Zephyria rapidly shrank below them as they climbed.

Lucifer stood on Isolde’s massive, diamond-scaled neck. The high-altitude wind screamed past his dark armor.

The air grew violently hot, thick with the stench of burning of raw unfiltered Abyssal magic bleeding from the torn sky.

Elara flew parallel to the Royal Dragon. The Eclipse Valkyrie’s Twilight wings beat with explosive, rhythmic power, effortlessly keeping pace with Isolde’s colossal speed.

Above them, the Abyssal Rift dominated the heavens.

It was no longer a perfect, glowing purple eye. The strike from Zephyria’s planetary railgun had shattered the Keystone of Chaos, causing the dimensional tear to violently collapse inward.

But the collapse was jammed.

Malphas, the Desolator, was physically holding the door open.

The Demon King’s true body was incomprehensibly massive. It was not a magical projection or a localized Avatar.

He was a Level 85 Primordial Entity. His two colossal, pitch-black hands gripped the jagged edges of the tearing sky, his thick, dark-matter fingers digging directly into the fabric of reality.

He was slowly, agonizingly pulling the rift wider, trying to force his towering, horned head and massive, green-flaming wings through the gap.

[System Warning: Catastrophic Entity Breach!]

[Target: Malphas (True Form)]

[Level: 85 - Demon King]

[Status: Forcing Dimensional Entry. 30 Seconds to Full Manifestation.]

"He is too big!" Isolde roared. Her draconic voice vibrated through the scales beneath Lucifer’s boots. "My frostfire will not freeze a core of that density. I will only anger him!"

"I don’t need you to freeze him," Lucifer shouted over the roaring wind. "I need you to hit his hands. Break his grip on the rift."

Isolde didn’t argue. The Winter Sovereign accelerated, her massive wings catching the violent updrafts of burning Abyssal air.

They closed the distance rapidly. The colossal, horned face of Malphas filled their entire field of vision.

The Demon King’s eyes were pools of absolute, empty green fire. Thick, corrosive black sludge dripped from his jaws, raining down past them like toxic waterfalls.

Malphas saw them coming.

The Demon King could not let go of the rift to swat them. If he released his grip, the dimensional tear would snap shut, severing his head from his body.

He opened his massive jaws instead.

A localized hurricane of pure, highly concentrated necrotic fire erupted from Malphas’s throat. It was a solid wall of green, corrosive death magic that completely enveloped the approaching dragon.

Isolde did not veer away.

"My sky!" Isolde shrieked, a sound of absolute, ancient arrogance.

She inhaled deeply, the blue light in her chest flaring brightly. She unleashed her own breath attack, a continuous, hyper-dense beam of liquid frostfire.

The absolute cold of the Royal Dragon met the primordial heat of the Demon King in mid-air.

The clash was deafening. The sheer, opposing magical pressures created a massive, horizontal disk of violently expanding white steam and green plasma.

Isolde poured every ounce of her multiplied mana into the attack, holding the green hellfire back, refusing to yield an inch of airspace.

"Now, Elara!" Lucifer commanded.

He didn’t wait. Lucifer activated Zephyr’s Grace and launched himself off the dragon’s neck.

He shot forward, diving directly into the chaotic, blinding clash of frost and hellfire. He moved so fast he bypassed the heat entirely.

Elara was right behind him. The Eclipse Valkyrie used the steam as cover. She flew rapidly toward the colossal left hand of the Demon King, which was currently gripping the edge of the spatial rift.

Elara didn’t use a spell. She used pure, physical, Mythic-tier violence.

She raised her violet-flaming spear, channeling the entirety of her new Twilight Sovereign core into the weapon. She aimed for the thick, dark-matter joint of Malphas’s left pinky finger.

Elara struck.

The celestial spear punched deep into the dense, black flesh. The violet fire detonated inside the joint.

Malphas roared in sudden, sharp pain. The massive, building-sized finger twitched, slipping slightly from its grip on the tearing sky.

Lucifer didn’t attack the hand. He aimed for the center.

He plummeted through the steam, flying directly toward the colossal, horned face of the Demon King.

"Gravity Crush," Lucifer whispered.

He channeled his Archmage-level mana into the Gauntlet of the Void King. He targeted the space directly inside Malphas’s open, roaring mouth.

A microscopic, incredibly dense black singularity materialized inside the demon’s throat.

The localized gravity didn’t crush the Level 85 boss, but it violently disrupted his spellcasting. The massive torrent of green hellfire was instantly sucked backward, pulled down the demon’s own throat by the gravity well.

Malphas choked. The green fire sputtered and died, leaving the Demon King gagging on his own necrotic magic.

With the hellfire cleared, Isolde surged forward.

The Crystalline White Dragon didn’t use a breath attack. She banked sharply, whipping her colossal, diamond-hard, spiked tail.

The massive tail slammed into Malphas’s right hand, which was gripping the opposite edge of the rift. The physical impact of a mountain-sized Royal Dragon hitting a stationary target was absolute.

The dark-matter fingers slipped. The right side of the rift snapped inward by several miles, tearing a massive, jagged gash down the Demon King’s arm.

Malphas shrieked, a sound that cracked the remaining obsidian on Zephyria far below.

"He is losing his grip!" Elara yelled, ripping her spear out of the demon’s left hand and hovering backward.

Malphas stopped choking. The Demon King glared down at the tiny mortal hovering in the air before him.

"You..." Malphas rumbled, his voice shaking the atmosphere. "You are an annoyance, Regressor. But I am not an Avatar. I am the Desolator. I will crush this plane into dust."

