The single sword in her hand suddenly fractured and multiplied, spawning into hundreds of glowing, razor-sharp blades that started covering her, rotating furiously in the air. But they didn't just float randomly. The blades started joining together, interlocking hilt-to-tip like two massive, deadly chains made of pure divine steel, whipping around her in a lethal, storm-like orbit.

  Her eyes flared, glowing with an intense, overwhelming holy light. Her hair rapidly elongated, flowing wildly yet styling perfectly around a majestic, shimmering crown that materialized out of thin air onto her head. The combat gear she wore dissolved, seamlessly reforming into a breathtaking, elegant white gown cinched with a brilliant golden waistbelt.

  She didn't just look powerful; she looked utterly, terrifyingly angelic.

  With a flick of her wrist, several of the loose swords locked into place beneath her feet, forming a stairway of floating steel. She calmly climbed them, stepping into the sky until she was hovering effortlessly above the battlefield, standing on a single suspended blade.

  I was genuinely mesmerized. For a split second, I forgot we were in a death match.

  That was a mistake.

  The two massive sword-chains lashed out, ripping through the air with the sound of a tearing hurricane. I snapped back to reality, diving out of the way just as the blades obliterated the stone where I had been standing. I gritted my teeth, channeling the freezing blue star-fire of my Blue Origin state, and lunged forward. I swung my blade, aggressively parrying a secondary barrage of flying swords. The impacts were impossibly heavy, sending shockwaves rattling up my arms and shaking my bones to the core. I dashed, deflected, and slashed, burning every ounce of Qi I had just to survive the onslaught, pushing my physical limits to the absolute breaking point in a desperate bid to close the distance.

  Down on the ground, Alita and Starlia had finally arrived at the edge of our combat zone. They stood completely still, watching the cataclysmic clash of blue fire and holy light. They were unbothered, exchanging quiet glances and clearly planning to just chill on the sidelines, waiting to intervene only if Leonica somehow ended up needing a rescue.

  Meanwhile, I was fighting for my actual life. I sliced through a wave of incoming steel, panting heavily, my muscles screaming in protest, and looked up to brace for her next devastating attack.

  But she wasn't attacking.

  Leonica had casually sat down sideways on her floating sword. She was completely ignoring my desperate, sweat-drenched struggle, effortlessly parrying my incoming fire strikes with a lazy, automated flick of her sword-chains while... gently petting a fluffy little puppy sitting comfortably in her lap.

  (Are you kidding me? I'm out here actively burning my soul to avoid being pureed by holy shrapnel, and she's running a magically suspended petting zoo. Nerf siblings, Writer. Nerf them immediately.)

  "Bro!" Leonica called out cheerfully, her melodic voice echoing clearly over the apocalyptic sounds of our battle. "Wanna play with my little Dawn? She doesn't bite, though there is no guarantee!"

  She actually giggled.

  Before I could even yell back that I was a little too busy trying not to die, the puppy hopped off her lap.

  It didn't fall. Dawn trotted casually on the empty air, walking down the invisible incline toward me. And with every step the dog took, its body rapidly expanded. The cute, fluffy fur shifted into coarse, magical bristles. Its muscles bulged, its jaw elongated, and its size violently exploded until it was the size of a hulking, terrifyingly massive wolf. It stopped its growth right in front of me, staring down with predatory, glowing eyes.

  I dropped my combat stance, my jaw practically unhinging as the sheer, suffocating aura of the beast hit me.

  "It's a Fenrir!" I screamed, completely abandoning my cool, calculated protagonist persona. "A fucking Fenrir! Are you serious right now?! This thing is so legendary it eats dragons for breakfast!"

  "Don't worry, it's not a full Fenrir," a deep, ancient voice echoed in my mind. Yang. "She isn't strong enough to fully summon one. It is still just a half-breed."

  "Half or not, a high-level Fenrir can eat True Dragons!" I mentally screamed back, watching the giant wolf bare teeth the size of my forearms.

  "True," Yang rumbled, his tone entirely too smug for the situation. "But I am the Father of True Dragons, aren't I?"

  I wiped a streak of sweat from my forehead, gripping the hilt of my sword. "Then it's your time to rock, Yang."

  "Oh, yeah!" Yang's voice roared. A pulse of dark, heavy energy erupted from my chest. The air distorted, and Yang materialized beside me in all his glory—a massive, black half-spirit dragon with piercing white eyes. "This is going to cost you a lot of mana, kid."

  "No problem," I gritted out. "Just go and beat the absolute crap out of that giant mutt."

  Down on the ground, the peanut gallery had finally realized what was happening.

  Starlia’s jaw practically hit the floor. "That is... Drake's dragon? What the heck! Alita, it's time!"

  Alita’s eyes narrowed, her cosmic sword humming as she stepped forward. "I can sense he is getting stronger every second. If we are lucky, it's not too late to win."

