The mana blade radiated heat, settling just above Joshua's shoulder splitting the air. Joshua couldn't even react. The prince's body was wrecked. Half-conscious.
It stopped inches away. Right on his skin.
A hiss tore through the air, a thin line of smoke curling upward as the mana edge kissed the surface of his shoulder.
He gasped but didn't jerk or flinch. His eyes stayed locked onto her.
Lysandra's expression didn't change at first. The mana scythe was kept in its place with precision, the heat burning more and more with every passing second. She tilted her head slightly, holding his gaze.
"Why haven't you begged for your life yet?"
Joshua's heartbeat hammered. He swallowed, tasting blood, and forced his spine straight.
"Because begging won't make you stop," he choked out, words as sloppy as the prince looked.
Her demeanor shifted. It wasn't anger or pity. Perhaps it was annoyance or curiosity. Joshua couldn't get a read on her.
Her blade pressed closer, sizzling the skin. A tiny drop of blood bubbled up and evaporated instantly. "Then what," she questioned, leaning forward, "do you think you're doing? Staring at me like you're going to walk away from this?"
His throat tightened as he swallowed again.
"I don't know," he said between deep inhales, "but if I can think about living, then that means I'm alive enough to keep on fighting for that."
Her aura lowered half a notch. "You're stubborn... Joshua," she said. "Annoyingly so." Lysandra retracted the blade from her hand instantly, a cold distaste on her face. "In fact, I've never met a human quite as frustrating as yourself."
She called me by name. Why?
"Stand," she ordered quietly. "If you can."
Every muscle rebelled, refusing the command—but he pushed anyway.
Still tried to get one foot beneath him. Still refused to stop.
He made it halfway up before collapsing onto one knee again, breath ragged.
Lysandra watched the entire struggle unreadable.
Then a mischievous smirk etched across her face. A dangerous, intrigued, almost impressed curve.
"You're not done," she said. "I didn't finish the strike."
Joshua lifted his head.
"You stopped," he whispered.
"I did," she answered. "Because a corpse can't finish the test. We can call that strike 9 to keep it fair... Prince."
She stepped away from Joshua one pace, bringing the red blade back to her hand one last time.
"Strike ten," she said softly, "will decide if you stand beside me… or get sent to your kingdom in a box."
And for the first time since the test began, her smile held, her eyes never leaving his face.
She didn't look at him like prey anymore. Not even like entertainment. It was as if he was a question she suddenly didn't know the answer to.
Lysandra lowered her mana-scythe, just enough for the demon crowd to notice, and their murmurs swelled instantly.
"She stopped the strike?"
"Has the princess gone soft?"
The Demon King didn't speak, but Joshua could feel the weight of that man's stare like a chain around his neck. Every single twitch Joshua made was under judgment.
Lysandra stepped closer, her boot crunched over brittle stone. "Get up," she ordered again—quieter this time.
"I can't—" Joshua tried, but his leg buckled the moment he put weight on it. His ribs stabbed with every inhale.
He pushed up again anyway, a broken grunt tearing from his throat. The demons heard this and leaned over the railing like hungry dogs watching someone crawl toward an inevitable death.
The prince got halfway, then... met the ground yet again.
Lysandra watched from above, having no intention of striking the man while he was down this time.
"Do you expect me to carry you through your own trial?" she asked.
He coughed a laugh through the pain. "You'd probably throw me off a balcony again."
Her eye twitched barely.
"That's a possibility," she agreed, "but the fact that you can still joke while bleeding out irritates me."
"That's my job as a husband, isn't it?" he smirked weakly. "Being irritating?"
But Lysandra's expression didn't break.
"If you die while trying to be clever," her voice quieter this time, "I won't forgive you."
Joshua blinked.
That was... odd.
But he had no time left to question it. Digging his fingernails into rock, he forced his weight onto his other leg. His ankle trembled. His back felt like glass.
But with an agonizing slowness the prince rose one last time.
Lysandra exhaled softly through her nose. Not a sigh. Something sharper. Something like… satisfaction?
"Good," she said. "Now listen closely."
She crouched slightly, looking directly at him. Her face hovered inches from his, close, intimate, and dangerous.
"For all your bravado," she murmured, "you still haven't understood why I stopped that blade."
Joshua swallowed painfully. "…because you need me alive for the tenth strike?"
Her lips curved into a sharper smirk. "Partially."
