Mir’vas, the Blade of Storms, met the abyssal darkness of Demon Lord Azrageth's sword with a resounding clash of steel. Standing at seven and a half feet, The Demon Lord towered above Leonidas, the aura so intense it vaporized what little sweat clung to his face.

“You will lose everything, Hero,” Azrageth intoned with an echoing bass that vibrated through Leonidas’ bones. The deceptively cultured voice delivered the promise from a face that was far too handsome to be natural. “Any victory you achieve will be hollow.”

“Too bad you already used the majority of your mana trying to stop me, you piece of shit,” Leonidas responded fiercely, while pushing the limit of his own mana reserves. “All you have left are your minions, innate spellcasting, and hellblade. You really think you can defeat me with those?”

“My demise is but the beginning of your suffering, Hero. I welcome it, if only because I know it will be the key to a new life of torment for you.”

Leonidas withdrew Mir’vas from the deadlock with Azrageth, and then pressed forward once more with a rapid series of slashes and thunderous strikes against the towering Demon Lord’s guard. Each one echoed with the subtle crackle of Mir’vas’ power, forcibly testing the infernal creature’s resolve. Sparks of gold and red were thrown into the air with each successive strike, pushing the dark lord back hoof by hoof in the process.

It had been a near thing to get as far as they had. Cutting their way through the infernal’s forces had proven more difficult than anticipated, and Leonidas’ once-pristine armor bore the scars of battle where even he’d suffered blows at the hands of Azrageth’s demonguard.

“Leo!” a female voice cried from nearby, where Lyara Melredor—the High Elven Princess and his Party’s spellbow—engaged one of Azrageth’s Greater Demons. “We’ll be there soon!”

Leonidas couldn’t afford to answer her, lest the distraction cost him his life, and instead threw his weight into forcing Azrageth away with a particularly savage slash. The Demon Lord took the blow upon his blade with a snarl, stumbling backward in surprise from the force behind it.

This brief falter highlighted how exhausted Azrageth had truly become.

The Demon Lord had been fighting just as long as they had in their quest to reach him, and if not for the support of the Mages from the Tower of Magic, he very well may have succeeded in killing them with one of the multitude of apex-level spellcastings he’d attempted.

Within him, Leonidas could feel his Radiance Core revving with power, and his vein-like mana channels burned with the condensed force of the Light Affinity raging through them. The Demon Lord had been his predestined foe for the last five years since he’d been Summoned to this world. Every iota of his focus was set on ensuring that everything ended—one way or another—with their confrontation in the creature’s seat of power.

While Lyara, the Dwarven Mountain-Lord Bjorn Heavenshammer, and the Grand Archmage Caricus Mirin held back the Demon Lord’s guardians: Leonidas focused on fulfilling the duty for which they’d fought, bled, and lost friends to achieve. Everything came down to this.

“You talk a lot of shit, Azrageth,” Leonidas snarled around heavy breaths. “But you’re just another disgusting Demon I’m going to send screaming back to the Hells!”

The Demon Lord roared in reply, and Leonidas lifted Mir’vas before him horizontally. Before Azrageth could do more than raise his sword, Leonidas tapped into his supernatural Blessing of Celerity. His left hand smoothly moved from Mir’vas’ crossguard to the tip of its blade.

He channeled the force of his Radiance Core while he did so, and by time Azrageth had started his downward swing, Mir’vas was already blazing with the warm sunfire-golden glow of his Lumenkill Swordforce.

When Azrageth’s hellblade struck, Leonidas was more than prepared.

Mir’vas met the descending blow with unerring precision—and sheared through the Demon Lord’s blade near the crossguard. An explosion of infernal energy expelled from the sword upon its destruction, and Leonidas barely flinched at the scalding heat of the severed weapon biting into his shoulder as it flew past.

Instead, he stepped in under the Demon Lord’s guard and rammed the blazing tip of Mir’vas deep into his solar plexus. Acrid black blood, as hot as magma and as thick as tar, ejected from the wound—and Leonidas responded by twisting Mir’vas by the hilt and then unleashing the Lumenkill Swordforce within Azrageth’s body.

Vivid white-gold light flensed out along the infernal’s flesh, both smoke and fire crackling out from the fissures like the shattering crust of a planet. A savage smile lit Leonidas’ face at the sight as he urged his mana onward with a snarl of determination.

The immense Demon Lord roared in pain and denial, and Leonidas used the opportunity to lean into his Blessing of Titans. Using Mir’vas as an anchor, he delivered a savage kick to his enemy’s left knee. When Azrageth staggered, Leonidas kicked him again—and then again, until he heard the tell-tale sound of the bone cracking under the force of his armored blows.

With the infernal creature stumbling on suddenly uneven hooves, Leonidas launched himself up, throwing his bodyweight and superhuman strength against the Demon Lord to topple him onto his back. He rode Azrageth as he took him down, and the moment the creature crashed upon the steps of his obsidian throne, Leonidas started to rain gauntleted blows down onto that disturbingly perfect face.

