"I am not letting you survive," the Monarch's voice boomed, vibrating through the vacuum of space. "I will erase your very existence."
He raised his hand, and the void itself seemed to flee from his palm. The [BEAM OF DESTRUCTION] erupted—a streak of pure, anti-matter erasure. Trapped between the incoming Neutron Star and the Beam, Mayanee's instincts hit a level beyond 1200%. She didn't dodge; she transcended. In a flicker of red lightning, she vanished, reappearing behind the Monarch with her blood-red katana raised for a terminal strike.
"Too slow," the Monarch whispered.
Before she could swing, a fist hit her sternum with the force of a collapsing galaxy. The air left her lungs. As he followed up with a crushing kick, Mayanee forced her [MASS DEFENSE] to its absolute limit and threw her blade up to parry.
CRACK.
The sound was louder than a supernova. The katana—the blade that had sliced through galaxies—shattered like cheap glass. Mayanee was sent hurtling backward, crashing into a nearby planet with the impact of a world-ending meteor.
As the dust settled, she lay in the crater, her Blood Lightning form flickering like a dying candle. Crimson blood leaked from her lips, staining the white strands of her hair.
The Monarch drifted down, landing softly in front of her. "Someone was saying they wanted to punish me?" he mocked, his single eye cold and pitiless. "What happened? You are just as weak as your sister was before I ended her."
"You... monster..." Mayanee gasped. Gathering the last of her violet energy, she shrieked, "[GRAVITY BEAM]!"
The violet pillar of light roared toward him, but the Monarch simply walked through it as if it were a light mist. He reached out, grabbed her by the hair, and hoisted her up. "Aren't you the 'Strongest of Today'? Show me the true meaning of that title."
Mayanee couldn't even speak; the pressure of his aura was crushing her lungs.
"Tell me," the Monarch leaned in, his voice a low growl. "Where is the Spark of Hope? Where is the Tree of Life?"
"I would rather... die..."
In a final act of defiance, Mayanee gripped the jagged remains of her broken blade and sliced through her own hair to free herself. She swung the shard at his leg, drawing a thin line of dark blood, but it was useless. The Monarch didn't even flinch. He pulled the shard from his leg, stepped heavily onto her back—shattering the ground beneath them—and then turned toward the stars.
"Die with this planet, woman." He raised his hand. "[FULL GRAVITY CONTROL: PLANETARY RUPTURE]!"
The planet didn't just break; it exploded outward like a balloon filled with fire. The Monarch turned his back, certain she was ash. But from the center of the planetary debris, a new, terrifying pressure began to leak into the universe.
Mayanee rose from the floating rocks, her broken blade glowing with a light that shouldn't exist.
"I will not let you go... Final Move: [DOMAIN EXPANSION: BLOOD OF ETERNITY]!"
Scene shift on earth
The blue flames of the Monarch's vanguard were finally met with a heat that didn't belong to this world.
"You... dragon," a voice rang out through the screams of the dying city.
Rax turned, his draconic eyes narrow and predatory. Standing amidst the rubble was a woman with hair the color of a setting sun. She didn't look like the broken soldiers he had been slaughtering; she stood with the stillness of a volcano.
"One more adventurer?" Rax hissed, his wings flapping and sending out a wave of blue cinders. "I will turn your bones to ash like the rest of your kind."
The woman didn't flinch. She simply raised her palm toward the sky. "[FUSION FLARE]!"
A sphere of concentrated white-hot plasma erupted from her hand, expanding into a massive fireball that didn't just burn—it roared. She hurled it with the force of a falling star.
The impact was deafening. Rax, a Dragon-Type whose very skin was supposed to be immune to heat, was thrown back across three city blocks. For the first time, the invincibility of the Monarch's army was shattered.
Rax scrambled to his feet, his scales blackened and smoking. He looked around; the reinforcements from the other cities were pouring in, but his eyes stayed locked on the woman.
'Who is she?' Rax's mind raced as his molecules struggled to regenerate. 'I am a Dragon. I am the master of flames. Logically, fire should heal me, not hurt me... but her fire is denser. It's burning me at a molecular level. It's as if her flames are... alive.'
He looked at the growing army of adventurers. He could kill them all, but not while she was standing there.
"I will remember your face, woman," Rax growled, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and newfound caution.