My Charity System made me too OP

The Obsidian Ant chamber for Rank 19 did not welcome them with stone or echoing chants. Instead, it opened to silence—a void-like space beneath a false sky where stars blinked like distant regrets. Floating islands of broken constellations drifted in low gravity, each tethered to glowing chains of memory.

Leon floated in with slow grace, his armor catching faint glimmers of nebular light. A pressure settled on his shoulders—not from gravity, but from the sheer presence of the one waiting.

Iskar Veln, the Hollow Starlord, stood at the center of a shattered celestial ring. His body was ethereal, clad in robes made of stardust and shadow. One eye burned with endless nova-fire. The other… was a black hole.

"You carry too many echoes, Leon of Above," the voice whispered in cosmic delay. "Return them. Or be undone by their weight."

Leon readied his staff, feeling his Destruction Core pulse uneasily. "I'm not here to return anything. Just to move forward."

Iskar raised a hand—and time fractured.

Before Leon could respond, the battlefield inverted. He was underwater—or felt like it—floating in a timeless sea of falling stars. Iskar launched the first attack: a bolt of compressed time flanked by gravity slashes.

Leon twisted mid-air, Shell Reverb absorbing the force—but even the feedback loop staggered. These were not simple kinetic blows—they were events, memories condensed into mass. Every hit made Leon relive moments: the battle against Kragg, the Mirror fight, even Vaer'Zhul's illusionary village.

"Damn," he gasped, breathless. "He fights with… my past."

He activated Absolute Return, using damage already taken to surge forward. A triple-feint movement cracked into Iskar's shoulder—but the Starlord didn't flinch.

Instead, Iskar unleashed Supernova Pulse—an expanding sphere of zero-light.

Leon countered with Shell Pulse: Karmic Loop, redirecting a portion of the attack back at its source while absorbing residual echoes into his own core.

A collision.

A brief flash.

Both combatants reappeared above a falling comet-island, breath ragged.

Iskar began singing.

Not with a mouth, but with memory. The stars resonated with every note—a requiem of lost timelines and fractured dreams. Images of Roman dying. Of Roselia fading away. Of Leon, alone, at the peak of Ascension with nothing left.

Each note attacked Leon's soul.

"This is not real!" Leon screamed.

But part of him believed it. And that belief made him bleed.

Until—

"Then make your truth louder."

Liliana's voice. Not real—but remembered.

Leon clenched his teeth, activated Origin Anchor, and cast a layered spell:

→ Aether Blood: Fateburn Sigil

→ Gold Magic: Solar Override

→ Destruction Core: Hollow Rejection

A spiral of golden-red light engulfed him as he burned through the illusory symphony.

"I reject your memory."

He pierced through Iskar with a pure spear of Destiny Cleave, laced with Voidbreaking essence.

Iskar screamed—and exploded into stardust.

Only to reappear behind Leon.

"Wrong. I am your future—when the stars burn out, when all you love fades."

Leon spun, blood running down his jaw. "Then let me make one thing clear…"

He activated all three core arts—Destruction, Aether, Gold—into a singularity.

"I'm not afraid of endings anymore."

With a roar, he unleashed Origin Pulse: Heartsplit Aegis, a divine fusion strike that chained from one reality to another. It shattered the starlord's form, tore apart the false cosmos, and silenced the haunting music.

[Victory: Rank 19 – Iskar Veln, Hollow Starlord, Defeated.]

[Level Up: 621 → 625]

[Skill Gained: Hollow Star Memory – Once per battle, absorb a fatal attack and return it as a stored Astral Wound.]

Leon stood at the edge of the ring, gasping. His bones felt heavy, his heart loud in his chest.

Roselia caught him as he stumbled. "That bad, huh?"

Leon smiled weakly. "He fought like everything I never wanted to be."

Roman clapped his shoulder. "Then it's good you still are what you chose to be."

Leon looked up toward the narrowing path.

"Let's keep going. Rank 18 won't wait."

The descent to Rank 18 did not feel like a step downward.

It was a fall—through silence, memory, and something deeper. When Leon's boots touched the ground, there was no crowd. No arena. Just a circular chamber, walled in choral glyphs, thrumming with harmonic resonance.

A single figure waited at its center, seated atop a dais of flesh-like marble—its skin carved with sacred verses, its mouth sewn shut by threads of gold.

This was Mael'Rhun, the Scarred Choir.

A being said to have once been ten thousand singers, merged into one cursed vessel. Every wound upon its body resonated with a voice, and every strike it took added another note to its eternal song of agony.

As Leon approached, a tone rang out—beautiful and unbearable.

"Leon of Above. You, too, carry scars meant to sing."

Mael'Rhun rose, and the chamber shifted. It didn't transform—it remembered itself: the echoes of countless past fights layered onto the walls like ghost-fire. Each step Mael'Rhun took echoed with hundreds of overlapping footsteps from other timelines.

Leon's staff thrummed, warning him. Even at Tier VIII, this opponent did not obey logic.

The first blow was silent—Leon only felt a shift in pressure. Then his side bled, reacting to a cut he hadn't seen.

Mael'Rhun stood still, its mouth unmoving. Yet the pain was real.

Shell Reverb activated instinctively, catching a second invisible strike. The data looped, built up kinetic backlash, and he countered with a Shell Pulse: Tripart Echo—a threefold strike that caught Mael'Rhun in the ribs, shoulder, and chest.

Each impact sang.

Not screamed—sang. Each hit added a new voice to the creature's body, each tone harmonizing into a violent chord that reverberated into Leon's mind.

His vision blurred. Blood dripped from his nose.

"He's… weaponizing sound through pain."

Mael'Rhun raised a hand and conducted the voices, creating a wall of harmonic force that slammed into Leon like a wave of glass.

Leon crashed back, breathing hard, bones creaking.

Phase Two: Karmic Chorus

He stood, activating Karmic Loop. If every voice was a wound, then every wound could be returned.

Mael'Rhun's next strike was a sweeping aria of silent agony—blades of condensed suffering arcing in from every angle.

Leon danced through them with Shell Reverb: Absolute Return, bouncing pain through stored echoes and feeding the backlash into his Origin Conduit. He snapped forward—

→ Destruction Core: Fleshbreak Spiral

→ Aether Blood: Temporal Edge

→ Gold Magic: Heartsight Flash

The combination tore through Mael'Rhun's midsection—only for the wounds to erupt into a choir of rebuke. The creature's body disassembled into harmonizing shards and reformed behind Leon mid-note.

Too fast.

Leon twisted—too late.

A sound spear pierced his back, exiting his chest.

He gasped.

Mael'Rhun leaned in, eye sockets hollow. "One must listen to end the song."

Leon fell to a knee, coughing blood.