Flash Of Completion.

Straddling the dragon, I held my pitch-black magic blade at the ready, positioned directly opposite the towering, pure white knight raising its colossal holy sword.

A truly terrifying volume of raw mana violently erupted and collided between our coordinates, venting a chaotic, howling gale across the airspace. I could calculate the escalating tension metrics with absolute certainty. Both units were aggressively running predictive diagnostics, waiting for the absolute, single-frame apex window to deploy a lethal strike.

“OOOOOOOOOOOOOH!”

The Lord of Light initiated the opening vector. It launched a high-velocity downward cleave alongside a thunderous roar. For an artificial weapon engineered to be entirely devoid of biological emotion, the entity was openly radiating a raw, ferocious thirst for battle.

Was its AI simply that heavily stimulated by the clash, or perhaps—

“Are your parameters simply that thoroughly backed into a corner?”

Confronted by the absolute, crushing pressure vented by my profile—by the Demon King.

“Perish and shatter to pieces, Demon King!”

Against the massive holy blade slicing down through the air, I casually swung my right hand to slam my demonic blade straight into its trajectory.

Slit! With a remarkably quiet, crisp slicing wave, the Lord of Light’s colossal sword was cleanly severed right down the middle, its broken half sent flying across the sky.

“W-What kind of impossible sharpness is this…—”

The mechanical titan awkwardly dragged its rear talons back across the earth, its vocal arrays registering a wave of profound horror.

“We are closing the gap, Belle.”

Issuing the directive to my personal mount, we accelerated straight into its immediate perimeter.

“D-Do not approach my coordinatesssssssss!!” the Lord of Light shrieked, its processing loops succumbing to pure mechanical dread. “Vile, accursed Demon King, aaaaaaaaah!!”

An infinite barrage of luminous spheres erupted from its chassis to flood the airspace. However, the maneuver was entirely non-serving. Deploying my <Homing Ray> array, I loosed a dense volley of precision-guided mana shells that systematically intercepted and shot down every single projectile in a single frame.

“Dial up your velocity metrics, Belle.”

“Orders locked~!”

Expanding both of her massive wings, Belle executed a massive spike in her flight speed parameters, rocketing forward.

The exact split second we zipped past the titan’s frame, I masterfully executed a sequence of rapid slashes. Four consecutive strikes. The mechanical limbs of the Lord of Light were cleanly severed straight from their base sockets, sent tumbling into the open sky.

“Mgh…!…”

“Your deployment has hit its absolute end-of-service threshold.”

My blade’s edge pinned straight against the torso of the now limbless Lord of Light, I locked its coordinates.

“Aw man, what a bummer! It was such a spectacularly cool-looking weapon, and now its arms and legs are completely separate cinders,” Belle purred, tracing the falling parts with her eyes.

“Hey, whose active network parameters are you actually synced to right now?”

“Hey, high-tier aesthetics are high-tier aesthetics! It’s a total waste of premium design metrics,” she shot back. It appeared she was processing the entire ultimate weapon of the gods under the cognitive framework of a shiny toy. Her internal sensibilities remained a complete mystery to my analytics.

“To think that your profile commanded a power pool of this caliber… my engine stood absolute zero percent probability of establishing a viable defense,” the Lord of Light groaned.

“Your chassis was engineered strictly as an environmental hazard to liquidate the demon race and fracture this world. Your existence terminates permanently at these coordinates.”

I raised my demonic blade to lock down the execution arc—

At that absolute, precise microsecond—

“Fried-sama!”

Venting an anomalously panicked, high-volume warning quite uncharacteristic of her usual playful demeanor, the Underworld Dragon aggressively loosed a backward flight burst, forcefully yanking my frame away from the target.

“What variable triggered that reaction, Belle?”

“The target’s internal fluctuation waves… something is fundamentally broken inside its energy algorithms!”

“So your scanning arrays successfully processed the output shift. As expected of a high-tier entity logged under the sovereign ‘Ga’ lineage—the Underworld Dragon, Belle Ga Elphida,” the Lord of Light murmured, its chassis beginning to flicker rhythmically. “However, capturing the data loop will yield zero salvation for your network. I shall systematically erase this entire Demon World along with your profiles, utilizing the absolute final failsafe engineered into my system by the gods—”

“Lord Demon King, that engine is initializing an immediate self-destruction sequence!”

A sharp voice broke through from the lower earth coordinates. It was Stella. The third eye anchored to her forehead was wide open, running active diagnostics.

“The core mana stores inside its chassis are condensing at an anomalously catastrophic velocity! At this rate, it will trigger a cataclysmic, world-ending detonation in approximately three minutes—”

“What did you say…”

I see. That was the exact behavioral data Belle’s instinct tracked to trigger our emergency retreat, I calculated.

