"Cyra, why on earth did you let her go?" Thranduil asked, his voice low and tight as he stared toward the lone, ancient tree perched precariously on the absolute summit of the mountain.
"In the original timeline, I'd assume we successfully kept Areia out of the tower on Dan's request, and when Dan broke free, it was an absolute disaster," Cyra said, crossing her arms defensively as her gaze locked onto the twisting roots of the summit tree. "I decided to shake things up a little this time. Why not send Areia right into the heart of the tower? She is the only person in this entire world he actually reacts to when he completely loses control. I mean, we literally found that out the hard way back in the Dragon realm. If anyone can pull Dan out of that darkness before it's too late... it's Areia."
"What is your actual objective here?" Thranduil's eyes narrowed into dangerous slits, his elven senses screaming that there was more to her play.
She turned and stared back at him, her deep brown eyes carrying a chilling, immovable resolve. "To permanently rid this world of existential threats like him. Sure, I genuinely like Dan and all, but I cannot put his single life over the safety of the entire world. I'm not blindly in love with him like Areia is." She turned her head, looking out at the distant horizon as the clouds began to violently churn and turn an ominous, pitch-black color.
"Say... if I were to destroy that tree right now, not only will it permanently trap Dan inside the void, but Areia too," Cyra said slowly, her voice eerily calm. "In a way, I'm basically doing her a favor. They can be together forever."
"I refuse," Antrea growled through gritted teeth, her black wings flaring out in a sudden surge of protective fury, her artificial horns humming with a tense, dark light.
Cyra eyed the winged girl for a quiet moment, completely unfazed by the threat. "I know you have a major thing for Dan, Antrea, but you need to bear with me right now. I gave Areia exactly one hour. If she doesn't return to this summit with Dan by then... I am going to blow up the fucking tree myself."
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the mountain peak as the trio stared at one another, the rising wind howling through the rocky crags.
"If that is your plan, then why did you bring me along but explicitly request the Queen and Haki to stay behind at the kingdom?" Thranduil asked, trying to piece together the puzzle.
"Because I need a highly advanced, powerful illusion magic from you," Cyra said, raising her arms to stretch casually as if they weren't standing on the brink of an apocalypse. "Also, Antrea... prepare yourself. We are about to fight someone incredibly troublesome."
"An illusion?" Thranduil pressed, his brows furrowing in deep confusion. "What for? And who exactly am I casting it on?"
"Myself, of course," Cyra smiled, though her gaze suddenly looked profoundly tired, carrying a weight no one else could see.
"You're actually trying to force-activate your hero's blade using an illusion?" Thranduil asked slowly, his voice dropping an octave as the sheer absurdity—and danger—of the plan dawned on him.
"Bingo!" Cyra smiled, popping the 'p' with an airy, almost fragile cheerfulness.
It was common knowledge among their inner circle that Cyra was fundamentally locked out of her own true potential. Because of the unique, rigid nature of her hero's crest, she couldn't activate her legendary blade or draw upon her most devastating powers unless her mind truly perceived her opponent as a literal monster. Since most of their enemies still possessed human or elven forms, she was practically nerfed a majority of the time. It was a psychological theory Thranduil himself had pitched to her months ago during a late-night study session. If a high-tier illusion magic could forcibly alter her perception of reality, tricking her brain into seeing a hideous abomination in real-time—even if only for a split second—it would be more than enough to violently spark her sword to life. But he had absolutely no idea she had actually been considering such a reckless gamble all this time.
"So... I'm only here to act as your mental trigger," Thranduil muttered, a bitter taste in his mouth.
"Yes and no," Cyra countered softly, her eyes locked on the darkening horizon. "You're also our absolute last line of defense if both myself and Antrea happen to fall—though, realistically, that's probably impossible. I'd honestly like to keep you as far away from the actual battlefield as I can, Thranduil."
"Because I'm the weakest link in this entire group," Thranduil replied, a cold, realistic sigh escaping his lips.
"I'm sorry, Thranduil," Cyra said slowly, stepping closer. The usual tough-girl facade completely melted away, leaving something intensely raw. "But it's just how it is. You're the most normal person among us, and that is in no way a bad thing." She reached out, her warm, calloused palm resting gently against his cheek. "In fact... that's the exact reason why I think I fell for you in the first place."
"I'm not saddened by the truth," Thranduil sighed, gently leaning into her touch for a brief moment before pulling back to look at the sky. "You are all literal monsters. I understand my place. But... just who exactly are we fighting that requires a gamble like this?"
