The sky above the Barren Lands still burned with the remnants of three shattered meteors.
Fragments of flaming stone rained harmlessly across the distant horizon, turning the wasteland red for a brief, terrible moment.
Below that scarlet light
Luminous Valentine descended slowly.
Her black and white garments stirred in the wind.
Her face was cold.
Beautiful.
And furious.
The Ten Great Saints stood frozen where they were, bloodied and battered, too stunned by her arrival to even speak.
Across from her, Loki stood atop the ruined battlefield with one hand still half-raised toward the sky.
He looked at the fading meteor fragments.
Then at Luminous.
Then, somehow
He smiled.
Not a nervous one.
Not even an apologetic one.
A smug one.
The kind of smile only Loki could wear while being caught in the middle of doing the exact thing he was told not to do.
Luminous's eyes narrowed.
"What," she asked, each word controlled with visible effort, "do you think you are doing?"
Loki lowered his hand fully.
He glanced around at the ruined terrain.
Then at the Saints.
Then back at her.
"…Improvising?"
The answer did not help.
At all.
The air around Luminous sharpened instantly.
"You had one job."
Her voice remained calm.
"Fight them."
"Lose."
"And do not destroy anything."
Each point came out like a blade.
Loki placed a hand on his chest.
"Well now, that feels a little unfair."
Luminous took another step forward.
"Unfair?"
She pointed toward the sky.
"You just tried to drop three meteors on my Hinata."
Loki blinked.
"Your Hinata?"
Luminous's expression did not change.
"That is the part you're focusing on?"
Loki considered it for a moment.
"…No."
Then his smile widened again.
"But it is funny."
Lightning sparked in Luminous's palm.
Small at first.
Then brighter.
Hinata, still half-standing in the broken earth below, stared upward in stunned silence.
'What is happening?'
None of this fit any battle she had ever known.
A Primordial Demon laughing beneath falling meteors.
Luminous arriving from the sky.
The two of them speaking like this
Like this was somehow personal.
Luminous kept her gaze fixed on Loki.
"We had an agreement."
Loki tilted his head slightly.
Then, with the kind of smugness that practically invited violence, he said—
"Doesn't Your Majesty know better than to trust the words of a demon?"
Silence.
Dead silence.
Then
Luminous disappeared.
The battlefield cracked.
BOOOOM.
She reappeared in front of him, fist already crashing into his face with enough force to tear apart the air itself.
Loki's head snapped to the side.
The impact sent him skidding across the ground, boots carving trenches through the dry earth before he twisted, caught himself, and stopped.
Dust rolled around him.
He straightened slowly.
Touched his cheek.
Then looked back at her.
"…Okay," he said. "That one was deserved."
Luminous did not answer.
She was already moving again.
Her magic power flared in a brilliant crimson-white surge as divine energy gathered around her arms and legs. Every movement she made was sharp. Efficient. Elegant in the way only a true monster's violence could be.
She struck once.
Twice.
Three times.
Each blow carried enough force to pulverize mountains.
Loki met her with laughter.
Not because she was weak.
Far from it.
But because he had already slipped into that space he loved so much. That point in a fight where everything became fun.
He ducked under a divine palm strike.
Turned sideways as a heel passed his jaw.
Caught her wrist.
Spun with it.
Then released her just in time for her to recover in midair and blast him with a burst of holy light.
KRAAAAASH.
The explosion swallowed him whole.
The Saints flinched from the aftershock.
When the light faded—
Loki was still standing.
His maroon suit was torn at the sleeve now.
A little smoke rose from one shoulder.
He looked down at it.
Then up at Luminous.
"Ooh," he said lightly. "Fancy."
Luminous's eye twitched.
"You are insufferable."
"I get that a lot."
She raised one hand.
The sky above the battlefield split with lines of divine light.
Holy spears formed in the air.
Hundreds of them.
Each one gleaming.
Each one humming with enough destructive force to erase lesser beings outright.
The battered Saints below could do nothing but stare.
Then Luminous brought her hand down.
The spears fell.
SHHHHK—!
Loki vanished.
The spears obliterated the ground beneath him in a storm of white fire.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
The entire center of the battlefield disappeared under that barrage.
But above it—
Loki reappeared upside down in midair, hands behind his back, grinning down at her.
"You missed."
