“This section needs to be built like this.” Birand held the blueprint like a river map, tracing the lines for the lead dwarven designers.

“Also, skip the gunpowder if we can.” His brows knit like storm clouds.

The dwarven craftsmen blinked, curiosity sparking like flint. “No powder? How’s it supposed to hit that hard?”

“Hey, add powder and the chamber might blow early.” Birand shrugged, casual as drifting ash.

They stared at the drawing, confusion fogging like breath on iron.

By their parsing of structure, a super‑weapon like this shouldn’t have newbie flaws like a blown chamber.

“C’mon, trust me.” Birand lifted his hands in surrender, a wry smile like a crooked blade. “I brought the core design with me. Have a little faith.”

“…All right.” Still doubtful, the dwarves hauled off the Godslayer Ballista ammo schematics, sparks in their eyes, ready to work.

Birand’s grin tilted, sly as a fox in mist. Let you kill the Demon King here? Then where do I grind my supreme merits—where do I find my next boss?

He looked across the distance at Pandora, locking eyes over open air. His chest swelled like a drum. “Well then. Demonic Lord, unlucky for you to meet me. The whole Hero versus Demon King story is just… sigh, inevitable.”

Not far off, Pandora had no idea what Birand was plotting. He stood still as a standing stone, feeling the tide of mana and miasma pulse around him.

The battle would break like dawn. He needed to lace the ground with energy‑circulation traps, like nets in a black river.

Maybe, with one turn, the ebb could become a surge.

Soon, the dwarven masters came shouldering a giant bow‑engine, all eerie runes and clever joints, like a steel beast covered in sigils.

Birand eyed the thick bolt shaft, the grain and grooves like tree rings. He smiled. “Looks like it came out well.”

“Sir, how do we fire this thing?” The dwarven smith’s eyes glittered like gems in a cave.

They’d spent half a month forging a Godslayer Ballista. Now the simplest “bullet” was finally done, and they burned to see the storm it could unleash.

They needed to know if it merited full war prep for the Hero coalition.

Birand chuckled, light as falling snow. “We probably can’t mass‑produce it.”

“Huh? Why?” The dwarf sagged like a bellows. “We dwarves can build anything with a blueprint.”

“Materials,” Birand said, shrugging like a man in rain. “Mercury grass is too rare. And it’s consumable. We can’t field it everywhere. But one per unit to drop high‑level elites? Not bad.”

“Oh… I see.” Disappointment dulled his voice like soot.

Birand grinned. “Otherwise, why call it the Godslayer Ballista? ‘Godslayer’ isn’t a joke.”

“Heh… heh.” The dwarf scratched his head, sheepish as a child. He’d heard legends of this cannon’s weirdness, but had no gut sense of it, so Birand’s talk didn’t quite land.

Birand sighed, palms up like scales. “Fine. I’ll show you what it does.”

He glanced at the distant Pandora, still standing like a dark monument. “Nemesis, do me a favor and hold that pose.”

Beside Pandora, several demon generals walked over like shadows under torchlight. They bowed. “Demonic Lord, please return and rest. You’ve stirred the natural elements here for too long. You’ve worked hard.”

Cold and tired, Pandora looked back, eyes like ice on a blade. “If you weren’t so useless, would I, a Demon King, be reduced to this?”

Birand strode into the command room, high spirits beating like drums, and took the main seat.

“Listen up! Right front, about thirteen kilometers out, the one in black—that’s our test target! Gentlemen, lock it in! Shoot him down!”

“Oh!” The dwarves roared in chorus, a furnace of pride and nerves.

Watching their creation unleash its own signature thunder, their hearts hammered like anvils.

“Aim!” Birand’s voice crackled like dry tinder.

“Fire! Fire! For hell’s sake—fire!” He slapped the chair, palms popping like whip cracks.

Whoosh!

Atop the dwarven bastion, the giant ballista launcher lifted from its guts like a leviathan breaching, then began to twist, slow and certain, toward the target.

At the center of that aim, Pandora had just dismissed his subordinates. A prickle rose along his skin like frost; a pulse of danger rolled in like thunder.

A blink of surprise—and he sensed something screaming in.

As Birand shouted to fire, lightning gathered around the ballista, flickering like a storm trapped in iron.

At last, like a falling sky‑bolt—

The massive bolt tore the heavens, a violet spear that stitched the long sky, roaring toward its mark.

Pandora felt a force that could cut his life like a scythe swinging at wheat.

In that razor sliver of time, he moved.

He slipped aside with blurring speed, but he was still a breath too late.

Boom!

