'That damn coward!!!! Running away when he sees just how terrifyingly powerful I am!!!! Well, I suppose that's only obvious, right? After all, he was quite strong.... strong enough to give even myself a scare for a second, but it doesn't matter, because in the end I was far stronger than him!! All it took was that one little potion and he was shaking, desperately trying to escape from me!!! As it should be!!! I haven't lost. I am still the best, and this is the proof of it! But.....'

Time continued flowing.

'Shit!!! Now I won't be able to defeat him in 2 minutes!!!! Now that Senator will think that I had a rough time with it!!! I can't let that happen.... where is he!?! Where did he go!?!?! I need to know!!!'

At first, Slith found himself completely occupied with the time limit.

Second after second passed.

"SHIT!!! HAVE I REALLY LOST HIM!?!?!?!"

2 minutes had certainly passed at this point. Even if Slith was not sure how much time exactly had passed, he was positive that he had already exceeded the time limit.

Now, the time limit was not important.

Slith walked over to the trampoline which was set up, and started punching the stalagmites in fury.

"SHIT SHIT SHIT!!! WHY!?!?! WHERE THE HELL DID YOU GO, YOU MONSTER!?!?!?!?"

As he punched the stalagmites, he recognized just how much his power had increased by. They would crumble the moment he came into contact with them.

It felt amazing.

As if he was relieving the stress built up inside him, Slith began destroying each and every one.

When he had destroyed all the stalagmites, he then moved over to the wall of the cavern.

With a grim smile, he held back his fist in order to test out his newfound power.

He swung at the wall, and a beam of black energy seemed to break open reality itself, creating a massive crater that went on for as far as he could see.

"I.... did this?"

While Slith was the most skilled assassin in the world, his skills were not that of overwhelming power, but that of speed and technique.

To wield this amount of massive destructive power was unknown even to him.

"I did this."

Slith grinned demonically as he started to spew off beam after beam of dark energy, causing earthquakes and rumbling around the cavern.

"AHAHAHAHAHHA!!!!! THIS FEELS GREAT!!!!! I HAVE SO MUCH POWER!!!!!!!"

It was at this time that Slith felt the presence of the spider once more in the cavern.

As he continued his fit of laughter, Slith shouted out for the spider to hear.

"This.... this power..... I can feel it flowing through me..... I've been reborn!!!! I thought I was strong before..... but that strength.... it was nothing!!!! It was nothing compared to the ecstasy which I am feeling right now!!!!"

From the roof above Slith, he heard the hoarse voice of the spider.

"The others have been removed, and as such any and all risk of them being taken away and used against us has been eliminated completely. My own death is not something which even needs to be considered anymore. My masters have told me that they have a plan even for that. Therefore, all that is left now is for me to do as his excellency Gary would do. To forget all caution, and to place this battle in the hands of luck by playing my strongest cards here and now. You've offended my masters by claiming to be the best. Your arrogance shows no bounds. I will tell you again, scum. The power you hold now isn't even as much as the leftovers which overflow from my masters. And I will now prove that to you, rigorously."

----

Coran felt the power contained within the devil in front of his eyes.

This man was no longer human.

Without a doubt, he had relied on some sort of dark power to upgrade himself.

What infuriated Coran the most was that this lowly human dared to imitate the glorious form of her eminence with this half assed transformation.

It was as if this scum thought that by imitating the demonic form of her eminence, that he could surpass the real thing.

This man was no demon. He was an impostor. Yet his power was real.

While his power did not even scratch the surface of his masters, Coran felt a chill down his spine emanating from the evil mana of this being.

It was an overwhelmingly evil energy, one which was eating away at the person using it.

However, that in of itself was not of any concern to Coran.

After all, regardless of what became of this man later, he could not afford to lose here.

His masters had told him that even if he were to die, that his own death would not be a hindrance to their plans.

Therefore, he would throw away his concern for his own life, in an attempt to be useful for his masters.

'I cannot allow this scum to mock my masters like this. It's nothing less than blasphemy. I'll show him that he is nothing more than a small fish in an even smaller pond..... by opening up that pond to the ocean that is ruled by my masters.'

Coran jumped forward towards Slith, swinging on a wire and accelerating himself with all haste.

He was not holding anything back now. He had hesitated before because of the risks of allowing other members of the dictatorship to be captured and used as hostages, but right now his mind was clear and focused on a single goal.

Kill this man.

Show him his arrogance.

Slith turned to Coran to receive his attack, holding out his palm.

