I plant my feet, surge forward, and smash my face through the realm’s skin like breaking thin ice.

Time freezes; even lava in the cracks stops mid-bubble, a candle’s breath held.

Then I cut forward.

I know this is my last flare before darkness, one final swing. Real time? About five seconds before the Demon King senses a worm in her gut, breaks Dragon Exorcist’s molten seal, and grinds us to ash.

Five seconds. The first hangs, thick as amber.

"Such a gentle blade. Too gentle. What are you trying to understand from this cut?"

Dread rises; she’s awake.

To humans, the Godspeed Realm is a contest of absolute fast and absolute slow. Only the result matters; the path vanishes like footprints in surf.

To gods and demons, it’s just a way to tilt the hourglass, a different angle on time.

Humans measure the world with matter because that’s the eye they have. Gods and demons can change eyes at will, like turning a mask.

I meant to strike while she drifted half-asleep, like stabbing the night before dawn. Now she’s alert, and the sky changes.

Even inside the Godspeed Realm, Sylvia speaks. For humans the mouth would shred; speech is too fine and quick, like silk snagged by wind.

But gods and demons ignore rules we wrote on sand. No 340 meters per second for sound. No scything gust that slices skin for moving too fast.

I have to admit, she’s faster now. Her arm blurs; a knife-hand falls like a meteor and severs my right forearm at the elbow. The cut is jewel-clean. Even an enemy has to say, beautiful.

"You think too much, Andor. It makes me doubt you ever meant to kill me."

She speaks my true name, shaped by the Demon Realm’s tongue.

Panic needles up my spine; I’m read like an open scroll.

Damn it. When I resurrect, I’m going to pay Daviya back for that seal.

"If you meant it, why this rag of a body, this thin strength? That slash had no weight, no spirit. Half-hearted, trying to read me mid-swing? Ha. That’s so very Demon King—aloof, obvious, beneath even basic courtesy. Not that I planned any."

Sorry, Daviya. I blamed you. This one’s on me.

Sylvia strolls through the lava like through warm rain, pinches the Greatsword Valor frozen mid-arc, and squeezes. Cracks flower across the metal, silver-white petals splitting. The rip widens; she snaps off a chunk, pops the intact piece into her mouth, and chews. The rest she flicks away like grit.

Blackgold, Mithril, Mountain Bronze—legendary stuff that resists a change of concept. That’s why you face a Demon King wearing legends.

Mountain Bronze is sturdy, but not famed for never changing like Blackgold. A Demon King who defines herself as the physical limit can pry it open barehanded. Not strange at all.

Heroes trade their shining deeds for the right to face a Demon King. The pity is, the right is the Demon King’s to grant. If she’s vexed, she can swat a human Hero anytime.

Our trio—me, Dragon Exorcist, and Maki—meant to catch Sylvia off guard. Too bad her reflexes woke first.

We still have a shot—

"Forget it, rude junior. After I erase this world, I’ll take my time with you in the Demon Realm. Be grateful. Time stands with us immortals. We’ll have ages to discuss how you toyed with my body this past year."

Only when she permits it does time thaw and flow, like a river unbound.

Inside the Godspeed Realm, she taps me as if dusting snow. In normal time those pats boom with shockwaves. A soft lick near my ear detonates half my skull.

There it goes. Forget building limbs with magic—there isn’t even enough left to rebuild a torso.

"As for you—huh?—"

By my count, post–Silver Era Heroes rarely use the Godspeed Realm. If they do, it’s a flicker for warning or a dodge. The body can’t bear the strain; the hurt you deal is less than the tear you take.

Trade one wound to the enemy for two to yourself. That kind of math.

It’s a fine art, shackled souls by matter. With training, it could sing...

Set Heroes aside. Dragon Exorcist staying outside the Godspeed Realm helps. Her nail-bolt launcher fires the instant the realm drops, and the Demon King—switching viewpoints still costs a sliver of thought.