The bolt struck where he’d stood. The blast blossomed like a sunflower of wrath, and the shockwave flipped him like a leaf in a gale.

The energy washed over him anyway. From the center, a magic with the breath of annihilation seeped outward like ink.

It ate the Demonic Lord’s entire right half like black fire devouring paper, and only then did he hurl himself clear of the killing ground.

He hit the earth and his body began to knit, flesh weaving like vines, restoring in moments.

Pain flooded Pandora’s face as he pressed to the ground, a grimace like a knife‑cut.

Even healed, it didn’t help. Something hitchhiked inside that energy and crawled into him like cold worms.

His right half screamed like a forge under a hammer.

Since his birth, he had never tasted pain this deep, this bone‑white.

“Aah!” The cry tore from him like a ripped banner.

Finally, he forced the carriers of that power out with raw demonic qi, like squeezing poison from a wound.

Shards fell—more than a dozen copper splinters, each pulsing with holy power.

Rage flared; he flicked the copper bits away like sparks. On the ground, a note lay under a veil of the same holy light. He crushed the halo with a pinch.

He unfolded the paper. The handwriting was a Hero’s—sharp strokes like sword marks. “Hello, Mr. Demon King. Aside from my last little visit to your Overlord City, we haven’t met, have we? Allow me a quick intro. My name is Birand Aste. Mm, the current Hero.”

The ink stopped there.

Frowning, Pandora turned the note. More words crawled across the back like ants.

“Ah. I don’t have much to say. Just—how was that pain? Refreshing, right? Don’t worry. For you, I prepped at least twenty of those bolts. Mm, I know, you adore me now and you’re cursing my ancestors. That’s my cue!”

“Hero, Birand Aste, personally. Oh—right. No one but you can open this. Hahahaha. Okay then. Bye‑bye, my friend~”

Expressionless, Pandora finished reading, then closed his hand. The note powdered like dry bone.

Face dark as thunderheads, he stared at the dwarven fortress. Veins stood on his brow like cords; his lip twitched with rancor and fire.

“Hero. Birand… damn you, Hero! I’ll tear you to pieces! I’ll scatter your corpse!”

Not far away, Birand strode out of the bastion laughing, one finger at his nose like a lazy rogue. A sudden sneeze snapped out of him.

“Huh? Am I getting sick?”

The dwarves chuckled, bright as coals. “Sir, you joke. At Sacred Rank, sickness doesn’t stick. Not when you’ve got full Divinity—a super Sacred Rank.”

Birand shrugged, easy as a drifting feather. “Fair point.”

He tossed out a few casual excuses and waved the dwarves away like shooing sparrows.

Then he flew the road, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, his shadow flickering like a kite in wind.

After a long run, he found Pandora seated, meditating like a boulder in night rain.

He whistled, dropped down in one smooth arc, and grinned. “Yo—our Demonic Lord. What’s wrong? Someone beat you up?”

Pandora spat blood from his meditation, a red arc like a gash. He roared, “Bastard! I’ll kill you!”

“Ten Thousand Demons Bow to the Heart!” Pandora’s fury cracked like a whip, and demonic qi geysered from him like a black tide.

Birand blew a fleck of saliva away, pressed his palms together, and shut his eyes. When they opened, his left iris had gone black, his right white; two moonlike discs rose behind him, and his hair bleached snow‑white.

Holy power surged out of him like a dawn tide, meeting the Demon King’s storm head‑on.

“Come on then, Demon King. Let me see if that heavy wound clipped your edge.” Birand smiled, a crescent under cold stars.

“Damn you! I’ll kill you!” Pandora raged, spilling every drop of demonic qi like oil on a blaze.

Birand focused; one disc flew off his back, arcing like a pale moon. It covered the land and penned the miasma into a fence of light.

The Abyss, watching this memory, paused, a strange look rippling like a shadow over water. “What is this? Isn’t that the Celestial God’s Judge Mode? Why does it appear on the one who looks exactly like that human outside?”

Birand gripped the other disc and sprinted at Pandora, feet biting earth like claws.

“Aurora White Moon Slash!” He spun, Saintly might roaring into the disc. It whirled and blazed like a white sun.

He slipped under Pandora’s sweeping strike, then raised the disc vertical and cut for Pandora’s chest.

Pandora crossed his arms over his heart, a gate of iron. “Endless hellflame that wanders the Inferno, by the Demon King’s decree—come!”

Boom.

A scorching shockwave wrapped Birand like a furnace lid slamming, heat blooming like a scarlet flower.

Pandora thrust out his palm and clenched the air hard, fingers like a closing trap. “Die, trash!”