Up until now, Weapon Fluidity had not really been that helpful to Leo in terms of battle. If anything, his Capricorn Branch was nearly useless, as it only helped him further unify with his Vestiges.

Then again, it had helped him battle Sigurd and the dormant creatures of Morva. But when it came to facing things much more supernatural and intense aside from martial arts, it was useless, forcing Leo to rely on his instincts here and there.

And now, his instincts were failing him as he gazed upon the two large dreadful eyeballs that stared upon the battlefield with no sign of emotion.

The eyes occasionally twitched slowly, causing Leo’s heart to race even more.

Suddenly, the expanse disappeared and the eyes were also gone. Pushing his mind out of the dreadful domain, Leo immediately stabilized himself into battling again while his mind reeled on what to do.

They couldn’t win this fight by just battling the goblins. His intuition told him the eyes also had something to do with the countless emergence of the goblins.

So if they wanted to win this fight, the owner of the eyes has to go.

But how? It was as if the owner was making himself invisible creating a distorted illusion in a perceptive illusion!

’I am going to run mad.’

Leo exhaled slowly through clenched teeth and forced himself to reject it, because thinking about madness while standing in the middle of a battlefield like this would only make things worse. Instead, he redirected everything into action, into movement, into control.

"Lucien," Leo called out while parrying a strike and stepping into a counter that dropped the attacker immediately. His voice was calm, but sharper than before. "The goblins are not the real problem. Something is controlling them from deeper in the forest."

Lucien did not look surprised, which was the first thing Leo noticed. Instead, he adjusted his stance slightly and responded in the same steady tone. "I suspected as much. Their coordination is too clean for instinct-based monsters."

Nightwalker, still carving through the heavier enemies at the front, overheard them and briefly glanced over his shoulder while splitting a goblin in half mid-motion. "So you finally noticed," he said casually, as if it was not a life-or-death situation at all. "Good. Then stop wasting time here."

As if responding to his words, the goblins around them suddenly changed behavior again. Their pressure increased. It became more focused, more directional, as if something had shifted its attention fully toward the group after realizing they were beginning to understand the structure of the fight. The weaker goblins stopped hesitating completely and started rushing in continuous waves, forcing the formation to tighten further.

Mira’s barriers flickered more frequently, appearing slightly offset before correcting themselves, while Gareth’s Aura threads strained as more students began to lose stamina under the constant pressure.

Leo could feel it too, not just through sight but through the constant mental pressure that kept trying to push images into his thoughts.

This time, however, he did not fully suppress it immediately.

Instead, he let a small portion of it touch his mind again through the Shell of Dread, just enough to trigger the reaction he had noticed earlier. The moment the influence made contact, the armor responded, and the distortions appeared again, clearer than before. This time Leo did not look away. He followed them, tracing the invisible pressure lines as they stretched deeper into the forest beyond the goblin wave.

"There," he muttered under his breath.

Lucien glanced at him. "You see it?"

"I can follow it," Leo replied. "It’s not stable. It reacts when I push back."

Nightwalker cut through another cluster of goblins and shifted closer while listening. "Then push harder."

Leo did not answer immediately, but his expression changed slightly as he understood what that meant. If the influence reacted to resistance, then the battlefield itself could be used as a signal. Not by brute force alone, but by controlled rejection. The Shell of Dread was already doing part of it automatically, but now he needed to guide it.

He slowly adjusted his Aura flow, increasing the intensity of the Minor Remnant of Dread in controlled bursts rather than letting it spread evenly. The goblins nearest him hesitated for half a second longer than before, and the distortions in his perception sharpened again, forming a faint directional path that cut through the chaos of the battlefield.

It was not a full image yet, but it was enough.

Lucien stepped in beside him without needing explanation and cleared a path through a sudden rush of goblins, while Nightwalker shifted forward like a moving wall, forcing the heavier enemies to split apart.

Leo stared into the distortion and took a single step forward.

"We move," he said simply as they left the remaining students to deal with the goblins.

As they walked deeper into the forest, the distortion got stronger and it was clearly starting to affect even Nightwalker at a large rate too.

Leo frowned. He still doesn’t know what rank or what ability the silver haired man was since they weren’t called the Seven Radiant Blades yet in this timeline but he was still strong enough to battle a horde of endless goblins.

What exactly was he against a creature whose ability was related to distortions?

Speaking of distortion, Leo turned to Nightwalker and asked while still leading the way.

"I’m guessing this might be one of the Eldrath Executors sent to kill you and your team. Can you face them?"

Nightwalker didn’t reply immediately. He then finally sighed and said:

"Yes, I can. I didn’t complete my third rite for nothing. It’s just I’ll need both of you to leave immediately I’m ready to use my ability."

Leo frowned but only nodded and didn’t press further.

Leo kept walking deeper into the forest, following the distortion that only became clearer the further they went. The goblins behind them were still fighting, but it was obvious now that they were not the real source of the problem.

The trees in front of them started to feel wrong. They were not broken neither were they damaged, just inconsistent, like they changed slightly every time Leo looked at them. Shadows did not match properly, and the space between the trees felt uneven. Lucien noticed it too, his calm expression tightening.

Between two trees ahead, space looked like it was slightly folded inward. At first it looked empty, but when Leo focused, two large eyes slowly formed inside that distortion. They were not attached to a body. They just existed there, watching. Around them, smaller eyes appeared and disappeared in random places, as if the main ones could not stay fully stable in one form.

The moment Leo looked directly at it, a heavy pressure hit his mind again. This time it was stronger, forcing him to see brief flashes that did not belong to reality. His body reacted instantly, and the Shell of Dread suppressed it before it could take hold, breaking the influence cleanly.

Lucien stepped forward slightly. "That’s it," he said quietly.

Nightwalker’s expression also changed as he stared at it. "So this is the one controlling everything."

Leo tightened his grip on his weapon. "That is not it. It has a physical body."

Lucien and Nightwalker didn’t argue.

The eyes twitched slightly, and the pressure in the air grew stronger, like it had acknowledged them. Nightwalker stepped forward without hesitation, raising his sword.

"Then we find its real body and end it," he said simply.

And the battle behind them continued, but all attention was now locked onto the thing watching them from the distortion.

The moment Nightwalker said that, the distortion around the eyes shifted again. The space between the trees bent more sharply, like something unseen was reacting to their presence.

Leo did not waste that opening. He stepped forward slightly, keeping his eyes locked on the floating eyes. "It reacts to awareness," he said. "The moment we see it clearly, it tries to hide again or change position."

Lucien narrowed his eyes. "So it avoids direct observation."

Nightwalker rotated his sword once, as if confirming something in his mind. "Then we do not look at it directly. We break the space around it."

The words sounded simple, but Leo immediately understood what he meant. Nightwalker was not talking about attacking the eyes themselves. He was talking about forcing the hidden body behind the distortion to reveal itself by destabilizing the space it was using. If the eyes were not fully physical, then their presence depended on maintaining perception control. Disrupting that control could force a collapse.

What they need now was a plan. They were only three with just one Upper Rank and two Capricorns. The battle was going to be a dire one.

Leo tightened his grip, eyes locked forward, ready to move the moment Nightwalker gave the signal.

Together, the three of them rushed towards the distortion like crazed beings.