The crunch of flesh from each hit was a sorely needed catharsis.

The Demon Lord’s features swelled with every blow, and Leonidas decided then and there that giving him bruises alone was not nearly enough. His Radiance Core roared to life, and energy flooded his limbs in an empyrean tide of focused aether and hyper-dense Light Affinity mana.

Every blow against Azrageth’s roaring face was vengeance for a slain child, repudiation for a defiled man or woman, and justice for the countless millions the Demon Lord’s legions had put to the sword. Leonidas roared right back at the demon while he struck him, and his voice was raw with the remembered horrors of the witnessed pain, violation, and suffering of the mortal races across the whole of Elatra.

Golden radiance built within Leonidas’ eyes, and he reached up to seize Azrageth’s horns in his armored fists. His grip allowed him to bring the creature’s face closer to his, and with a continued scream of hatred, Leonidas’ blazing gaze unleashed two beams of searing Light Mana into Azrageth’s own eye sockets.

The Demon Lord spasmed and writhed while his eyes cooked and boiled in their sockets, and even when the gelatinous masses of his eyes bubbled and leaked out in a mix of distorted matter and tar-like blood over Leonidas’ fists, he didn’t relent.

The moment the beams of Light Mana cut off, Leonidas returned to slamming his fists repeatedly into the Demon Lord’s ruined and blistering face. Every strike ejected burning hot oil-like blood into the air that Leonidas felt splash across his skin. His Divine Skein activated each time, and the blood burned away where it touched him, with only a decrease in his mana supply to show for the protection.

The loss of his mana was a concern, certainly, but not as critical as it once might have been. He had prepared for such, keeping plenty of reserves stored in the gems of his armor—though exhausting them would in turn render the warplate largely worthless.

Leonidas lifted his fist one more time, but hesitated.

This seemed too easy. His eyes searched the ruined face of the Demon Lord, and then he very nearly cursed in realization.

He could beat Azrageth until his limbs went numb, but that wouldn’t end the threat. Ending the Demon Lord was not as simple as breaking his body: his spirit could, and would, simply escape. That, Leonidas realized, was exactly what the goat-legged tyrant was hoping for. If he broke Azrageth’s body, his spirit would be free to escape and eventually possess someone else in the future.

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That couldn’t be allowed to happen. In the frenzy of his rage, he’d almost lost sight of that. That lesson had been drilled into his mind, and in the haze of his loathing, he had very nearly let Azrageth escape justice.

Leonidas staggered off of the prone Demon Lord, reaching down to where Mir’vas impaled his solar plexus. He tore the sword out mercilessly, and Azrageth’s ruined face bubbled in a growl of agony at the sword leaving the wound. The Holy Weapon, sanctified in the willingly sacrificed blood of a virgin saintess, burned with purity of purpose as he stared down at the broken Demon Lord.

There was only one path forward.

There had only ever been one path forward.

Leonidas realized he just hadn’t been ready to face it until the moment was now before him. He stood above the Demon Lord, knowing that only a true obliteration could guarantee Elatra’s safety. Only an ending, a true ending, could forever banish the dark lord from his new home’s lands in truth.

He needed to ensure that Azrageth couldn’t pose a threat to Elatra ever again. To achieve that feat, he had only one spell in his arsenal which could guarantee such a result.

Leonidas raised Mir’vas before him and brought the crossguard to eye-level, with both of his hands wrapped around its hilt, and its bladed tip pointed to the ceiling of the throne room. Into it he began to pour his vast pool of mana, and while he did, he reflected on his journey—and what had brought him to that moment. It was important, he’d realized, to understand where’d come from. It put things into perspective.

It made the sacrifices mean something.

After all, the people of Elatra had suffered immeasurable hardship, prior to his being summoned as the ‘Hero’. Theirs had been no light-hearted Anime story, such as the ones his parents had so ignobly named him in fealty to. Nor, in fact, had they been the beneficiaries of the great historical triumphs of the righteous which Earth had boasted, albeit against far more mortal and fallible enemies.

No, Elatra’s tale had been one of brutalization and madness, built upon the unimaginable cruelty and fundamental inhumanity of the Demon Lord and his army of nightmares. Elatra’s foe had not been some misunderstood antagonist, secretly seeking understanding or a ‘worthy fight.’’. Azrageth had been a true denizen of the Hells, summoned centuries prior by a cult of madmen and fools intent on unleashing a cataclysm upon Elatra for some perceived slight.

Their ritual had worked too well, and Azrageth had come forth—terrifying in his dark glory, and laden with darker purpose. He’d turned first the cult, and then the surrounding nation of Mallerion into his base of power as he enacted mass sacrifices and hideous tortures to summon forth the legions of Hell.

By the time the great nations of Elatra had been made aware of the circumstances plaguing the southern continent, it was already too late.

Only the distance between the southern continent and the remainder of Elatra had spared the mortal and immortal kingdoms both from immediate and total annihilation, and it was only after several species were all but wiped from the face of the planet that the ‘Grand Alliance’ was truly formed. Even then, it took another decade before the Summoning was devised—and Leonidas was subsequently brought forth to fight Azrageth.

