I lace the Greatsword with mana from the Shadow Realm, slap on a quick enchant, and leap, cleaving at Sorek like a falling crescent moon. But his speed cracks my expectations like thin ice; a single sidestep lets the blade sigh past like wind over reeds. The storm coiling around him hurls me off like a leaf in a gust, and lightning scatters my Shadow mana like a flock of crows ripped apart.

Cold anger settles first, then memory unspools like frost lines: that Demon Realm portal in the Arctic Tundra dates back two centuries, when the “Restless” Demon King refused to hold his ground. He forced open a permanent gate like a night tide breaching a dam and ferried legions of Demonfolk into the mortal world, then cast a grand spell to turn our world into theirs.

It was his personal gambit, a lone drum in a winter march; he thought the other Demon Kings would applaud the invasion, so he burned mana like torch oil. Even his so‑called “infinite” domain began to run dry like a desert well.

Because his true body never stepped into the mortal world, it didn’t break the Primordial Accord; his abacus clicked like sleet on bronze.

But the oldest, strongest, and quietest Demon Kings braided their will like braided thunder, slew the “Restless” one, and pulverized the mustered army like pottery in a kiln. At the same time, the gods slammed the gate shut like a lid on a storm.

It took six days, a candle burning to its nail; adventurer teams kept arriving, flesh and bone against a tide of steel, and only one ember survived—Sorek.

On the panel, Sorek’s authority over wind and lightning sits just beneath the elemental god Elemont, a mountain’s shadow under a taller peak. He’s got many original spells, and his battle sense is a whetted blade; he knows his greatest edge is air superiority.

We don’t enter the main hall; we clash in the upward corridor, a stone throat winding to a sky I can’t see. The space is tight; even in flight Sorek can only kiss the ceiling like a moth to a lampshade.

Frustration hits first, hot as sparks; even when we jump, we can’t grab Sorek, and Stini’s half‑baked magic shatters like thin glass against his control.

My mid‑tier Shadow spells stutter in this lightning‑rich air, a candle in a gale, and my high‑tier casts are slower than his storm-tossed hands.

Only Catherine’s bow can truly threaten Sorek; even he won’t tank an arrow that carries the “Surekill” concept, a needle with a god’s whisper.

Hope tastes sharp, like mint on the tongue; Raven’s already finished a winged Construct during our fighting, and now she’s building reaction thrusters as if plucking stars from wire.

Her genius is so bright it makes you a little sick, like staring at snow at noon.

The fight doesn’t stall; it whitens to a fever pitch as Sorek completes a high‑tier spell, heat haze over a battlefield.

High‑tier Destruction magic: “Thunder’s Stirring.”

Lead‑gray thunderclouds billow like bruised seas, smothering sight like wet wool. Worse, any movement past a certain speed draws lightning from the cloud’s rich veins, a hawk stooping the instant you twitch. Catherine, light as paper, would die to that bolt like a moth in a forge.

So it has another name, “Speed Valve,” a spell forged to choke speed specialists like a hand at the throat.

Mid‑tier Destruction magic: “Oxygen Devourer — Auxiliary.”

It’s an alchemical spreader, a wind that carries venom; mid‑tier on paper, but it turbocharges Oxygen Devourer into breaking oxygen into poison gas, a greenish veil over a pond.

Sorek’s a lich, and he drapes himself in an Application spell, “Flight Cloak,” a steady glide like a crane; his constant speed won’t trip “Thunder’s Stirring,” so both spells are snares meant for us.

Speed shackles us, and a ticking clock beats like a drum in the chest.

I feel the thrill first, cold wine in the veins; I actually smile, and my cheek muscles ache like torn silk—I haven’t felt that in ages.

Elina and Stini scramble, hands a blur like wings, throwing anti‑poison buffs on everyone; they’re safe behind our wall, so the headlong joy of the fight falls to me.

If a straight jump gets read like a telegraphed wave, then faster is the answer—a lightning strike he can’t predict, a falcon he can’t see.

I drop into my body like a diver into dark water; my right foot twists against stone, and the reaction force shatters the floor like brittle ice. Even the Sorcerer Emperor’s tiles can’t bear my full output; they crack like old bone.

“I’ve grown too! Stop treating me like a half‑baked fighter!”

And now I step into the Godspeed Realm.