"Cyra..." Antrea's voice suddenly cut through the air, loud and completely stripped of its usual timidity. "Please... please don't tell me that's him."
Up above the mountain peak, the sky violently tore open.
His hair, the color of rich, whipped cream, floated lazily on the chaotic wind. His eyes burned like twin, dying stars, entirely devoid of human empathy. He stared down at the three of them from his lofty perch in the heavens, his high-collared jacket billowing around his frame like the wings of a vulture. The sheer, suffocating pressure of his presence cascaded down the mountain, making the very air feel thick as molasses.
*This pressure...* Thranduil thought, his knees violently trembling as sweat poured down his neck. *I'm... I'm completely being overwhelmed just by his gaze.*
"Dan explicitly warned me about you," Cyra grinned, her voice rising to defy the crushing aura. She walked away from Thranduil's side, her hand gripping her locked hilt as she stepped up next to Antrea. "He knew you'd eventually come sniffing around for the tower, and I'm here to greet you in his stead."
The man's star-like eyes never even blinked. They completely bypassed Cyra, locking entirely onto Antrea's dark, feathered wings.
*Of course. A pretentious god like him would only focus on the strongest asset among us,* Cyra thought bitterly, her jaw tightening.
"Antrea," Cyra whispered under her breath, not breaking eye contact with the sky. "Can you take him?"
The fallen angel's eyes began to glow with a soft, terrifying light. A dense, pitch-black aura of pure malice began eminating from her pupils, her wings flaring wide. "He has multiple, overlapping layers of conceptual immortality stacked onto his soul," she whispered back, her voice shaking with a mix of rage and fear. "I would lose a direct war of attrition on my own. You have a brilliant, tactical plan, right?"
"Nope. We just beat him to death," Cyra said loudly, her grin turning savage.
"I would highly appreciate it if we didn't resort to primitive violence," the man spoke. His voice didn't carry across the wind; it simply manifested inside their minds like a slow-acting poison. "I only came to harvest the demon inside the tower, and the white-haired vanguard girl. Step aside."
"Come off your high horse, you bastard!" Cyra shouted, her grin spreading even wider as she drew herself up. "We're going to drag you kicking and screaming into the mud, and crush your little dream into absolute dust."
"If that is truly what you wish," the man said smoothly.
He closed his eyes.
In less than a millisecond—faster than the human brain could register a single neuron firing—the space in front of Thranduil warped. The man materialized directly out of thin air, his pale, slender hand already closing like a vise around the elf's throat. Thranduil's eyes widened, his elven reflexes entirely too slow to react. Cyra's hand was still on her hilt, her body frozen by the sheer speed of the assault.
But the man's attack never landed.
*BOOM!*
Antrea's dark form blurred. She intercepted him instantly, her hand gripping his extended arm with a bone-crushing hold. Using the man's own downward momentum against him, she gracefully flipped over his head, forcefully taking the celestial being right off his feet. She let him go mid-air, spinning her body around as her heavy, mana-reinforced boot connected squarely with his jaw.
The impact sounded like a cannon blast, sending the grey-haired man hurtling like a sonic blur off the edge of the mountain summit, crashing into the rocky earth far below.
"Get it together!" Antrea growled fiercely at Cyra, her dark aura flaring aggressively. "I am strictly only doing this for Dan's sake!"
Without waiting for a reply, she walked right up to the sheer precipice of the mountain. With a single fluid motion, her massive black feathers vanished into thin air, and she let herself fall backwards into the yawning abyss below, chasing the god into the dirt.
Malakor didn't even touch the earth.
After the concussive force of Antrea's kick, his body was hurled a couple of miles through the air like a discarded ragdoll, yet he remained entirely unharmed. Mid-flight, he stabilized his form with terrifying ease, turning his body into a living missile as he shot right back toward the mountain summit.
But Antrea intercepted him instantly.
Before he could even register her approach, her dark hand reached out and grabbed him violently by his cream-colored hair. Using his own insane velocity against him, she spun around in a savage, sweeping arc and launched him face-first toward the ground below.
*BOOM!*
The impact was cataclysmic. The earth buckled, creating a massive, localized earthquake that ripped deep fissures through the valley floor, sending plumes of jagged rock and dust exploding hundreds of feet into the air.
Hissing in irritation, Malakor charged back up at her, ready to erase her from existence. But the moment he flexed his power to ascend, gravity violently broke. He was suddenly and forcefully dragged straight back to the dirt. Confused, he tried pushing upward again, but his body was pinned flat against the trembling ground, the atmospheric pressure threatening to crush his ribs.
