While Lilith painted the desert black with blood and shadow, Gabriel and his two clones ascended into the churning, monster-filled sky.

The artificial sun blazed above them, casting their golden silhouettes across the horde. Wyverns, harpies, giant wasps—hunded of winged monsters filled the sky. Their cries merged into a continuous, deafening roar. Their wings beat in unison, creating a wind that howled across the desert below.

Gabriel hovered at the center of his formation. His twelve golden wings spread wide, each feather glowing with ancient runes. To his left and right, his two clones floated in perfect symmetry, their six wings beating in harmony with his.

Three archangels. Three pairs of cross-shaped pupils gleaming with predatory anticipation.

"Shall we show them what heaven looks like?" Gabriel murmured.

The clones did not answer. They simply smiled wider like the original.

The wyverns were the one to strick first.

A group of wyverns—copper-scaled, amber-eyed, their jaws dripping with flaming saliva—dove from the highest clouds. They formed a spearhead, a wedge of fang and claw aimed directly at Gabriel.

It was a coordinated attack. The wyverns had done this before. They had torn apart lesser adventuring parties, ripped through entire armies, reduced castles to rubble.

They had never faced an archangel, though.

Gabriel did not move. He did not raise his hands. He did not even blink.

One of his clones stepped forward.

The clone raised his right hand, palm outward. Golden light gathered—not in form of a beam, not in a sphere, but in form of a net.

Thousands of tiny threads of light shot outward, weaving between the diving wyverns, crisscrossing the sky in an intricate pattern.

The wyverns flew into the net.

The threads did not cut. They bound. The wyverns found themselves tangled, their wings pinned to their bodies, their jaws lashed shut, their tails coiled. They crashed into each other, a tangled mass of reptilian bodies and copper scales, and fell toward the desert below. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

BOOM.

The impact sent a shockwave rippling across the dunes. Dust and sand erupted. A dozen wyverns died on impact. The rest lay stunned, easy prey for Lilith’s shadows below.

The clone lowered his hand. His smile had not wavered.

"Too slow," he said, clearly dissatisfied but there was still countless monsters to work on.

The harpies came next.

They were faster than the wyverns—much faster. Their vulture-like wings carried them in erratic, unpredictable patterns, darting left and right, up and down. Their claws were sharp enough to tear through enchanted steel. Their screams were weapons, sonic blasts that could shatter bones and burst eardrums.

A swarm of two hundred harpies descended, their mouths open, their screams merging into a single, piercing shriek that shook the very air.

Gabriel’s second clone reacted.

He raised both hands and clapped.

The sound of his clap was not loud—it was absolute. A wave of temporal energy erupted from his palms, washing over the harpies like a tide. Time around them slowed. Their screams stretched into deep, rumbling moans. Their erratic flight became sluggish, almost stationary.

The clone drew a single golden spear and threw it.

The spear did not fly fast. It did not need to. In the slowed time, it moved like a glacier—inevitable, unstoppable. It pierced the first harpy, then the second, then the third. It threaded through the swarm like a needle through cloth, impeding dozens of the creatures before finally exiting the far side of the slowed field.

Time resumed.

The harpies did not scream. They simply fell—their bodies torn, their wings shredded, their claws broken. A rain of feathered corpses tumbled toward the desert, joining the wyverns below.

The clone caught his returning spear and dismissed it with a flick of his wrist.

"Too chaotic," he said.

The next wave of monsters attacked, the wasps were the most numerous.

They came in swarms of dozens—each one the size of a horse, their wings buzzing so loudly that the sound became a physical pressure. Their stingers dripped with paralytic venom, and their compound eyes reflected the golden light in a thousand fractured images.

They did not attack in formation. They simply swarmed—a living cloud of chitin and venom, seeking to overwhelm by sheer numbers.

Gabriel himself stepped forward.

"I’ll take this one," he said.

He raised his right hand, index finger extended. A single point of light appeared at his fingertip—small, no larger than a marble. But its brightness was blinding. It pulsed once, twice, three times.

Then it exploded.

A sphere of pure light expanded outward from Gabriel, growing faster than the eye could follow. It washed over the wasp swarms, and where it passed, the wasps simply ceased. Not burned. Not vaporized. Unmade. Their chitin dissolved into motes of golden dust. Their venom evaporated. Their buzzing stopped.

