The Extra's Rise

The final High Archduke dissolved into inert dust, its essence scattered by Reika's perfect, negating cut. A profound, psychic silence settled over the battlefield. Where moments before a massive, chaotic armada had thundered, there was now only a vast, silent graveyard of drifting, frozen wreckage, dissipating miasma, and crumbling, rotted bio-mechanical hulls.

Lucifer and Ren Kagu, their own duels long since concluded, rejoined the six fiancées. The eight of them hovered in the void, a silent, unassailable constellation of power. The "War of Mortals" was over. It had not been a war; it had been an execution. It was a complete, overwhelming, crushing victory for the eight Peak Radiants. Their two years of training, their bond, their combined power—it had not just been validated. It had been proven to be a force of nature, a terrifying, cohesive weapon that established their absolute dominance over any non-Divine threat.

The remaining, scattered pockets of the demon fleet, leaderless, their commanders gone, their army of Radiant-level Dukes utterly shattered, were now just... cleanup.

"They're running," Lucifer's voice, filled with a cold, satisfied fury, crackled over the comms. "Don't let a single one escape."

"Rachel, Luna. Identify all portal attempts. Prioritize the capital ships," Cecilia's voice was relentless, leaving no room for mercy. "Seraphina, Rose, expand the denial field. Box them in. Reika, Ren, Lucifer… hunting time."

This was the final "curb-stomp." The eight Peak Radiants, now unleashed and working in perfect, terrifying concert, became a systematic, merciless extermination squad.

Lucifer was a blazing star of vengeance. He moved like a binary pulsar, his sword of light and shadow tearing capital ships in half with single, elegant strokes. He would appear above a cluster of fleeing Dukes, his shadow pulling them into a condensed, gravitational vortex, and his light would then detonate in the center, purifying them all in a single, silent flash.

Ren KAGU was a ghost. He simply… appeared. In the path of a fleeing capital ship, he would materialize on its bridge, his expression serene. He would meet the terrified stares of the demon crew with a simple, open palm. His Fist Accord would touch the ship's miasmic core, and the core would simply… stop, its energy unmade, leaving the ship a dead, cold hulk.

The six fiancées were an engine. Rachel and Luna were the fire-control, their minds linked. "Warp signature detected, coordinates 11-7-92!" Rachel would call out. "Target confirmed," Luna would reply. "Anchor point is vulnerable now."

Cecilia would then act, her imperial fire lancing across the void as a condensed, pinpoint beam of solar fury, striking the ship's engines, crippling it instantly. Seraphina and Rose, their work of mass-denial done, became hunter-killers, their fields of cold and life now projected as lances, freezing and dissolving fleeing Dukes. Reika moved between them all, a grey-silver blur, her blade ensuring no high-priority target, no potential future commander, escaped the kill zone.

It took less than ten minutes. The entire armada was annihilated. The black sky, now clean of the invasive fleet, was theirs. The human fleet, which had just finished deploying from the Grey Seams, hung back, their crews watching in stunned, silent awe. They had come prepared for a desperate, planet-scale war. They had just witnessed an execution, performed by eight beings who operated on a level they could barely comprehend.

Exhausted, their auras flickering but their spirits blazing with the fierce, cold light of triumph, the eight of them finally came to a halt in the void. They hovered amidst a vast, silent, expanding graveyard of drifting wreckage and dissipating miasma. They had done it. They had held the line. Earth was safe.

The triumphant mood vanished instantly, replaced by a sudden, shared, heart-stopping dread. The adrenaline of their own overwhelming, impossibly fast victory evaporated, and the silence of the void was filled by a new, terrifying sound—the absence of Arthur's.

"Rachel... analysis," Cecilia commanded, her voice suddenly tight, her gaze snapping down to the grey, pockmarked lunar surface far below.

Rachel's hands, which had been steady, trembled slightly as she refocused her awareness, her analytical senses reaching down towards the Sea of Tranquility, where Arthur had engaged the two Divine Lords. The data that flowed back was chaotic, terrifying, and wrong.

"The landscape is... shattered," she reported, her voice thin. "LeSagues of the crust are melted or refrozen. The ambient energy readings are... they're not just high, they're conceptually unstable. Reality itself is... flickering."

"Where is he?" Lucifer roared, his triumphant energy instantly replaced by white-hot, protective rage.

"I see him!" Luna whispered, her golden eyes wide with horror, her fate-sense locking onto the scene. "Oh... no..."

The eight Peak Radiants descended, a silent, desperate plummet, halting at a high altitude, afraid to approach, afraid to interfere.

They saw it. Their private battle had been a symphony of overwhelming power. His was a silent, desperate, unwinnable struggle.

Far below, in the center of a crater kilometers wide, Arthur lay in a broken heap, his Grey Divinity, once a quiet, absolute assertion, now a faint, flickering candle. His body was ravaged, his regeneration clearly struggling against a conceptual, divine-level damage that defied healing.

Hovering above him, graceful and untouched, were the two Demon Lords. Wrath, the mindless colossus of magma and miasma, pulsed with rage, ready to deliver the final, killing blow. And beside him, Envy, the slender shadow of pure, cold intellect, held him back with a simple, raised hand, his analytical gaze fixed on the fallen god at his feet. They looked like victors, examining their prize before its final disposal.

Arthur had failed. His first strategic gambit, his attempt to BFR Wrath, had been hijacked by Envy, turned against him, and the resulting backlash had shattered his defenses, leaving him broken and vulnerable.

"Arthur!" Rachel screamed, her voice a raw sound of pure, telepathic terror.

Lucifer, his eyes blazing with a grief-stricken, suicidal fury, surged forward. "I'm going—"

"No!" Luna and Ren shouted at the same time, their combined will grabbing him, holding him back.

"You can't!" Ren said, his voice grim, his God's Eyes seeing the horrifying, conceptual truth of the scene below. "Their power... it is not just power. It is conceptual. It's a different reality. If we go down there, we are not reinforcements."

"We are hostages," Luna finished, her voice trembling, tears streaming down her face as she watched Arthur's flickering aura. "We are liabilities. He knew this. He… he can't fight them and protect us. We would be used against him, just like Alyssara tried to."

The eight most powerful mortal-level beings on the planet, fresh from a victory that had annihilated an entire demon army, a victory that had established their absolute supremacy, could do nothing but float helplessly, sickeningly, in high orbit. They were forced to watch as their friend, their lover, their leader, lay broken and defeated at the feet of two gods, his divine light about to be extinguished.