Boom!

The two hurled raw energy in midair, like storm-lashed spears crossing a burning sky.

After dozens of exchanges, breath came hot as iron.

“Madman.” Pandora slipped past Janus’s blast. Sweat beaded her brow like dew on stone. “This deathwish output—if someone’s a touch stronger, you’ll die on the spot.”

Janus chuckled, smoke in his grin. “You don’t get it. Against someone wearing the world’s boon, only strange moves bite.”

“Sounds cute. Got any strength left to back it up?” Pandora’s laugh was cold, like frost on steel.

Janus scratched his head, playing it light. “Aw, don’t make it boring. That’s just trouble.”

“Show me what you really have. Unless you can hold me down, I won’t yield.” Pandora smiled like a blade, but sweat slid down her temple like a thin stream.

Janus kept smiling, sunlight through clouds. “You said it. Don’t take it back.”

“Don’t you dare underestimate me.” Pandora’s lip twitched. She watched Janus’s darkening face, and her hands slipped behind her back like coiled serpents.

Magic swelled in her palms, a tide ready to drown the sky in sigils.

“Come!” Pandora’s shout cracked like thunder.

Janus didn’t rush. She summoned Ashir from thin air, the sword tip pointing at Pandora like a blue star. “Come on.”

Boom!

Eight prisms rose around Janus, crystalline towers encircling her like a cage of light. Janus watched Pandora with amused eyes, lanterns in dusk.

Pandora had devised this technique; she knew exactly what she’d unleashed. She knew her own nature too well.

To make herself submit, only one thing worked: dissolve every strike, again and again, until pride ran dry.

“Eightfold Execution!” Pandora snapped her hands forward, ribbons of shadow flinging wide.

Magic poured out like a black river breaking its dam.

Power beyond this world slammed into Janus, a falling mountain shattering the air.

Pandora’s face set hard, a winter mask. Janus raised her sword to catch the wave, while her free hand sketched sigils like lightning writing on night.

Pandora had forged this to end the Hero in a breath, days and nights hammered into one ruthless edge.

It cast fast, with no lagging recoil, its bite among her top three killers.

Seeking the world’s far edge, she bathed in demon miasma each day, a scour of smoke and fire.

Surplus energy was packed tight inside her body, a sealed furnace waiting to burst.

With Eight Demon Mirrors refined from thousands of high-tier Demon Race bodies, the scattered power got re-collected, then strafed the center target like a cyclone of knives.

The damage was brutal, ironclad.

She saved so much for one moment, to blow it all at once and birth a storm.

Faster than those chants that drag like winter nights, it was perfect for ambushing the Hero.

Pandora glared at Janus, a hawk sighting prey. She could feel Janus wasn’t much stronger.

They were separated by a hair, a breath.

Janus and the Hero had been neck and neck; if this hit, the Hero would vanish like mist under noon sun.

Even if that woman edged her out, it was only a sliver.

Without the world’s apex, you couldn’t crush her.

So if this landed, she’d scatter the woman on the spot, like ash in the wind.

She didn’t know why, but seeing this woman lit a karmic fire—blind, angry—like dry tinder igniting. She wanted to destroy her, as if shame had shadowed her steps for ages.

“Mm… yeah. That’s rough.” Janus forced a wry smile, salt in the wind.

Pandora hadn’t expected the move to hit this hard.

She had saved it for the Hero, but he kept vanishing like a ghost skirting dawn.

She never saw him again until the final battle, so the energy stayed caged inside her.

Right before war, her guiding hand slipped. The Hero’s mole found a flaw and died for it, and her internal reserves started to leak like a cracked cistern.

Not just surplus—her core power bled too, washing her plans away like rain over chalk.

The next day, the Hero moved like he knew everything and declared war on the Demon Race.

He led the vanguard himself.

So Janus had never really felt this technique in the wild. In her head, it was strong. In battle, it was monstrous.

Janus had no words left. Tools meant for enemies ended up flaying her instead. What a joke.

Even at death’s door, the Hero had tricked her—now she was a girl, a new skin under old scars.

That thought filled Janus with smoke-dark grievance.

The Eight Demon Mirrors drank enough power and turned, firing at the center like a starburst.

Janus frowned and closed her eyes, a calm lake before the stone fell.

