SWNOVELXO Chapter 429: Void Walker X
He slammed his blade down. The floor cracked for fifty meters.
Leon responded with Shell Reverb: Absolute Return, striking back with an echo that caused the floor beneath Riven to tremble.
"You lost your crown because you forgot why you wore it," Leon said through gritted teeth.
Riven laughed, and the entire hall shook.
"No. I lost it… because I remembered who I was before I wore it."
The fight dragged on.
Each strike pushed Leon closer to the edge. Not just physically—but mentally.
Riven wasn't trying to win.
He was trying to make Leon question everything.
"You'll climb. You'll bleed. You'll lose them. And in the end… you'll sit on the same throne."
Riven slashed again, carving a deep wound across Leon's arm.
"And you'll wonder… was it worth it?"
Leon dropped to one knee.
But then…
Kael's voice echoed behind him. "You're not alone."
Roselia's blade blocked a follow-up strike.
Milim dropped a sigil ward to slow the next blow.
Naval flanked with a feint strike that caught Riven's leg.
Roman slammed the hilt of his sword into the Sovereign's back.
And Leon stood again.
"No," he said. "I won't sit alone. I climb—because I'm not the only one that matters."
He raised his blade.
"Let's end this."
Final Clash
Leon unleashed Shell Reverb: Tripart Echo layered with Absolute Return, chaining pulse after pulse of compressed force into Riven's collapsing blade stance.
Riven staggered.
Leon stepped in and struck—one clean cut.
The helm cracked.
The glow in the eyes faded.
And Riven… smiled.
"Good."
His body turned to dust—gently, like crumbling old parchment.
"Don't become me…"
And he was gone.
[Floor 530 – Cleared – The Broken Sovereignty]
• Trait Gained: Kingless Flame – Immune to Dominion-based Sovereign Auras
• Title Earned: Breaker of Thrones
• Chain Protocol Node 9/12 Acquired
Final Memory Recovered:
"There was once a king who ruled by fear. He did not fall. He chose to vanish."
Leon stood before the cracked throne.
He didn't sit.
He turned and walked away.
When the gate opened this time, it didn't glow.
It howled.
Not like wind or voice—but like the Tower itself recoiling from whatever lay beyond.
Leon stepped through first—and was immediately hit by nothingness.
No ground.
No light.
No walls.
Just black. Dense. Cold. Vast.
And then—he fell.
He landed hard, but on something oddly soft. Like stepping on dust layered atop old metal. The others dropped in one by one after him, blinking into the pitch-dark.
[Welcome to Floor 531 – Silence Below]
• Floor Classification: Forbidden Depth
• Records: Redacted
• Protocol Warning: Chain Node 10/12 – Breach Detected
Hazard: Reality Instability
Sound: Inverted
Light: Devoured
Objective: Unknown
– Manual Override: Leon Aetheren Access Granted –
Everyone froze.
Even Milim, who rarely looked unnerved, stepped closer to Leon.
"Manual override?" she wrote using Echo Script.
Leon didn't answer.
Because the Tower had said something else.
But only to him.
"Welcome home, Leon."
Phase 1 – The Forgotten Pillars
As their eyes adjusted, they began to see the outlines—dozens of towering obelisks arranged like teeth pointing up from the abyss. Each one was etched with glowing script—familiar to no one… except Leon.
They were his memories.
Every challenge. Every floor. Every death. Every moment he almost gave up.
Each pillar bore a name:
– Floor 1: The Gatekeeper
– Floor 78: The Crystal Maw
– Floor 217: Roselia Falls
– Floor 300: Obsidian Echo
– Floor 411: Naval's Resurrection
– Floor 467: Dwarven Firebound Treaty
– Floor 526: Oracle's Echo
– Floor 530: Broken Sovereignty
Each moment, recorded.
Played back.
And around them, figures began to stir.
Twisted reflections of their past selves. Not like the Mirror on Floor 529—these were more degraded. Melting memories barely able to hold shape.
Leon saw a distorted version of himself—eyes blind, mouth open in a soundless scream.
It lunged.
And Leon cut it down without hesitation.
Phase 2 – Name of the Unspoken
At the center of the abyss was a monolith larger than all the others, cracked and chained from all sides. It pulsed with light that felt wrong. Familiar. But ancient.
As they approached, the chains trembled.
A voice spoke—not into the room, but into Leon's head.
"You carry what I left behind."
Leon's vision blurred. For a moment, he saw something impossible.
The Tower.
But before it was the Tower.
A temple, or maybe a grave.
And someone—like him—placing something at the heart of it.
Kael grabbed his shoulder. "Leon. You're bleeding."
Blood was dripping from his eyes.
But he stayed on his feet.
And the monolith began to crack.
Phase 3 – Encounter: The Unnamed King
From the monolith burst a creature not of flesh—but of memory.
A shadow shaped like a man in ruined armor. No face. No voice. Just presence. It moved like lightning, striking with a blade that screamed with every cut.
Roselia blocked with her shield—but was knocked back twenty meters.
Roman tried to parry—and his arm twitched involuntarily as if overwritten by old commands.
Only Leon stood steady.
He raised his weapon.
"You were the first."
The shadow surged toward him.
Leon didn't dodge.
He met it head-on.
Boss Battle: Unnamed King – Chain Protocol Core
The fight was surreal—each clash rewrote part of the world. One moment, Leon was on Floor 1. The next, he was back on Floor 300, fighting Korath. Then, on the broken throne of Riven.
The shadow wasn't trying to kill him.
It was trying to make him forget.
Every move it made struck at Leon's identity—his victories, losses, fears.
And each time, Leon responded not with fury—but with clarity.
"I fought because I believed."
"I lost because I dared."
"I remember… because I survived."
He activated Shell Reverb: Origin Pulse.
The pulse spread through the void, forcing the fragments of time and thought to stabilize.
The shadow staggered.
Leon pressed forward with Absolute Return, chaining it into Tripart Echo, and finished with a blade infused with the will of every floor he'd climbed.
"You're not me."
"You're the part that gave up."
Final strike.
The shadow broke—not in light, not in death—but in acceptance.
[Floor 531 – Cleared – Silence Below]
• Title Earned: The Rememberer
• Trait Gained: Soul Threading – Immune to Memory Rewrite
• Chain Protocol Node 10/12 Secured
— Archive Access Granted —
Chain Protocol Project Origin: Leon Aetheren. Candidate Zero.
[Data Unlocked: The Tower was never built. It was grown.]
[Data Unlocked: Leon is not the first. But he may be the last.]
As the gate to Floor 532 opened, no one spoke.
Leon turned to the team—his friends, his family, his reasons.
"I know who I am now," he said.
"And I know where this ends."
Roselia nodded. "Then let's finish it."