Emerald, one of the many normal agents of the syndicate, one more in the midst of the chaos that had formed in the main square, was desperately fighting for her life.

For her own life, not to protect the lives of others, unlike just a few minutes ago.

When that egg had appeared and the civilians had collapsed, their lives seemingly being sucked up to feed that thing, the monsters had stopped coming after them.

So, for the moment now she only had to worry about her life.

Which didn't make things much easier for her.

The Lunar Remnant she was fighting was a writhing mass of darkness, full of white spikes that twisted as well, as the creature changed shape. No, it wasn't exactly like that.

The darkness and the white parts moved all the time, but its shape didn't change drastically, everything went back to its initial configuration.

Still, it was a seriously dangerous nuisance.

She could move just enough to dodge an attack only to find that suddenly the beast's arm, along with its sharp claws, was much closer than it should be. In fact, she'd paid for that mistake several times in the beginning.

That's why she couldn't move her left leg very well.

That's why her hair was stuck to her forehead not from sweat, but from her own blood.

Now, when dodging Emerald wasn't just taking into account what she could see right now. She was trying to predict its changes, though it gave the impression that the Remnant didn't control them, but that its body was unstable.

And it was shooting at it. Continuously firing at it while backing up and dodging, of course.

But the bullets didn't seem to do much to it. It was like a big wall. The son of a bitch refused to go down. Emerald was giving it her all and with each passing second, the more she feared it wouldn't be nearly enough.

The beast roared. The attack, which would have made her head explode like a melon, split one of the pillars in the room. The fight had started in the main square, but this monster had ended up driving her back toward a department store. They had plenty of money to pay for the damage, and she could only afford to worry about her life right now anyway.

Emerald disappeared from sight.

Yes, she had an invisibility device. Had it not been for that, she would surely have been torn to shreds by that thing by now. She had been lucky. Many Lunar Remnants had other ways of tracking their prey, but this spike"covered mass of darkness depended on sight.

Invisibility didn't last long, forcing her to expose herself again and wait for it to recharge, but it served her well enough to escape death and put as much distance between herself and the creature as possible. That was enough for her.

For the time being.

In a situation like this, Emerald couldn't expect anyone to arrive to save her. But if she continued this way, only death awaited her. I don't like to think about it, she told herself, but it's true. At this rate I can consider myself dead.

Emerald had her rifle, she had her invisibility device.

She had one more tool, a grappling hook. Something most agents had, nothing special. She could shoot it at the Remnant... And deliver herself faster into the maw of that monster on a silver platter?

Ha, no.

But she had another idea. A more or less good idea.

It was enough for her.

Emerald stopped losing ground. For the first time since the fight with this thing had started, she ran towards the creature instead of backwards. The monster tried to tear her apart with both claws, but they only slashed the ground as she threw herself, slipping between the Remnant's legs.

Scrambling to her feet again, she ran.

Not toward the exit. She turned around just as fast. Taking aim and firing. Emerald's aim was impeccable, even if it hadn't done her much good so far. The monster ran towards her, its claws ripping chunks out of the ground and kicking up dust in its wake. At this rate the stores would be as unrecognizable as the main square, which no longer looked like a place built with human hands.

At this rate, indeed. But the fight would be over soon enough. That would have no chance of happening.

Emerald fired the grappling hook at the ceiling.

She didn't propel herself into the ceiling, of course.

Instead, she pulled on it. Caused it to come crashing down as the monster passed underneath. The loose piece created a collapse big enough that she didn't have to calculate the exact timing.

Good, because she wasn't sure how she could do that.

The trap worked. The Lunar Remnant was buried under a mountain of rubble. It wouldn't take long to get out from under there. Those monsters could only be contained in a facility designed specifically for that purpose.

But Emerald wouldn't allow it. That mountain of rubble would become its tomb.

The monster tried to break free. Emerald approached with her heart in her fist, put the rifle to its forehead and fired. She held the trigger down for a long time, risking the gun overheating.

The monster's head hit the ground. It was a small victory, but still she celebrated. The high of victory coursed through her veins as if she was going to walk out of here and see that outside they were done with their own battles too, that nothing was happening anymore.