"What's wrong, monster? You were so quick to run away, but now you've returned?? If you were scared of my tremendous power, then you should have just stayed away!! Now that I've exceeded my time limit, I better finish you off quickly so that it doesn't look like I struggled!!"

A beam of dark energy was shot off at Coran, who dodged it, swinging around.

"Those threads are pretty useful, aren't they? What, are you scared to take the attack head on!?! Of course you are!!!! Who wouldn't be!? You'd be pulverized in an instant!! HAHAH!!!"

Slith then shot off a number of dark beams of energy, and Coran began swinging around the cave, dodging all of them while closing the distance.

"There is never a reason to take an attack that will cause even the slightest scratch. Even if you are 95% certain that you will come out of something uninjured, you shouldn't risk that chance if you don't have to. Doing so would be nothing more than arrogance, and in the 1 in 20 chance that you do get injured....."

Coran now swung behind the back of Slith, and with his arm shot off a number of wirelike threads, creating a matrix of wires around the cavern.

"Then it would be completely my your own fault for taking that chance."

Slith, who was now surrounded by the matrix of webs, merely laughed.

"Do you think these things will do anything against me!?!? HAHAH!!! What are you, stupid?? Are you trying to trap me, or restrict my movements!? You're probably too scared to just close in on me, aren't you?? But I'll have to apologize, because these aren't going to stop me!!"

Slith began shooting what looked like bullets of dark energy from his fingers, snapping many of the wires which surrounded him and freeing up room to move around.

Coran, meanwhile, had grabbed his bow and was tipping some arrows with poison before shooting them off.

Many of them grazed Slith, but they didn't seem to have any effect on him.

"HAHA!!! You think you can poison me again with those?? That poison won't work on me anymore. There's something else running through my veins now, and it will eat up anything you throw at me!!"

Slith continued firing off bullets snapping the wires around him, and Coran, who was keeping his distance, smiled victoriously.

"Plan A. Try to defeat the strongest person in a single blow. Failed."

Slith, who was now taking aim at Coran, began shooting off bullets at him, before grinning and deciding on a new plan of attack on seeing Coran dodge around while swinging on wires.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"What are you talking about? Of course your plans would fail against me!!! Let's see if you can take this one!!"

Slith held out his arm, and dark energy gathered around it before it shot out at Coran like a vine. Coran dodged it smoothly, but then a number of spikes protruded from it as well, shooting out again at Coran, covering a large area.

Coran quickly swung away, but his armor was grazed by the vines, and some small rips were formed.

'He's even got enough power to damage the steel thread armor.....', Coran thought, while still smiling. 'But..... it doesn't matter.'

"Plan B. In case anything suspicious happens, and the target doesn't die in a single blow, retreat. There is nothing cowardly about running. There is nothing wrong with facing your enemies from the shadows. But if you give your target the opportunity to do this against you, then you've already lost."

As Coran swung he continued to shoot out more of the wires around the cavern, thickening the matrix which Slith was set on destroying.

"You know, I'm a monster. I don't think it's wrong or underhanded to take a hostage. As a matter of fact, you even had the chance to do that early on, but you weren't able to. Or perhaps you were too proud to do so? But you know what I think? If you lack the power to protect the people who might be taken as a hostage, then you have no right to complain about someone else taking those you love hostage. That's why I gave you one chance, but you failed.... and when you did, I removed that possibility by removing the potential hostages. Plan B- Success."

Slith now pulled out his daggers as he retracted the vines which extended from his arm, and the dark energy collected around them.

With a slashing motion, he drew out two lines in an X formation that not only cut many of the wires surrounding him, but barreled towards Coran.

"Tough talk, saying that you succeeded in anything!!!! Do you think I would even need to do something like take hostages!??! I can beat you easily without resorting to something like that!!!"

Coran found himself unable to dodge the slashes of energy, and used the armaments on his spider arms to block them- but they made their way through, tearing through the metal with a horrible creaking, and cutting into Coran's arms.

They left slight cuts on even the hard skin of Coran, which only further proved the firepower that Slith currently held.

"Plan C. Use any method possible to kill you. Success or failure is.... undetermined."

Coran was pushed back by the slashes, but managed to fend them off, and then dropped his spear, grabbing a number of the wires he spread across the room with both of his human hands.

Grabbing the wires, he pulled them with all his might.

The ones which he had pulled were attached to the ceiling, and many rocks began to fall from the ceiling as a result of Coran's strength, and the strength of the wires to resist snapping.

