The clock is ticking. Light's shockwave has begun to push outside the neighborhood's area. At this rate, he is going to level the entire city and even the neighboring cities all around. In Lily's current state, she can think and process information at a rate faster than even any supercomputer in the world is capable of.

  "(Think, Lily! If you don't act, FAST, a lot more people would be caught in the blast. THINK!!)"

  In that short amount of time, Lily has formulated and thought about 100,000 different methods to stop Light and the shockwave. All of those methods would be in vain until she remembers something crucial.

  "(Right!)"

  Lily summons the Sword of Purification in her right hand. She tries to use her ability on the Sword of Purification. Lily intended to accelerate time on the Sword of Purification, to throw it towards Light so that it travels and lands instantly at his chest, but the Sword wasn't affected by her Faith power at all.

  "(. . .I forgot this Sword is immune to Faith powers in general. Thankfully, I have another plan!)"

  Lily's whole body already glows in her blue light as she is already using acceleration on her body, but Lily's right hand glows even brighter than the rest.

  "LIGHT-KUN, STOOOOPP!!!"

  Lily hurls the Sword of Purification towards Light, who is currently 500m away from her. The Sword travels at unbelievable speed and lands directly on his chest.

  "(IT WORKS!!!)"

  Instead of accelerating the Sword, Lily accelerates her own hand to throw the Sword away at a speed on par with what her original plan would have achieved.

  One.

  The shockwave stops. Light tries to pull the Sword out of his chest. In that instance, as Lily had already accelerated her whole body, she quickly ran and arrived in front of Light.

  Two.

  Lily grabs the Sword on his chest and struggles to keep the Sword stabbed into his chest as Light is also trying to pull it out.

  "Light-kun. . . Please. . . Open your eyes!"

  But Light grabs Lily's neck easily. He lifts her up and pulls the Sword of Purification out of his chest with his other hand, and it disappears.

  "L-Light-kun. . . Please answer me!!"

  Light's grip on her neck gets tighter.

  "UUURGGHH!!! LIGHT-KUN. . .Please, I beg you. Wake up!"

  Light strangles Lily with one hand until she's almost out of breath.

  "Li. . .ght-kun. . ."

  Light strengthens his grip and strangles Lily even harder, and her neck starts to turn red.

  "AAAKKKKHHH!! LIGHT-KUUUUUUN!!!"

  Lily is suddenly shrouded in bright light, and it forms into a sphere, engulfing her whole body. The light pushes Light away, and he loses his hold over Lily. The light slowly turns into blue light, and a blue light shoots upwards into the sky from the top of the sphere. After a few seconds, the blue sphere cracks open slowly, and then Lily appears with a different appearance.

  Lily has entered Second State. She dons her queen-like appearance during this state with six pairs of her clockwork swords floating behind her, acting as wings.

  Light rushes towards Lily while he is still absorbing time. Lily's swords on her back are slowly getting absorbed by Light. Lily then lifts her right hand, aiming towards him.

  "Break!"

  In that instant, Lily "destroyed" time in a small area around them. Light lost its hold over time. Lily's sword in her back returns to normal and functions properly. In that small area where time doesn't exist, Lily "creates" time on her hand and crafts her clockwork swords on both of her hands to prevent Light from absorbing time and shutting down her powers.

  Lily sliced Light with both of her swords, and they broke apart as expected, but Lily immediately summoned the Sword of Purification in one hand. Light throws out a right jab at her. She easily dodges it and stabs Light with the Sword.

  One.

  Light punches Lily away, and she loses her grip on the Sword again. Light pulls out the Sword from his chest, and it disappears from his hand.

  "(It doesn't make that much difference than before now that I am in Second State. I have to find a way to successfully let the Sword of Purification sit on his chest for three whole seconds. At least now I know that he cannot absorb time within the space where I destroyed time.)"

  Lily summons both of her swords again. She rushes towards Light with yet another unreactable speed. She slices him with her two swords, only for them to be broken. She immediately proceeds to do the same thing over and over again from different angles and directions each time.

  With one single rush, she has landed two slashes on him. The total amount she rushes towards Light in that full minute is 1496 times, which means she has summoned almost 3000 swords in that instance.

  Light couldn't react to even one of her strikes during that full minute, and after exactly 60 seconds, Light had instinctively deemed Lily's attack to be dealt with differently.

  *!*

  Lily notices Light's stance, and she immediately stops during her high-speed run.

  "LIGHT-KUN WAIT!!!"