Nothing could be further from the truth. What she saw as soon as she stepped outside was two gods fighting.

They were in the air. Both had wings and could fly freely.

Emerald understood immediately even though he didn't want to. The thing that had been growing in the egg had finally hatched and Sylvester was fighting it.

"Unbelievable."

She was at a loss for words and breath. Without realizing it, she began to hold her breath as she completed that spectacle.

There was no one who didn't know about Sylvester and his strange powers, about how much humanity owed him. She'd always known he was strong, but this was on a whole different level.

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They were two flashes cutting through the night, dancing in the night sky. The human eye could barely follow them. Every attack they launched would have shaken the foundations of any building, so thank goodness they had taken their battle to the skies. Otherwise Sylvester might have wrecked the city before saving it.

The woman who was his opponent was either unaware of that because she had just been born or she didn't care because she only had eyes for Sylvester. Because she recognized him as the only threat to her survival and supremacy.

In any case, their battlefield was the sea of stars. It seemed that was not going to change. For everyone's sake, she hoped that wouldn't change.

Emerald didn't even think of getting in their way. She would be a nuisance, she couldn't even serve as a distraction for a few seconds. All she could do, all any of them could do....

Was raise their eyes to the sky and pray.

Gods. That was what had come to her mind the first time she had seen them. That they were two gods fighting.

Yes, then praying was appropriate. Humans had been at the mercy of the gods since the beginning of time, she was no different. Interfering in that fight would be like dreaming of stopping a tsunami with her hands.

If they weren't gods, they were at the very least natural disasters in human form. All she could do was...

Pray that someone would be left alive when the waves crashing over them, poor bastards, calmed down.

Emerald felt like throwing up.

——

They were evenly matched. Sylvester was giving it his all and was barely hurt, but that thing was matching his every move and attack even though it had just been born a few minutes ago.

Every time it parried one of his attacks, the force of the impact shook his whole body anyway. What was it using to attack? A sword. At the beginning of the fight, she reached into her chest and pulled out a sword from the 'black crystal' her body was made of.

Had she shaped it like a katana because that was his weapon or had it been a coincidence? In any case, she moved as if she had a lot of practice fighting and using a sword. It wasn't just that she was being a problem because of her monstrously innate strength and speed.

And why not?

After all, she had also spoken English to him as soon as she was born. And she had protected herself from him even before she was born. No one but she had ensured her own birth. It made no sense to measure her by human standards when she wasn't and with all he knew about her.

That was why Sylvester was terrified. For the first time in years, he didn't know the outcome of the fight before it even began. That was because he didn't know where he stood. The woman was growing at blinding speed.

Minutes after her birth, they were evenly matched. What would happen half an hour later, or days? It was obvious no matter how much he didn't want to think about it. If he didn't defeat her here and now, he wouldn't have another chance.

She would become too strong even for him. Could he do it? If they were evenly matched, all it took was one small mistake for everything to go to shit.

Sylvester was terrified, yes. It was as if he had forgotten the fear of fighting with his life on the line and was remembering it only now. As? It was exactly like that.

He had relaxed too much.

Another exchange of blows. He thought it would be exactly like the others, but this time the black crystal sword exploded into a thousand pieces. So Sylvester lunged at her like a shark after smelling blood in the water.

The woman intercepted the attack with her sword. Another sword. She had extracted another one exactly like it from the black crystal on her body and moved fast enough to intercept his attack.

Sylvester clicked his tongue. Okay, he should have expected that outcome, but it didn't make it any less irritating. Quite the contrary. He'd like to be wrong for a change when assuming the worst. It really would be nice once in a while.

The series of evenly matched attacks and defenses ended abruptly as he flew off. His world spun around several times. He crashed into the front of a building, making it quite a bit less flat. It sank inward.

She'd throw him around so easily that he'd end up vomiting if he got careless. An exaggeration, no doubt, but that was how it felt.

The stats screen appeared in front of his eyes without him opening it. An obstacle to his field of vision. A fatal distraction, even if it wouldn't take more than a second to make it disappear. But neither was the worst of it.

Level: 53

He should be happy to level up, to get stronger. But he hadn't leveled up for years precisely because he hadn't encountered worthy opponents. That this thing had made him go up two levels in such a short time only increased his concern.