“If the parameters permitted, the gods highly desired to preserve the structural integrity of the Demon World. This realm holds an exceptional utility value for our long-term projections, and specific core anomalies must be harvested from the vaults. However, now that the Demon King’s combat stats have verified this absolute threshold, our primary directive dictating your systematic liquidation takes absolute, overriding priority,” the Lord of Light calmly announced.

Throughout its flat declaration, the high-frequency pulse of light radiating from its armor grew exponentially more intense. It was a literal, hard-coded countdown toward absolute detonation.

“Tch… Lucifer’s Shield!”

I vaulted straight off Belle’s back into the open airspace.

“Break away from these coordinates immediately. Ensure your frame doesn’t absorb the splash damage ticks,” I commanded, using my flight magic to launch a high-velocity dash straight toward the ticking titan.

Channelling every single drop of my remaining mana pools, I began projecting an endless succession of defensive magic barriers. One layer, two layers… rapidly dialing up the generation rate to erect a colossal spherical cage that enveloped both my own frame and the entirety of the Lord of Light within its perimeter.

“I shall compress the absolute impact metrics of this self-destruction strictly within these barrier walls—”

However, the physical scale of the target was comprehensively massive. Deploying a mere handful of standard shields wouldn’t even cover a micro-fraction of its hull. Could my processing speed successfully erect enough barriers to completely seal the Lord of Light before its timer hit zero?

It was an absolute, frame-by-frame race against the clock.

“A completely non-serving expenditure of runtime. No matter how comprehensively peerless your raw mana indices scale, my core chassis holds the absolute divine power ordained by the gods. Zero entities in this world possess the necessary stats to suppress this output…!”

The flashing frequency of the Lord of Light breached its maximum threshold.

I single-mindedly focused my entire operational bandwidth on generating a non-stop stream of Lucifer’s Shield layers, layering the geometric shell around the perimeter. Because this specific magic array uses the caster’s own physical coordinates as its behavioral anchor point, my only choice was to lock myself inside the cage along with the bomb.

To state the unvarnished programming reality: the exact dynamic fraction of a second the explosion triggered, my own personal health pool would be forced to absorb the cataclysmic brunt of the damage parameters.

However, my cognitive timeline possessed absolute zero allowance to execute a hesitation loop. There was no time to run an administrative doubt check.

“Lucifer’s Shield!” I roared, pushing my throat to its limit.

Another five layers… ten layers—

The active shield count registered on my interface rapidly breached fifty consecutive units. My cognitive resolution began to blur, my consciousness drifting toward a blackout state. Even with my absurd stats, my internal mana stores were not an infinite resource. Furthermore, by completely bypassing the mandatory chanting loops to enforce a zero-frame casting speed, the system was extracting an exceptionally grueling, punishing penalty that aggressively drained my fuel reserves far beyond normal consumption parameters.

“I have already informed your system that your struggles are entirely non-serving. The absolute final payload of my engine detonates—NOW!”

“I absolute enforce a total block on that directive!”

And then—the absolute milestone of a hundred layers.

The network of a hundred overlapping magic barriers verified complete, creating a flawless, airtight seal around my frame and the Lord of Light. Simultaneously, the rhythmic light pulsing from the Divine Gear reached its peak, absolute saturation point.

“Fried-sama, NOOOOOO—!”

Stella unleashed a tragic, heartbreaking scream from the earth below, her facial features twisting in profound despair.

“To choose a strategic self-sacrifice play of that caliber—”

“Your analytics have blundered, Stella,” I chuckled, my lips curving upward beneath the cover of my mask. “My system harbors absolute zero intention of executing a self-sacrifice loop. Furthermore, I flatly refuse to allow a piece of junk like this to fracture the Demon World.”

“In that case, your code shall simply shatter into pieces alongside my engine—END OF REALM!”

Venting its final operational code, the Lord of Light loosed its cataclysmic detonation. The boundless, roaring wave of absolute light erupted from its core, completely bleaching the pitch-black sky of the Demon World into a blinding canvas of pure white—

The Demon World is a realm completely devoid of a natural solar body, eternally trapped within a state of drifting, heavy darkness. Yet, slicing through that permanent midnight environment, a blinding, white-hot lumen output blanketed the horizon, as if a literal sun had spontaneously manifested within the center of the capital.

“Ugh…”

The sheer brilliance of the radiation breaching her visual thresholds, Stella reflexively narrowed her eyes to safeguard her sensors. Yet, she flatly refused to pivot her neck or cut her gaze away from the epicenter.

(Fried-sama…!)

She intensely chanted her master’s name within her internal loops.

Single-mindedly praying for his victory.

Single-mindedly praying for his survival.