Four seconds.

The Mountain Bronze bolt punches through pale skin hard as diamond, burrows into meat, and opens its barbs like thorns.

Three seconds.

The chain hauls back, dragging the Demon King’s body. The shield comes up, and its spikes bite into Sylvia’s belly like a steel wolf.

Two seconds.

She twists the shield’s mechanism. The spikes start to spin, drill-bits meant for dragon scale. They churn ribs to splinters, then mash organs to pulp.

Sylvia dangles like a ruined doll. With each tremor, her limbs flop boneless, a puppet with cut strings.

One second.

"Dragon Exorcist, the sword—take her head. It has to be the sword. It has to be this sequence—only then—"

So close. A fingertip from fate—

Just take her head—

A gore-slick demon hand breaks the molten seal’s skin, clamps my throat, and hoists the patchwork body I just cobbled together.

"Truly, just a little short."

Her face, spattered with blood and offal, snaps up. Sylvia grins; bloodlust glints on the points of her teeth.

She’s still pinned to the shield. Comically, she reaches out, hand stretching for Dragon Exorcist’s face—no, for her head.

Dragon Exorcist snaps the chain loose from the nail-bolt, hops back, and whips the trash off her shield in one smooth motion. The Demon King doesn’t touch her head, but the visor isn’t so lucky.

The Mithril faceplate gets torn from the helmet, crumpled to a ball, and tossed aside like foil.

"How are you still alive!" Dragon Exorcist bellows, hiding the quaver in her breath.

Because we were never going to kill her.

"Just a little more, and you could have—banished me."

I never meant to kill Sylvia. We can’t. Even without a fused authority domain, a Demon King is still a Demon King. Their rank sits above, like a hand outside the page. A planet-buster in a comic can’t punch the author at his desk.

Different layers of being. From where humans stand, gods and demons don’t die.

All I wanted was to exile her to the Demon Realm. Lean on the original pact. Split hairs over wording to stage “fought a Hero and lost,” then borrow the Divine Being’s hand to blast her home.

So we needed at least one thing: a sword to take her head. That meant I had to forge her body, and drag her mind into it as well.

Snapping a spine, pureeing organs, ripping limbs? Useless. While the whole holds, the concept refills the flesh in a blink.

And I couldn’t tip off Dragon Exorcist to use a sword. If you scheme against a Demon King, you don’t get to be the Hero who slays her. The moment I laid this plan, I gave up the protagonist’s seat.

Only Dragon Exorcist could land the last strike.

Too bad...

Newborn and gleaming, Sylvia flaunts a body with eerie allure—full yet cut. A textbook Demon King. She doesn’t care how humans look at her. Her kind thinks like this: no one minds an insect peeking at your bath; why treat humans as equals?

"Have you said goodbye to your friends? To your world? To your Divine Being? Then let’s begin. Humans, I invite you to taste this hatred brewed for a century. Wail. Suffer. I’ll savor every sound."

The molten seal shrinks like a drying puddle. Dragon Exorcist backsteps from the ghost hand, her gaze cutting between me and Sylvia like a pendulum.

Sylvia doesn’t care. She strolls over and grips a clump of Shadow power at my gut. As I once did to her, she uses the concept of Hatred to wrench it free.

She won’t drop half-dead after, unlike me.

When Hatred tempers the Shadow clean, a glass orb forms in her palm, starlight caught in syrup.

She crushes it with a wet crack.

Her interest in me gutters. She even forgets to finish me. Her eyes lock on Dragon Exorcist, and she presses in, step by step, like tide over sand.

"Only one left. Relax. It won’t take long..."

Just then, star-lit feathered arrows fall like rain.

Arcane fireworks bloom and set the sun ablaze.

One figure, spear and sword, dives alone into the dragon’s den and tiger’s maw.

"Hero Stini Saya, here to challenge!"

You’re late, idiot!