He had to do something.

"Don't think you're going to defeat me with that alone," said the creature that had hatched from the egg, grinning like the devil himself.

What was she...? It couldn't be. It couldn't be, but what other option was there? She'd seen it.

And he saw it too. That woman's status screen. He saw enough, anyway. Level five.

Regardless of whether she'd started from level zero or level one, she'd gone up a few levels since the fight started. Since her life had started. It hadn't even been a quarter of an hour since her birth, surely.

It was hard not to lose track of time in a situation like this. But in any case he would feel that more time had passed than had actually passed, not less.

"You're like me," Sylvester said. Things were going from bad to worse. Never in his worst nightmares had he imagined such a possibility, but now his ominous foreboding made all the sense in the world.

She could become strong in the same way he could, so in no time she would be unstoppable.

"That's right." She felt a shudder. It was almost as if she'd answered his thoughts. "If this is the sick game of the gods, then you're player one... and I'm player two."

She had chosen an interesting metaphor. But, more importantly...

"If? Don't you know exactly what's going on in this world?" Wasn't she responsible for this?

"Well, I was just born.... Sylvester." Hearing that abomination utter his name was as if his spine had been transformed into a centipede. Painful, disgusting, terrifying. It made him feel violated.

And the smile did not leave that abomination's face. Openly mocking him.

"Yeah. I'm several dozen levels above you."

"And what good has it done you? It seems that the quality of my base material is simply superior. After all, you're only... human." She said it with a calm tone, but it was more dismissive than if she had spat it out with hatred.

The thing was right, of course.

Sylvester grimaced. She might be a newborn, but she wouldn't be fooled so easily.

If he had to, he should have tried it after putting her on the ropes at least once, not right after losing an exchange of blows.

Sylvester straightened up, wings too. Player one against player two. He had to seize the advantage while he still had the upper hand here.

He fired an anchor of darkness.

Anchor, claw. He liked to think of that thing both ways, despite the name of the skill it sometimes served both purposes. In this case, it served no purpose. That woman shattered the anchor with a single swing of her black crystal sword.

She didn't dodge, she didn't even look to hit it, showing utter contempt. She did it in the same casual way a normal person might shoo away a fly.

"Who are you?"

"I suppose you can call me the Lunar Princess."

That was a title, not a name. But it was somewhat interesting. New information about his enemy, even if he couldn't get anything out of it because she was being vague. Or not so much, but he didn't have enough context for it to mean much to him.

In any case...

He lunged for her. If the anchor didn't work, he'd try a more direct approach. What good has it done you so far?, he thought. More than talking.

They collided again.

He could keep flying for a long time. When they attacked the plane, his PM bar was depleted rather quickly because he had been thousands of miles up in the air. His body and wings had to withstand that pressure and so it had been depleted quickly, but now they were only flying a few feet off the ground.

Above the buildings, but it wasn't anything that could be called high, knowing what they were both capable of. Everything about his enemy was new to him, but there was no way she was even close to her limit.

She wasn't human, after all.

He wondered why she wasn't coming down, forcing him to fight at ground level. To hold back, for fear of doing too much damage or killing innocent people. Perhaps her inexperience. As much power as she had, she had just been born.

She could fix that in time. She could fix it all...and surpass him. He couldn't give her that time. It had to end here.

"Tonight!" Sylvester didn't even realize he had shouted that as he wielded the katana with both hands.

A powerful blow executed above his head, with the full weight of his body. It failed to penetrate his enemy's guard, even though he had chosen the perfect moment. The swords intertwined once again, locked in a fight that seemed to have no end.

"Tonight what, huh?" Her smile was serene, almost beautiful, even though she was only mocking him. Even though she was the ultimate enemy. "You're adorable. You should know by now that I am the end.

The barrier...

The technicians weren't able to open it to let the cavalry through. They fired a second barrier, trapping the biggest monsters in an electric sphere in the air. A gladiatorial area created with electricity.

The woman, the self-proclaimed Lunar Princess, didn't seem impressed at all.

"This will only make it impossible for you to run away."

"I don't intend to."

One way or another, things would end...

Tonight.