Chapter 75: The Grave-Titan, Ozymandias (2)

"It’s charging a sector-wipe attack immediately upon spawning," Leon stated, his tactical mind racing through defensive calculations. "It doesn’t care about a drawn-out fight. It knows we are a threat, and it wants to erase us before we can establish a foothold. I cannot afford to let you dictate the pace of this battle, Titan."

Leon looked up at the rapidly expanding black sphere. The gravitational pull of the charging attack was already beginning to rip the topsoil from the Gravesite Plain, loose stones and broken headstones drifting upward and disintegrating at the sphere’s edge.

"Auris!" Leon yelled over the roaring winds. "Get me up there! We cannot let it release that sphere!"

The Glacial Sovereign roared, launching himself toward the towering Titan. The aerial dogfight was spectacular and terrifying. Auris rapidly gained altitude, his Void-Piercer Wings cutting through the intense gravitational pressure radiating from the charging Titan.

Ozymandias tracked the dragon’s ascent with its burning red eyes. The Titan realized the Vanguard was closing the distance. It didn’t release the massive sphere yet; instead, it raised its free left hand. The ambient void mist coalesced around its petrified fingers, forming massive, secondary spears of condensed void energy.

"Incoming artillery," Leon warned, his grip tightening on his greatsword as he rode the dragon’s back.

The Titan hurled three consecutive spears, each one the size of a redwood tree, cutting through the air with supersonic speed.

"Evasive maneuvers!" Leon commanded through the soul-bond.

Auris didn’t attempt to outpace the projectiles in a straight line. The dragon folded his right wing, entering a violent, lateral barrel roll. The first spear clipped the outer edge of his Glacial Aegis, the sheer kinetic friction generating a shockwave of displaced air that threatened to tear Leon from the saddle. Leon anchored his grip, channeling mana into his boots to lock himself against the sapphire scales.

The second and third spears whizzed past them, impacting the distant ground and detonating with the force of heavy ordnance, sending plumes of gray dirt hundreds of feet into the air.

"Retaliate!" Leon ordered, calculating the Titan’s recovery time from the throwing animation. "Target the joints in its left shoulder! Freeze the bone and restrict its throwing arm so it can’t swat us out of the sky!"

Auris banked sharply, breaking out of the barrel roll and aligning himself perfectly with the Titan’s massive shoulder. The dragon opened his jaws, retaliating with a sustained strafing run of Absolute Zero Breath.

The apocalyptic beam of cyan frost washed over the Titan’s shoulder joint, freezing massive sections of the petrified bone armor. The temperature drop was so severe that the ambient void magic surrounding the Titan began to visibly crystallize and shatter.

"It’s working, but it’s not enough," Leon analyzed rapidly.

The Titan flexed its frozen shoulder. The sheer mechanical force of the Level 95 Boss, combined with its Colossal Density, sent massive fissures tearing through the absolute zero ice. The petrified bone groaned but did not break.

"Freezing a hundred-foot colossus isn’t going to kill it," Leon stated, realizing that a battle of attrition against a boss of this scale was mathematical suicide. "I acknowledge your durability, Titan. But armor is meaningless if the pilot is dead. We need to pierce the brain casing and sever the neural link to that Void-Storm Core before it finishes charging that sphere."

As Auris swooped dangerously close to the Titan’s massive shoulder, dodging another sweeping swipe of its rapidly thawing free hand, Leon made his move.

"I’m going in," Leon said, his voice completely devoid of fear. "Keep it distracted! Draw its line of sight!"

"Storm-Strider!"

Leon vaulted off the dragon’s back. He didn’t just jump; he actively utilized the B-Rank wind manipulation talent, compressing a highly pressurized pocket of air beneath his boots. He triggered the release, launching himself directly into the air toward the colossal skull of the Grave-Titan, turning himself into a localized missile, the wind screaming past his ears as the ground below shrank into a blur.

Ozymandias saw him coming. The twin red suns in its eye sockets locked onto the Vanguard, recognizing the immediate, lethal threat hurtling toward its face. The Titan abruptly stopped channeling energy into the Absolute Annihilation sphere. It prioritized immediate defense, raising its massive left hand and attempting to swat the human out of the sky with the force of a falling mountain.

Leon watched the colossal hand closing in. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t attempt to use Abyssal Stride to teleport away; teleporting would kill his forward momentum and ruin his trajectory.

"You have mass, and you have power," Leon yelled over the roaring wind, his heterochromia flaring with absolute, terrifying intensity. "But you lack authority!"

"Sovereign’s Edict!" Leon roared, pouring the entirety of his soul, his immense Intelligence stat, and the 200% aura amplification into the tyrannical command.

"HALT!"

The A-Rank authority talent did not interact with the Titan’s physical mass; it struck the entity’s conceptual willpower. The sheer, overwhelming difference in raw stats, Leon’s Level 91 attributes heavily boosted by the Battlefield Realm, forced the Level 95 Titan to comply.

The colossal hand froze in mid-air, a mere ten feet from crushing Leon. The sheer kinetic momentum of the sudden, unnatural stop caused the Titan’s own petrified shoulder joint to crack audibly, unable to handle the immediate deceleration of its own mass.

Leon sailed past the paralyzed hand, his trajectory flawless, the enormous frozen fingers close enough that he could feel the residual cold radiating off them as he passed.

He landed squarely on the bridge of the Titan’s massive skeletal nose, his boots locking onto the porous, ancient bone.

He didn’t hesitate for a single microsecond. He gripped the Blade of the Dragon God with both hands. The ethereal golden flames erupted into a towering inferno of draconic power, casting a brilliant light against the dark, swirling void storms raging within the Titan’s chest below.

"Dimensional Severance!" Leon shouted, triggering the Diamond-Rank skill.

A/N: Thanks for reading, I would like to hear your thoughts on the story