Folks, I hate fighting; it tastes like iron rain on the tongue.

I hate war; it stinks like wet gunpowder under a gray sky.

I hate anaerobic bursts when I’m sleepy; it’s sprinting uphill in a storm.

I hate slimy villains and brain-dead protagonists; clowns with greasy paint in a funhouse mirror.

Eh, none of that matters; it’s smoke on a breeze.

Hit, run; show off, bolt; greed draws a team wipe like a riptide.

Keep that rule carved in bone. So after I blasted Yakfarro’s face with Shadow’s corrosive magic, I ran, wind through reeds.

Stini kept pumping her finisher, Beam Sword; molten power flooding his core like gold into a furnace.

A blinding golden lance and light-vines unfurled, fireworks across a night dome.

In movies, it’s the kill shot—hero and villain lock beams, then the villain pops like an overripe fruit.

Kidding; final bosses don’t die to sneak crits, mountains anchored in fog.

I’ve got no Hero blood. I slid to Raven’s side to watch the fireworks, a watcher under an eave in rain.

I breathed out a little faith, like a coin tossed into a well. I believe in you, Stini.

Ten seconds of special effects, probably; no time to fish out snacks, sparklers over summer water.

“Die! I don’t hate you, but die with my name as your shroud!” Her voice rang like steel in wind.

“You… you’re a fully realized Hero?” His words scraped like a blade drawn clean.

“The one who’ll kill you is Stini Saya, Hero; and the killing blade is the Holy Sword Yingfeng!” Names chimed like bells.

Cough, ha-ha. His laughter was gravel under cold rain. “Who’d have thought? I took you for a gifted girl with some high blood. A real Hero, huh.”

The jagged light veining from Yakfarro’s heart was pressed back, and new gold blossomed as more petals flew, a storm of flowers.

“Now I’m interested again. I’ll try a little harder and show you my true strength,” a storm waking on the sea.

“What! You took Galewind through the heart and you’re still alive?” A stake through a tree that won’t fall.

See? I said it—final bosses never go down in one round, old stones weathering a flood.

“It’s not great. Raven, keep making Constructs. This fight’s not ending soon,” miles of ridge still ahead.

I had to move. I dashed and scooped Stini around the waist before the petals fell, a hawk snatching prey in a blossom storm.

Even scooped mid-leap, Stini found balance in the air and hit ground ready, a cat twisting mid-fall.

I thought she’d blush and stammer, “W-what are you doing?” I’d solemnly explain the petals were weapon strikes, sugar melting into steel.

But her eyes were all hunt, tracking for gaps in the enemy’s moves, a wolf under moonlight.

I even went out of my way to touch her chest, a guilty sparrow stealing a crumb.

“Uh, sorry, it’s just because…” I winced, swallowing a pebble.

“Ah, I know—those weapon-petals are deadly. Thanks. But let’s focus on taking down the Demon King they call Yakfarro,” a red string tied back to the task.

I got lectured for that, and she stole my commentator job, the mic yanked mid-song.

If Yakfarro wrapped in petals and gold was one transformation, then the high-density mana rage now was stage two, a chrysalis cracking to reveal a storm.

But those petals wound on touch and killed on impact; razors riding a breeze, and I wouldn’t interrupt.

Maybe try something ranged, an arrow loosed from shadow.

I planted Valor in the ground, spread my hands, and chanted solemnly, a priest under a black sky:

“The fallen angel’s funeral bears no pallbearers—

It is the lamb’s burden, and the offering of a body.”

“If they say good deeds reap no reward,

I’ll pray no more; I’ll curse the deepest dark and make it bite the light!”

A single-target high-tier Shadow spell, a scythe through night.

Atonement Rite of the Innocent! Bells tolling over a black lake.

Countless shadows poured off me and clung to Yakfarro, gnawing like maggots on bone; the thick darkness hissed like water on red-hot iron and vanished.

Ah, no good; better wait for the magic boy to finish transforming, thunder cresting on the horizon.

“Stini, want a Balo biscuit?” I asked, palm open like an offering in a temple.

“Now? …I’ll eat,” a soldier stealing bread before the next volley.

Knew it—she’s a good kid, honest to her appetite, a fox that doesn’t lie to its stomach.

Miss Raven wobbled over, a kite losing wind. Her stamina should be fine—did that X-fluid flood earlier drain her out?

“Sorry—I couldn’t free the people beneath the altar,” frost nailed into bone. “Some unknown force locked them; no chain opens. Unless we cut off the bound limbs, they can’t escape. I couldn’t do it. I’m sorry.”

That’s normal. Yakfarro’s second only to the Demon King, and this is his lair, a spider web tight across its rafters.