Everything slows, like snow floating on a midnight wind: the flicker of lightning, the spray of gravel, the dust rising, every motion stretched like melted glass.

Good. I had already accelerated before crossing that threshold; in a sense I etched “limit speed” into myself, a brand of wind and edge. It’s hard to steer, a wild horse that kicks; one slip and I’ll cut myself.

I keep adding careful weight to my speed, a fingertip on a scale; in my senses I crawl like a tortoise under moss, but to the others I am an instant, a knife flash.

I sprint for the wall, my body’s cadence finally climbing like a drumbeat; I jump and plant my foot on stone.

Even light as I can make it, my first step hits the wall like a battering ram into a city gate; shockwaves ripple in layered rings, and the masonry caves like dry bread. Pain screams up my leg like fire ants; bones in my foot crackle like twigs.

I keep running. Lightning clings to me like wet silk, then pours away behind me like a shed skin. I circle the ring‑wall upward, a gecko with a storm at its back.

On the way, Sorek fires a high‑tier spell at Stini, “Exploding Thunderblade,” a jagged comet. I cut its body with my Greatsword; the mana circuit snaps like a harp string. Normally chaos mana would slap me in the face like a rogue wave, but inside Godspeed, it can’t diffuse. I do the same to sever the high‑tier “Wind’s Limit” screaming for Catherine, a gust cut at the root.

I reach the ceiling and trade stances again; I still use my right foot, better to ruin one shore than both.

Pain is a tax, and I pay it; under crushing pressure like a mountain’s palm, I run along the ceiling, draw a bead on Sorek at center, and drop a single stroke that splits his skull like a ripe gourd. The gale my Greatsword drags tears apart his “Storm Fortification” and “Thunder Fortification,” then powders the broken bones into snow.

Lich Sorek: three lives remain.

If you want the handsome version, it goes like this:

Activate “Godspeed Realm.” A peerless swordlight flashes, and in that breath it feels like time stops and falls to ash. In the blink that follows, spell and skeleton explode together, and Andor slides his blade home and smooths hair the wind just teased.

I did exactly that, but it’s lame to say it out loud; praising yourself tastes like stale wine.

If Vega said it for me, I’d find it natural; I miss my dear maid like the smell of home smoke.

Sorek’s next life will guard against attacks from the Godspeed Realm; it’s like an RPG boss with staged phases—one trick only buys one life.

Even with death at my elbow, I joke; under Sorek’s growing artillery I force my way to Raven’s defensive ring like a crab through surf.

“Stini, the rest is yours.”

I see it, light motes swarming into Galewind like fireflies into a jar; another secret sword from the Hero’s line? Stini’s grown since the Yakfarro campaign, a willow thicker with spring.

She copies me, sprinting the wall like a lark, then leaps. With mana extending her blade like a ray of dawn, she thrusts through “Exploding Thunderblade.”

As expected, the rampaging mana slaps her into the wall like a breaker against a pier. Her speed trips “Thunder’s Stirring,” and lightning bites like a white serpent. She leaves a human‑shaped dent in stone and goes limp; Stini’s out for now. Without “Iron Fortification,” we’d have to ask a Divine Healer to ready a soul‑return rite.

Sorek glides to her and starts another “Exploding Thunderblade,” a single‑target killer that even a fully blessed Stini can’t take head‑on, a hammer for a single nail. Let alone now.

But he forgot something; my anger cools to clarity like a night pond. Stini isn’t fighting alone—no, that’s not the point. To kill you must focus like a lens, and Sorek underestimates the rest of us while he narrows his breath.

We won’t forget you being the bait, Stini; your step opens our road like a cut in bamboo.

Princess Golia leaps, a swallow into wind, and a casual mid‑tier “Feather‑Cleave” tags her chest and knocks her back like a drumbeat.

Good thing it’s the single‑target slicer; if he’d used “Hyperburn Strand,” the lightning‑mania variant that spreads like grassfire, her thrusters might have been ruined.

From here, Sorek walks into a dead end like a stag into a snare.

Gloria’s thrusters roar to life with a fox’s whine; she banks and sights Sorek as his “Exploding Thunderblade” nears completion, two storms about to touch.

Raven’s improvised reaction thrusters aren’t quality; their speed lags behind “Flight Cloak” like a sparrow against a kite. They can’t catch Sorek in a straight chase.