Then, it suddenly dawned on him. *She's changing the rules.*
Testing his theory, Malakor purposefully tried forcing his body *downward* into the dirt—and instead, he flew upward into the sky at terminal velocity.
*Interesting,* he thought, his star-like eyes widening slightly at the conceptual manipulation.
"Keep spacing out like that, and I might just find a way to permanently kill you before the sun sets."
Antrea's cold, distorted voice was suddenly inches away from his ear. Malakor's reflexes flared; he swatted blindly at the sound, his hand cutting a lethal arc through the air, but his palm struck a massive, floating boulder instead, shattering it into fine powder. Antrea was already gone.
Before he could pivot, he felt a light, mocking weight settle on his frame. Antrea was standing perfectly balanced right on his shoulder, her dark, aura-coated hands resting gently on either side of his head.
"Eyes on the prize," she whispered maliciously.
*Substitution!* Malakor thought quickly, his celestial magic sparking in a desperate panic.
A millisecond later, Antrea unleashed a crushing wave of downward gravitational force, flattening the space beneath her deep into the shattered crust of the earth—obliterating everything in a shockwave of dirt and raw violence.
"Compared to fighting Angels who can effortlessly shut down my mind just because they hold my genetic blueprints..." Antrea thought, her glowing eyes tracking the dust cloud below, "...fighting a self-proclaimed god is way easier."
*She's strong,* Malakor thought, his teeth gritting as he stood up from the shattered dirt. He brushed the debris off his jacket, his star-like eyes flashing with a rare hint of irritation. *Is she as strong as the four ancient beings, maybe? No... that's just pushing it.*
He raised his hands toward the air, unleashing a localized gravitational tether. Antrea was violently pulled from the sky, hurtling instantly toward his outstretched grip. But she didn't come alone. Anticipating the pull, she had used her rule-bending magic to compress a massive boulder into a dense, solid rock hammer mid-flight. She rammed the weapon full-force into his head.
The compressed rock shattered into a million pieces on impact, but it gave Malakor enough pause for her to close the distance. Snapping out of the daze, Malakor forcefully grabbed Antrea by her neck and slammed her face-first into the dirt. Without letting up, he threw her body high into the air, gathered a terrifying vortex of celestial energy around his fist, and rammed it directly toward her ribs.
But the devastating impact never happened.
Antrea's blood-streaked face twisted into a savage smile. "Counter."
The space warped. The momentum of his own world-ending punch was violently inverted and fed directly back into her own strike. Before Malakor could register the shift, Antrea rammed her reinforced fist squarely against the side of his head, the shockwave sending him skidding wildly across the ruined terrain, tearing a massive trench into the earth.
"You are definitely unique," a cold voice echoed from the rising dust cloud.
Malakor walked out of the destruction entirely unharmed, his cream-colored hair flowing calmly as if he hadn't just been blasted through a mountain valley. "But this is a battle you fundamentally cannot win," he growled.
In a terrifying display of absolute speed, he bypassed the concept of distance entirely. He was suddenly right in her personal space, his slender, lethal fingers sitting mere inches away from her eyeballs.
"Meet Cyra," Antrea said, her smile broadening as she simply melted out of the way.
*SCHWING!*
A blinding, clean line cut through the sky, parting the thick clouds and disintegrating everything in its path as far as the eye could see.
Malakor retreated at a blinding velocity, pushing himself backward away from Antrea as another girl materialized into the empty space. Cyra stood firmly on the scarred earth, her brown hair flowing slowly in the howling wind. Her beast-like tail was turning a dangerous, pitch-black color, and her eyes were closed in absolute, unyielding focus. Resting in her grip was a massive, monstrously large blade with a blunt tip that hummed and vibrated violently with a terrifying aura. She swung the impossibly heavy sword with terrifying ease, the sheer displacement of air cutting a deep canyon into the earth beneath her feet as she stared silently toward the spot where Malakor had retreated.
"Hey, Mister God," Antrea called out loudly, casually resting one hand on her hip as she pointed a dark finger at him. "You're bleeding."
*Me? Bleed?* Malakor's ancient mind raced, a sudden jolt of shock piercing through his cold exterior. *I haven't drawn a single drop of blood for over tens of thousands of years...*
But Antrea wasn't lying. Thranduil's illusion had worked perfectly. For a split second, Cyra's mind had perceived him as an absolute abomination, force-activating her legendary hero's blade. The strike had conceptually bypassed every single overlapping layer of divine immortality he possessed, cutting directly into his vulnerable, human side.
