A fist tore through the air, a storm of force and fury following in its wake. The impact shattered nearby rocks and tore the earth apart where it hit. The horned figure staggered, his crimson eyes blazing against dark gray skin, jaw snapping back but his stance still solid.
His thick, wavy red and black hair whipped around him like a flag in the wind.
With a snarl, the demon lord swung back, a hammer of a fist aimed right at his opponent, but the man below him moved with impossible grace, slipping past the strike like it was nothing.
A savage uppercut followed, exploding into the demon's jaw with a shockwave so strong it cracked the sky open overhead, leaving a jagged hole in the clouds.
For a second, the monstrous warrior swayed, looking like he might go down.
But before he could fall, a hand lit up, burning with colors that shouldn't exist—violet, gold, crimson, all shifting together. It struck so fast it left trails in the air.
The demon's eyes snapped open just in time to see a flurry of fists already coming at his face, too many to count. He threw up a barrier, a jagged shield of raw earth and magic that roared to life around him.
The shield held, but only just. The ground shook, splitting open beneath them, and the air filled with the smell of broken stone and upheaval. Still, the demon held on, braced against the storm of hits.
Then, seeing his chance as the attacker shifted his feet, the demon slammed his foot down into the dirt.
The ground burst upward in a pillar of sharp stone, hurling the other fighter into the air. The horned figure's eyes gleamed, ready to finish it.
But Arden didn't even blink. He just looked up, vanished in a flash of motion, and reappeared right beside the demon like a ghost.
His punch landed square on the demon's jaw, sending him flying hundreds of meters through the sky, tearing a path through the air.
Before the demon could even steady himself, attacks came from everywhere. Arden moved so fast he was just a blur, an impossible flurry of strikes and blocks. The demon raised his arms, shielding himself blow after blow, each one landing like thunder.
His armor, glossy and black as polished stone, caught the light. Spikes on his shoulders and gauntlets glinted. The skull hanging from his belt swung as he fought to keep his feet.
Then, from high above, came a strike that felt like pure hate. A fist came down like a falling star, a comet of raw power that turned the air dark around it.
The demon twisted aside just in time. The miss sent a shockwave ripping through the ground, shattering the earth and throwing rubble in every direction.
Both of them crashed down in separate parts of the ruined landscape. Arden stood up slowly, each step making the ground shake under him.
The demon's crimson eyes narrowed. Dark magic swirled at his fingertips, forming two jagged spears of shadow in his hands. Without a word, he lunged forward, unbelievably fast.
The demon's strength was ridiculous, almost godlike, but he was still mortal. That arrogance was all over him as he charged Arden, hurling a spear so fast it broke the sound.
The weapon hit, piercing the air with a shriek, but Arden barely moved, pushed back only a few dozen meters like he'd been shoved, not speared.
Smoothly, the demon spun his second spear and vanished beside Arden, launching a barrage of blows. Arden met every one, deflecting them with his bare hands, precise and unyielding.
The clash was a blur of motion, a storm of force that battered the air and cracked the ground under them.
Suddenly, Arden's palm shot out, slamming toward the demon's face with a gust of wind so fierce it ripped a chunk out of a nearby mountain and flattened ancient trees.
The demon arched back just in time, avoiding the strike. Using the momentum, he swung a vicious counter that sent Arden flying back, crashing through a thicket of thorns and broken rock.
Yet, Arden got up, untouched, his calm unbroken. A split-second distraction, but all the demon needed. Closing the gap, he unleashed a furious flurry of strikes aimed at Arden's middle.
The speed was insane, just a smear of motion. Each hit cracked and fractured the stone wall behind Arden, chunks of earth flying. The last blow smashed Arden's face, sending him crashing back through the ruined wall and burying him in dust and debris.
Arden, watching from across the shattered field, didn't wait. He raised a hand, and a dozen glowing fire orbs the size of heads appeared around him. With a flick of his wrist, they shot toward the demon.
The demon didn't dodge. He stretched out his hand, and a dark green goo surged forward, spreading into a shimmering, jelly-like wall. The fire orbs hit it and sank in without a sound. No explosion, no heat. They were just swallowed, their light snuffed out like candles in tar. The goo pulsed once, digesting the magic, then pulled back into the demon's hand.
"Gluttony," the demon said, his voice thick with pleasure. "All magic is just food for the void."
Arden's face didn't change. He reached to his wrist, where a plain bronze bracelet gleamed, and snapped it.
