The air was still tense as the two figures continued their stare down.
"Hey, what are those guys doing?" Maximillius asked, nudging Hatori. "They've been staring at something for like two minutes."
"How should I know? I'm not a genie!" Hatori shot back, looking away.
Maximillius gave her a perplexed look, "…What? You don't have to be a genie to know that…"
He squinted at the sky again, shading his eyes with one hand.
"…Is it just me," he muttered, "or does something feel… off?"
Hatori didn't answer right away.
She had turned her back toward the battlefield, her expression tightening. Not confused—focused. The kind of look she got when something didn't line up the way it should.
"…Max," she said slowly, do you see it?"
"See what?" he asked. "All I see is Archangel floating there, the clouds, the flying beasts and a whole lot of nothing."
Hatori frowned.
"Yeah, and that's the problem."
Maximillius blinked. "Huh?"
She stepped closer to the railing, eyes locked forward. "The essence readings never dropped. And they didn't just spike either. They just… stopped fluctuating."
"I'd prefer if you said an easier word." Maximillius said bluntly.
Hatori sighed, "Fine. They stopped shifting."
Maximillius' casual tone faded a notch. "Stopped shifting how?"
"…It felt like it settled."
That earned a pause.
He leaned forward peering harder into the distance. "Okay, and now I can feel the creepiness climbing up my spine."
She gave him a sour look. "What?"
But then—he froze.
"…Wait."
Hatori turned her head. "You see it now?"
"…Yep," he said quietly. "I think I do."
It was barely there. So small it almost vanished against the clouds. A dark speck, unmoving, easy to miss if you weren't already looking for something that shouldn't exist.
"Hmm… that's not debris if I've ever seen debris," Maximillius whispered.
The feed zoomed in automatically.
The speck resolved into a shape.
Humanoid.
Standing upright in the sky as if it belonged there.
Maximillius' eyes sharpened.
"So… that's the Behemoth?"
Hatori didn't respond.
She couldn't.
Because if that was true—if that was the Category 5–then something was very, very wrong.
Far ahead, Archangel shifted slightly in the air. Not advancing. Not retreating.
Just adjusting his position.
"You really shouldn't go there," his voice carried calmly across the open sky.
Tohil didn't move.
Didn't react.
Didn't even pulse with power the way Behemoths did. It was different from the other Category 5's the world encountered.
It simply remained there.
Watching.
Maximillius swallowed. "…Hey, Hatomi."
"It's Hatori."
"…Hatori"
"…Yeah?"
"Since when were Behemoths that small?"
She shook her head slowly. "They weren't. They're not."
The sky felt heavier all of a sudden.
Not like pressure.
Like attention,
And for the first time since the battle began, Maximillius understood something he didn't like at all. Whatever they were looking at—it wasn't towering over the world anymore.
It was meeting at eye level.
Down in the ruins, Mikado strolled casually as if he didn't just obliterate a doppelgänger.
"You sure it's left this time?" Mikado muttered, squinting down the hall.
"I'm certain." Saku replied, glowing faintly.
In the distance, on the right turn, he barely had time to register the sound of footsteps—
"MIKADO—!"
Ka-blam.
Three bodies slammed into him at full sprint, knocking the air clean out of his lungs as they crashed and tumbled onto the cold stone floor in a messy heap.
"Ow—! What the hell, who did that?!" Mikado groaned, holding his head as he shook off the daze.
"You're alive!" Yoriko's voice cracked, hands gripping his shoulders as if to make sure he was real. "We thought it—"
She was cut off.
"You silver-haired idiot," Mikami snapped, hauling him partly upright. "Do you have any idea how—"
Kokuine let out a sharp laugh, relief breaking through the panic. "Dude, you scared my balls off, I thought you were dead when—"
Mikami nudged him hard to shut him up.
Mikado blinked, stunned for half a second—
Then smiled.
"…I'm glad you guys are well too," he said quietly.
For just a moment, everything else fell away. Then—
"Get down!"
Yoriko pulled Mikado close, dragging her and himself near the ground just as a blade of distorted air cut through the space where his head had been.
The stone exploded.
They all spun around to see the culprit.
"…Oh man, it can do that too…?"
Standing at the far end of the corridor, it was Mikado. Slightly too tall. Slightly elongated. Smiling a bit too wide.
"Well," the fake Mikado said, tilting his head. "That reunion was touching…"
Saku vibrated. "Be ready, Mikado."
"Who said that?!" Kokuine asked as he looked around.
"I'll spare the details." The real Mikado replied, stepping forward as he drew his gun. Yoriko pulled out a dagger from her thigh strap. Mikami cracked his knuckles.
The doppelgänger stepped forward, eyes glinting with something hollow.
"Round two?"
Outside, the second round had also begun.
The sky split open with a flashing blast.
