Mm… can’t win this one.

After my dashing taunt, everyone—Raven and Gloria included—hit the dirt within three seconds, like leaves flattened by a storm.

Fighting a world boss head-on was a dumb plan. A boot slammed into my belly. The concept of Slaughter poured in like cold poison. I tried to rise. Another kick flipped me. My greatsword skittered away like a discarded fang.

Anna grabbed my collar and hauled me up, a hawk lifting a rabbit by the scruff.

Should I spit blood in her face? The thought flared, then cooled. She’s still a girl. Cheap hostility only gets you killed faster.

“Mortal. Keep laughing.”

Her face was ghost and Buddha layered together—undefinable, half wrath, half serenity. Only this was clear: Anna was furious, the sky reddened by her mood.

We looked wiped, true. But there was a pivot coming. The next beats mattered more than the fall.

“Laugh. I told you to laugh.”

She shook me by the collar, back and forth, like a petty tyrant rattling a toy. I’d only mocked her a little. Did that really bruise her pride?

I stayed loose and numb, let the shaking carry me. My part down here was thinning. Some things don’t yield to effort. Do your best; let fate roll its dice.

…Oh, right. I’m the Demon King. I don’t take orders from a Divine Being. That proverb doesn’t fit here at all.

The shuddering stopped. Curiosity pried my lids. Blood glued them shut. I strained. Before light found me, something smacked my face.

By feel, it was a face.

“At the start, you protected her, didn’t you? Desperately. With love in it.”

Catherine’s profile pressed into mine. Teeth pushed past lips. Our clacking jaws tapped like chimes. Noses collided. The kiss was awful. If someone asks what a girl’s lips taste like, I can only answer: iron, salt, blood.

My love life keeps getting misread. Is it just me?

Also, Anna had my neck in her grip while forcing me to kiss Catherine. Anna, do you just love grabbing throats?

“Well then, lovebirds. Your last little perk.”

I’d already pictured the non-perks to follow. No surprise left, only leaden certainty.

I’m Demonfolk too. I’ve heard the ways to torture, and to savor. The catalog is ugly.

Anna let go. Catherine fell limp into my arms. I sank backward, but a wall rose behind me and caught us, like cold stone hands. Should I praise her thoughtfulness? A wall for the gravely injured to lean on—very considerate, in a cruel way.

I held Catherine close. I knew what came next. First, I had to apologize.

I’m so sorry, Catherine. To keep most of the team breathing, I’m going to abandon you. I’m sorry.

Hate me. Keep a blade ready for me. I live by stepping on lives; that truth is mine to carry. I’ll bear the weight of my sins, blank sky or burning.

Let me say it once more inside. I’m sorry, Catherine. I meant to save you, but—

But you drew Anna’s eye. And I chose to sacrifice you. I’m sorry.

I sighed, a small, weighted breath. I etched that guilt and warmth into my bones. My embrace tightened like a vow.

“Now say that line,” Anna purred. “The line Sorek tosses out sometimes. Blasphemous. Desperate. A curse at the lofty gods. You know it, don’t you? That one—”

I do.

My God, why have You forsaken me? (eli eli lama sabachthani)

“For the one you love, curse this sky.”

I had no strength left. I could only shield her back with my arms, hold tighter, make a human shell.

I shook my head at Anna, a faint refusal like dusk falling.

“I see… So your hunger for light outweighs love.”

Exactly. Exactly. I, Andor, love no one.

Anna swung her giant scythe in a bored arc, stepped clean into position, and raised it high, a crescent moon ready to reap.

“Then curse yourself. To die beneath the demonic weapon ‘Shenghuan’—that’s honor enough, isn’t it?”

The giant scythe plunged. It pierced us both, sliced through my hand bones and sinew, sank into Catherine’s heart, kissed my right lung. No drag. No mercy. Just winter through silk.

Catherine’s eyes flew open, shocked, like waking from a nightmare. What did she see?

I didn’t know.

Her gaze loosened, turned clear. For the first time, I read a message in someone’s eyes. Her hand brushed my chest. Her other arm hugged my back.

“…—…”

She smiled, soft as mist, said something in a whisper I couldn’t catch, then blushed, then slackened. Her lids drifted closed, a petal folding at night.

In my arms, she was a sleeping sprite—fragile, breakable. Not the stern beauty history wrote for her, but a gentleness one could fall for all the same.

“Farewell done?”

Anna’s vicious grin cut the air. She pronounced my last sentence.

Next she’d sweep and shred my heart, a harvest made neat.

But she hesitated.

Not out of pity, a warmth for creatures beneath the sun. Just because someone stopped her, simple as a hand on a wrist.

Stini propped himself on his last working leg. He bit Anna’s forearm, a wolf at a hunter’s sleeve.

“See’ee, I cun shtill shtand!”

“Not bad.”

Anna’s voice was flat as ash. She pressed on, muscles tightening, moving the giant scythe.

Stini’s spark of distraction mattered. Princess Golia shoved me aside at the instant the blade would have speared my heart. No tragic novel twist; she didn’t get cut.