But Gloria isn’t our only striker still moving; my feet are dead weight, but the waist thrusters sear like coals. They’ve preheated and wait for a signal, a hidden arrow for Sorek’s blind spot.

Sorek doesn’t tense; a veteran mage reads his best dodge line like a hunter reads wind.

If it were just Gloria and me, gaps would yawn like broken teeth. But why would we pilot fresh‑issued thrusters ourselves?

We can’t dogfight; we only swing on planned lines like metronomes, covering every lane Sorek can flee, a net with no moonlight holes.

Yes, Lady Raven is the one guiding us; her calculation power stands among the finest in the mortal world, a crystal abacus under stars.

Brittle bones can’t endure Shadow power seeping through like cold river water, and no bone can stand against the sharpest edge under heaven. Dust to dust.

Lich Sorek: two lives remain.

After a long silence, Catherine’s Aerian‑only Imbuement finally flowers like spring breeze. “The sky never belongs to mortals,” she finishes chanting, and a pale cyan radiance blooms out, then vanishes like dew.

Imbuement Magic: “Verdant Sky Imbuement.”

Save for clouds, the sky holds nothing but breath.

When Sorek returns, he can’t use any magic tied to “flight” or “levitation,” a bird with feathers damp. Don’t underestimate his ground game, though; two hundred years ago the Demon Realm gate opened on land in the Arctic Tundra like a wound in ice.

He probably fought like the frontier knights of the Western Expansion: spells first like arrows, weapons later like axes when mana ran dry.

Elven tradition teaches longsword, bow, and rapier, with short blades reserved for assassins like shadows under hedges. We can guess a mage like Sorek would reach for a sword.

He drops his bone staff like a dead branch, lets his high‑tier wards peel away like old paint, and stands in a tattered robe, a common traveler under gray sky.

But he doesn’t draw a sword. Instead, he pulls a scythe that glows with a cold green, plain as field iron, a farm moon turned blade. Stare at it and your soul cramps with pain and nausea, a fish hooked behind the eyes.

No motion shows, just a sudden clang of steel, a bell in fog; Catherine’s feathered arrow falls limp at Sorek’s feet like a molted quill.

“Aerian girl, your arrows are useless now.”

So, he counters the Godspeed Realm and resists the “Surekill” concept; it’s not the mind‑rot a Demon King brings, but the pressure is a mountain of slate. That scythe is—

“I never wanted to use this,” he says, voice like cold ash. “It’s proof of my bargain with a Demon King, the sin I condemned. But your strength is beyond my guess, so I must let this body sink into a darker trench.”

A scythe blessed by the domain of Slaughter, a simplified magic artifact, Slaughter made flesh—the Demon King’s temptation and curse, a honeyed thorn.

“Careful, that’s a manifested conceptual domain!”

I’m twenty meters from Sorek, a river’s width in a cave. He tilts his head at my shout, and the hand holding the scythe twitches like a cat’s tail. No wind‑cut, no killing aura, only the quiet of a falling leaf.

I whip Valor up before me, steel like a raised cliff. The masterwork takes a gouge like a canyon, and the shock hammers my arms, driving me back several steps like surf.

I’m Demonfolk, so terror doesn’t drag sweat from me like it does mortals, but this one skated the blade’s edge.

Another heartbeat, and my chest and spine would have been snipped like threads; my bones and muscle aren’t as hard as Valor’s steel, only flesh under storm.

Worse, that scythe is Slaughter itself, a crescent of iron that reaps like a cold moon through fields of souls.

I can feel the Greatsword in my hands dying, the craftsman’s spirit fading, the edge dulling, that unbending temper guttering—embers snuffed in snow by that scythe.

Only two lives left—how do we fight, two candles trembling in a storm?

“I can tell you, my physical combat was never as good as my magic. But laughably, blessed by the Demon King, my maximum attack range reaches twenty meters, a ring of frost stronger than the spells I studied for years. And as that boy said, this scythe is Slaughter made manifest; a pure concept needs no time to spread, like light.”

That means every cut is an attack in the Godspeed Realm—no defense, almost no counter, like lightning under a black sky.

“I’ll kill every attack and defense you make; if you truly have courage, then pierce this twenty-meter prison of death, woven of iron thorns.”

The bones don’t grin; they voice their killing intent with calm, like still water hiding a riptide.