The ceiling began collapsing and the entire cavern began to rumble.

"You think that destroying this cave will kill me??? HAHA!!! You really are trying everything, aren't you spider monster!?! It's not gonna work!!!"

Slith shot up a beam of energy directly upwards, and it destroyed any and all rocks above him which might have fallen onto him.

In this moment, Coran was currently swinging from rock to rock in midair, making his way to the top.

However, when Slith looked up after the beam of energy had dissipated, he saw something unexpected.

Dropping along with the rocks which made up the ceiling was a pool of green liquid, as if the cave were underneath a pond.

The green viscous liquid formed walls around Slith as the rocks fell around him, and caved in on the small cylinder which previously was filled with the beam of energy like a wave about to crash.

"Is this.... is this all poison!?! An entire pond of it!?!

The liquid crashed on top of Slith, engulfing him.

"How did you produce so much of this!?!? Did you set this up beforehand!?!"

The demonic figure which Slith took was being slowly overtaken by the ocean of poison which surrounded him.

While the demonic aura within him had been able to easily fight off and overtake Coran's poison before, that was only a trace amount of it.

Right now, it was an overwhelming sea.

Little by little, Slith's body which had been covered in a dark energy became purple with cysts and boils, and the dark energy seemed to retract, overtaken by the poison around him.

"This can't be!!! I.... I am the greatest, and the strongest!!!! I have poison resistance!!! I even relied on that potion, and my body overcame it and took the power as my own!!! You're just a lowly monster!!! A milestone to show just how powerful I am!!!! I'm better than you!!! You used an underhanded setup to do this!!! Fight me fair and square!!! I'll show you that I am the strongest!!!! Glub!!!"

Slith found his tongue become inflamed as it came into contact with the poison as he shouted from underneath the pool of poison, and he could no longer speak.

His eyes were doused and their redness became a dark purple before they exploded inside his head.

"MMMPH!!!!"

His skin ruptured and the dark energy within him seemed to dissipate as he dissolved inside the acid.

Meanwhile, Coran was now swimming around in his own poison while keeping careful watch on Slith from afar.

'He might still have one final trick up his sleeve.... I can't let my guard down yet.... but how I would love to bombard him with insults....'

In just a few moments, Slith's body had completely dissolved to nothingness, and the cavern was filled with a poison fluid.

Coran confirmed that none of the man remained, and made his way out of the cavern, smiling to himself.

'It looks like I didn't even have to rely on plan D. If I were to die, my masters said they would take care of the rest themselves.... but it looks like there was no need for that.'

What Coran did not know during the fight, was that as a result of using that potion, Slith had increased from someone in the 7th tier, to someone in the upper 8th tier. He became a monster far beyond the limits of humanity- one which could only be outclassed by the heroes or the monster kings themselves.

While Coran would have been able to face him head on, it would have been a close fight- one which he could not escape unharmed.

However, through careful planning and outsmarting of ones opponent, even someone weaker can defeat someone stronger than themselves.

Slith had a chance to defeat Coran, but through his own arrogance failed to recognize that Coran was stronger than himself.

On the other hand, Coran assumed that Slith was stronger than himself.

And thus, a one sided battle ended quickly.

301 seconds after Slith leaves the home of the Senator: Slith is bathed in acid, and dissolved into nothingness.

"But really..... fight him fair and square? Haha! As if a monster like myself would do that. Setting up tricks and traps from the start has always been the best way to do things. It allowed me to take the upper hand without even having to face him directly. Being the strongest? I don't care about that. Coming out on top, for the sake of my masters and their goals, regardless of the method, is the only thing that matters."

Coran exited the cave to the mineshaft, which was at a higher elevation than the cavern, and as such the poison did not flow out into the city.

His body dripping with poison, Coran looked at himself.

'I suppose I should get washed. I don't want to kill someone who comes near me and inhales some of this, after all.'

----

Claire looked around with the children and Alicia in front of her, as they all seemed to patiently await any orders.

Alicia seemed to be looking down, unable to meet Claire's eyes.

The children, on the other hand, stood in line like little soldiers. Claire could sense an odd sense of maturity even among the younger ones.

With a brilliant smile, Claire welcomed the group.

"Welcome to the Dictatorship. I am the Determined. You may refer to me as 'your eminence'. I've heard all about you from Sarah. Your name is Alicia, right?"

"Yes...", Alicia responded shyly.

Looking around, Alicia could not help but be amazed by her surroundings.