Luminous shot upward.
Her fist drove toward his chest—
Loki leaned back just enough to let it graze his suit instead.
Then he tapped her forehead lightly with two fingers.
A pulse of gravity exploded outward.
THOOM.
The air folded.
Luminous was blasted backward through the sky, stopping herself only by carving a line of light through the air.
She steadied.
Looked up.
And found him already in front of her.
Loki smiled.
"You know," he said, "you're much stronger when you're angry."
Luminous bared her teeth.
"And you're much more of an eyesore when you're alive."
She drove a knee upward.
Loki twisted aside.
Then he formed a sword.
Black light gathered in his hand like ink dragged from a shadow. In an instant it lengthened, curved, and sharpened into a katana.
He swung.
She blocked with a barrier.
The collision split the sky.
SHIIIIIING.
The barrier shattered anyway.
Not fully.
But enough for the pressure of the strike to force her back.
Loki spun the blade once in his hand and laughed.
"This is nice."
"You're trying to kill me."
"No," Luminous said coldly. "I'm punishing you."
"It's more of the same thing."
She attacked again.
This time the battle stopped looking like a duel and started looking like natural disaster.
Luminous filled the sky with radiant constructs and divine arcs of lightning, each one lashing through the air in elegant patterns designed to pin, corner, and crush.
Loki moved through them like he was walking through festival fireworks.
Sometimes he dodged.
Sometimes he cut them apart.
Sometimes he simply let them hit and laughed when they blasted him through stone and dust.
He was not fighting seriously.
That much became horrifyingly clear.
Even to the Saints.
Even to Hinata.
Especially to Hinata.
'He's toying with Lady Luminous.'
The thought made her stomach twist.
Everything they had endured.
Everything he had done to them.
And now he was toying with Luminous the same way.
Luminous realized it too.
That only made her angrier.
She vanished from the sky entirely.
The battlefield trembled.
The next instant she was beneath Loki, palm already pressed against his ribs.
"Burst."
Divine power detonated point-blank.
DOOOOOOM.
The shockwave split the clouds.
Loki went flying this time.
Actually flying.
He smashed across the wasteland, bounced once off the broken earth, then rolled and came to a stop on one knee.
For a moment—
He stayed there.
Luminous descended slowly.
Her chest rose and fell once.
Twice.
Her eyes never left him.
"If you are still under the illusion that this is amusing," she said, "I can continue until you understand otherwise."
Loki looked up.
Then laughed.
Softly at first.
Then harder.
By the time he stood, the grin was back.
Wider than ever.
"Ah."
He brushed dust from his shoulder.
"That was definitely a good one."
Luminous stared.
The Saints stared.
Even battered and broken, they could feel it now.
The truth of it.
This demon—
This thing standing in front of them—
Was enjoying all of it.
The Saints' fear.
Luminous's anger.
The heat.
The pressure.
The chaos.
Loki twirled the katana once and let it dissolve back into shadow.
Then he spread both hands.
"What can I say?"
He looked from Luminous to the Saints and back again.
"You all make such wonderful expressions."
Lightning screamed down from the sky.
Luminous did not even raise a hand.
It simply answered her rage.
Loki stepped to the side lazily, letting the bolt tear apart the ground where he had stood.
Then he smiled again.
"Oh, come on."
"You've got to try harder than that to punish me Luminous."
Luminous moved.
He moved.
The two collided again in a burst of red and black, light and crushing gravity grinding against each other hard enough to shake the Barren Lands from end to end.
The surviving Saints could do nothing but watch.
Dust.
Light.
Thunder.
For several long seconds, the battlefield belonged to no one else.
Then—
A new presence entered it.
Massive.
Heavy in a way that made even the wasteland itself seem to bow.
A footstep.
And with that one step, the battlefield changed.
The pressure deepened.
The very land seemed to acknowledge its master.
Luminous and Loki both halted mid-exchange.
The Saints looked up.
At the edge of the battlefield stood a giant of a man.
Immense and ancient.
His presence felt like mountains learning to walk.
Dagruel.
He looked over the broken wasteland, the battered Saints, the hovering Demon Lord, and the smiling Primordial.
Then his voice rolled across the Barren Lands like the sound of the earth itself speaking.
"Who dares come battle in my territory…"
He took one more step forward.
"…without my permission?"
---
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