“It’s not your fault. He’s using them as a mana source; of course the shackles are tight. Beat him and they’re free. Here, have a cookie and stoke your fire; a blizzard’s coming.”

“No, I won’t—don’t shove food at me!” She snapped the fan shut. “Stini, you too—don’t assume what you like is what others like! Enough, listen to me.”

Push it too far and you tank affection, so we scrubbed our ears and listened, students under the teacher’s shadow.

“What do we do now? Um… what is Yakfarro doing?” A volcano building under a pall.

He’s channeling his ultimate—what else, a river swollen to flood.

I explained to Raven—non-combat, but a maker of everything, war gear included—how strong he gets on full manifestation, a blueprint turning into a hurricane.

Thankfully he hasn’t ascended to Demon King; he can still be framed in numbers, threads woven into cloth. Raven turns records into clear concepts; researchers like her do.

“Hmm… Andor, how long till his transformation completes?” Her voice was a thread over still water.

“About ten minutes. That’s why I’m eating a cookie,” paint drying under lightning. Over ten minutes for a transformation? In anime, viewers would bail.

“Then, if so…” Raven cupped her cute chin, eyes half-lidded in thought, a craftsman weighing silver. “Since we can’t hit him now, how about I try this?”

...

One small step for man, one giant leap for the world, a footprint on dust.

Sure, it’s a quote from the end of the Black Iron Age; if every human step pushed the world, the cart would race downhill.

I’m not denying progress, but most actions are smoke and dust; some even drag the world back, sparks that never warm.

People bicker for nothing; they hesitate between set A or B at lunch, a coin twitching in fingers.

They grind on posted tasks without urgency for a paycheck, ants marching under a sun that doesn’t care.

Everyone works hard, but not everyone gets to do what matters, gates that don’t open for every traveler.

That’s the default world, an unbreakable everyday, gray daylight over a thousand roofs.

I’m no nihilist, but what I saw made my own actions feel worthless, ash settling on the tongue.

Now I get the emptiness of those who chase geniuses, chaff skittering after a whirlwind.

We lined the outer wall by the altar and powered the magitek cannon Raven had just built, stoking a furnace under a watchtower.

I fed in Shadow mana; Stini kept the circuits clear; Raven patched faults and amplified the blast, a trio weaving a thunderbolt.

At the peak of his transformation, when his gold was brightest and most beautiful, Miss Raven called the charge complete, dawn tipping to noon.

We pulled the firing lever together, a single cord drawn tight. A pure-black beam extended from the cannon’s mouth and shot at the golden figure, a night river spearing the sun.

I expected blazing SFX—the classic gold versus black clash, drumfire under fireworks. Our courage triumphs; something like that.

I even considered ending with that tired arc; the goodwill was already banked, a ledger closed.

But the truth was too quiet, like snow falling on a grave.

I thought Raven had forgotten the people below, hadn’t budgeted the havoc my mana would cause; I braced to shield the girls, under a vault ready to fall.

But reality was too plain, a candle snuffing without a sound.

The jet, pure, absolute black—no, the color of Nothing—swallowed the golden figure whole, a hole punched in the world.

The petals from Yakfarro’s artifact, Cold Lure, didn’t block a thing, leaves swept into a black sea.

Where the beam passed, only the concept of “Nothing” remained, a blank stitched into the sky.

Shadow Annihilation Magitek Cannon. A very generic name, a label slapped on a storm. Miss Raven assembled it in seven minutes forty-four seconds, a thunderbolt on a roadside anvil.

She said it was still a concept; the name was ad hoc, chalk on wet slate. I hadn’t expected much.

If we couldn’t win, I’d reveal my true nature and stage a “pacifist Son of the Demon King” tragedy, a white flag tucked under a dark cloak.

Right up until it fired, the crossbow string snapping in air.

I’d failed to recall a relic of the original timeline—the Void Annihilation Magitek Cannon, a name carving itself into stone.

In my past life, at Shadow Demon Andor’s zenith, Hero Stini led a decapitation strike; Raven Segrito’s cannon swallowed my right arm, a night tide taking a limb.

It returns all things—positive or negative—to nothing, a black eclipse eating sun and moon.

I thought it was her peak work, thirty years later, built with brain-wringing and rare parts, a mountain laid stone by stone.

Never thought she could make a close, simplified version now, with the junk I brought, in seven minutes, lightning bottled in clay.

We watched space twist and knit itself shut, glass warping in a kiln. The fact was too shocking; the scene beyond sense.

Even if we slew a Demon King, all we felt was trembling fear and a clogged chest, river ice under ribs; no words would come.

We could only stare together at the place where Yakfarro vanished, three scarecrows under a silent sky, a long while unable to calm.