MIGHT AS WELL BE OP

"If you were as strong as I was at nineteen years of age… then I would gladly accept."

Anthony's words were calm, spoken with an unshaken expression. His tone carried neither jest nor exaggeration, yet it was colored faintly with the quiet calmness of someone who was only stating facts, facts that to him were simply reality.

To Anthony, there was no false pride in his declaration. He was merely recounting truth as naturally as one breathes. And in that moment, as his voice intoned, his thoughts drifted away from the confrontation before him and back to a memory, a memory of Klaus.

Klaus… the man who had first recognized Anthony's true talent upon meeting him only once. He had proposed something similar back then, extending a hand, recognizing greatness in its infancy.

But Anthony had refused him.

At that time, Anthony had rejected the offer without hesitation, not because he doubted Klaus, but because his own path was his own.

Although Anthony never truly knew the depths of Klaus's strength, he was not blind. He understood well enough that Klaus stood near or at the very pinnacle of existence, perhaps even at the summit of the galaxy itself.

After all, following the Starborn Tournament, Klaus had humiliated and overwhelmed representatives of the most powerful races across the cosmos, and he had done so without so much as lifting a finger. That alone spoke volumes of the man's capabilities.

And now, standing before him, the Demon King, Azrath Kaelthar Morvanyx Doomrend, was stunned.

For a long moment, the ancient being floated in silence, almost disbelieving what he had heard.

He, the Demon King, had extended an offer that countless beings across galaxy would have killed to receive. Yet this boy before him had not only refused, it was worse. The boy had placed a condition upon him.

A condition the Demon King could never hope to fulfill.

Could he, the mighty Azrath Kaelthar Morvanyx Doomrend, meet the boy's demand? No. The answer was clear. And that truth alone was laughable.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

A booming laughter erupted from the Demon King, thunderous and unrestrained. His voice rolled like waves of destruction across the planet, shaking the very foundations of existence. Earthquakes split Domains, volcanoes roared to life, storms raged across the seas, and natural disasters spread like a plague, all in resonance with his laughter.

The Demon King was amused, no, truly amused. He had not laughed like this in eons. His laughter was not forced; it was genuine, rising from the depths of his chest until a tear formed in his dark, cruel eyes. He lifted a hand, a finger brushing away that solitary tear as he continued to chuckle.

At nineteen, he had been nothing like this boy.

At nineteen, he had not even reached planetary might. Back then, he was still clawing his way upward, still drowning in struggle, fighting tooth and nail for a glimpse of power. But this boy spoke as if standing on heights even higher.

And the strange thing was, there was no arrogance in Anthony's words. No falsehood. To him, it was simply reality.

Azrath Kaelthar Morvanyx Doomrend, the scourge of worlds, the shadow of eternity, the being who had reigned unchallenged for eons, was not angry. Not in the slightest.

Ironically, despite all his infamy, he was a man... a demon, of principles.

Normally, others would expect him to slaughter any who dared reject him, to crush them beneath his heel for the mere crime of refusal.

But Azrath Kaelthar Morvanyx Doomrend stood above such pettiness.

Anthony was not the first to reject him.

Long ago, there had been another, the first. And in that moment too, the Demon King had not lashed out. He had simply turned his back and walked away, wordless, unshaken.

That was the kind of being he was.

Terrible, yes. Unforgiving, yes. But bound by his own strange laws of conduct.

Anthony, however, only stared as the Demon King laughed with enough force to make space itself tremble. In truth, he had half-expected the man to flare up in rage, to lash out with fury at the audacity of rejection.

Pride was often the weakness of beings at such heights. But the Demon King did not fit neatly into such expectations.

"It seems I was the arrogant one here, Anthony," Azrath Kaelthar Morvanyx Doomrend finally said, his laughter subsiding. He wiped another tear from his eye.

"Normally, I would leave. I care little for pride, for it breeds nothing of worth. But reputation… reputation is another matter altogether." His voice grew calm, yet it carried weight like the collapse of worlds. "One of my subordinates has fallen. Lilithra, her existence erased by you. I cannot simply walk away without response. For if I do, what of my name? What of the shadow that spans galaxy? I must act, even if only to maintain the order of things."

He sighed, as though even speaking of it exhausted him. "Now I must scour the galaxy once again, searching for another with talent even remotely comparable to Lilithra's. Who knows how long such a task will take?"

Anthony remained silent, his body poised, his stance ready. His eyes flickered downward for a moment, noticing the countless citizens still pressed against the earth. Their knees were bruised, their foreheads bleeding where they had struck the ground, pinned by the Demon King's mere existence.

His lips parted, and his voice descended like a decree of gods:

"You may raise your heads."

The words echoed through every domain, reverberating across reality itself. Instantly, the crushing force pinning everyone to the ground vanished. Knees straightened, foreheads lifted, and countless people staggered to their feet.

Their eyes, however, did not dare look directly at the 'human' floating above. Instead, they returned to their livestream.

The Demon King smiled. He had just watched Anthony erase yet another of his passive existential attacks, dismantling them as though they were nothing.

"I hope you survive this, Null Anthony," the Demon King murmured, his tone calm yet edged with grim finality.

And then he spoke a single word,

Shatter

At once, reality obeyed. Space screamed as though unwilling, yet it still submitted. Cracks, glass-like and endless, spread across the planet and beyond, spiderwebbing through existence itself.

Within a heartbeat, the void yawned wide, a hungry maw eager to devour all. Mountains fractured, seas split, hills trembled. The Blue Planet was seconds away from annihilation.

But then, another voice answered.

Unshatter

It was Anthony's voice. Clear. Steady. Inevitable.

Through his Mind Calculation ability, he had foreseen this attack long before the Demon King enacted it.

Reality bent in response.

The fractured glass of existence stitched itself back together, reversing course. Lands reformed, oceans settled, and mountains stood once more. Space itself reattached like healing flesh, while the yawning void shrank into nothingness.

Anthony had no skill by such a name. There was no Unshatter in his arsenal. What he had done was far more profound: through Quantum Manipulation, he had simply reversed the Demon King's act of destruction, bending reality back into place.

He did not bother attempting what he had done with Lilithra, dragging their battle into outer space. That had worked then because Lilithra had desired amusement, because she had allowed it.

But the Demon King was no such being. If Anthony tried to sever the distance with the Authority of Severance, to forcibly drag the Demon King into the void, Azrath Kaelthar Morvanyx Doomrend would simply return to the Blue Planet in an instant.

There was only one path left.

One method.

His lips parted again, his words a divine proclamation.

Mirror Dimension

Reality shattered anew, the sound of infinite glass breaking across all Domains. But this time, it did not end with cracks. It folded. It twisted. It inverted upon itself and then rolled forward like waves, until a new layer of reality enveloped the current.

A mirror laid over truth, yet indistinguishable from it. Two realities, coexisting as one.