It seemed that she was not the only one who was amazed. The children stood still, but seemed to be interested in this new and strange place as well.

It was a demonic palace. Everything from the floor to the walls to the seats shouted 'Welcome to hell.'

Yet, in the center throne, sat a woman who could only be described as an angel.

She even had a halo floating above her head, and her smile was truly that of someone who cared almost too much for everyone she looked at.

So this was her eminence?

This was the woman who led the masters of Coran?

The other four were so vastly different, she could hardly imagine them being led by this woman.

It was a contrast that made absolutely no sense.

Alicia was well aware of how great the masters of Coran were, but their greatness was far different than the woman in front of her.

Coran's masters were absolutely dominating.

They were powerful beyond belief, and instilled fear into the hearts of anyone they so much as glanced at.

They were magnificently elegant and refined, and at the same time ruthless and cold.

Yet, Alicia knew deep within herself that behind those cold stares, and behind those ultimate auras, were four kind souls.

Why else would they have spared her and the children?

Why else would they have shown such anger and disgust at hearing Coran's story?

Why else would they have allowed Coran to keep her as his own personal slave, if not for their love towards the ones that they called slaves?

However, this woman was far different.

The other four seemed to hide their kindness and mask it with their power.

The woman in front of her seemed to be the very incarnation of compassion.

She looked delighted to see a new face, and her smile was pure with no stain of ill intent.

"Alicia, I heard from the antiheroes that you seem to be rather fond of Coran. And that he seemed to be rather fond of you as well.", Claire said with an innocent face.

"U-um.... y-yes...."

"Well, he is one of my best subordinates. You know, he took over my position when I was gone once? The antiheroes like to put me in two places. Either I'm stuck here in this seat with all the paperwork, managing the city from this desk, or I'm off to meet with a new set of faces. I wanted to help everyone at first.... but I came to a realization after a while."

Claire looked to the side with reminiscent eyes as she stuck her tongue into one cheek.

"I can't help everyone, but I can at least focus on what's right in front of me. You've been placed at Coran's side, and clearly have a responsibility to take care of those children."

Claire looked at the children with sad eyes, looking down the row.

In each one of them, she saw an individual.

A renewed person who was once dead inside, but was revived just recently.

Claire had been informed of their situation and background by the antiheroes, and on hearing this her demonic form almost took over. She was about to run off herself to kill the woman who denied these children every right.

'I don't know whether it's because I am the Determined.... but I can sense that these children went through a great mental change recently. Their states were..... predefined. But it seems that the arrival of Coran and Alicia redetermined that which was already determined. Is that because I was in close contact with Coran, and altered his fate?'

Looking at her demonic hand, Claire was only left to wonder this.

Just how much of the world had she already changed without even knowing it?

She felt a strong connection with fate itself, as if her very words and actions were setting reality on a different path each time she did something.

But she was not the only one who was changing reality.

That man was out there, and he too was changing reality with his every movement.

Looking into the eyes of the children, and feeling in herself that they were once dead but now brimmed with life, she could not feel prouder.

It filled her with joy to know that Coran was spreading happiness not only to other monsters, but to people as well.

"Please make sure that Coran stays on the right path. I'm sure that's your purpose. Don't let him stray too far from the sides of these children."

Alicia was filled with happiness at hearing these words.

"Yes! I will stay by his side always!"

Claire smiled back and looked down, continuing her work.

"Ah, speaking of which, you're in love with him, aren't you?", Claire casually let out while writing something.

"E-eh? Well...."

Before Alicia could answer, Claire continued on.

"I heard from Sarah. But you know, if you're gonna be playing as his wife then you should really meet his sister. If she doesn't approve of you, then you might have some trouble. So, good luck!"

With that, the door opened, and inside the room came a spider who looked almost exactly like Coran, though with long strands of white hair and a more feminine face and figure.

She had her four eyes closed as she carefully walked through the throne room, before kneeling down to Claire.

"I heard you called for me, your eminence? Is there something which you needed? Perhaps some traitors which need to be torn apart limb from limb? Or maybe you wish for me to help you with the paperwork? Or perhaps those birdmen have been at it again, and you want me to teach them a lesson? If they've been making their reports too long, then perhaps I should remove their hands and glue them back on backwards to increase the difficulty of producing long reports. Whatever you need, I stand at your beck and call."

Claire gave Berith a lovely smile, as if she was unphased by her horrendous statements.

"Oh, nothing of the sort, Berith. You joke too much. I actually wanted you to meet someone."