Her mana blade flickered, dimming a fraction.
"But also, because the way you looked at me," she whispered, "was unacceptable."
Joshua's heartbeat stumbled.
She leaned even closer, her breath brushing his cheek.
"You looked at me as if you were my equal," she said.
The words came like a blade to the throat. Joshua didn't drop his gaze. He couldn't. Because she was right—he had looked at her that way.
"You threw me from the sky," he started, "beat me through stone. Tried to gut me."
"So?" she replied.
"And I'm still here."
A silence thicker than the fog of mana fell between them.
Lysandra's smile faded. She didn't smirk, didn't scoff, didn't lash out.
She simply studied him with a quiet intensity.
"…yes," she murmured. "You are." She didn't move for a long moment, the mana weapon still humming in her palm, flaring like a roaring flame. "Strike ten begins now," she said, but her words lacked the same bite.
His limbs felt distant, like they weren't connected to his body. He gulped, tasting metal. He couldn't even lift his arms to guard himself. His broken ribs scraped every time he inhaled.
But he held her gaze.
Even now.
"Find a way out like you always do, Joshua."
Her blade snapped downward, a shimmer of death heading straight for his heart.
Joshua didn't move. Couldn't.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[WARNING: LETHAL DAMAGE INCOMING]
[VITALITY 3%]
[TRAIT: DAMAGE CONVERSION — STILL ACTIVE]
User has endured repeated trauma without system report. Adaptive pain-index rising.
[DAMAGE TAKEN: 0%]
[PAIN TAKEN: 1000%]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"What—?!" Joshua choked, not even fully understanding the words.
The blade touched his chest.
Everything went silent.
Then the world folded.
Every nerve ignited at once. Every fiber in his muscles lit up like molten wire being dragged through his bones. Pain tore through him in one impossible wave—so blinding, so indescribably violent his vision turned scarlet, flashing with each surge of agony.
His voice broke before the sound could escape.
Lysandra froze.
The scythe didn't pierce him.
Her eyes widened as the mana curled around his chest, harmless but sparking violently, like it was being devoured by something she couldn't see.
The demons on the balcony gasped in a single breath.
"No wound?"
"That should've killed him!"
"Why isn't he dead?!"
Joshua fell to one knee, gripping the ground with shaking fingers, every muscle locked in agony. His breath hitched, his entire body trembling.
Lysandra stepped back, the mana scythe disappearing in her hand. "Your heart should be ash," she whispered. "There is no world where a human stands after receiving that strike."
Joshua forced a breath—sharp, agonized, broken.
"I wouldn't call...this—" a brutal cough escaped his lungs, the pain as viscous and unrelenting as ever. "Standing. I'm barely even here."
The pain washed over him again, this time worse, his back arching involuntarily.
Damage convergence was working.
And it hurt more than anything he'd ever lived through in his entire life.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[DAMAGE CONVERGENCE ACTIVE]
[Physical Damage: Negated]
[Pain Threshold: 68% / 100%]
WARNING: Pain overload will induce unconsciousness.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"Joshua"
The prince replied by dropping violently, his hands barely catching his momentum.
Her voice was no longer taunting or cold.
"Look at me," she commanded softly. "Your eyes should never be on the ground. Especially at the end."
"Right." His head lifted a fraction, neck trembling from the strain, he looked directly at her.
And for the first time in the entire trial—
Lysandra's expression faltered.
"You survived," she whispered. "You actually… survived ten strikes."
Joshua let out a breath that was half a laugh, half a broken exhale.
"I told you," he muttered. "I'm here… to prevent a war. Not start one."
His vision blurred.
The world swayed.
Pain Convergence ticked upward again—his body barely clinging to consciousness.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Pain Threshold: 91%/100%]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"Don't fall," Lysandra said.
She stepped forward lightning-fast, catching him by the collar before his body hit stone.
Her grip was firm and steady.
"You're not allowed to die after proving yourself," she whispered. "Not to me."
His vision went black around the edges.
The system flashed one final time:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[SURVIVE THE PRINCESS' ONSLAUGHT — COMPLETE]
[Level Up Available]
[Title Earned: Demon Princess' Chosen]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Joshua's lips parted as the world slipped away.
"…did I… pass?"
Lysandra's glare softened.
"You did," she whispered.
Then Joshua Vale, prince of Arial, collapsed unconscious into the arms of the woman who tried to kill him.