A spell circle, huge and intricate, appeared instantly in the space between them. It was etched right into the air with lines of pure white light. It hummed with so much power the ground under it cracked into a perfect, crazy pattern. No chant, no gathering energy, no time to react.
From the circle, a beam of chaotic, rainbow energy shot out. It wasn't one element, but all of them—fire, ice, lightning, stone, wind, light, shadow—twisted together into a single thread of destruction.
The demon's eyes went wide. He thrust both hands forward, summoning the gluttonous goo into a massive, swirling vortex to eat the attack.
The beam hit the vortex. For a second, it held. The goo writhed, trying to swallow the impossible energy. Then it shuddered, bulged, and tore apart. The rainbow beam, weaker but not stopped, slammed into the demon's chest.
He was thrown back half a mile, carving a smoking trench through the land. His obsidian armor was scorched and cracked, steaming where the chaotic energy had chewed into it. He climbed to his feet, a low growl building in his chest. The green glow around him vanished, replaced by a pulsing, violent red.
"WRATH," he roared.
The demon's muscles swelled, tearing at his armor. Veins bulged, glowing like lava under his gray skin. His crimson eyes turned into burning coals. He vanished, reappearing right in front of Arden with speed that made before look slow.
His fist, now the size of a boulder, connected.
The hit came with a pressure wave that flattened everything for a hundred meters. Arden's body was launched like a cannonball, not through the air, but through the land. He smashed through a low hill, burst out the other side in a spray of dirt and rock, only to be caught by the demon's other fist and driven straight down into the earth.
Crack.
A soft, clear sound, like a gem splitting. From the crater, something small and metallic pinged off a rock and lay still, its gold shine dulled by dirt.
The ground cratered. Again and again, the demon pounded the spot where Arden had landed, each blow causing its own little earthquake. The air itself seemed to hurt.
Then, from the middle of the wreckage, a soft click.
The demon's next world-breaking punch hit empty air. Arden was gone. So was the demon.
They reappeared five miles away, in the middle of a frozen, wind-whipped tundra. The shock of the sudden, biting cold hit them both like a wall. Arden stood, his coat torn and dirty.
On his hand, where several rings had been, one finger was now bare. A plain silver ring on another finger was cracked and dull. The teleportation relic had saved him from the beating, but it had been a blind jump, a last resort.
The demon, confused for a second by the sudden shift, roared in frustration. The red aura of Wrath flickered around him, but the cold was a problem he hadn't planned for.
Arden didn't give him time to adjust. From a small pouch, he pulled a glass syringe filled with swirling, shiny liquid. Without hesitating, he jammed it into his own neck and pushed the plunger.
His body jolted. His posture went loose, his head lolled to one side, and his eyes lost their sharp focus, going hazy and distant. He took a stumbling step, then another, looking like a man who'd just downed a barrel of ale.
The demon laughed, a sound that shook ice off distant cliffs. "You poison yourself? Desperation's an ugly look."
He charged, a red blur of rage-fueled speed, aiming to crush this unsteady fool.
Arden weaved. Or really, he swayed. The demon's fist missed his head by a hair, the wind of it ruffling his hair. As the demon overreached, Arden's own hand, moving with slow, fluid ease, tapped the demon's elbow. Not a hard hit, but perfectly placed. The demon's own momentum spun him off balance.
Arden staggered forward, his movements a chaotic, unpredictable dance. Every time the demon, powered by Wrath, tried to land a crushing blow, Arden was never quite where he aimed. A drunken stumble became a dodge. A clumsy-looking fall became a sweep at the demon's ankles.
The trance had wrecked his coordination but sharpened his reflexes to something unreal. His strikes, when they landed, weren't powered by skill, but by the strange, boosted strength the potion gave him. They hit with the random, shocking force of a rockslide.
He grabbed the demon's horn during a wild swing and used it as a lever, flipping the massive being over his shoulder to slam into the frozen ground. The demon roared, more confused than hurt. This wasn't fighting. This was chaos given shape.
Furious, the demon pushed himself up. The red aura of Wrath faded, replaced by a soft, creeping gold. He stood straighter, his wounds seeming to matter less. A smug, superior smile spread across his face.
"Pride," he announced, his voice dripping with condescension. "Why struggle with your weak tricks? See real power. I'll end you with the very spell you tried to use."
He raised a hand, copying Arden's earlier move. He'd summon a spell circle, just as fast, just as strong. His pride demanded he beat the human at his own game. A complex, golden light began to draw itself in the air before him.
