Legia resisted the urge to grunt as the other giant's claws sank deep into the flesh of his fist. Pain lanced through his arm, but he forced it down. His mind raced. '[Spiritual Manifestation]? Impossible. She's only a Monarch Candidate. How could she have attained such a transformation?'
He yanked against the monstrous grip, but the creature only tightened its hold, dragging him forward before slamming a haymaker across his face.
The blow split the void itself, a shockwave tearing through the endless nothing as Legia was hurled backwards. His massive frame twisted in the air before he forced himself upright, rage burning in his eyes.
"It doesn't matter!" he bellowed, voice booming through the cosmos. "I am the King of Giants!"
With a thunderous stride, he lunged forward and swung a punch the size of a mountain. The four-armed giant didn't flinch. It crossed its titanic limbs, taking the full force of the blow.
CRACK!
Legia roared as his own arm snapped clean off at the elbow, fragments of shattered bone and flesh tumbling away into the void. The severed limb floated aimlessly through the darkness, its sheer size eclipsing the debris of shattered dungeon stone. Vivi vaulted aside, barely avoiding its trajectory as her phoenix unleashed a beam of searing fire from its beak.
The torrent struck Legia square in the waist, folding his massive body forward under the sheer heat. The four-armed colossus lunged, seizing his shoulders in its claws before its many-mawed mouth yawned open.
Legia howled as Kaede's monstrous form tore a massive chunk from his shoulder, rending flesh and sinew like parchment. Snarling, he brought a colossal knee upward, smashing it into her chest with enough force to send her reeling across the void.
Clutching his wound with his remaining arm, Legia grimaced, the thought slashing through his mind like a blade. 'I can't beat them. One on one, perhaps… but not together.'
Above, Vivi stood tall upon her phoenix, its radiant wings blazing so bright they painted the void in living fire. Below, Kaede's monstrous Atrocity loomed in shadow, her six burning eyes and abyssal aura filling the emptiness with an oppressive darkness.
The two together were terrifying. A balance of flame and void, light and abyss, opposites united against him, or so he thought.
Legia's chest heaved as he glared up at them, resolve hardening. "I have no choice. You two are far too dangerous to be left unchecked."
His eyes flared, pupils dissolving into twin stars. The void trembled as pinpricks of light began to blossom in the surrounding darkness.
Vivi's eyes flicked around warily. All around her, the emptiness was shifting. Tiny points of radiance shimmered into existence, multiplying by the second until the abyss resembled a vast galaxy. "What's he doing…?"
Kaede's monstrous voice rumbled like an earthquake. "I'm not sure but it's pretty. Are we in space?"
Legia's roar shattered the silence. "I will not allow another Ashborn to exist! You will bring calamity upon everything!"
His colossal body began to expand, swelling past the boundaries of sense. His already gargantuan form grew until even Kaede's Atrocity looked like a child before him, a speck compared to the primordial mass he had become.
The void buckled and screamed under the sheer weight of his presence. His primordial darkness poured outward, creating more mass with every second.
Kaede and Vivi found themselves suspended in what could only be described as a boundless galaxy. Stars glittered like scattered diamonds across the void, distant suns burning with eternal fire. Planets turned ever so slowly in the darkness, each orb circled by its moons, like silent dancers in a cosmic waltz.
"Ah!" Kaede flailed, panic surging through her monstrous frame. "We can't breathe in space!"
Vivi gave her a flat look. "I don't think we're even breathing at all. Since…" She gestured at her own form, a glowing, massless silhouette of energy. "We're not exactly… you know." Her hand shifted toward Kaede, whose hulking Atrocity body loomed with six unblinking eyes and a mass of armor and shadow.
"Oh." Kaede blinked all six eyes at once, realization dawning. "You're right! We are breathing in space!" she cheered, sounding far too pleased.
"That's… not what I said." Vivi groaned, before her gaze sharpened. She tilted her chin upward toward the colossal figure that dwarfed the stars themselves. "So. He's going all out."
High above, Legia loomed like a living constellation, vast beyond comprehension. His shoulders stretched endlessly, his arms carved with celestial muscle, and his fists the size of worlds. He didn't look like a man anymore, he was godhood incarnate.
Legia lifted one of those unfathomable fists and swung.
Vivi's entire view disappeared beneath the shadow of the planet-sized blow. "Do you think we might have… overdone it a little?"
Kaede scratched her massive head with one of her four arms, her monstrous form looking oddly sheepish amid the endless void. "Yeah… we definitely got carried away. We should probably head back before we accidentally break something else."
Vivi turned to her, ignoring the planet-sized fist hurtling toward them at thousands of times the speed of light. "What about him?" she asked flatly, jerking her thumb toward the cosmic titan trying to flatten them.
Kaede's form shimmered, collapsing back into her human shape. She landed gracefully on the back of Vivi's phoenix, her boots clicking against its blazing crown. "Should we kill him? He's a Monarch, and he did kind of kill you earlier."
Vivi winced, rubbing the side of her head at the memory. "Yeah… that black hole thing? Having it appear inside my skull was definitely a new kind of weird." Her eyes narrowed, a teasing smile crossing her face. "No one can know about that, Maple. Leave no witnesses."
Kaede smirked, her eyes glinting with mischief as she turned toward the incoming fist that had finally reached them. Her voice echoed softly through the void.
[Authority of Reduction]
The air—if it could even be called that, shuddered. The massive fist slowed mid-swing, every motion grinding to a crawl as the void itself trembled. Then, with a soundless ripple, the entire limb simply… vanished.