Antrea glanced at Cyra briefly, a dark, dangerous smirk playing on her lips. "Try to keep up, hero. From this exact moment on... I'm running on absolute demon time," she said, taking a heavy step forward as the ground beneath her heel cracked.
*He's terrified of that sword now. He'll try everything in his power to avoid Cyra's blade from here on out,* Antrea analyzed, her mind calculating at a million miles per hour. *Sadly, I don't think my standard attacks can bypass his immortality layers to actually damage him. I'll have to play the ultimate support and force an opening for Cyra to land a final, finishing blow.*
"Here I come!" Antrea yelled at the top of her lungs, but her body didn't move an inch. "Just kidding."
While Malakor braced for the angel's fake assault, Cyra covered the distance in a fraction of a millisecond. Moving so fast she left a trailing sonic wake, Cyra closed the gap, her massive, blunt-tipped blade slicing through the air until it was mere inches away from Malakor's throat.
*Pop.*
Malakor vanished into thin air, forcing the strike to hit nothingness.
"Gotcha," Antrea whispered slowly from right beneath his repositioned coordinates. She had meticulously traced his spatial frequency; she knew his panic would make him try everything possible to escape the conceptual deadliness of Cyra's blade. Her fist was already loaded with a catastrophic amount of dark mana.
**[ UNIQUE SKILL ACTIVATED: LAG FRAME ]**
Her punch connected squarely with his jaw, and instantly, the laws of physics were completely flipped on their head. The sky shattered like brittle glass, the fragments melting into thin air as the fabric of the dimension ruptured. In a blinding flash, they were violently plunged into an entirely separate reality—a apocalyptic pocket world of endless fire.
Malakor flew like a broken meteor through burning mountains and across a literal sea of roaring flames, landing miles away from where the collision had occurred.
"We can't exactly go all out on Earth without causing causalities ," Antrea smiled savagely, her arms spread wide apart as she breathed in the sulfurous air of the burning realm. "I'm sure Cyra shares the exact same feeling. So, welcome to a separate reality, god boy!"
Cyra didn't wait for Malakor to resurface from the rubble. The moment her boots touched the boiling surface of the flame-licked lake, she skidded across the liquid fire, sprinting at a terrifying velocity toward the distant impact zone.
*A spatial trait mostly exclusive to high-tier Angels... the raw ability to casually leap between entire worlds,* Malakor thought, coughing up a small splatter of gold-tinged blood as he stood up. He stared at the bleeding red sky above as massive, molten meteors pelted the burning world like a relentless storm of rain.
"I have seen many legendary Heroes over the entire course of my stay in this reality, but you are by far the first to ever successfully harm me!" Malakor roared into the wind as Cyra closed the distance.
Her massive blade began to glow with a blinding, pure white light, violently pulling raw kinetic and magical energy directly out of the atmosphere.
*I will completely avoid her blade and strike her down with a single, fatal blow. She is vastly more troublesome than the angel right now,* Malakor decided. He teleported instantly, rematerializing directly behind Cyra's blind spot.
Even with her eyes completely closed, the hero followed his movements flawlessly. When Cyra used her legendary blade, it temporarily took away her physical vision—a binding vow and condition that had to be met to wield its true, world-cleaving power. But she was in no way blind. No one in their group was entirely sure what she actually *saw* when she held that sword, but it made it utterly impossible for her to ever lose track of an enemy's soul.
Malakor thrust his hand forward, aiming directly for her skull. *She can track me, yes, but her physical body is still far too slow to react to my divine speed! I'll blow her head clean off her shoulders!*
*STITCH!*
The space distorted. There was a sudden, violent displacement of matter. Cyra was instantly switched with Antrea.
The small, dark-winged girl spun on her heel mid-air, her leg cutting a lethal arc as her boot slammed hard against Malakor's incoming fist. The catastrophic impact of their meeting tore a shockwave so profound through the planet's surface that the burning crust was completely blasted away, exposing the glowing, molten mantle of the world beneath them.
"Bye!" Antrea yelled with a bright, mocking grin, and vanished from the spot just as quickly.
Before Malakor could even retract his arm, space warped again. Cyra materialized exactly where Antrea had been, her massive sword already descending from the heavens. The gathered energy coating the blade had expanded exponentially, making the weapon look larger than a literal mountain as it came down to split him in two.
*No... I was completely wrong,* Malakor's star-like eyes widened in genuine horror as the mountain-sized blade cast a shadow over his entire existence. *If I am to win this fight... the angel has to die first!*