Eventually, the catastrophic explosive light decayed down to zero, and the heavy darkness of the Demon World smoothly reclaimed the capital. The colossal white knight—the combination weapon designated as the Lord of Light—had been systematically liquidated from the database, leaving absolute zero material traces behind.

Stationed squarely at the absolute center of the blast crater, a solitary silhouette cloaked in a heavily fractured, shredded black robe stood tall.

The unmistakable profile of the Demon King.

“Fried-sama!”

Stella launched into an immediate, high-velocity sprint ahead of the rest of the garrison, propelled by an overwhelming surge of profound joy and absolute relief that completely bypassed her cognitive restraints. Her emotional metrics exploding past their normal parameters, she found herself completely incapable of suppressing her actions.

“Thank goodness… your survival parameters are intact…” she wept, throwing her arms tightly around his frame.

“Stella… I apologize for forcing your system to process that level of anxiety.”

“Fried-sama…!”

As she looked up into his face from his chest, her scanning sensors caught a sudden structural revelation: the personal mask he routinely wore to obscure his identity had been completely shattered and blown away by the blast, leaving his true facial features entirely exposed to her gaze. Furthermore, the pitch-black robe enveloping his frame was heavily fractured and torn across countless nodes, fresh beads of blood seeping through the fabric.

“Because my primary directive required prioritizing the deployment of the barrier layers around the target’s perimeter, the internal shields I engineered to safeguard my own health pool were restricted to the absolute bare minimum specifications. Well, my stats managed to tank the brunt of the payload, though it cost me my mask and reduced my wardrobe to absolute cinders…” Fried explained, a tired, self-deprecating chuckle escaping his lips.

“In that case, I shall coordinate with the logistics detail to prepare a fresh set of royal raiment immediately. For the time being, please utilize this asset…”

Reaching down, Stella manually tore a clean, substantial strip of fabric straight from the hem of her own military-style uniform and held the cloth out to Fried. Wrapping the material around his mouth and nose would serve as a perfectly functional makeshift mask to conceal his identity from the gathering troops.

“Here…”

As she extended the cloth, her gaze locked directly into Fried’s eyes. At that precise dynamic fraction of a second, she registered the physical reality that their faces were positioned at an exceptionally close, intimate proximity.

Instantly, her cheek parameters spiked into a deep, burning crimson.

“I… Um, that is to say…”

The rhythmic pounding of her heart rate underwent a rapid acceleration, and her cognitive resolution felt oddly faint and dizzy.

“Mhm? What status anomaly has disrupted your system, Stella?”

“N-No, my profound apologies… my diagnostics are completely normal… it is absolutely nothing…”

Faced with Fried’s genuinely bewildered expression, Stella frantically shook her head to dismiss his tracking query. Properly handing over the strip of cloth, she softly cut her eyes away to stare at the dirt floor.

(My profile is logged strictly as a loyal vassal bound to serve Fried-sama’s sovereign vector. Allowing my internal metrics to harbor romantic thoughts of this nature is an absolute violation of my operational parameters…)

She ruthlessly enforced the rigid constraint upon her own heart. The mandatory attribute required to define her existence as his commander was strictly an ironclad, absolute loyalty. Allowing a chaotic variable like romantic love to compromise her code was an absolute error.

However, during that grueling, terrifying window where her systems had been forced to calculate the potential loss of Fried’s life signs, her true feelings had been flawlessly brought to light.

He was the absolute most precious entity in her world.

Her system flatly refused to process a reality where he was lost.

And she highly desired, with absolute sincerity, to remain permanently anchored by his side, down to the final frame of their journey—

“That visual profile registers as—”

His hollow eye sockets anchored tightly onto the coordinates where Fried and Stella were locked in a close embrace, Regal let out a low, clicking rumble from his chest.

“The true, unmasked face of the Lord Demon King… is it…?”

It was highly anticipated that the cataclysmic explosion generated by the Lord of Light’s self-destruction loop had exceeded the durability parameters of his standard mask, shattering the artifact into pieces. Even tracking the data from a distance, his high-resolution visual sensors had captured the image with absolute, undeniable clarity.

The distinct, sharp features of a powerful, mature human male.

“That exact structural layout and baseline aura…”

It closely, flawlessly mirrored the taxonomy of a human being.

No, a programming calculation of that nature was a mathematical impossibility.

“There is absolutely zero probability… surely not,” Regal muttered under his breath.

Offering a sharp, heavy shake of his skull as if to forcefully delete the chaotic thought from his internal processing loops, he tried to archive the anomaly. Yet, the deep trace of profound suspicion that had sparked within his matrix flatly refused to clear.

It remained nestled deep inside his code, continuously, quietly smoldering down in the dark—