My Charity System made me too OP

Enraged, Seraphthorn screamed, shedding its wings like burning feathers. It compressed into a spear of pure voidlight and launched at Leon.

Leon planted his feet.

His left hand pulsed with Destruction, right with Aether Blood, and his spine sang with Gold Magic.

"Come," he whispered.

At the moment of impact—

He thrust his staff forward and detonated his tri-core magic, channeling the destructive harmony through Karmic Loop and rebounding it through Shell Reverb into a single counterpulse:

True Shell Pulse — Heaven-Breaker Echo.

The sky cracked.

The light vanished.

Seraphthorn fragmented mid-flight, erupting into glimmering motes and sighing, "…thank you…", before vanishing entirely.

Leon collapsed to one knee, panting, smoke rising from his arms. His body glowed faintly from the strain of his magic overload.

[Victory: Challenger Leon. Rank 11 Defeated.]

[Shell Pulse Mastery: 92% → 94%]

[Core Synergy Refined.]

A memory sigil branded into the ground—this one brighter than the last.

You have faced the light that devours and returned as one who kindles.

Leon stood, blood trailing from his lips.

"I'm still here."

He turned his eyes toward the path ahead.

Rank 10 — The Eternal Mendax

The arena reassembled itself again—but not in stone or obsidian.

It folded into a marble-floored cathedral under a sky of shifting colors. Floating spires turned in slow rhythm around a vast throne. Mirrors framed every pillar, every step, every breath. Reflections spun infinitely, showing Leon—past versions, future echoes, dying silhouettes, triumphant ones.

A lone figure sat upon the throne, legs crossed, dressed in a suit of seamless silver. No armor, no weapons.

Just a smile.

A perfect, infuriating smile.

"Leon," the figure said, voice like velvet wrapped in daggers. "Welcome. I am the Eternal Mendax. Truth is your weapon. And I—" he stood, spreading arms wide, "—am immune to it."

The announcement boomed from nowhere:

[Begin Trial: Deceiver of a Thousand Realms]

Leon moved first.

A golden spear of Shell Pulse-fused magic flashed across the space, aiming to end the fight early.

It struck.

Shattered the Mendax's chest.

And then…

It shattered Leon.

Blood sprayed from Leon's torso. His body screamed. His attack had rebounded—perfectly. It wasn't a reflection.

It was a rewrite.

Mendax had made Leon believe he attacked—but he'd truly attacked himself.

Leon gasped, reeling. "What…"

"Every truth you declare fuels me," Mendax said calmly. "I borrow your intentions. Twist your instincts. The more you know yourself, the more I can wear you."

Leon narrowed his eyes.

Shell Reverb couldn't read this opponent—because every rhythm was inverted. Nothing moved in time. Every echo was falsified.

Even reality.

He tried again—slowly, cautiously using Shell Pulse: Absolute Return to analyze the last second… but even his memories looped wrong. The Mirror Cathedral was distorting his soul-tether.

Leon altered tactics.

He stopped speaking.

Stopped thinking forward.

He allowed Karmic Loop to guide him based on pure intentionless momentum.

For the first time in combat, he didn't predict or retaliate—he simply moved like water, like breath.

He took hits—some illusions, some real—but used Shell Reverb not to remember, but to create new definitions of truth within his motion.

Slowly, his staff began to hum with alternate rhythms. Not reactions—fabrications.

He made up an echo that had never occurred.

And it hit.

Mendax reeled as a phantom blast tore through his shoulder.

He grinned.

"Lying back, are we? Delicious. But not enough."

The cathedral shimmered, revealing the truth.

The throne was never real.

The sky wasn't sky, but the back of Mendax's skull—the entire arena had been his mind.

Leon was fighting inside a lie.

He had to escape belief itself.

So he made one final move.

He crushed his own core momentarily, disassembling Destruction, Aether Blood, and Gold Magic, feeding the raw streams into his staff without form or concept.

He forged a new spell not based on control—but denial.

A spell with no element. No intent. Just a nullifying paradox.

He called it:

Origin Pulse: Liebreaker.

And he cast it.

The spell hit Mendax not as damage—but as an undoing.

Every lie that built his existence crumbled.

Every illusion shattered.

The cathedral imploded into infinite shards of false memories.

Mendax looked at Leon with a faint smile, now flickering.

"Your truth… was to forget yourself."

He dissolved.

[Victory: Challenger Leon. Rank 10 Defeated.]

[Shell Pulse Mastery: 94% → 95%]

Roselia, watching from the scrying crystal in the waiting vault, whispered, "He's bleeding from the soul…"

Roman crossed his arms, tension still thick in his shoulders. "And yet… he still moves."

Leon stood, swaying but upright.

He looked up as the floor reformed into an ascension ring.

Only nine challengers remained.

Each one closer to Aeon Seraph of the Depths.

The arena opened not to a structure, but to a graveyard beneath a sky frozen in dusk. Towering spires of bleached bone spiraled from the ground like jagged monuments, and the clouds above hung motionless, refusing to move.

A wind blew — but only backward.

Leon stepped onto the pale arena floor, and the ground beneath his feet cracked, not outward, but inward, like the earth itself was recoiling from him.

Across from him, the next challenger stood silently. It wasn't massive like Kragg or warped like Mendax.

It was still.

Ancient.

A skeletal giant in black ceremonial wrappings, half of its face missing, with glassy time-runes embedded in its ribs and spine.

Name: Zoth-Urran, Warden of Yesterday

Title: Guardian of the Lost Epoch

[Begin Trial: The Immutable Anchor]

Leon made the first move again — a strike with compressed Shell Reverb energy aimed at the Warden's skull.

Zoth-Urran didn't dodge.

The moment Leon's attack landed, time reversed for a flicker, and the attack never happened.

The bones reassembled. The air unwound.

Leon froze.

"His time anchor..." he realized, "...is set one second in the past."

Zoth-Urran raised one skeletal hand, and the entire graveyard shifted. Bones bent into a ritual circle around Leon, and the sky cracked like ice.

Then—

The arena turned into a loop.

Leon blinked — and realized the last five seconds had happened three times already.

Zoth-Urran wasn't just reversing time — he was building momentum with it.

Each reversal added more force, more memory, more inevitability.

Leon clenched his jaw. "No choice…"