The sky held no clear moon, no silver bowl of light to bless us.

Without the “Undying Under the Moon” tier blessing, Alpha spat a crimson petal, pain snapping back like an iron trap.

Stini lowered her hand, sorrow skimming her face like frost, yet her smile still sprang up like sunlight after rain.

“We’re not small anymore. Rest easy. It’s our turn on stage. Saint Mire, pull Alpha up.”

We’d just traded blows with Saint Mire, the Grand Divine Healer, our blades ringing like hail, and even she admitted our weight.

After our upgrade, the Hero Squad was a stormfront no lone fortress hero could hold.

We’d agreed: if we beat Alpha, she’d drag him up to the academy folded in another dimension.

Then we’d fight Demon King Anna with both hands free, like wolves on open snow.

But Alpha refused the transfer, his hand slicing the air, his few scraps of mana jamming Gugwen’s space shift like sand in gears.

“Hey, hey, I said it already. Let me. This is sentiment, like incense over old graves. You brats get that?”

“We’re strong enough, Teacher!”

“Not enough! Can you stand with your old man, Augustus, and trade storms? When he’s back, if you can break his nose with one punch, I’ll admit I’m old. That bastard’s not home yet, so this round is mine.”

“Even if we can’t beat Dad, we’re stronger than you are! Teacher Alpha, your body’s at its limit!”

Alpha burned flesh and blood again, trying to drag down a moon like a hook through the clouds.

“Just a trick, cough, cough. You think this wins against the Demon King… huh?”

Stini clenched her empty left hand, knuckles white as bone, and the bright moon still refused to rise like a curtained stage.

“Teacher.”

Iron will lit Stini’s eyes like stars in black water, and she spoke like a bell.

“It’s not a trick. Teacher, you pit effort against talent like fire against water. This is our crystal, forged from blood and soul. We don’t know how much you paid for legendary magic, but you don’t know how we dragged ourselves forward, heart by heart.”

“I know.”

“You don’t.”

“I watched everything you did, like a lantern watching ants cross a bridge.”

“Knowing the scene isn’t feeling the burn. You can’t stand in our skins.”

“…”

Alpha bowed under Stini’s presence like bamboo in a gale, maybe resonating with a wound that rang the same.

Like rage at our own weakness, like grief for a beloved gone cold, like thirst for strength that tastes like salt.

Blood crescents marked Stini’s palm where her nails bit, while Alpha’s clenched teeth cracked like old porcelain.

“The Creator is dead. Maybe we’ll never truly understand each other, like two rivers split by a ridge. But we can still believe.”

“…What do you want me to believe?”

“Believe I can beat the Demon King. Believe I’ll come back breathing.”

“…”

Alpha reached into his coat like into a winter pocket, found no flask, and remembered he’d tossed it like a fallen leaf.

The fire on him guttered out like dying coals. He smiled, but tears slid down like warm rain through ash.

“…You little devils. Do you want to erase an old man’s reason to exist, like sweeping chalk from a slate? Those born with talent leave no crumbs for me. I can’t even throw my life away and play hero?”

“The elder’s meaning is the best seat in the house, watching juniors carve new legends like calligraphy in gold. Then wait at home, offer praise and soup. Don’t die. If you die, who do we show our pride to?”

“Fair enough. Hey, Saint Mire, Gugwen.”

He turned so we couldn’t see his tears, waving at the sky like shooing birds, telling the academy it was time.

“Bring my flask back, yeah? It’s my dead father’s relic, a shard of time I can’t replace.”

Space rippled like heat above a kiln, and Alpha’s body rose like driftwood on a tide, when—

—a pure white little scythe slipped through space like a winter crescent, aimed straight for Alpha’s heart like a needle for silk.

I knew it. Anna wouldn’t wait while we played warm family drama by a hearth.

And I’d been waiting for this hand like a hunter with an old snare.

“Damn it! Watch the ambush!”

I roared through clenched teeth, leapt ten meters like a spring deer, and threw my Greatsword crosswise as a shield before Alpha.

In the vanishing Alpha’s stunned gaze, the impact of that tiny scythe slammed me like a battering ram, thunder under iron.

In a fight measured by heartbeats, it still took me two full seconds to bat the little scythe back like swatting a wasp.

Weakness flooded me after like the sea rushing out, as if strength had been siphoned like wine from a cracked jug.

That was Anna’s other demonic artifact, cold as moonbone. If I hadn’t moved, we’d fight Anna, then attend Alpha’s funeral under black flags.

Anna still lounged in her chair like a cat in sun, sipping tea, frozen mid-throw like a statue with a wicked smile.

“Kukuku, interesting, boy. Much better than last time. If you’d had that then, maybe you could’ve saved… Catherine?”

“You… you vile thing!”

Raven reacted last, finally grasping the cut, and shouted like a crow startling from a branch.

“Too noisy. It was my duel with ‘Burning Moonlight.’ You lot cut in like a knife through silk, then blame me? I never said I’d let you go first. I never said I wouldn’t meddle.”

Anna brushed cookie crumbs from her lap like snow, leaned on her Giant Scythe, and pitched chair and table into her domain in the Ocean of Darkness like stones into a lake.

“Daviya’s tea is decent, good for clearing the hangover fog like wind through pines… whatever. Vacation works. You coming works. It’s all sand and sun to me.”

“For a vacation? Just for a vacation, you’ll massacre a whole city like mowing dry grass?”

“Are we fighting or not?”