But his focus was on the show, on the boast, not on getting it right. The circle was messy, its lines shaky. Arden, still moving in his drunken, reflexive daze, saw the opening. While the demon was busy showing off, Arden closed the distance in a stumbling, zigzag run.
He didn't hit the demon. He hit the forming circle.
Right before the demon finished the last sigil, Arden slapped his palm into its center, pouring a burst of raw, disruptive mana into the unstable shape.
The spell circle blew up in the demon's face.
The backlash of golden energy didn't go outward—it went inward. The demon screamed as his own arrogant magic burned him, scorching his skin and blinding him for a moment. The Pride aura shattered like glass.
Crack.
Another ring on Arden's hand split straight through, its pieces falling silently onto the ice. A small price for the opening.
Staggering back, blind and burned, the demon gasped. A pale, tired gray aura seeped from him now, spreading over the tundra. "Sloth," he whispered, his voice weak.
A wave of deep, soul-crushing tiredness hit Arden. His limbs turned to lead. The reflexive energy from the potion fought against a sudden, overpowering want to just lie down in the snow and sleep. To stop moving, to stop fighting. Every thought was heavy. Why bother dodging? Why bother hitting? It'd be so easy to just… rest.
His stumbling walk slowed. He blinked slowly. The demon, still hurting from his own mistake, saw his chance and limped forward, a sharp shard of ice forming in his hand for a final, slow stab.
Arden watched the point come. It seemed like so much work to move. Really, an impossible amount of work.
Then, his foggy eyes landed on the cracked teleport ring on his finger. A relic, used up. He saw the empty syringe in the snow. Another relic, used up. The broken bracelet. Used up.
A spark cut through the Sloth fog. A simple, clear thought.
I don't like wasting things.
His hand moved. Not fast, but with purpose. He reached into his coat and pulled out a small, smooth stone, dark as a night with no stars. He dropped it onto the frozen ground at his feet.
The stone didn't break. It sank, like the ground was water, and vanished.
For a heartbeat, nothing.
Then the world flipped.
Gravity reversed. The demon, mid-stab, was suddenly thrown upward into the sky. Arden, fighting the Sloth, made himself fall up after him. The tundra dropped away below, becoming a distant white patch.
They were in a void, a pocket of reversed reality, a one-time space warp held in the relic stone. Here, there was no ground, no up or down. The demon flailed, lost, the gray aura of Sloth dying in sheer, directionless panic.
Arden, his body still heavy but his mind clear now, found his bearings in the nothing. The potion was wearing off, his coordination coming back. He looked at the demon, who was trying and failing to swim through empty air.
Dozens upon dozens of glowing circles, intricate and deadly, lit up the void around Arden, each one a perfect piece of magical math made in a thought. Their fiery light painted the nothing red and gold, all of them aimed at the lost demon lord. The silent void went still, waiting.
And then he spoke, quiet but clear, the words echoing in the weightless space,
"Eighth circle magic: Spitfire."
That was the last thing the memory showed before the sky inside the vision turned to solid, roaring light.
A flood of flame and fury poured out, not an explosion, but a thick, all-eating river of magical fire that filled the anomaly. It was the sound of creation burning. The projection shivered violently at the sheer force of the spell, the recorded memory straining to hold it.
And just like that, it was over.
The fancy crystal orb floating in the middle of the palace strategy room dimmed, its light dying. With a wave of Arden's hand, it broke into blue bits that drifted away like ash on still air.
A wave of reactions went through the advisors, ministers, and top knights. Some let out shaky breaths. Others muttered in disbelief. A few of the more military types leaned forward, eyes bright, already picking apart the moves and relics.
That spell… it was something else.
The Emperor himself had asked Arden to use a rare relic, a Memory Orb, to show the fight. Arden hadn't given it a fancy name, just said what it did. The official reason was to teach the inner circle and military brass about high-level combat and the kind of threats out there. It sounded fine.
But as the light faded and I saw the pale, shocked faces of a few rich lords and stern advisors at the long table, I got the real reason. These were the doubters. The ones asking why Radames was betting so much on a wandering adventurer, why he was giving people like us so much freedom while the kingdom got ready for war. This wasn't a lesson. It was a show of force. A brutally clear resume.
Only Sora had seen the fight before. She stood near me, her usual small smile there but tight, her hands clasped so hard her knuckles were white. Even seeing it again, the size of it clearly still got to her.