The next instant, her petite body vanished in the surge, swallowed like a moth in torchlight.

Pandora laughed wildly as energy geysered, a volcano spitting night.

Then the mirrors shattered like glass rain, and backlash caught Pandora too, flinging her like a leaf on a gale.

Boom!

The crash dragged everyone’s eyes across the field, sparks biting into silence.

Far off, the orange sky got devoured by darkness, a dusk gulped by an eclipse.

A spherical black energy body swelled in the air, spreading like ink in water.

Edlyn kicked Pandora aside and squinted at the distance. “Plainly just two phantoms, yet they fought like storms. We really didn’t know our own strength.”

At the center.

Janus looked at the second sword in her right hand and smiled. “Thanks.”

The blue longsword trembled, a reed stirring over water.

Janus shrugged. “Without you, I wouldn’t have known how to end this. It blew past my expectations.”

Energy came like a flash flood and left like wind over dunes.

In the Inferno, the miasma broke down and blended, like smoke dissolving into stone.

Soon, it vanished completely, a fire that left no ember.

Only shattered bluestone platforms remained, teeth of a ruined altar.

Pandora sprawled across the slab, ragged as a fallen hawk.

She stared up at Janus floating above, disbelief pale as moonlight. “How… how are you unscathed?”

Janus sheathed the blue blade and smiled, light and easy. “Hey, the outcome’s clear. Why keep asking?”

“…I refuse. Woman… I hate you.” Pandora’s eyes were empty wells staring at stars.

Janus sighed. “Mm-hmm? Got a reason for that?”

“…I don’t know.” Pandora finally understood she’d lost.

Janus looked untouched; Pandora couldn’t move at all, a puppet with cut strings.

She hadn’t even beaten the Hero, yet she fell here, irony sharp as frost.

“What do you want? Do it. I can’t resist.” Pandora turned away, her mood dripping like rain off stone.

“Fine.” Janus shrugged, helpless as a wandering breeze.

“Woman, can you tell me why I hate you so much?” Pandora’s voice wandered, fog over marsh.

Janus smiled and sat beside her. “I probably do. Hey, me from before.”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you a story.” Janus’s gaze rested on Pandora’s face like a quiet lamp.

“…Go on.”

Once, there was a chieftain. His people faced their worst crisis, a winter that wanted to eat them whole.

For survival, and for a flame in his heart, he chose war.

He marched toward a nearby world, horizon like a drum he meant to break.

His people fought without rest, a tide of steel under a blood-red sun.

They were born for battle, wolves with iron in their bones.

Where they passed, corpses carpeted the earth, fields turned to red rivers.

They conquered, conquered, and fatigue seeped in like cold through armor.

He found a cure—rule the species that submitted. Make them thralls. Give them power, give them a name.

It worked. The machine of war turned smoother, dark wheels crushing clay.

With clan and thralls, he kept conquering. The world was frail, a reed in a storm.

Where his iron hooves arrived, nations broke, and people vanished like dust.

His ambition swelled, a sea at high tide.

He won too long. He stopped seeing people. He toyed with his thralls.

At his peak, a sword rose among humans—and a man.

He was sunlight. He shattered the myth of invincibility, a dawn that burned banners.

Where he appeared, armies broke like surf against rock.

The chieftain smirked, then felt a challenge, a mountain facing another mountain.

He raised a crusade. The man was daylight, pushing back the darkness he’d spread.

They were fated—nemesis and shadow.

The war shifted. The world gathered, a flock finding its sky.

The chieftain fell behind, steps heavy as mud.

At last, in the final battle, the man crushed the clan and him, thunder ending the storm.

He died on the field, a banner collapsing into dirt.

When he opened his eyes again, he was a baby girl of a race he despised, a seed in unfamiliar soil.

She had no power. She bent to the world, a reed under wind.

Centuries had passed since her clan fell; memory faded like ink under rain.

People forgot the terror. She swore to reclaim it, one breath, one blade.

The girl grew. She met a man who looked exactly like him.

From his mouth, she learned her greatest foe had already died, a sun set beyond reach.

Janus stopped and watched Pandora’s dazed face, a mirror catching stormlight.

“Want me to keep going?”

Pandora hesitated, water trembling in a cup, then nodded.