A massive armored warrior swung a sword at Anna, opening space. Stini flashed his displacement magic and escaped the tangle. Anna didn’t even look surprised. She chopped casually with the giant scythe at the armor.

“I told you—soulless tin cans dare step up? Hmm? What is this?”

The scythe that slays all met iron that didn’t yield. Not for skill. Just for hardness, pure as mountain bone.

“Soulless? Get real. Even a mass-produced Construct gets made nail by enchanted nail. Sweat and heart go into these, something you battle idiots don’t understand!”

Miss Raven’s voice puffed out from inside the armored warrior. Steam vented from the seams in hissing plumes. The armor pressed the chase on, hot-lunged and relentless.

“Raven. My gauntlets.”

Princess Golia smacked her fists together, steel on steel, and flashed me the iron gloves. Same material as that armor? Perfect. She wouldn’t have to fear touching the concept of Slaughter bare-handed.

Good. Our top physical fighter is back in the wind.

Love you, Raven. Your mad science never lets me down.

While I stalled and Raven scrambled Anna’s rhythm, Elina finished the long chant for her unique Divine Art, Avatar of the Vicar. Her rank climbed to the highest the mortal world allows. Light poured off her like dawn spilling over a cliff, as if a Divine Being had descended.

Divine Art: Soothe Wounds worked without chant, and the healing surged. My strength and injuries rallied. The Slaughter in my veins was driven out. I could fight, barely but enough.

Soul Return Prayer shortened its casting. It scrubbed the “being killed” brand off Stini’s limbs. The Hero returned to the line.

But… Catherine didn’t. She looked alive—blood moving, heart beating. Yet soul and flesh were sealed by high-density Slaughter. A coffin without wood, a lock without a key.

We couldn’t save her. She was alive and utterly dead. Even Soul Return Prayer couldn’t pull her back.

“Catherine…”

“Andor, it’s not on you. First, defeat that Demon King…”

I never wanted her dead.

I didn’t need Stini’s comfort to know my eyes were a mess, storm-dark and raw.

“Let’s go.” I set Catherine down away from the clash, like laying a white flower at the edge of a road. I dragged my battered body forward. “We kill that Demon King.”

Catherine, your sacrifice bought us minutes of Anna’s attention. Elina caught that window for her Divine Art. Our squad re-formed. Thank you, Catherine. And I’m sorry.

Heroes of the Silver Era get washed out by time. The living don’t drown in old grief. Still, they leave something: spirit, faith, a line carved in stone.

Anna’s strike had been too sudden. Only I was fully formed when she came.

Now we’d reset and learned her tricks.

We could fight.

One gathered power. One swung sword without fuss. One drew heat. One supported. One aided. The five beats of a war drum.

Anna kept blinking through space, but we shifted our pattern to enclose her, changing shapes like clouds. Our weakness in ranged lockdown was obvious; none of us voiced it. Silence can be a rope.

Raven moved slow, but Anna’s giant scythe couldn’t bite that black-tech armor. Raven held her offense in check, a dam against a flood.

Gloria slid roles, turned to harassing skirmish, a sparrow needling a hawk. Main assault fell to me and Stini, blades and magic crossing like rain and thunder.

Elina was the pillar, the one who gave us all that impossible support—restoring strength, mending wounds, light poured into bone.

Anna’s style felt old once we mapped it. We were all veterans. Even with rule-less teleport, we could read and adjust.

Good. Enough. Keep this pace, and we win.

We pressed. We focused. Anna shortened her teleports. She was rattled. The horizon lightened. Victory’s pale glow teased us.

As if.

What’s “omniscience and omnipotence”? A concept beyond mortal grip. Even limited omniscience and omnipotence isn’t for a handful of humans to duel, especially inside her domain, where the air itself is hers.

We thought we’d cornered her. We pooled our breath for the final strike. Her panic dropped away. Her grin turned mocking, cruel as a mirror.

We didn’t know what changed. We only saw the scythe whirl. Then everyone lost the ability to fight, like candles snuffed by an ocean.

“Kukuku. I love the moment when people think they hold the high ground, and I step on their face. Hm?”

“Haha—”

I figured we’d lose a few more here. Anna would taunt and batter us. I’d stall a few minutes more. Empty hope, thin as smoke.

“Hahaha—”

When it’s her turn to show off, she really commits. Terrible taste. Terrible “adult.”

“Ahahaha, ahahahahaha—” Joy hit me so hard I cried.

You finally came, Augustus. You slow bastard.

“I’m here. So leave the rest to the grown-ups.”

He gripped the Holy Lance Thousand Gallop in his right, held a longsword in his left—the one standing in for the Holy Sword Yingfeng he’d gifted his daughter. Silver armor blazed. His stance cut the wind.

“Augustus…”

“Don’t thank me. Thank your loyal maid. She begged us, bleeding, to come.”

He waved it off like dust from a sleeve.

The true Hero, Stini’s father—Augustus Saya. Alien Knight. Demon King-Slayer. Strongest of Humanity. Breaker of Dragon Scales. The Gun-and-Sword of Judgment.

Reinforcements, arrived.