Legia dropped like a stone, slamming face-first onto the phoenix's back with a dull thud. The once-godlike Monarch groaned, his entire body twitching and convulsing under a strange, unseen strain.
Vivi blinked, crouching beside him. "Okay… what did you do to him? 'Authority of Reduction'? That sounds like your usual Maple-brand nonsense."
Kaede grinned, clasping her hands behind her back. "It's one of my Authorities. This one lets me reduce anything I want."
Vivi raised a brow. "So… Maple Bullshit. Got it. What exactly did you reduce this time?"
Kaede tilted her head innocently, her smile turning almost sweet. "His level," she said. "I made him level one again."
Vivi exhaled heavily, dragging a hand down her face. "Just… give me a second to process this." Her gaze drifted upward to the vast tapestry of stars and swirling nebulas still lingering from Legia's earlier manifestation. The colors reflected faintly in her eyes, fiery blues and deep crimsons blending into the void. "You seriously reduced his level? All the way down to one?"
Kaede beamed proudly, hands on her hips. "Yep. Now he's Legia, Monarch of Beginnings… Level One."
Vivi blinked twice, then nodded slowly. "Right. Level one. Of course." She rubbed her temples. "I miss when I was numb to your bullshit. But I guess you wouldn't be Maple if you didn't do things like this."
Her attention shifted toward Legia, who was still sprawled across the phoenix's back, trembling and wheezing like someone who'd just run a marathon with broken ribs. His once-imposing aura was completely gone, no divine glow, no crushing pressure, just a giant, gasping mess.
"Hey!" Vivi called out, cupping her hands around her mouth. "You gonna get up and fight, or what? Maybe beg for your life? You were all high and mighty a few minutes ago!"
Kaede tilted her head thoughtfully, a mischievous glint in her six eyes. "Weren't you the one who was proud when he killed..."
"Shush, Kaede," Vivi interrupted quickly, pressing a finger to the other girl's lips. "Let me have this."
Kaede blinked once, then leaned forward and bit down on Vivi's finger with a playful chomp.
"Ah, what the hell, Kaede?!" Vivi yanked her hand back, shaking it like it had been burned. "What are you, a child?"
Kaede puffed her cheeks and pointed accusingly. "Then don't put your finger in my mouth!"
"How?" Legia rasped, his pupils dilating as he looked down at his trembling hands. His once-obsidian skin had lost its sheen, dulling to a muted grey. "My strength... my divinity!"
He tried to summon his gravitational field, the power that once crushed mountains into dust. Nothing happened. Not even a spark. His connection to the Primordial Flow was severed, cleanly and utterly.
"No…" His voice cracked, disbelief twisting his features. "This... this is impossible. My existence cannot be lowered! I am a Monarch!"
Kaede crouched beside him, smiling pleasantly. "So, how does it feel to be level one?"
"You… wretched… creature…" Legia growled, but the threat was empty. He couldn't even generate enough aura to make the air tremble. He was weak.
For a being who once measured his strength by the weight of worlds, the realization was unbearable. His breathing grew ragged, his hands clenching the feathers beneath him as if grasping for an anchor. "You… reduced my very essence..."
Kaede tilted her head. "You didn't turn into an egg."
"You don't… understand what you've done…" His tone shifted, panic bleeding through the arrogance. "Without balance, the cycle will collapse. You've torn out one of the roots..."
A faint glow caught Kaede's attention. Tiny threads of silver light were drifting from Legia's body, slowly, silently dissolving into the void like ash on the wind.
Vivi frowned. "Uh… Maple? Is that supposed to happen?"
Kaede blinked, then tilted her head slightly. "I don't think so."
The threads brightened, spiraling upward until the entire void shimmered with motes of fading power. Each one pulsed once, then shot off in a dozen directions like scattered stars.
Legia slumped forward, eyes wide with horror. "You've released it… all of it… The calamity is..."
The Monarch's body disintegrated in a soft, soundless flash, like dust being swept away by a passing breeze.
Silence reclaimed the void.
Vivi's expression tightened with concern. "The calamity is what, exactly?"
Kaede threw up her hands. "Don't ask me! You watched him die same as I did! How am I supposed to know something you don't?" Her voice rose as the air around them began to quake, the void itself trembling as if alive.
A deep rumble echoed through the dark expanse. Fractures of light rippled across the collapsing dimension, shards of reality crumbling into nothingness.
Vivi steadied herself, scanning the drifting fragments. "It doesn't matter. The dungeon's closing." Her eyes locked on a cluster of debris floating nearby, the shattered remnants of the chamber where Legia had once been imprisoned.
"Then let's go," Kaede said, adjusting her stance as the world around her dissolved into motes of light. "This has been a very weird day. At least I leveled up seven times from it."
"Seven?" Vivi huffed as the phoenix lifted off. "I only got five level ups."
Kaede grinned, brushing a strand of hair from her face. "It's not a competition, Vivi. Besides, you're still a higher level than me, so there."
---
"You felt it didn't you?"
"Yes. Legia's Primordial Darkness has returned."
"Did the rulers kill him?"
"No. I seriously doubt it."
"Indeed. Their plans placed him in a position where it would be impossible for them to do so."
"Was it him then?"
"The Shadow Monarch remains on his small island."
"Then who? How?"
"It matters not. The location of the next fragment of brilliant light has been discovered. It appears our target is in America."
"Ah. What about Quresha? Have any of you been able to contact her?"
"I haven't."
"I don't care."
"Neither have I?"
"Yogumunt. Try and locate her. We will proceed without her for now."
"Of course."