Anna dug a finger in her ear, bored as a lizard on a warm rock.

Demon King? No, all life in the Demon Realm craves ruin like wolves crave marrow; destruction is their bread and rain.

What’s habit to us is a thorn to those of the Sea of Light; they’ll never swallow it smooth.

In the Silver Era, countless souls were pure good like fresh snow, so we were pure evil, a black river opposite the bright shore.

For a Hero like Stini, justice shines like a blade; odd thing is, Heroes hate Demon Kings least.

They’re the mortals closest to a Divine Being, walking banners of justice, and they see Demonfolk were born to evil, not driven by—

“…free will.”

The word flickered back, sharp and apt, like a flint spark in my skull.

“What’s wrong?”

Stini was cursing Anna, or giving that pre-battle speech that plants our flag, while Raven tuned her Construct and tossed me a glance like a pebble.

“Nothing. Thought of a nameless liar, like a shadow in a tavern.”

“Huh? Whatever. Keep your eyes on the Demon King. Last time, she was playing patty-cake with us.”

I watched Raven peel a strip of paint off a Construct like old bark, her calm only a silk veil over a drum.

“Yeah. We’ll avenge Catherine, and we’ll keep our own candles burning.”

I caught her hand. Unexpectedly, she didn’t pull away, like a bird choosing a wrist.

“…We’ll beat you, then we’ll walk back alive, like dawn after storm.”

“I hope so. If everything bends to my will, boredom grows like moss.”

With that, Stini drew the Holy Sword, light rippling like water, and led the charge at the Demon King like thunder leading rain.

Our captain ran, so how could we fall back like leaves?

Anna didn’t guard; she trusted her Giant Scythe’s reach, longer than the Holy Sword like a crane over a heron, and her casual swings birthed a Godspeed Realm.

She underestimated us. So she’d choke on that mouthful like a bone.

Every Demon King can kill a Hero from the front like a cliff crushes a wave, but most grow careless like cats in milk.

In a life-and-death duel, underestimation isn’t just looking down; it’s fighting without the will to bleed, like stepping on glass barefoot for pride.

They assume a clean win, plan to avoid scratches, and that will crumbles before warriors ready to die like candles in wind.

The Giant Scythe’s beak punched through Stini’s upper arm, then stabbed her shoulder blade, two moons of pain blooming red.

Anna’s face shifted like cloud shadow over snow.

Stini never intended to dodge; she let the Scythe bite, then gripped the haft like iron roots and pinned Anna’s attack like a nailed wing.

Elina’s hands kindled not with the offensive Divine Art, “Authority Barrage,” but with the healing Divine Art, “Soothe Wounds,” warm as milk.

She pressed Stini’s back, warding off the concept of “Slaughter” like a tide, and kept Stini’s body in fighting shape like a brace.

Stini’s right hand chopped for Anna’s face, a head-on cleave like lightning for a tree.

A pure-white small scythe, the demonic artifact “Shiku,” flew from nowhere like a sneer and knocked our strike off its line.

Gloria flashed behind Anna, her hand a blade like iced wind, ready to reap a head like wheat.

But Anna blinked out like a candle, and both strikes bit nothing; she teleported within her domain and reappeared like a ghost crossing a doorway.

“Demon King, I told you. Lately, my sense for ‘life’ is razor-sharp, like a hunter smelling blood.”

I slid my Greatsword from Anna’s shadow like a fin from black water and drove it through her body like a stake through ice.

I heaved and twisted, wringing her organs like wet cloth and grinding them to pulp.

Anna screamed, and the concept of “Slaughter” spilled from her like smoke, staining the air like spilled ink.

At a glance, it looked like we’d killed her, but the “Slaughter” domain still held like iron walls; she couldn’t die here.

“Hey, hey, hey, that’s not all you’ve got, is it, Demon King?”

I taunted like a drumbeat, but we kept our circle tight, weapons up like a ring of spears.

“Kukuku, you pop a lesser vassal I dressed as a decoy, and you’re this happy? If I let you kill a few more, will you thank me?”

Anna’s voice swam around us like a shark, but her figure hid like a knife in silk.

After Liebich’s self-detonation, this place had turned into the domain of “Slaughter,” the Demon King Anna’s own hunting ground, flat as a killing floor.

She used it as a springboard to the Ocean of Darkness, exercised the authority of Slaughter like a judge’s gavel, and summoned her subjects like crows.

One, two, ten, then hundreds and thousands of mind-lost puppets crawled from the Ocean of Darkness like swollen corpses from bogwater.

They looked like bloated dead, yet their pitch-black nails argued against “only the dead are safe,” like knives that vote.

We stood back to back like a four-petaled flower, and cut down these once-humans, pitiful as torn flags.

Countless mind-lost puppets fell, then dissolved into the concept of “Slaughter” like salt in rain, and still more came from the dark like waves.

Raven’s magitek bombs erased swaths into nothing, fire blooming like poppies and dying like sparks.

Then Stini froze mid-motion, eyes hard, as a Giant Scythe’s blade kissed her throat like winter glass.

“Kukuku, checkmate, little kitty.”

“No.”

Stini grinned, seized the scythe, and squeezed like a vice.

“My checkmate.”

Hero perk “Immunity Privilege,” application one.

“Throne Shatter.”

—The authority to drag gods and demons off their throne like yanking idols from pedestals.

“Ahhhhh, you bastard—”

Anna’s scream tore the air like cloth.