They opened their eyes slowly.
The glare still lingered, burned into their vision in white afterimages. One by one, they looked up.
High above the city hung what felt like a second sun, a massive sphere of divine radiance suspended in the sky. Its brilliance flooded every shattered street and broken rooftop in merciless light.
Ercale clicked his tongue.
"Tch. It's happened before but damn does it feel annoying," he muttered, staring up at what Sarandel had created.
Annabel squinted against the brightness, one hand lifting instinctively to shield her eyes.
"What's that? I've never seen or felt that type of magic before," she said, voice thin from exhaustion.
Arkanis let out a quiet breath.
"I ended up helping her," he said to himself.
Clara's halberd remained fixed on him, though her gaze flicked briefly toward the sky.
"What does it do? Who did it?" she asked, scanning the others for answers.
*This feels different from astral magic, but it's definitely not normal magic. Is there a third type that I also didn't know about?* Amara wondered, eyes narrowing as the divine radiance washed over her flames without interacting with them at all.
Samwell did not look at the sky for long.
He saw an opening.
Arkanis had glanced upward. His staff was still raised from the interrupted cast. The astral density around him had shifted—slightly, but enough.
Samwell extended his palm.
"Mana Blast."
A beam of pure mana erupted from his hand, a concentrated lance of purple energy that tore through the air in a perfectly straight line toward the Demon Lord.
Arkanis turned instantly.
He brought his staff down into a horizontal guard while his free hand traced precise patterns through the air. Seven magic circles manifested in rapid succession between him and the incoming beam, layered shields of intricate geometry stacked one behind another.
At the same time, additional sigils flared across his body, reinforcing him directly.
The beam hit.
The first circle shattered on contact.
The second disintegrated half a heartbeat later.
Then the third.
The violet lance did not slow. It punched through the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh circles as though they were thin glass, their fragments scattering into dissolving motes of failed structure.
It struck the staff.
Arkanis's eyes widened.
The weapon began to shriek under the pressure, fractures spiderwebbing along its length as the mana overwhelmed its capacity.
He released it immediately.
The staff fell and struck the ground with a sharp crack. In the same motion, Arkanis tapped it once against the stone.
He vanished.
The beam continued forward and clipped his body for barely half a second before he fully displaced. When he reappeared farther down the street, a smoking scorch mark marred his torso where the mana had connected.
Silence fell for a breath.
Everyone stared.
*That beam… it's on an entirely different level compared to Even,* Annabel thought, shock cutting clean through her fatigue.
Arkanis's gaze settled on Samwell.
"I can't believe I'm saying this," he said evenly, "but you're a bigger threat than Ercale at the moment."
The name hung in the air.
Confusion flickered across the others' faces at the mention of the Demon Lord they only knew from children's stories.
In that fractional distraction—
Arkanis moved.
He extended his hand toward the building Samwell stood upon.
The air compressed.
Then it surged.
A wave of gravity detonated outward in a widening arc. It struck the structure beneath Samwell first. Stone did not simply crack—it imploded and then exploded outward as force overwhelmed its integrity. The building shredded apart in a violent cascade of debris.
The wave continued.
Everything in its path was annihilated. Streets ripped upward in slabs. Masonry tore free from foundations. Adjacent buildings splintered and collapsed as if dragged through an invisible grinder.
Samwell reinforced his body with mana enhancement the instant he felt the pressure spike. A defensive spell flared around him, layered and desperate.
It was not enough to hold his position.
The gravity wave caught him and hurled him backward, shield straining and cracking as he was carried along within the torrent of destruction.
The force did not stop at the initial impact.
It carved forward relentlessly, gouging a nearly three hundred meter cone through the city before finally dissipating, leaving behind a channel of pulverized ruin in its wake.
"Now that he's dealt with," Arkanis remarked, lowering his hand as the carved ruin still settled in the distance, "time to deal with you."
His magenta eyes shifted toward Ercale, calm and calculating.
Ercale rolled one shoulder and lifted his hand, curling a single finger inward in a lazy come-on gesture.
Amara drew in a breath and began to thrust her hands forward, the condensed fireball between her palms screaming at the core from compression—but before she could release it, the ground shook violently beneath them.
It was not a minor tremor. It felt like a direct impact somewhere across the city.
Clara staggered and drove her chains into the street to anchor herself, fiery chains scraping against stone as she stabilized her footing. "What was that!?" she exclaimed.
Dust cascaded from nearby ledges. Windows in distant structures shattered in rapid succession.
Amara steadied herself and looked toward the horizon. "Whatever it was, it came from the town center."
Both Demon Lords turned their heads in the same direction at the same time.
*King Domine.*
Clara's expression tightened. "That's where Xain and the others went!"
Before anyone could respond, the skyline shifted.
In the distance, above the broken line of buildings, a five-story structure tore free from the earth and began to rise. There were no visible spell circles. No aura. No mana flare.
It simply lifted.
"Wha-what? How? I don't sense any magic…" Annabel said, staring at it in disbelief.
Ercale narrowed his eyes slightly.
The building hung suspended for a brief moment—then dropped.
Even from this distance, the impact was audible. A deep, crushing detonation rolled outward across the city like distant thunder.
"Ugh… you can handle it, I'm sure ape," Ercale muttered to himself.
The instant the words left his mouth, lightning snapped around him as he vanished.
An astral blade cleaved through the exact space he had occupied a fraction of a second earlier. The cut split the air with a sharp hum as Arkanis completed the swing, the arc carving a glowing crescent into the ruined street.
"Let's not focus on that," Arkanis said evenly, rotating his staff as the astral edge reformed along its length. "Let's finish this."
Ercale reappeared several meters away, boots skidding across loose stone as he regained balance. He extended both hands outward, and twin astral blades ignited from his palms, solidifying into elongated edges of condensed energy.
Arkanis narrowed his eyes.
"Yeah," Ercale replied, settling into stance. "Let's."