My Charity System made me too OP-Chapter 422: Void Walker III

It was a test of identity.

Every slash asked one question:

Why did you stop being me?

Leon answered with a rising strike—imbued with Shell Pulse and his newly stabilized Echo Drive. The power wasn’t pure violence.

It was refined control.

The blow knocked his echo-self back.

But the Echo grinned—and roared forward again.

The floor trembled.

Obsidian chains erupted from the ground, dragging Leon into a simulation of the same arena he’d once faced in the Ants’ domain—Rank 51.

Blood. Fire. Dust.

And screams.

Voices of the weak, the enemies he’d cut down. Innocents caught in the crossfire.

"You won by losing yourself," the Echo said at last.

"You used everything. Became this. And then... you forgot me."

Leon’s voice was steady. "I didn’t forget."

He activated Karmic Loop, redirecting a burst strike with future intent, a new Shell Reverb application only he had refined. The blow didn’t kill the Echo.

It shattered his weapon.

And the battlefield stilled.

"I didn’t forget," Leon said again. "I just chose not to stay as you."

The Echo stared.

Then... slowly nodded.

"Then take it."

From his hand, the echo offered a pulse of molten light.

A fragment.

Of himself.

Leon stepped forward—and accepted it.

[Echo Synchronization Complete]

• Shell Reverb Mastery Increased: 96%

• Skill Unlocked: Shell Reverb: Bloodlink Pulse

Chain your Shell Pulse between allies once per floor. Damage, healing, or effect will spread to up to 3 connected allies.

• Trait Gained: Conquered Self – Immune to mental distortion from past floor echoes.

The echo faded—not in defeat.

But in peace.

As he vanished, he whispered, "Climb higher. Be better than we ever were."

Leon stood alone for a moment longer, then turned.

The floor shimmered—realigning.

And for the first time in a long while, there was no enemy waiting.

Just his team—back beside him, stepping out of a separate gate.

Kael blinked. "Where’d you go?"

Leon didn’t answer at first. Then:

"Had a chat with my past. He was pissed."

Aris smirked. "Sounds like most of us."

Naval smiled faintly. "You okay?"

Leon nodded. "Better than ever."

As the next gate opened, a warning blared across the interface—not with a voice, but in harsh red glyphs etched into the very fabric of the air:

WARNING: FLOOR 519 IS ATMOSPHERE-VOID

• No oxygen present

• Mana density: inert

• Duration limit: 7 minutes

• Equipment and systems must compensate for total vacuum

Proceed with extreme caution

Leon took a deep breath—then slipped on his helix-breather, a reinforced obsidian mask enhanced with the Shell-forged circuitry they’d salvaged from Floor 301. The others followed suit.

Milim grimaced as the final latch clicked onto her neckpiece. "Feels like we’re going into space."

Roselia’s face was calm but focused. "It’s worse than that. Magic won’t respond properly here."

"No mana?" Roman muttered. "Then what the hell’s alive down there?"

Leon said nothing.

He just stepped through the gate.

They emerged into a realm of metal and frost.

The floor beneath them was sheer alloy—white and blue, with circuit veins running like frozen lightning. Above them, the sky wasn’t black, but white. Blank. A dome of silence and void.

And across the field stood a massive, mechanical ruin—part cathedral, part data vault, cracked open and breathing vapor.

That was the most chilling part.

There was no atmosphere.

No air. No wind.

Yet the ruin was breathing—rising and falling in slow rhythm, like some colossal lung that had never stopped working.

Their HUDs lit up.

[Objective: Reach the Core of the Breathing Vault]

Time Remaining: 06:59

They moved.

No talking. Just gestures.

Leon led point, his step precise and deliberate. Aris covered the rear, her eyes scanning for threats. Naval and Kael moved in the center, while Roselia monitored the environment, trying to get anything from the silent mana net.

But it was dead.

Utterly and truly dead.

Until—

Screech.

Not a sound. A vibration in the bones.

Shapes peeled off the walls of the vault—metallic beings, humanoid in shape but twitching unnaturally, like corrupted simulations.

And then a single word appeared in their shared HUDs:

"Breathers."

They struck fast—warped constructs that didn’t obey momentum or gravity, slipping along vectors of corrupted data.

Leon ducked one’s swipe, turned on his heel, and used pure kinetic burst to launch a counterstrike.

No mana. No Shell Reverb.

Just technique.

Pure and practiced.

The others followed suit. Kael shifted to close-quarters tactics, using blunt force instead of elemental enhancement. Aris adapted fast—her dual blades flowing in brutal arcs that cut down two Breathers in seconds.

But the vault was awakening.

Each step forward triggered more movement—dozens of silent figures crawling along the walls, forming from broken code, some of them whispering fragments of old Tower command strings.

Roselia tapped into her scroll—a backup she’d preloaded before the floor—and fired a point-blank burst of anti-corruption flare. It didn’t destroy the Breathers, but it slowed them down.

They reached the outer sanctum.

Time left: 03:14

Inside, the air didn’t return—but something else did.

Faint mana.

Just enough for Leon to activate the bare minimum of Shell Pulse.

And ahead, they saw it—

A pulsing, crystalline heart locked in a lattice of black steel.

The Breathing Core.

And seated before it, slumped but watching—was a figure in broken armor, covered in frost, half-machine, half-man.

His voice came not from a mouth, but directly into their minds.

"...Finally. Someone made it."

Leon approached. Slowly.

"You’re not with the Tower."

The figure coughed once—jagged and mechanical. "No. I was before it. I helped build the floor framework... before they turned us into nodes."

The others stopped moving. This was new.

Leon narrowed his eyes. "Then you’re one of the Architects."

A faint smile. "One of the last. Call me Thales."

His hand twitched toward the core.

"I stayed because I wanted to remember what we lost. What we built. The Tower wasn’t supposed to be a prison."

Leon moved closer. "You’re dying."

Thales nodded. "This core... it holds one of the original blueprints. The Sovereigns can’t touch it. But it’s fading. I can pass it to you... but only if you give it a name."

Leon’s brow furrowed. "A name?"

Thales nodded weakly. "The Tower’s soul was never supposed to be written in commands. It was meant to be felt. Every floor, every challenge—it meant something."

He pointed at Leon’s chest.

"You. You carry that meaning now. So name this... and it’ll be part of your truth."

Leon stared at the pulsing heart of the Breathing Vault.

He thought of everything.

Of Naval’s smile after winning his first duel.

Of Kael’s fire and fury.

Of Roselia’s quiet kindness.

Of Aris’s rage and reason.

And of every step he’d climbed—every person he’d saved, or failed to.

He placed his hand on the core.

And whispered:

"Hope."

[Breathing Core Registered – Name: HOPE]

• Legacy Blueprint: Acquired

• System Trait: Hope-Linked Memory – Allies near Leon gain +5% resistance to despair, mental attacks, or suppression fields

• Echo Upgrade: Shell Reverb now responds 3% faster when used in tandem with allies

Thales gave one last breath.

And stilled.

[Floor 519 Cleared – Legacy Vault Decommissioned]

• Time Remaining: 00:41

• Auto-Extraction in 5... 4... 3...**

The team was pulled back by golden light.

As they reappeared on the interlude platform between floors, Kael broke the silence first.

"That guy... was he really one of them?"

Leon didn’t answer at first.

Then he looked up at the next gate, where soft white light pulsed, and the words inscribed above the entrance shifted constantly—like they couldn’t decide what floor came next.

"Yes," he finally said. "And he wasn’t the last."

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