To answer something beyond rank, you need power cut from the same sky.

So I drove my Authority Domain to mimic the legendary magic Defiant Death, then used its second application, Divinity Fill, like ramming a comet at the end. I forced my way into a world that should’ve been a sealed ring of steel, empty of everything but a duel.

Divinity’s useless against stone and flesh, but when it touches will and soul, gods and Authority, it’s a universal key slipped into every lock.

For a Demon King, the soul and resolve carried by legendary magic are just the ticket that lets mortals sit at the table. For ordinary people, it’s a summit above the clouds.

When Stini raised her blade and Justin’s outline thinned like ink fading in a drizzle of bodies, I knew something had gone wrong.

Her legendary magic should’ve been Wading Past Wind and Smoke.

But thinking it through, it tracks; she’s watched so many heroes die, her worldview’s shifted from the last life like a river changing course.

Back then, Wading Past Wind and Smoke meant time slipping like sand. Anything that couldn’t stand time’s weathering—things and wills—eroded inside that legend. So once the crusade began and Stini opened it, I couldn’t summon lesser vassals to stall the Heroes, and I got dogpiled like a lone tree in a storm.

I figure it symbolized the Stini of that life lifting her gaze, or rather, going cold and unbothered. She’d seen too much pain and tragedy, so to stop her heart from bleeding, she raised her eyes like a falcon, and froze herself against mortal love and hate.

Ice-bright eyes stepped past time’s shackles, fixed only on things that outlast seasons and graves.

But this Hero’s Funeral Rite is the mirror image, a banner of respect and understanding hoisted in clean wind. Facing dark heroes, defiant heroes, wicked heroes—those who held their creed to the end and didn’t regret the ruin—they get the bow they’re due.

And with it, iron resolve and glass-clear killing intent.

I’m genuinely glad—Stini finally learned to heal her own mind, like spring grass pushing through frost.

When she completes her theory and hardens her philosophy, when she can name good and evil by her own will, that’s a person whole as a full moon, for better or worse.

Now I can rip the veil off my identity, and for better or worse, I trust Stini can face that truth and choose her future with her own hands.

Seeing a girl grow up should make me happy, but then I remember the gods’ con, and ash blows through my chest again.

Still, we Demonfolk are born to the stage; masks and endless lies fit our faces like paint to lacquer.

We’re the best actors in the world, always.

I hefted Abigail’s Godslayer Sword and told the girl, like tapping a glass with a knife.

“How long’s it been since we fought? Was it when you stole my thirty-year treasured wine, or when you smashed my three-hundred-gold collectible?”

“I was in the wrong then! I didn’t fight you! Move, Andor.”

I rolled my shoulders, and this human-shaped body complained like old wood under snow. How humans haven’t gone extinct is a mystery—kidding, sort of.

“When a skull’s jammed with stubborn ideas, words die like birds in a chimney. A frenzied mind brands any different tongue as wrong, picks at phrasing, not meaning. Looks like we fight.”

I took a few steps, lowered my point, and laid my blade against Stini’s Holy Sword like two rivers meeting.

“Yeah. Let knives and swords talk; that method suits us.”

She gave me a look I couldn’t read, a clouded mirror. I’ve never understood people’s eyes, ever.

But a sword’s simpler than a person.

It goes straight; it only cuts forward, and who it cuts, how deep it bites, shows the user’s heart like a shadow on snow.

My take? The nearer you stand to death, the truer you speak, and a duel is that cliff edge.

Stini flicked her wrist, angling for my hilt. I drew back, and steel on steel screamed like winter wind on wire.

Left diagonal, right diagonal, then she stepped in and chopped down, a guillotine of light.

Her target was Justin behind me, so I couldn’t yield a single step, like a door braced against a storm.

I raised my blade to block; my wrist strength matched hers—but Heroes fight with cheats carved by lightning.

The gods’ blessing isn’t a joke; back in the academy yard she fought fair, using only strength and swordcraft, but not today.

Today Stini has two goals—shake me off, then kill Justin—and the scales of fairness lie broken like pottery.

Buffs go on herself; blessings don’t land on the enemy, like rain that never wets the sea.

It felt like a mountain range sliding over my head. I had to cant the blade and spill her weight aside like water off a roof.

Before I could hop back to safer ground, Stini popped up with a knee to my liver, then nailed my eye with an elbow, all thunder and bone.

My left eye ballooned like a bruised plum; my gut burned like a coal brazier.

This body’s not fully healed, and your hands are black as night, Stini.

I forced the eye open, spat the blood out like rust, and took a two-handed grip.

“Again.”

In the Silver Era, swords were built for one or two hands, because magic swells strength and other races outclass humans, like oak outgrowing grass. It helps against big and bigger beasts.