  (Wait, what? 'We'? As in, all three of you? Hey, Writer! Is there no honor system in this tournament?! A 3v1 against the protagonist is a blatant violation of basic balancing rules!)

  "I won't lose!" I roared, lunging forward with the Zenith of Dusk.

  The dark, dusk-colored blade hummed as it met Leonica's sword in a shower of sparks. But here is a fun, incredibly painful fact about this matchup: Leonica was wielding the Demon Slayer. It’s a C-rank blade with a passive 10x damage multiplier against demons.

  And guess who has demon blood running through his veins? Me.

  Every time our blades clashed, the holy feedback from the Demon Slayer sent shockwaves of pure agony up my arms. I was fighting for my life against my sister, and then—just to make my day objectively worse—Starlia and Alita joined the chat.

  They didn't just attack; they absolutely ambushed me. Suddenly, I was dodging Alita’s cosmic strikes, deflecting Starlia’s magic, and trying to keep Leonica’s multiplier blade from turning me into holy confetti. They were beating the absolute living daylights out of me.

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  Meanwhile, my summoned backup wasn't doing much better. Dawn, the supposedly "half" Fenrir, threw her head back and unleashed a devastating howl. It wasn't just a sound; it was a physical attack—a rapid-fire combo of concussive sound waves mixed with thousands of jagged energy shards. Yang roared in frustration as he was pelted, getting beaten back by the sheer volume of the barrage.

  I was officially in the red zone. I was taking hits from three overpowered girls simultaneously, bleeding from half a dozen new injuries, and my mana pool was draining like a punctured gas tank because Yang was tethered to my reserves.

  I needed to clear the board, fast.

  (Desperate times call for reckless mana management. Watch and learn, folks.)

  I forced a massive, dangerous surge of my remaining mana straight into my spiritual link with Yang.

  Empowered by the sudden juice, Yang let out a deafening, earth-shattering roar. He blitzed right through the sound-wave barrage, grabbed Dawn, and absolutely pummeled the Fenrir into the ground. After a brutal, high-speed exchange, the giant wolf whimpered and collapsed, knocked out cold.

  One down.

  But funneling all that mana left my own tank practically empty. My legs felt like lead. My vision blurred, and my reaction time plummeted.

  I didn't even see Alita move.

  She blurred into my blind spot, delivering a devastating, cosmic-infused blow that shattered my guard. The impact launched me off my feet, the Zenith of Dusk nearly slipping from my numb fingers. I was completely out of breath, my HP clinging to a single, pitiful digit, teetering on the absolute verge of blacking out entirely.

  I was running on fumes, but I wasn't done. My Blue Origin form flared, the ambient temperature plummeting as my raw power spiked to its absolute limit. My eyes ignited with a blinding, incandescent blue light. It wasn't even a deliberate, tactical flashbang—I was just getting that serious, and my aura was violently overcompensating. But the sheer luminosity of it effectively blinded all three of them anyway. I’ll take the accidental crowd-control buff.

  Meanwhile, Yang—my majestic, serpentine Father of True Dragons—decided to capitalize on their momentary blindness. How? By slithering right over and aggressively munching on Starlia’s defensive magical lotus like it was a complimentary salad bar.

  "I'm an omnivore, morons!" Yang's ancient, draconic voice boomed in my head, followed by a deeply smug mental chuckle. "I mean, I'm absolutely not, but all is fair in love and tournament arcs. Hahaha!"

  By the time the girls blinked the spots out of their vision, the arena had completely changed. I hadn't just moved; I had multiplied. Hundreds of my afterimages surrounded them on all sides, every single one of us gripping the Zenith of Dusk, aiming a heavily supercharged, blue-flame Draconic Crash right at their heads.

  Leonica didn't even flinch. She whipped her chained swords in a massive, devastating arc, cleanly slicing through every single one of my clones in a fraction of a second.

  Starlia, finally rubbing the glare out of her eyes, took one look at the giant black serpentine dragon currently digesting her spell and went completely pale. The horrified realization of exactly who she was fighting hit her like a physical blow.

  But slicing my clones was too late. The afterimages were just the bait. Up in the sky, hundreds of massive, blue energy dragons materialized, roaring as they plummeted toward the three of them like an arcane meteor shower.

  It was the perfect setup. A guaranteed, unavoidable board wipe. Or it would have been, if Alita hadn't decided to completely break the game's physics engine again.

  Before my energy dragons could even reach the ground, dozens of deep, ominous purple spheres materialized in the sky, perfectly intercepting them.

  "Shred to nothingness," a perfectly calm, chilling voice echoed across the entire arena. "Space Shredder."

  The purple spheres didn't just block my attack; they literally deleted it. My majestic, overpowered blue energy dragons were instantly ground down into microscopic, shimmering dust, erased from existence without a second thought.