Malphas let go of the rift.

He didn’t care that the dimensional tear began to snap shut around his neck. The Demon King abandoned his attempt to force his entire body through.

Instead, he brought his two colossal, pitch-black hands together directly in front of his face.

The ambient magic in the stratosphere stopped.

The air didn’t freeze. The air didn’t burn. It simply ceased to exist.

[System Warning: Primordial Law Imposed.]

[Spell: Absolute Desolation (Mythic)] 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

[Effect: Total spatial and biological erasure within a 5-mile radius. Unblockable.]

A sphere of absolute, perfect gray silence began to form between Malphas’s hands. It wasn’t an explosion.

It was an expanding bubble of non-existence. Anything touched by the gray sphere would be permanently deleted from the system’s code.

Isolde roared in genuine terror. The Royal Dragon tried to backpedal, her massive wings beating frantically, but the spell’s vacuum effect was already pulling her forward.

Elara gritted her teeth, her Twilight wings fighting the pull, but she was slowly dragging toward the gray sphere.

"Lucifer!" Elara shouted. "We cannot block that!"

"We don’t block it," Lucifer stated coldly.

He was hovering in the air, exactly fifty feet away from the Demon King’s face. He was staring directly at the expanding gray sphere of Absolute Desolation.

He didn’t order a retreat. He didn’t try to fly away.

Lucifer sheathed his longsword. He reached to his dark leather belt.

He unhooked the translucent, shimmering short blade of the Sovereign’s Duel.

"You can’t duel a Primordial!" Isolde shrieked, watching him raise the tiny weapon. "The Law-Weapon cannot contain a being of that mass! The pocket dimension will shatter!"

"I am not containing his mass," Lucifer replied smoothly. "I am containing his core."

Lucifer raised the shimmering blade. He pointed it directly at the massive, glowing green eyes of the Demon King.

He channeled a fraction of his Void Arcanist mana into the weapon.

"Malphas, the Desolator," Lucifer declared. His voice, perfectly amplified by Void magic, cut cleanly through the howling winds of the stratosphere. "I challenge you."

[System: Law-Weapon Activated.]

[Initiating Sovereign’s Duel.]

[Target 1: Lucifer of Obsidian (Level 50 - Void Monarch)]

[Target 2: Malphas (Level 85 - Demon King)]

The shimmering blade dissolved into a blinding ring of pure, white light.

The ring expanded instantly. But it didn’t encircle the colossal, mountain-sized body of the Demon King. The system recognized the physical impossibility of the dimensions.

Instead, the white ring shot directly into the center of Malphas’s chest, phasing through the dark matter armor and striking the true, condensed divine core of the entity.

The physical world vanished.

Lucifer did not see Isolde or Elara. He did not hear the howling wind or feel the pulling vacuum of the gray sphere.

He materialized inside the pocket dimension.

It was the same vast, perfectly flat arena of flawless white marble. The sky was an endless expanse of neutral, swirling gray mist.

But this time, the arena was not empty.

Standing thirty feet away from Lucifer was Malphas.

The Demon King was no longer a colossal, mountain-sized monstrosity. The Law-Weapon had forcibly scaled the entity down to a standardized combat size, creating a level playing field.

Malphas stood at roughly seven feet tall, wearing his dark-matter plate armor and six wings of green necrotic fire.

He looked around the pristine white marble arena. He looked at his own, normalized hands.

The Demon King sneered.

"A trick," Malphas rumbled. His voice was no longer a planetary earthquake. It was just a deep, arrogant baritone. "You drag my essence into a locked box. You strip away my physical mass. Clever."

He summoned a heavy, jagged broadsword made of pure, solidified green hellfire.

"But I am a Level 85 Primordial," Malphas stated, pointing the blazing sword at Lucifer. "I do not need my true size to crush a Level 50 mortal. Your little box just ensured that nobody can save you."

[System: Pocket Dimension Established.]

[Rules of Engagement:]

[- No external interference.]

[- No environmental hazards.]

[- Combat ends upon elimination or absolute submission.]

Lucifer stood on the white marble.

He didn’t summon his allies. He didn’t have to.

He unhooked the Carnage Core from his hip. The Heart of Ruin pulsed with a slow, heavy, violent rhythm. He let it drop, letting the artifact hang loose on its chain.

He drew his ruby-red longsword.

"Nobody is coming to save you, Malphas," Lucifer corrected him smoothly.

He looked at the Demon King. For the first time since his regression, Lucifer dropped the cold, calculated Warlord persona.

He let the anger out.

Ten years of fighting in the mud. Ten years of watching his friends die, his cities burn, and his world turn to ash while beings like Malphas laughed from the clouds.

He had carried the trauma of a dead timeline in his chest for an entire month, rigidly controlling every aspect of his ascension to ensure he never felt helpless again.

Now, he was standing alone in a locked room with the architect of his apocalypse.

Lucifer’s void-swirling eyes flared with absolute, unadulterated hatred. Thick, jagged arcs of black lightning erupted from the Gauntlet of the Void King, tearing deep gouges into the indestructible white marble floor.

The Warlord aura radiating from his body turned violent, pushing against the Demon King’s presence with primal, unfiltered killing intent.

"You killed me once," Lucifer whispered. The void magic in his voice sounded like a grinding fault line. "Let’s see if you can do it twice."

Lucifer activated Zephyr’s Grace.

He vanished, becoming a blur of red and black, charging the Demon King head-on. The final duel had begun.