I used to carry a Greatsword. Not the same thing as a longsword—don’t get cute. Longswords look like later ages’, maybe a size or two up. My Greatsword was ten centimeters thick, half a meter wide, man-high; I used it as a shield like a door torn off its hinges.

Novels love to preach sword arts, but that’s a trap; swordcraft lives or dies by blade-to-body weight ratio. You bend yourself to the sword, not the other way around, like a dancer to the drum.

With a Greatsword, I fought by running and hammering, a whirling top with blade and body as two poles. Spin and swing, let mass and iron do the killing.

Its length matches a spear’s reach, so it works as a mid-range weapon, a storm branch sweeping the field.

The longsword’s a different animal; funny enough, it demands more wrist. Its weight is nothing to a fighter; you can flick it light as rain. Your cut’s power depends on wrist torque, not inertia, not mass.

A long life piles up knowledge like driftwood; if you’re alive, you’re learning. I was bored in the Demon Realm, so I tried whatever weapons the market had and whatever oddities crawled out of forges.

Of course I learned the mainstream longsword, at around master level, a steady lamp in the dark.

But Stini’s a Hero specialized in longsword, and that ranks as legendary, a star hung higher than mine.

My body’s worse, my craft’s worse—what am I using to beat Stini, hot air and rain?

She snapped her wrist, and while I was weak and bile stung my tongue, she popped my Godslayer Sword up and away like a bell struck awake. She stepped back two paces, offering me the form of courtesy, a bow cut from habit.

After six gut-cracking hammer blows, any human body would vomit, like a barrel losing its cork.

“You should give up, Andor.”

“Damn it, if breakfast today had been Abigail’s—if it’d been Raven’s hands—I’d have won for sure.”

Stini tilted her head, then gave a bitter smile, a crescent chipped by frost.

That mournful smile doesn’t fit her, like snow on a summer flower.

“Your spirit’s good, Andor. You still joke. Looks like you’ve recovered—your heart, I mean.”

“Could be better. Without Abigail, it was almost a perfect vacation. If you weren’t busy hunting Justin in the streets and visited me more, it’d be better.”

Stini didn’t have the courage to stay calm after seeing me ruined; Elina hinted that in casual talk, a pebble dropped in a pond.

I know too. She threw herself day and night into searching for Kairi, then day and night into searching for Justin, like running to outpace a shadow.

“You know, even a Hero can’t save a single person.” She looked up, but this little world woven by legendary magic was pure white, like blank paper.

“The things we cherish slip away like fish in a stream. We can beat the Demon King, shatter disasters, but we can’t always swat a stray arrow. People die; time passes like migrating geese; in the end we do only what any mortal can. Andor, we’re just human.”

“In the end, the only transcendence we can reach is saving the world, and beyond that we’re empty-handed.”

Our voices overlapped like two strings struck together, and the note hung between us.

She looked shocked, eyes wide as moons. Good—that’s the reaction I wanted, a spark catching dry grass.

I left the sword where it fell and walked toward her, fist clenched, and drove a full-weight punch at her face like a hammer to a bell.

After all those sword strokes missed her sleeve, that unblessed fist split her lip and sent her rolling, a flower cut by wind.

“Idiot, when did you get arrogant enough to think you’re transcendent?”

I kicked her in the gut; from her dry heave, it hurt like winter knives.

“Fool, when did you decide you could protect everything?”

I grabbed her hair and gave a headbutt with no love in it, two rams on a cliff.

We both paid for it; she staggered, and stars burst behind my eyes like fireworks.

“If you’re not smart, fine. If you’re not strong, fine. Stini, don’t punish yourself for others. You’re not living for someone’s dying wish, and anything you guard can vanish like dew.”

She raised her sword, teeth bared, ready to cleave me like firewood.

I stepped into her breath, our noses nearly touching like two blades meeting point to point.

“You can cry,” I said, voice steady as rain. “Just don’t look away, and don’t stop thinking.”

“Not afraid I’ll kill you?” she asked, her breath hot as steam.

“Will you, though?” I asked back, a stone tossed into a still pool.

Then I punched her cute little nose, and with blood running like red ink, cute didn’t apply anymore.

She sprang up like a beast, jammed the Holy Sword into the ground like planting a banner, and swung fists at me like iron hammers.

Each blow hit like a high-tier warrior’s maul; copper rose in my throat like tide.

She roared, a wolf in a white world.

“I just don’t want to think! I don’t want to think!”

We both dropped our guards, skirting vitals and trading the heaviest punches we could throw, like two drums beaten in a storm.

“Why do I have to think? Why shove misery in my face?”

Like beasts in heat, we leaned into force and savagery, breath hot as forge fire.

“Why can’t I just take clean revenge? Why can’t it be simple?”

She cried, tears shining like rain on stone.

“I get tired too! You know that!”

The tactical slips and aimed strikes dwindled, our strength ebbing like tide. Less fury now—Stini felt more like she was… being a child, a plea wrapped in fists.