  Light punches the ground, and the impact immediately distorts Lily's footing. Lily immediately flies high into the sky and takes a glance down below.

  What Lily saw was something terrifyingly spectacular. The entire residential area was split into five giant chunks, with each edge of the chunks lifted towards the sky, while the spot where Light punched went deep under the ground. The residential area was already in such a mess, but now it's nothing but a result of a natural disaster.

  But then, Light, who was standing in the middle of it all, raised his right fist to the side and started absorbing all of the lifted massive chunks of earth above his fist. The entire five gigantic chunks of the Earth, along with everything else on them, were absorbed and merged into a ball. He also compressed the gigantic ball of the Earth into the size of a mere baseball. The baseball-sized Earth soon collapses into itself and forms a small spherical stable black hole that doesn’t emit any gravitational pull; rather, it keeps them around a very thin layer around itself.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Lily lands on the soft ground below.

  *!!!*

  She soon notices that Light has prepared to launch the small black hole towards her with a punch.

  *BWUNG*

  Light quickly launches the black hole at Lily, and it travels at the speed faster than sound.

  “INFINITE ACCELERATION!!”

  Lily casts her Accelerate ability on her whole body and clenches her right fist. She swung her punch before Light launched her black hole to time its swing against the black hole’s arrival.

  *BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMM*

  Lily punched the black hole with an infinite amount of mass, and the black hole clashed against her punch. On contact, a gigantic explosion occurred, and it sent a gigantic shockwave that would destroy the entire city in its path, but Lily quickly erected a massive dome of her clock shield to contain the explosion. A thick amount of smoke filled the entire dome of the clock shield until it all faded away a few seconds later. Lily also discards her giant dome of clock shield.

  *pant pant pant*

  Lily loses her entire right torso along with half of her right head. She is bleeding a lot with all the exposed organs and flesh, but she quickly healed herself with her Rewind ability.

  *THUD*

  *pant pant pant*

  Lily falls to her knees on the soft ground below. She’s heavy breathing not because of physical exhaustion, but because of how scary the situation she was just in was, and she barely survived it.

  *!!!*

  All of a sudden, Light appeared in front of her, and he was already swinging her fist down towards her head.

  *BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMM*

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

  Lily tried to move, but Light pulled her towards his body, and his punch went through her belly and created a big hole in it. He quickly puts his other hand on her face, and he grips it hard.

  “UURRRGGGHHHH!!!”

  “LIGHT-KUUUNNN. . . STOOOPP. . .”

  Light grips Lily’s face so much that her skin almost gets torn. Lily immediately acts fast and casts a time stop on her sense of pain so she can ignore everything he’s doing to her.

  “LIGHT-KUUUUUUUNN!!! PLEASE STOP!!! LISTEN TO MEEE!!! I’M BEGGING YOU!!”

  Light pulls her fist out from her belly, and he prepares another punch.

  “LIGHT-KUUUUUUUUUUUUNNN!!!”

  *!!!*

  *ZRAAAASSSHHHH*

  All of a sudden, Light’s transformation on his body was grazed by floating black and red swords and broke apart on both of his hands. Lily felt his weakening grip and immediately escaped from him. She is now 20m away from Light and quickly heals herself back to full health.

  “(W-What was that? His transformation was broken?)”

  Lily looks to her right and left and sees that the entire residential area has become a giant empty crater.

  "REWIND!"

  Lily immediately rewinds the state of the neighborhood to the state before Light used his Rejection, and the residential area has returned to normal, minus all the people who died. Lily flies up high to the sky to search for Light.

  “(Where is he now?)”

  *!*

  Lily looked up and finally found him. Light is flying higher and higher towards the sky.

  "Where are you going, Light-kun?!"

  Light stops 3000 meters above the ground. Lily spreads her sword wings and chases after him. Light lifts his right arm in the air and places it diagonally upwards behind him.

  "What is he doing?"

  From Lily's perspective, he doesn't seem to be doing anything strange. And then something caught Lily's attention in the corner of her eye during her ascent. She stops in midair immediately. It was someone with red and black wings flying towards her. Lily immediately notices Quroe’s black and red wings.

  “Seventh Judge? Were you the one who helped me just now?”

  "Yeah! I woke up early.”

  Quroe immediately notices Lily’s different appearance from her previous one.

  “I see. Now I know why they call you the Queen of Time."

  “You're okay? You survived the shockwave earlier?"

  "Don't worry about me. How is he?"

  "He's up there. I don't know what he's doing."

  Quroe turns around and looks up at Light.

  "Why do I feel something bad is coming?"

