My Charity System made me too OP-Chapter 319: Fifth Part

Leon raised an eyebrow, blood trailing from his chin. "Another lesson?"

The elder nodded slowly, the obsidian staff in his hand tapping once against the stone floor, echoing like a heartbeat.

"You have already unlocked the Fourth Layer—Absolute Return," he said, his voice low and heavy with significance. "But what you wield is only its surface. What lies beyond is not written in our scrolls. It is the forgotten refinement, the silent resonance buried in blood and instinct."

Leon narrowed his eyes. "You're saying there's more?"

The elder stepped closer, placing a clawed hand gently on Leon's shoulder.

"There is a Fifth—the Forbidden Layer: True Resonance. A state where body, pulse, and trauma echo not outward, but inward—folded into perfection. It cannot be taught. Only felt. And only by those who've died and stood up anyway."

The silence that followed was weighty.

Leon exhaled, heart still racing from the Fleshglass battle. "Where do I find it?"

The elder gestured toward the jagged mountains in the distance, beyond the arena.

"Obsidian Breach Monastery no longer holds the key. You must descend into the Wound Below—where the First Pulse bled into the stone. Where even our ancestors dared not linger. Go there… if you still wish to echo beyond all return."

"but be warned only 1 out of ten ever return from there"

Leon nodded slowly, wiping the blood from his mouth.

"Then I'll go. I didn't come this far just to stop at 'enough.'"

Obsidian Domain – Subterranean Rift, "The Wound Below"

The descent was not marked by stairs or carved halls.

Leon stood before a jagged abyss deep beneath the arena's foundation. The rocks pulsed faintly—black and crimson veins shimmering with dormant power. This was no place of worship. It was a grave.

A warning was etched above the entrance in ancient Ant script:

"Here, the Pulse was first broken. Tread only if you are willing to break with it."

Leon stepped inside.

The deeper he walked, the heavier everything became—his limbs, his breath, even his thoughts. There was no light, only the strange bioluminescence of resonant crystals, pulsing in sync with his heartbeat. Every step echoed a fraction of a second too late—as if the place were recording him.

And then the silence ended.

A presence stirred.

A figure formed from obsidian and echo, shaped like an ant but radiating something deeper—older. It didn't move, but Leon felt its voice like a second heartbeat in his skull.

"You come seeking True Resonance… then become the Echo."

Without warning, the trial began.

The moment the echo-being attacked, it moved like Leon.

It mirrored his speed, his Shell Reverb, his very breath. Every blow Leon delivered, it returned a second later—augmented. Each dodge, it adapted. It wasn't fighting him—it was recording him, and perfecting it.

Leon's punches began to slow. The creature didn't tire. It grew sharper. Meaner. Realer.

Blow after blow, he bled.

Until—

Crack!

A strike slammed into his ribs, shattering them. Leon coughed blood and dropped to one knee.

Then something within clicked.

His Shell Pulse didn't just vibrate outward. It shivered inward. He saw it now: the entire technique wasn't about reflecting the world.

It was about recording himself.

He stood. Bloody. Broken. Smiling.

"You think you've seen all of me? Let me show you the hidden verse of my pulse."

And then it began—his body started syncing with the echo creature not to match it, but to overwrite it. His breathing fell into unnatural rhythm, guided by ancient instincts and agonizing memory. His movements became stuttering, recursive, recursive…

Then—BOOM.

A fist erupted with all the stored pain of his journey: Kragg's blows, Xa'Roj's tremors, the mirrored duel—all of it.

It connected.

The echo shattered.

And a chime rang through the chasm.

[You have unlocked Shell Reverb: Fifth Layer – True Resonance.]

You may now record and integrate kinetic trauma to elevate your physiological limit.

Pain no longer hinders. It archives. It empowers.

Leon collapsed to his knees, chest heaving. The cave walls vibrated around him—not menacing, but in respect.

He stood slowly.

"No more limits, then."

And turned back toward the path above.

****

The arena trembled once more as the obsidian gates opened, revealing the next opponent—Rank 47.

From the shadows stepped forth a terrifying presence: Varnak the Hollow Bloom, a monstrous Ant champion draped in layers of thorny obsidian petals and veined with crimson energy. His body pulsed like a heart, each beat spreading a poisonous aura that warped the very air. This was no ordinary brute—Varnak was known not only for his devastating offense, but for his ability to rot vitality itself. A walking plague.

Leon exhaled slowly, his body still bearing the bruises and echoes from the previous battles. But with his Shell Reverb mastery at its height and his recent Tier VIII Ascension, he felt his core surging with possibility.

The gong sounded.

Varnak wasted no time. Thorned tendrils burst from his shoulders, lashing the arena in a sweeping arc. Leon bent low, legs flashing forward with Shell Pulse-enhanced speed. The air sang with pressure—his first strike was a punch fueled by Absolute Return, echoing with the combined trauma of the last ten duels.

It hit.

Varnak staggered—but instead of blood, a cloud of venomous mist erupted from the wound. Leon immediately jumped back, but the poison clung like oil, sapping his strength and numbing his limbs.

"Persistent toxin?" he muttered, shaking his hand.

Varnak snarled and lunged, his limbs transforming mid-motion into whip-blades. Leon countered with Reverb Shift, redirecting the kinetic force of the incoming blow into his shoulder, where it coiled—waiting.

He twisted, then released it in a brutal roundhouse that shattered several of Varnak's thorned limbs.

But it wasn't over.

Varnak's broken pieces regenerated in moments. He hissed, revealing a flower-like cavity in his chest—one that began to open.

Leon's instincts screamed.

"Origin Shell—Amplify!"

A golden ripple surged around him, fused with Destruction and Aether Blood. As the blast wave of decay erupted from Varnak's chest cavity, Leon met it head-on. Not with a shield, but a spear forged from Gold Magic and condensed Shell Reverb—a single strike launched like a comet.