By then, the Demon Lord had been terrorizing the world for half a century.

In the five years since he’d been Summoned, Leonidas had Cultivated a Radiance Core, Mastered the Seven Sword Arts, and united the quarreling elf, dwarf, orc, and human nations into a single unified collective. He’d done so through force of arms, in the most part, and through shrewd diplomacy where force wasn’t an option.

Primarily, he’d simply refused to help anyone that had not accepted his wartime authority. Vicious, perhaps, but also efficient—and helpful in ensuring compliance, though the minor issue of the coup that attempted to assassinate him had certainly been a complication.

With the help of the best military and logistical minds of all the nations, the campaign against Azrageth had been both hard-fought and brutally effective. With Leonidas’ supreme might as the speartip of the advance, they’d managed to not only shatter the Abyssal Spires tethering Azrageth’s demonic forces to Elatra’s dimension, but had even pushed deep into the southern continent within the first three years of his summoning.

By the end of his fourth year, they’d managed to corral the Demon Lord within the borders of Mallerion and the sphere of influence of his last few Abyssal Spires, including the main one within the Black Citadel itself. The last, and current year of the war had been dedicated to painstakingly advancing toward that very same Citadel, and with staggering loss of life; they’d managed to succeed.

Mir’vas abruptly shivered in his grip, and Leonidas refocused his attention to the sword. A sense of readiness flowed from the weapon, as if prompting him that there was no more time to delay. He immediately parted his lips to begin the ritual that he knew would be his only recourse for true victory.

“Blood of the Slain,

Wrath of the Righteous,

Rage of the Betrayed,

Pain of the Innocent…”

The interior of the throne room began to rumble as he spoke the words, and the silvery length of Mir’vas took on a glassy texture. The blade went from opaque to transparent, and within it sparked a storm of golden lightning. As he continued to speak, golden-white flames roared up along the blade’s length—the sword vibrating in his hands. Leonidas maintained a strict hold on it as the throne room began trembling in earnest.

Mana radiated from him in immense waves, and he distantly heard his companions shouting at one another to find cover. He chose to trust them. He couldn’t stop now that he’d started; he had to finish before Azrageth recovered enough to either flee, or try to kill him.

Solemnly, he continued.

“By my title of Hero,

By my mantle of Savior,

By my right of Judgement,

By my Core of Radiance…”

Mir’vas let out a note of clear music in his grasp, and Leonidas smoothly spun the transparent blade to face its tip down toward Azrageth. The Demon Lord’s broken features started mending far more rapidly when he did, and Leonidas used every ounce of his Blessing of Titans to slam his foot down on the monstrous infernal’s chest and keep him in place.

“You cannot do this!” Azrageth blubbered in rage.

“For the vindictive Lost,” Leonidas continued savagely.

“For the defiled Abandoned,

For the violated Forsaken,

For the tarnished Damned!”

Leonidas plunged his sword down—piercing Azrageth’s heart.

A discharge of pure manaforce erupted from the contact, and the very walls and ceiling of the throne room exploded outward and upward. Marble was cut through like a hot knife through butter, and a rain of rubble and decimated masonry roared out into the dawn’s sky. The throne room roared with the onrushing wind, as high up as they were, and Leonidas met Azrageth’s healing eyes as the Demon Lord stared at him and writhed underfoot.

“Don’t do it! You don’t understand! You are sentencing your Earth to cata—”

“I summon the Final Sentence,” Leonidas spat, ignoring the demon’s words. He’d fought Azrageth for five years, and seen how demons were. They would deceive, murder, and cheat to ensure their survival as easily as a mortal drew breath. His words could not be trusted, and Leonidas would not fall victim to his lies!

He took a breath to utter the final words.

“No!” Azrageth shouted desperately.

It was too late. When Leonidas spoke, his voice was like thunder, resonating with the force and power of the Hero. It was a divine chorus, and in its syllables were written the final ending of a five year nightmare…

For Azrageth, and for himself.

“Lumenkill Astra: Requiem Ultima!”

The dark clouds permanently in residence over the Demon Lord’s citadel parted in a circle, and from within descended a pillar of blinding light. It subsumed Mir’vas, Leonidas, and Azrageth entirely. Heat, power, and divine force washed away everything.

It was a skill like no other, unique and singular in that it could only be harnessed by the Hero. A skill that purged everything and left no trace of evil behind.

It was guaranteed to obliterate Azrageth, in body and spirit both, to cast whatever remnant persisted back into the Hells from whence he was summoned. There was no chance for dodging, no prayer for evasion. Azrageth, Demon Lord and Great Enemy of Elatra, would die. Requiem Ultima was, as the name suggested, an ultimate magic. It was the Hero’s final requiem—A skill nobody could survive, no matter who they were.

Leonidas closed his eyes in acceptance.

As everything was consumed, something appeared in the darkness of his eyelids, and Leonidas barely had time to process it before the world went white, and he knew no more.

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