A pillar of light and blinding radiance tore downward from Archangel's outstretched hand, annihilating everything in its path as it roared through the clouds.
The beam missed by inches.
Tohil twisted midair, form blurring as light carved a molten scar through the sky behind him.
The shockwave rolled outward, rattling the fleet.
Tohil shifted back into his standing posture, barely affected at all.
"…Still too loud," he murmured.
And Archangel's eyes sharpened.
"Bring it on, champion."
The sky held its breath.
Tohil moved first.
No windup.
No warning.
Just… gone.
A fracture ripped through the air as he reappeared in front of Archangel, arm already in motion—a right hand drawn back and then driven forward with enough force to split the horizon.
A blitz.
A kill shot.
Clack.
Archangel caught it.
Clean.
His hand wrapped around Tohil's fist as if he had been waiting for it all along, fingers closing with quiet certainty. The shockwave still erupted—tearing the clouds apart behind him—but he did not move an inch.
Tohil's arm trembled slightly from the halted momentum.
Archangel tilted his head, expression soft… almost disappointed.
"…Is that how you greet someone?" he murmured.
Tohil didn't answer.
He exploded.
His other arm snapped forward—then another—then another.
A barrage.
Not punches.
Streaks.
The sky filled with blurred afterimages, fists folding space itself, each strike arriving faster than the last—faster than sight, faster than thought.
The fleet below saw nothing.
Just distortions.
Just pressure.
Just the sky cracking.
But Archangel saw it all.
Every angle.
Every shift.
Every intention.
His body flowed.
A step—he slipped one.
A turn—he caught another.
A tilt—he let one pass his cheek by a hair.
His wings unfurled.
Radiant. Immovable.
A punch crashed into them—
CLANG.
The sound rang like metal struck by a god.
The wing didn't bend.
It redirected.
The force slid off its surface, diverted, carried away—while Archangel spun with it, using the momentum, body turning in a smooth arc, and his wings carved across Tohil's face,
A clean, slicing motion.
Light met stone, purple blood sprayed.
A fissure split wider.
Tohil's head snapped to the side as a thin line etched itself across his face, glowing faintly where it had been cut, purple blood oozing from the wound.
Silence.
Then he slid back through the air.
"…Tch."
The first sign of irritation.
He steadied himself, posture tightening.
For the first time since his transformation—Tohil looked… annoyed.
"…I see."
His voice lowered. His finger extending.
And around them, the sky shifted.
The circling flying beasts—hesitating, waiting—suddenly snapped into motion.
"Devour it."
They surged.
A swarm.
Dozens—then hundreds—cutting through the air like blades, converging from every direction, screeching as they closed in on a single point:
Archangel.
From below, it looked like he had been swallowed.
A mass of wings, claws, and bodies collapsing inward, tearing, ripping, overwhelming.
For a moment—it worked.
"…He's surrounded!" someone shouted from the fleet.
"Did it—did it get him?!"
The swarm tightened.
Compressed.
A writhing sphere of violence in the sky.
Then—light.
Not an explosion.
Not a blast.
Something quieter.
Something… absolute.
A single point of brilliance bloomed within the swarm—and expanded.
The beasts didn't scream.
They didn't have time.
They were simply… gone.
Erased.
Vaporised in an instant as the light unfolded outward in a perfect sphere, dissolving everything it touched.
And at the centre of it—
Archangel hovered.
Unmoved.
Untouched.
Not a mark on him.
His wings drifted slowly behind him, shedding faint particles of light like falling snow.
"…You rely on numbers," he said softly.
"Yet you stand alone."
Tohil's gaze sharpened.
The air around him tightened.
Then—he vanished again.
Faster.
Sharper.
More precise.
This time, when he struck—
It landed.
A crack split the sky.
Archangel's body shifted slightly as the blow connected—not clean, not perfect—but enough.
Enough to push him back.
Enough to leave a mark.
For the first time—Archangel moved.
The clouds rippled outward from the impact as he steadied himself midair, one hand rising slowly to his face.
His fingers brushed against the mark.
He looked at it.
Quietly.
"…I see."
His eyes lifted.
Not soft anymore.
Not distant.
Focused.
"…So, you can reach me."
The light around him began to change.
Not brighter.
Denser.
Pulled inward, condensing around his body like a second skin.
His wings drew closer, folding slightly—not in retreat, but in preparation.
"Tohil."
His voice remained gentle.
But something beneath it had shifted.
"…Now it's my turn."
The sky dimmed.
Not from the clouds.
But from presence.
Energy gathered.
Not outward.
Inward.
Compressing. Refining. Becoming something sharper—something deliberate.
Far below, the fleet fell silent.
Even the sensors hesitated.
"…What is he doing…?" someone whispered.
Archangel closed his eyes.
And for the first time since he arrived—
He stopped holding back.
"Apex Metamorphosis."
The light collapsed into him.