In the span of three heartbeats, the sky was clear of wasps.

Gabriel lowered his hand. The sphere of light collapsed, folding back into his fingertip, and vanished.

The surviving monsters regrouped.

Wyverns, harpies, wasps—they still numbered in the hundred. They had learned from the first exchanges. They no longer attacked in simple formations. They circled, probed, tested. They used the clouds as cover. They struck from blind spots.

Gabriel and his clones did not flinch.

They moved together like a single entity—a three-point formation that covered every angle, every approach. When a wyvern dove from above, a clone met it with a temporal lance. When harpies screamed from the left, another clone answered with a net of light. When wasps swarmed from below, Gabriel himself descended into their midst, his golden wings spinning like blades, cutting them to pieces.

They coordinated without words. Without signals. Without thought.

They simply knew.

The first clone specialized in Light constructs—nets, spears, shields. He wove barriers that caught monsters mid-flight, then shattered them with concentrated beams.

The second clone specialized in Time manipulation—slowing, stopping, accelerating. He turned the sky into a labyrinth of frozen moments, where monsters moved like insects trapped in amber.

Gabriel himself wielded both elements in perfect harmony—Light and Time together. He created afterimages that confused the monsters, temporal loops that made them attack the same empty space twice, light lances that struck from impossible angles.

Together, they were unstoppable.

But they were not just killing.

They were toying.

Gabriel caught a wyvern by the tail, spun it around, and threw it into a swarm of harpies. The clone with the light net caught a dozen wasps, then released them—only to catch them again. The time clone slowed a harpy’s scream until it became a single, endless note, then sped it up until it became a squeak.

They laughed. Not cruelly—not mockingly. Just... enjoying.

This was what they lived for. Not the slaughter, but the art of it. The dance. The challenge. The sheer, overwhelming joy of being alive and powerful and together.

A giant wasp dove at Gabriel from behind. He did not turn. He simply tilted his head, and the stinger passed within a hair of his cheek. He reached up, grabbed the stinger, and pulled. The wasp’s abdomen tore open. Ichor sprayed. The wasp fell.

Another clone created a temporal bubble around a group of wyverns. Inside the bubble, time moved backward. The wyverns flew in reverse, their flames sucked back into their throats, their wounds un-wounding. Then the bubble collapsed, and time snapped forward again—and the wyverns tore themselves apart, their bodies unable to handle the contradiction.

Gabriel applauded.

"Beautiful," he said.

The clone bowed.

The monsters, despite their numbers, were thinning.

The desert below was littered with corpses—wyverns, harpies, wasps, all tangled together in a grotesque tapestry of death. The artificial sun, which had been blotted out by the swarm, now shone through gaps in the diminishing horde.

But the monsters did not retreat. They could not. The dungeon’s will drove them forward, commanded them to fight, to kill, to die.

The remaining monsters—formed a final, desperate charge. They came from all directions, a sphere of fang and claw and stinger closing in on Gabriel and his clones.

Gabriel looked at his clones. They looked back at him.

"Together?" he asked.

"Together," they answered.

Gabriel raised his hands. The clones mirrored him.

Light gathered. Time warped. The sky itself seemed to hold its breath.

Then they released.

A pillar of golden light—three intertwined beams, each from a different archangel—erupted from the trio and shot upward. It expanded as it rose, becoming a cone, a cylinder, a sun. The monsters that touched the light did not die. They were erased—their atoms scattered, their souls purified, their very existence denied.

The light lasted for three seconds.

When it faded, the sky was empty.

Not a single monster remained.

Gabriel lowered his hands. His clones did the same. They hovered in the silent, sunlit sky, their wings gently flapping, their smiles soft and satisfied.

Gabriel glanced at his golden bracelet.

340.

The number had climbed far past Lilith’s 325.

He looked down at the desert below, where Lilith stood among her shadow army, her crimson robe fluttering in the wind.

"Not bad," he murmured. "But I think I just took the lead."

His clones nodded in agreement.

Then they faded—dissolving into golden motes that drifted back into Gabriel’s body, their mana returning to their original, their purpose fulfilled.

Gabriel stretched his arms, rolled his shoulders, and began his descent.

The sky was his, he was like a god in the sky.

Time to finish all this, it was getting boring.