappeared but remained on each of his wounds.
"Don't scream too much, it's the best we can do to stop the bleeding, we don't want to waste energy if it's unnecessary."
He pointed his index finger at Leon and a black ray pierced the latter in the shoulder, then another in the knee.
"We have to thank you somehow, everything is only possible because you challenged us." As he spoke, he continued to use all the skills on the screen randomly.
"You see we can only manifest when we use polymerization, let's think of it as a package or as a treasure. One is the chest, the other is gold, the other is the map and together we're a treasure hunt... However, we had to put our souls on the line to reach the superuser of the system, but it was for... Heal."
A warm light enveloped Leon who was reduced to a bloody mass of burning flesh and put him in one piece again, but almost naked.
Dora walked over to him annoyed and leaned down to his ear.
"Looks like that's how far you can go, it's disappointing, but more healing will put us back to sleep again, can you believe this is our most exhausting skill? But look at you, this recovery is clearly on another level."
Leon was trembling all over, a million thoughts were mixing in his brain and preventing him from having a clear idea.
He was angry, he was afraid, he was disappointed, he was humiliated. He gritted his teeth and, without looking up, shouted with all his might.
"This is what you want?! This is the kind of monster you all want to follow?! Look at him, for God's sake!!! This is the one you want to look up to as a role model??! "
He was breathing heavily, defeated, he felt the power in his arms weakening, but he was slightly relieved. In the end, he delivered this golden message.
"Hm... Interesting. So that's what you were after all this time. You wanted us to slaughter you so that we would look like a horrible monster in front of the others. Clever, very clever. No matter the cause, a sane human with nothing to lose would never follow a demon, so your only hope of keeping your team is to demonize us. Very smart! What a great idea!"
He leaned closer, and Leon could almost feel his breath on his neck.
"But... We're millions of years ahead of you in terms of intelligence. Look at them."
Leon slowly turned his gaze towards his comrades and suddenly froze.
Throughout this fight, he was beaten, thrown, and lost focus on his surroundings, and when he finally looked around, nothing looked like what he expected.
The spectators were still, but not in shock, they were literally frozen in the air, the environment was gray and only a small perimeter inside which Leon and Dora were standing was colorful.
"H...Aah..."
"Consider this as an... "abstract reality". This skill consists of creating an illusion with all the elements in its domain. To put it simply, from their point of view, they will only see what we want to show them, and what we want them to hear. For example, if I want to show them an image of you insulting Marie..."
He turned towards them, and at the same moment, from their point of view, everyone saw an incredible scene.
Leon, slightly beaten, turned towards them, his head reddening with anger.
"Damn Marie! This only started because of you! YOU BITCH!!!!"
Marie looked at him in disbelief and slowly frowned.
"And there he goes, insulting again." Zuri sighed.
On his knee, Leon shivered, it was a disaster, it was impossible, but it was also just the beginning.
"Let's make it so you can see their reaction too, and at least hear the illusion."
His eyes glowed and the color around them returned to normal, the only change was the look of disdain in everyone's eyes.
"Dora, do you perhaps find pleasure in letting him insult us? Finish him!" Lilith shouted.
In response, Leon's illusion turned towards her.
"SHUT UP!!! You idiot, I only took you because I wanted to sleep with you, but you're too stupid!"
"... KILL HIM!!!"
Even Hope was looking away, his face full of disappointment, Kraim was leaning against a wall, enjoying the show and Erick was on his knees.
"...aah..." Leon fell on his knees.
"Isn't that amazing? They expected us to ruin you, but from their point of view, we only calmed down and deemed you unworthy, you attacked us while we turned our backs on you and we sent you fly with one kick. And now every 10 seconds you attack, get kicked, and insult one of them."
"... n.... no...."
"Heroes become stronger when encouraged? But you forgot the character development arc, you must eat the ground first."
"STOOOOP!!!!"
He got up and tried to run away, but right in front of them, Dora stomped on his head and crushed him to the ground.
"... A... Aah... aa... this... this... ish.... shomeone.... shomeone help.... meee...."
He struggled to raise his head, but the sighing of everyone else broke his spirit.
"Disgusting." Morgiana shook her head.
"You're... You're so horrible..." Liliana lowered her head.
Tears began to flow, his body was broken, his spirit was broken, and his dreams were shattered. It was too disastrous to be real, it had to be a nightmare.
"And you're never waking up."
Dora raised his hand and black spikes came out of Leon's body, hands and feet, planting themselves on the ground and forcing him to stand up.
Leon was crying openly, his tears melting with sweat and blood, his face was unrecognizable.
"You know, I didn't tell you earlier because I wanted to keep it as an asset but, I know you asked Erick and Sana to encourage you, but did you see that Sana didn't encourage you? Do you know why? Do you know how we know?"
".... I give up... I give up, please!"
Dora approached, drawing with his fingers on the spikes.
"She came to our room yesterday, apologized for everything, and asked us to come back with her. She even offered herself to us."
Leon, steam coming out of his mouth screamed with all his power.
"FUCK YOUUUUU!!!! FUCK YOOOUUUUU!!!!"
At this moment, something changed, the spikes disappeared, and Leon fell to his knee, crawled, and stared at Sana.
"I don't care!!! I don't care about you!!! You all can go to hell!!! You want to have her? I've already toyed with her! GO ahead... Take my leftovers!"
Sana flinched and looked stunned.
"W-what? Sh-shut up!"
"Look at her... she wants to play the nice girl... with everything you know in bed you call yourself a saint? Let me laugh! Haha...."
" Shut up!" She clasped her hands and threw him a small magic ball, Leon rolled to the ground with his eyes widening.
"Come on... ahead... I... her... mine..."
Dora slowly walked towards him.
"It was a lie, but we needed proper closure to make sure you lost everything. Now, hero, the illusion is over, our time is up too. You can now enjoy your audience."
He walked away past the others, Sana was crying profusely, and everyone looked at the broken hero with disdain and followed Dora, except for Sana, Hope, and Erick.
No one realized the massacre that had occurred, no one understood why the hero was on his back, muttering into space, and no one noticed the amber eyes that had turned red again.