  After carefully focusing on Light, they started to notice something behind him, far above the sky. Since the sky is clear tonight, they can clearly see what's happening. Upon further look, they started to figure out the objects that are heading fast towards Earth.

  "METEORS!!" said Lily.

  "ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?" said Quroe.

  Light has pulled a bunch of small asteroids from outer space towards the Earth. The number of meteors is more than fifty, with each having different sizes ranging from 1m in diameter to the largest at 50m.

  "His anger was already at an unhealthy level before this, and Berserker State multiplies that into an unimaginable level. He's really trying to destroy everything, huh?" said Quroe.

  "(My chest hurts. . . His anger is abnormal.)" said Lily in her head.

  All of the meteors have entered the Earth's atmosphere, and they catch fire from friction with the atmosphere. They all lit up brightly because of how fast they were. The sky is now filled with meteors falling down from the sky.

  Light swings his hand down as if he were doing a smash in a volleyball match. The meteors come crashing down at an incredible speed, all at the same time. With how fast the meteors are traveling, even just the smallest meteors can cause collateral destruction, while the largest meteors would cause human extinction.

  "STOP!"

  Lily immediately stops time on all the incoming meteors, on top of her previous time stop on the whole world, thus preventing any meteors from hitting the ground. Usually, she can only use Time Stop once at a time, but since she's on Second State, there is no restriction on her current actions.

  All of the meteors have almost reached the surface of the Earth. The closest meteor is 23m above the ground, while the farthest is 150m above the ground.

  "REWIND!!"

  Lily rewinds time on a massive scale, and the meteors start to move backward rapidly until eventually all of them exit Earth into outer space. Lily has successfully prevented human extinction events that would have happened if any of those large meteors were to hit the Earth.

  "The 4th Strongest Believer truly lives up to her name. To think you even have the capability to prevent such a massive-scale disaster."

  "Well, if it were a natural disaster, rewinding time only prolongs said disaster from happening, but the disaster will still occur at a later time. This time, it works only because it's manmade."

  "Right. And to think our leader has this much capability on his Faith power."

  Light then lifts his hand up again, but this time his palm is facing towards the moon.

  ". . .We have another problem." said Quroe.

  Both of them looked up. From their perspective, the moon is slowly increasing in size.

  "You have got to be fucking kidding me. . ."

  "Light-kun. . ."

  Light has pulled down the moon, the Earth's satellite, towards the planet. The moon travels at an incredible speed that it will collide with Earth in just about 10 seconds. He was able to pull the moon despite Lily’s time stop on the whole world.

  "STOP!"

  Lily immediately stops time on the moon itself and holds it in place.

  "REWIND!"

  Lily rewinds time on the moon, and it moves back to its original position. Light tries to pull the moon back, but Quroe appears in front of Light and cuts the transformation on his arm, leaving him unable to use his ability. Quroe also immediately stabs him with the Sword of Purification.

  One.

  "URGH!!"

  Light punches Quroe on his stomach, but Quroe cuts his transformation so that the punch isn't strong enough to push Quroe back.

  Light punches Quroe with his other hand, but again, his transformation was canceled, so he couldn't push Quroe away. Light then instinctively head-butts Quroe right in his forehead. Quroe was hit with a powerful gravitational push from the headbutt and was sent flying down right towards the ground. He falls very fast, but he stops himself at the very last second, and he drops to the ground safely.

  "Curses. . ."

  Two.

  Light pulls out the Sword of Purification on his chest.

  Out of nowhere, Lily arrived in front of him and stabbed him with another Sword of Purification. The three-second countdown restarts.

  One.

  Light smacks Lily with his backhand. A black and red blade appears and cuts his transformation before Light's hand comes into contact with Lily, thus preventing her from getting blown away. Quroe uses his third ability with the aura wings and blades to assist Lily.

  Light keeps trying to punch Lily away, but the black and red blade keeps cutting Light's transformation. Quroe continues to help Lily even from far below the ground.

  Two.

  "URGH!! AKH! UKH!!"

  Lily keeps enduring every hit she took from Light. The damage was minimal since he hit her with only his physical strength alone however, a man hitting a woman continuously is a terrifying sight on its own. Lily didn't try to dodge and accept any punches, slams, slaps, and even kicks as Quroe kept assisting her, cutting away Light's transformation.

  Three.

  Finally, a dome of light is erected and traps both of them inside, in the sky. At the same time, Light's Second State ends, and his white and yellow transformation starts to break apart.

  "Light-kun, this time, I'll save you!"