I stared at Sera, my mind reeling from the cosmic revelation. To reach Godhood, Virtues need an Authority. Sins need to fully master their Cenotaph.
"That explains a lot," I finally breathed out, the cold, frozen air stinging my lungs. "You needed an Authority, and I needed my Cenotaph. But what are we going to do about him?"
I gestured to the Demon Lord hovering just a few feet away. He was suspended mid-strike, his grotesque wings frozen, his hands poised to unleash a devastating barrage of dark spears. He looked terrifying, but under Sera's Tier 8 power, he was nothing more than a statue.
Sera slipped the golden Spindle into his coat. "I cannot maintain a complete temporal stasis over a Tier 5 entity for very long, Luci. The backlash of causality in the Sea of Concepts would be severe. I froze time to pull you back from the brink of Pride, and to give you a perfect opening."
"My reserves are almost empty, Sera," I reminded him, gripping my wounded shoulder. "I cut off the Cenotaph. And he still has that absolute defense barrier."
"You are Tier 3 now, Luci. You possess a Unique Skill," Sera said softly, his amber eyes glowing with unwavering confidence. "You do not need the Cenotaph's raw, corrupting power to win this. Use your mind."
He was right. I didn't need to overpower the Demon Lord's magic with brute force; I just needed to outsmart the mechanics of his spell.
I holstered Bad News and stepped across the invisible platform, walking directly up to the frozen Demon Lord. I activated Thought Acceleration. The blue grid overlaid my vision, calculating exactly how the Demon Lord's Ether would flow the millisecond time resumed.
If I use Level 3 Event Horizon, I can maintain multiple applications simultaneously, I calculated.
I placed my left hand inches from the Demon Lord's outstretched palms, right where his dark spears were forming. Application 2: Reverse Event Horizon. I didn't create a shield; I created an absolute spatial vacuum around his hands, completely isolating his attack from the ambient Ether of the world.
Then, I placed my right hand directly against the Demon Lord's armored chest. Application 1: Infinity Shield. I didn't wrap the shield around myself—I wrapped it skin-tight around the Demon Lord, trapping his own explosive aura directly against his body.
"Back away, Sera!" I yelled, stepping off my invisible platform and allowing gravity to pull me into a freefall toward the dark ocean below.
"Time resumes," Sera whispered, vanishing from the sky in a flicker of golden light.
The world violently snapped back to life. The wind roared, the storm crashed, and the Demon Lord finished his shriek of absolute fury.
"Die, insect—!"
He thrust his hands forward to launch his dark spears. But the spatial vacuum I had created instantly snuffed out the external catalyst. His attack destabilized, erupting into a chaotic explosion of raw, untamed Ether. And because I had wrapped the Demon Lord in my Infinity Shield, the resulting catastrophic backlash had nowhere to go.
The massive, highly condensed Tier 5 explosion detonated entirely inside the Demon Lord's own barrier.
The sky illuminated with a blinding, horrific flash of dark purple light. The sheer, confined pressure of his own attack instantly vaporized the Demon Lord from the inside out. His grotesque body was completely annihilated, leaving absolutely nothing behind but a shower of black ash raining down into the stormy ocean.
I fell through the sky, the wind whipping past my mask as the explosion echoed across Blackwater Roost.
Below me, Arthur banked hard, his draconic eyes wide with shock as he watched the Tier 5 monster obliterate itself. He dove and caught me mid-air, his massive claws gently grabbing my coat before I could hit the water.
"You got him!" Arthur roared over the wind, a massive, fanged grin breaking across his face.
I leaned against the dragon's scales, letting out a long, exhausted breath as my vision started to swim. My shoulder throbbed, and my Ether was completely dry, but a genuine smile touched my lips.
A single, glowing dark-purple crystal—a pure Tier 5 core—dropped from the dissipating ash in the sky. Arthur snatched it out of the air and handed it to me.
Kallisto, I thought, closing my eyes as Arthur carried me back toward the ruined cathedral. Target destroyed.
[Notice: The Demon Lord has been eradicated.] [Combat Complete. Calculating rewards...]