As for me… I was trying to keep my thoughts from falling apart.
Because what we'd just seen wasn't some fake show. That was a real fight, shown exactly as Arden remembered it, from inside his own head. The Demon Lord was a nightmare made real. And Arden had fought him like it was a tough chore. He'd broken priceless relics without a second thought, used potions that twisted his own mind, and thrown magic that rewrote how things worked. He'd died, or come so close that rings cracked and fell off his fingers, and he'd just… kept going.
The image of those broken rings, shining in the dirt and on the ice, stuck with me. A visual mark for hits that should've ended it all.
I blinked, forcing myself back to now. The room was full of low, urgent talk.
Arden adjusted his sunglasses, the gold on his wrists catching the light. He gave one small nod to the voices around him. Praise, awe, stunned swears. He didn't bask in it. He didn't smile. Maybe he really didn't care. Or maybe a fight like that was just another day for him.
I looked down at my own hands, still tense and clenched. Watching that fight left me feeling like a young tree in a hurricane, not broken, but bent to the dirt and sure the next wind would finish it.
It was the feeling you get when you realize the mountain ahead isn't just tall, it has no top. It just… is.
And still.
You keep climbing.
In the murmurs, my eyes went to the two knights beside Emperor Radames. I'd seen them at our first meeting, standing like carvings of judgment. The one on the right was younger, with a sharp, smart face cut by a nasty scar from his brow to his cheek.
His armor was perfect white and gold, but the long, beautifully made sword at his side looked like it had seen things palace polish couldn't hide. He hadn't moved a muscle during the whole projection, but his eyes… his eyes had been stuck on Arden with an intensity you could feel.
There was no anger in it. Actually, for a second I thought I saw a faint blush high on his cheeks. Just a flash, gone as soon as I noticed. But I'd seen that look before, in the throne room. That same focused, almost eager stare.
What's his deal? I thought, unease twisting in my gut.
Like he felt me looking, his gaze snapped from Arden to me.
I froze. Every instinct said to look away. I made myself meet his stare for one heartbeat before I chickened out and stared very hard at a tapestry of some old battle on the far wall. His look was hard, judging, and completely cold, like I was a weird spot on the fancy floor.
Then his eyes moved on, over Lysandra, Sora, and Lilith (who was doing a pretty good job of looking like a bored human girl). But like a compass needle finding north, his attention kept drifting back to Arden.
And, surprise, Arden looked back. Just a quick meet of eyes, Arden's head giving the tiniest tilt of recognition.
The knight didn't nod. Didn't smile. He just held the look, and the weight of it seemed to thicken the air between them. Arden looked away first, a slight shift in how he stood the only sign he'd even noticed.
Then Radames clapped his hands, the sharp sound cutting through the noise. His voice was bright and sure, the charming face back on.
"Well then. I trust that gives enough… context," he said, his smile not quite touching his eyes as he looked over the pale-faced doubters at the table. "For what we're up against, and the kind of ally we're lucky to have."
There it was. The unspoken message, now delivered loud and clear. This is who I'm with. Your worries are heard, and now they're wrong.
Arden answered with his usual little nod.
Radames waved a hand toward the scarred knight. "For those who haven't met him, this is Sir Heimer. A rock of the royal guard, and our expert in advanced fighting styles. A man of serious focus." His tone was light, but the words felt chosen.
Heimer didn't bow. He gave a tiny tip of his head, so small it was almost rude, his eyes never leaving a spot past Radames's shoulder. Clearly, he had zero patience for court nonsense.
Radames's smile twitched. He pointed to the other knight, an older guy with a tired face and neat beard, who was taking a quiet sip from a silver flask. "And his partner, Sir Artus. Just as dedicated, a bit more… friendly."
Artus lowered his flask and gave the room a vague, cheerful wave. "Hail," he muttered, before going back to his drink.
I didn't know if I should feel better or worse. We had the attention of the Emperor's own guards. One who looked at Arden like he was a riddle in a lost language, and one who looked like he'd rather be napping.
Radames wrapped things up with a few last words about sticking together and being ready. As the room started to empty, the shocked lords filtering out in quiet groups, I caught Heimer's look one more time. He was watching Arden pick up the now-dark Memory Orb, his face blank but so intense you could feel it across the room.
This show hadn't just been for the doubting lords. It felt like a line had been drawn, and we were all standing on it. And the people hired to guard the line were now watching us, really, really closely.