MIGHT AS WELL BE OP

Lilithra lay sprawled upon the barren surface of the moon, her gaze fixed upon the void above. Shock etched every contour of her face, as though the very foundation of her existence had been called into question.

She could not fathom what had just transpired.

She could not grasp what was still unfolding.

It all felt like a mirage, an impossible, mocking illusion.

A Demon Monarch. A sovereign whose name resounded across the galaxy, surpassed only by ninety-nine others in the hierarchy.

And yet… a child, not even three decades into his life, had flung her across celestial bodies as though she were nothing but a wayward leaf in the wind.

Should word of this reach the Abyss, her name would be reduced to the punchline of a cruel jest.

That human boy had toyed with her.

She, over a million years old, tempered in countless battles, conqueror of worlds and dominions, reduced to a state where she could not even find her footing upon the very stars she once commanded.

The last time she had felt such helplessness was when she had crossed blades with Demon Monarchs ranked in the seventies, foes she had always known to be monsters beyond compare.

Yet this boy had torn her apart. Piece by piece. Until nothing remained but the bitter taste of her own insignificance.

A fleeting thought crossed her mind: could this human child prevail against those ranked in the seventies, relying solely on hand to hand combat?

She dared not consider how he might fare against the top ten. Those… were demons in the truest, most dreadful sense of the word.

Her thoughts drifted to her pride, the pride she had guarded like a crown forged from fire and blood. Many had challenged her for the coveted hundredth rank, hoping to earn the right to serve the Demon Kings directly.

Every single one of them had perished by her hand, a grim reminder that though they were all Demon Monarchs, she stood on an entirely different plane of power.

At this echelon, comprehension was everything. Without an ever-deepening grasp of one's own abilities, how could one refine themselves to their absolute limit?

Yes, she had lost in pure physical combat, her admitted weakness. But her true strength lay elsewhere.

From this moment forward, she would shift to her domain of mastery.

Magic

With a celestial-shaking detonation, an overwhelming surge of chaos energy erupted from Lilithra as she lay upon the fractured lunar ground. In an instant, plumes of silver dust spiraled into the void, jagged cracks raced across the moon's surface, and with a deafening blast, the celestial body itself shattered.

Through the veil of drifting debris, her figure ascended, unbroken, her wounds mended, her presence unnervingly calm.

Blood-red eyes gleamed like twin suns of malice, and from her being poured such an immense torrent of chaos energy that even the mightiest of oceans would be obliterated by proximity alone.

'It seems the time for hand-to-hand combat has reached its end,' Anthony thought, his expression unreadable.

'Shall we also show off our own mana quantity' Anthony mused to himself.

Like a collapsing star reborn in fury, mana of apocalyptic magnitude surged from his core. It burst forth in concentric waves that warped the very fabric of space, each pulse threatening to tear reality asunder.

With a resounding boom, his mana collided with her chaos energy, the two forces locking in a titanic struggle, clashing like colossal rams with their horns entwined.

The pressure mounted. The scale grew beyond comprehension. Each heartbeat saw the intensity ascend without limit. Planets shuddered in their distant orbits. Asteroids splintered. Meteors unraveled into streams of light. The galaxy itself seemed to hold its breath, awaiting the inevitable cataclysm.

'Such mana…' Lilithra's thoughts raced, her gaze locked on the boy before her. 'The quantity, the purity, can this child even be called human? No… he has transcended anomaly. This is something beyond.'

Though she could not wield mana herself, she could feel it, sense its ebb and flow, as clearly as others sensed the malevolence of chaos energy.

'I must end this.'

Realizing that even her unrestrained chaos could not bring him down, she moved.

Her chaos energy compressed around her palm, condensing with a density that made the air tremble. Each heartbeat amplified its potency, the surrounding space groaning under the strain.

Her arm rose, palm outstretched toward Anthony. In a flash, a colossal beam erupted, shaped like an unending column of darkness, its velocity seeming to surpass the speed of light itself. Space screamed as the blast tore forward, corrupting all it touched, unmaking reality in its path.

Anthony's response was calm, almost effortless. He raised one hand, gathering mana of equal ferocity. A blinding blue radiance surged from his palm, condensing into a beam that streaked forward to meet the oncoming tide of chaos.

In a cataclysmic cry, the two forces collided, pure blue against pitch black. The impact shattered space itself, the collision birthing a swirling maelstrom of annihilation. Incandescent brilliance erupted outward, engulfing the void in a wave of destruction that bent the laws of existence.

Then, within mere seconds, the mana beam overpowered its counterpart, ripping through the chaos energy like paper, and roared onward toward Lilithra with maddening, unstoppable force.

Lilithra moved in an instant, her figure slicing through space itself. A single, fluid motion carried her clear of the oncoming beam, her afterimage dissolving into nothingness just as the blast consumed it.

Hands of Necrone

Chaos energy surged from her core once more, roiling like a living tempest before shaping into long, spectral hands, each as dark as a void without stars. They multiplied in the blink of an eye, their numbers swelling into the thousands.

Then, with a hunger that bordered on madness, they lunged forward, like vipers starved for centuries.

Anthony could have unleashed Infinity, ended this display in a breath, but this was a test. A measure of his abilities against a Demon Monarch. And not just any Monarch, one counted among the rare few who stood at the very pinnacle.

He knew the truth: a single touch from those hands meant instant death… or worse, corruption, rebirth as a demon under her will.

His figure blurred, slipping from existence entirely, reappearing a heartbeat later far from the writhing mass. The spectral hands shredded through the space he had just occupied, but they did not falter. They pursued relentlessly, each moving with an eerie intelligence, tracking his every shift as though they could smell his very soul.

Anthony weaved through their ranks with effortless precision, each movement a study in controlled grace. His white hair streamed behind him, a comet's tail in the chaotic dark.

But he knew this could not continue forever. The air around him thickened with anticipation as he came to an abrupt stop. Mana swelled at his command, radiating a light that felt both serene and merciless, divinity incarnate.

Holy Radiance