Charles pierced through the clouds alone and saw the airborne fortress.
Persuaded by Charles, Asta would not join the fight for now, but wait for the demon assimilation timer to reset. Until then, Charles would handle the battle by himself.
Before they split up, Charles had told Asta, "If you're too slow, I'll just wrap this up myself. By then, who knows how long it'll take you to catch up to Yuno."
After the expedition, thanks to Asta and Charles's exploits, both were promoted to First-Class Senior Magic Knights—just one step below Grand Magic Knight in the Magic Knights' merit system.
But Yuno had already been promoted to Grand Magic Knight earlier and was now preparing to succeed as captain of the Golden Dawn.
Asta had fallen quite a bit behind; this was his chance to catch up in one go.
Of course, Charles knew Asta would catch up quickly even without that kind of provocation, but seeing his fighting spirit double like that, Charles figured there was nothing bad about it.
Bringing his thoughts back, Charles locked eyes with Lucius, who sat high upon the throne.
"What a show-off!"
Charles scoffed, then beat his wings and flew over.
Watching Charles come before him, Lucius propped his chin and said, "You're here."
Unlike his clones, Lucius hadn't transformed into a Paladin; he sat on the throne in human form.
Even so, seated atop the sky fortress, he felt like the center of the world.
But his tone was as gentle as Julius's, as if the person before him were not an enemy about to fight to the death, but a friend visiting with a gift!
Charles taunted, "Didn't you already set up that boring welcome ceremony? Now you're still pretending with greetings?"
Lucius smiled and said, "Don't misunderstand. That wasn't prepared for you. It was just to keep the irrelevant from disturbing us."
Charles raised a brow. "So I'm supposed to feel honored by your attention?"
Lucius stood from the throne. "You're not like them. To the new world, they're all insignificant. Only you—you are the cornerstone of the new world!"
Only then did Charles understand: Lucius's target was actually him.
"So there's nothing else to say. It's you or me."
"Obviously."
Their calm exchange ended there, and the next instant they collided.
The austere, imposing cross-shaped throne couldn't withstand the shock of their clash and shattered with a crash; a section of the airborne fortress was leveled as well.
Both were blown back. Charles, without hesitation, unleashed a Fire Dragon's Roar.
Lucius vanished as if he'd teleported, and the flames only obliterated a corner of the airborne fortress.
Charles's pupils contracted. Lucius's true body was nothing like the clones; the clones couldn't possibly accelerate to this degree with time magic.
Charles cut off the output of Fire Dragon's Roar, turned, and raised a hand to parry Lucius's incoming palm strike.
Judging from the time magic, Lucius's true body likely had soul magic of considerable strength as well. Though Charles had confidence in his own soul and will, and in the preparations he'd made in advance, he wasn't about to recklessly sample Lucius's soul magic.
Missing with that strike, Lucius didn't seem disappointed; he simply pressed the attack.
Charles's response was to counter each move as it came, steadily fending off every blow.
It had to be said: after his metamorphosis, Lucius had indeed grown stronger. His speed and power were on a different level than before, and even his body had toughened to the point that he could brawl with Charles—a Dragonslayer mage who had trained to the dragonized state.
Add in that uncanny soul magic, and the pressure on Charles was considerable. But that pressure quickly turned into even greater fighting spirit.
Thus Lucius was surprised to find that Charles was only getting stronger. At first Charles was merely parrying his attacks; now, from time to time, Lucius himself had to evade Charles's strikes.
Lucius had been quite confident. Though he hadn't obtained the perfect power he'd planned for, he believed he had enough to suppress Charles.
Yet Charles displayed strength sufficient to stand against him head-on.
Bear in mind, it had only been a month since their last meeting. Over that month, Lucius had grown stronger by absorbing the magic of three blood relatives and Lucifero's mana, but Charles's growth was no slower.
Indeed, lacking intel on Charles, Lucius still believed Charles's parity with Lucifero back then came from that dragonization ability.
What he didn't know was that the more fundamental reason was that Charles had leveled up.
Every level-up is a metamorphosis in the essence of life, a step on the ladder from man toward godhood.
One could say the power boost from Charles's level-up was no less than what Lucius had schemed so hard to amass.
Especially this past month, Charles hadn't slacked on training, fully capitalizing on the XP grace period after the divine boon of leveling up.
Lucius knew none of this; ultimately, it was power from another world, beyond his understanding.
At this point, however, he realized one thing: if this continued, he'd be the one at a disadvantage.
So he took Charles's punch to the chest, retreated, and transformed into his Paladin form.
His black spade grimoire flipped open, and an invisible ripple spread outward.
That was time magic—a terrifying power that accelerated the flow of time for all things. Everything swept by the ripple weathered as if scoured by tens of thousands of years.
This was the proper application of time magic—an inescapable power meant to steal time.
Yet when that ripple washed over Charles's body, nothing happened to him. For a moment, even Lucius wore a puzzled expression.
Lucius hadn't expected to finish Charles with that spell, but in his estimation, Charles would at least need to expend a large amount of mana to offset it.
Clearly, though, Charles had done nothing just now. It was more like time magic had simply failed on him.
Charles smiled and drew the grimoire from the pouch at his waist.
In Charles's view, a grimoire linked to a mage's source of mana was a kind of weakness, so he wasn't in the habit of exposing it to an enemy.
Even Lucius had rarely seen Charles's grimoire.
At this moment, the cover of Charles's grimoire—bearing a great silver-and-black tree—was radiating a mysterious light.
"Even if you can manipulate the world's time, my time lies outside the world!"
Indeed, Charles had been preparing for this battle for the past month, and Lucius's soul magic and time magic were problems that had to be solved.
Soul magic could be met with pre-prepared defensive magical tools and arrays, with an iron will as the final bulwark.
But time magic was different; besides tanking it with mana, Charles had no means to counter it.
So he took stock of his trump cards and suddenly noticed a power he'd always overlooked: World Magic.
As an over-spec power even gods couldn't parse, Charles realized he had long underestimated it. Beyond world traversal and training buffs, this magic should have more applications.
After traveling through multiple worlds, the magic had evolved the ability to modulate the flow of time.
Once Charles realized this, a new page appeared for the first time in the World Magic section of the grimoire.
"World's Shelter"—a spell seemingly born specifically to counter time magic—could grant Charles immunity to attacks at the level of world rules.
Charles put the grimoire away and said, "Like I said from the start, if you want to fight me, you've got to use real, hard mana."
With his go-to magic failing, Lucius looked exhilarated.
"So that's power beyond the world? If I obtain it, I can evolve into something higher!"
There was nothing left to say. What remained now was battle—no, a fight to the death.