  I looked up. Alita was floating effortlessly in the air, one hand raised toward the dissipating dust of my ultimate attack. She had finally transformed.

  And frankly, it was terrifying. She looked like a celestial being—a literal goddess of war who had just been violently woken up from an eternal meditation and was ready to destroy whatever had interrupted her. Her purplish hair now faded into a vibrant, glowing pink at the ends, swirling around her like the cosmos itself. She wore a sleek, pitch-black dress that absolutely screamed "True Demon" aesthetics, radiating an aura of absolute annihilation.

  I mean, she looked objectively stunning, sure. But it is really hard to appreciate someone's celestial beauty when they just atomized your ultimate attack with a flick of their wrist.

  Alita hovered there, looking down at me with an expression that was way too calm for someone participating in a brutal free-for-all.

  "You are the first one in all these years who has made me transform," Alita declared, her voice echoing with a chilling, celestial reverb. "I can see your will to win, and I admire you for your efforts. But this havoc shall stop now."

  (Oh, thanks for the compliment. Let's just wrap up this deathmatch with a firm handshake and a participation trophy, then?)

  She wasn't done. "Your name will be eternal in this world where the fittest survive. I can sense it. Now, behold and show me all you've got. Transformation: Cosmic Destroyer."

  I didn't even get a second to admire her new title. The space in front of me literally glitched. She ceased to exist in the sky and instantly materialized right in my face.

  Before my brain could even send a frantic signal to my muscles to block, she unleashed ten devastating blows of Cosmic Impact straight into my chest. The kinetic force alone should have pulverized my ribcage and scattered my ashes across the bleachers.

  But I didn't move. I didn't even flinch.

  The dust from the impact cleared, revealing me standing exactly where I had been. My jacket was basically shredded, but beneath it? Pure, blindingly bright golden armor with a massive sun carved right into the middle of the chestplate, paired with two heavy, intricately designed golden earrings.

  Yep. Karn's Kavach and Kundal. The absolute pinnacle of mythological defense. I just hadn't felt the desperate need to flex them until right this very second.

  I just stood there, looked her dead in the eye, and gave her a wide, deeply smug smile.

  Alita's eternal, stoic celestial persona completely cracked. She looked genuinely annoyed.

  "Steps of the Cosmos: First Stance," she chanted, instantly drawing her galaxy-blade. "Light of Striking Blade!"

  It wasn't a single attack this time. It was a terrifying, high-speed combo of exactly fifty-two lightning-fast strikes. The blade sparked and shrieked as it tore across my torso, trying desperately to find a weak point. But the divine sun armor didn't even suffer a scratch. It just absorbed the impact with a dull, heavy resonance, leaving me completely unharmed.

  "The heck is with that armor?!" Alita finally snapped, her expression twisting into pure, unfiltered frustration. "Why is it so strong?! Fine. If I can't cut your body, then I will hurt your internal organs! Cosmic Sonic Boom!"

  She slammed her power into the air. An invisible, apocalyptic shockwave of sheer sound erupted. It was so overwhelmingly loud and violently vibrating that it could literally snatch a normal person's life away just from the raw resonance. Up in the stands, every single spectator scrambled to aggressively plug their ears.

  Alita looked at me, fully expecting me to be coughing up blood on the arena floor.

  Instead, I was just standing there, looking moderately bored. The magical earrings—the Kundal—were actively neutralizing the lethal soundwaves before they even reached my head. I was effectively invincible.

  Well, 'invincible' is a strong word. Invincibility usually implies a lack of cooldown timers.

  "Uh oh," I muttered as a sharp, agonizing cramp seized my chest. The Draconic Scales that I had been desperately channeling underneath the armor to handle the heavy physical recoil finally hit their absolute limit. They shattered into green dust. My timer ran out.

  (Hey, Writer! My defensive cheat codes just expired! A little plot armor over here? No? Great.)

  "Phoenix Wings!" I shouted, violently pushing the absolute last dregs of my purple core mana. Wings of deep violet fire erupted from my back, granting me an emergency thirty-second speed boost. I blasted off the ground, desperately trying to evade the incoming barrage.

  But thirty seconds of speed isn't enough when you're fighting a pissed-off cosmic deity, an invincible healing-item spammer, and an angelic sister with a ten-times damage multiplier against your specific bloodline.

  They swarmed me. For the next solid minute, I was treated like a highly uncooperative pi?ata. I was blasted by Starlia's spells, slashed by Leonica's multiplying swords, and completely pummeled by Alita's cosmic strikes. I was beaten. Badly. Thrown around the arena like a broken ragdoll, bleeding, battered, and pushed entirely past the point of physical exhaustion.

  The pain stopped registering. The fear evaporated. And right at the absolute, desperate end of my rope... something snapped.

  I lost my sanity.