Dimensional Descent

They cut through the army like a knife through butter. One life after another was reaped beneath their blade.

Leonel felt an extra hand on his spear, and his fiery fury fueled his every action.

The Demoness had surely not expected Leonel to cut down Montez so easily. Not because he was so strong… he was not. In fact, he was among the easiest opponents here.

Leonel would read her like she was an open book. He had long stepped off her chess board and he was gazing at it from above, his chaotic aura suppressing her own.

She wanted him to hesitate, she wanted him to feel the same torn feeling she was, to change his mind and realize that giving up everything to save someone you loved only made perfect sense. Wasn’t it only natural to do so no matter what the cost?

Yes… it was only natural.

As for sending his aunt after them as well, Leonel saw through that even more easily. She actually wanted Aina to kill her, she wanted to form a rift between Aina and Leonel, breaking the seamlessness of their communication and teamwork.

If Aina so carelessly took the life of Leonel’s aunt, how would Leonel feel about that? How would he react?

Even now, she was still trying to play mind games.

No… at this point it was all she could play.

She couldn’t gather her true strength, her mind was too dispersed. And yet, rather than trying to reel it in, she was desperately trying to expand it further, to run away from the pain Leonel was trying to force her to face…

The guilt.

It wasn’t going to work.

Because as Leonel said, there were no Gods in this world. There was no one without a limit.

And this time, having run so far, and for so long…

She had reached hers.

Leonel and Aina appeared before the Demoness.

”PROTECT ME! I COMMAND IT!” she shrieked.

But in her fury and confusion, she didn’t seem to have noticed yet…

That there was nothing left of the Invalid army to protect her.

Leonel and Aina had carved through an army of millions as though taking a strolling through the park.

Craters appeared in reality, rifts through times of the past and even small peeks into potential futures. The power of Aina’s Force Pill bombs had been so shocking that she had forced these rifts to appear, but they also served a secondary purpose.

With them, it was impossible for the Demoness to reverse time again. It was all too volatile, her mind was in too much of a mess, and, like Leonel was drilling into her right this moment…

She had her limits.

Just like everyone else.

And just like everyone else who had suffered loss and was forced to learn to deal with it, she would too… or she would die right here and now.

Leonel had always believed that no life was superior to another. What gave the Demoness the right to make a mess of the world, rip families apart, cause so much death, destruction, and carnage, just because she was unable to accept something anyone else would be forced to?

Why?

Because she was strong?

That reason was never good enough for him.

She was lucky to be born with her talent. Nothing more, nothing less.

It didn’t make her or her desires more important than that of someone else.

And today, he and his wife would finally make her pay for that arrogance.

Leonel’s Idol and Constellation shimmered into existence, an enormous man wielding a spear and formed of Stars taking shape.

Aina’s body trembled and her own Idol appeared… a manifestation of herself rising high in the skies and standing side by side with her husband.

She waved a hand and shingles of crimson armor formed out of the blood around her.

Leonel’s aura flared along with hers, his Divine Armor appearing for the very first time in his battle with the Demoness.

Heavy robes formed of leather fell down his body, shimmering in whites, golds, and violets. His eyes became orbs of violet, his crown shining brighter and brighter.

An explosion of Creation filled the air, a painting of butterflies, fluttering birds, stars, and the most gorgeous of phoenixes and soaring dragons appeared around him.

But what was more powerful than any of that was what wasn’t seen.

Hidden in his World of Creation, his father’s spirit, his grandfather’s, his uncle’s… they all layered onto one another.

He thrust out with his spear with one hand, holding onto his wife’s with the other.

Aina punched out with all her might with one fist, her free fingers interlacing with her husband’s own.

They appeared before the Demoness in unison, their manifestations bending the world to their will.

In that moment, time seemed to slow, their determination solidifying. The power of the Demoness felt like an unscalable mountain, a peak that stood beyond a peak, a Heaven beyond a Heaven.

And yet, right then, crippled by her thoughts, this mountain fell to its knees, this peak crumbled, this Heaven darkened, falling to an abyss that fell into a vast nothingness.

In the end… maybe she too… was just as tired as the Northern Star above.

A spear pierced through the right of her chest, a fist punching through the left.

Her body convulsed.

In a shocking display of will, she tried to twist reality once again, pulling on time to reverse, to allow her to live. She had always done it so easily in the past… no one could kill her… she was a Goddess…

The Demoness.

But she realized at that moment that even she would have to face death one day. It was something she had never considered, a possibility that never crossed the vastness of her mind…

But now she had no choice but to face it…

Because the gaze of her grandson was forcing her to.

”Die.”

Leonel said coldly.

Ophelia’s heart shook.

Such… hatred…

Tears fell from her eyes and she just… stopped.

Her head lowered. In a fraction of a moment, her Dream Force sprung back to her body and her mind was forced to analyze everything at once.

But maybe this was the unfairness of the world, the unfairness she had forced everyone else to live through all this time.

Even with her speed of thought…

She didn’t have the time to analyze it all.

BANG!

She crumbled.