Takamiya Mio and Kurumi faced each other, less than twenty meters apart.
Behind Kurumi, space twisted. A gun and a combat knife materialized at the same time, one in each of her hands.
At that moment, her right eye shifted from red to blue.
The twelve signs of the zodiac appeared within her pupil, forming an eye just as unique as the "Clock Eye."
Her Divine Spirit Dress: Sanban appeared.
But its form had drastically changed.
One half was red, the other half pure white.
Even her hair reflected the transformation with a black and white strands, each color claiming one half of her long twin-tails, fluttering wildly in the wind.
Even her stockings had split from white silk on one slender leg, black on the other.
The stark contrast only made the sight more striking… and alluring.
One angel: Zafkiel, the "Time Emperor," and One Demon King: Lucifugus, the "Lunatic Emperor," time and space united.
The result was this new form of hers.
A playful, almost mocking smile curled at Kurumi's lips. Every inch of her radiated unshakable confidence.
This new stance… caught Mio by surprise.
"You… have you mastered the Demon King's power? Did you undergo inversion?" she asked cautiously.
"This—" Kurumi's voice brimmed with pride as she felt the ocean of reiryoku coursing through her.
"—is the precious gift given to me by my beloved."
Her crimson lips curved higher, her excitement bubbling:
"Mio, just as you sacrificed everything for Shinji Takamiya, there was someone who gave just as much, for me. It's the power of love that let me evolve into this."
Kurumi raised her antique pistol, pointing it straight at Mio.
"You, who went mad for love, will now fall to love's strength.
Tell me, what better ending could there be for you?"
For a moment, Mio faltered. Then understanding dawned in her eyes.
"I see… so you've found it too."
Her expression hardened, no longer calm and composed.
That fathomless tide of reiryoku surging from Kurumi… filled her with danger she had never felt before.
"It seems you stand as my equal now. Out of respect, I won't hold back. I'll fight with everything I have... to erase you!"
In an instant, countless motes of luminous pollen condensed into beams of light, blasting toward Kurumi.
That was death's radiance, an attack that ignored all defenses, killing instantly upon contact.
Kurumi's voice rang coldly as she pulled the trigger.
Behind her, a colossal blue disk manifested, so massive it blanketed the sky.
Her bullets had evolved, now they were wide-area attacks.
The moment the trigger clicked, the reiryoku-loaded bullet didn't target a single point, it rewrote the world itself.
All the incoming pollen beams twisted away, diverted into warped space and flung out past the clouds.
Around Kurumi's body, space itself began to ripple and distort.
Anything that came close was forcibly displaced, redirected wherever she willed.
It was one of Lucifugus's twelve zodiac abilities, capable of warping space itself.
If she poured enough power into it, Kurumi could even hurl the entire city of Tengu into the depths of the ocean.
Wrapped in her distortion field, she charged at Mio head-on.
Every beam of death-light that approached was warped away before it could touch her.
Closing the distance, Kurumi swung her combat knife down in a vicious arc.
Space itself split before her strike.
The sea of clouds tore apart, starlight spilling through.
In an instant, the heavens were smothered in the void of the cosmos, that was the atmosphere being cleaved open.
And that was just the aftermath.
The main impact (Mio herself) took the brunt.
Her ability of Paradise of Samsara was torn open.
Her chest armor shattered, the blade biting deep into flesh.
Blood spilled from a gash that, to any normal human, would be a fatal wound.
Cancer Sword Sartan: one of Lucifugus 's twelve spatial abilities.
A blade that could rend space itself!
"Urgh…!" Mio grimaced in pain.
She—she was injured!?
Kurumi had actually cut through Paradise of Samsara, her perfect defense!
That had never happened before.
Not even Souta's twenty-times-strengthened Tsar Bomb had so much as singed the hem of her dress.
Immediately, Mio retreated, refusing to let Kurumi get closer.
Her form flickered and vanished, that was her teleportation.
"You're not the only one who can jump through space!"
Kurumi let out a short laugh. Her body twisted in and out of warped space, relentlessly pursuing Mio.
Her Cancer Sword Sartan carved slash after slash into the sky, ripping the atmosphere into pieces.
Vacuum spread across the heavens.
Air rushed in to fill the void, spawning massive storms that raged across the sky.
Occasionally, a stray slash carved down to the earth, cleaving mountain ranges neatly in two and leaving vast canyons in their place.
It was a scene of utter apocalypse.
Down below in the park, Souta's eyes darted rapidly, tracking the two as they blinked in and out of space.
To let the others see too, he channeled divine power to project a massive screen, replaying every scene in vivid clarity.
Kotori and the others were left frozen in disbelief.
The battle raging between Mio and Kurumi sent chills running down their spines.
On the screen, both fighters moved at speeds far beyond mortal sight.
Kurumi had accelerated herself with time manipulation, surpassing even Mio's speed.
Mio countered with the Anaph(Branch Sword), an upper-tier skill of Paradise of Samsara, meeting Kurumi's blade strike for strike.
Each clash of tree-blade and combat knife unleashed violent reiryoku, rippling through the sky in waves of spatial quakes.
Had those blows landed on the ground, Tengu City would've been wiped off the map in seconds.
Kotori swallowed hard.
In a fight like that… she wouldn't last even a second.
"Kurumi's faster. Mio's covered in wounds, the tide's turning against her."
Altair's lips curled in admiration.
"At this pace, Mio's defeat is inevitable."
"Zafkiel has evolved… The bullets are now area-of-effect.
One pull of the trigger, and she can freeze an entire region of space-time. She doesn't even need to aim anymore."
Souta's voice was tinged with astonishment.
"If not for the sheer power required to stop Mio, this battle would've ended the moment it began."
Now, Kurumi no longer needed her bullets to hit in order to activate. But the process of charging them with reiryoku couldn't be skipped.
At most, she could fire a Seventh Bullet instantly, but even that, though immensely strong, could only stop Mio for a moment.
During that frozen time, Kurumi could slash her once before Mio would resume moving.
That one strike, while devastating, still wasn't enough to kill her outright through Paradise of Samsara.
"A shame… If she'd had more time to prepare before this fight, she could've crafted a bullet strong enough to completely stop Mio."
Souta sighed with regret.
"Wait, so the more reiryoku she pours into a bullet, the stronger the time-stop effect becomes? There aren't any limits?"
Tohsaka Rin joined in, raising a sharp example:
"If Kurumi kept charging a single bullet for days, letting her spirit recover in between, couldn't she eventually make one that could stop even Shiroyasha?"
Shiroyasha scoffed, crossing her arms.
"Time-stop barely works on true powerhouses. The higher your level, the more you can bend space-time on your own. How can time freeze someone like that? Celestial Star Spirits like me ignore time-stop completely."
"Yato," Souta suddenly muttered a name.
"Hm?" Shiroyasha tilted her head. "What was that?"
"Nothing," Souta shook his head.
Shiroyasha's scope of knowledge… was still too narrow.
The strength of time abilities depended entirely on their scale.
Take the most obvious case: a time-related divinity could never rival a true Principle of Time.
The name he had mentioned [Tenma Yato] was from Dies Irae, a domineering god even stronger than the King of Silver.
With his law of the "Infinite Crimson Hell," Yato could freeze the time of entire multiverses.
Against that level of time-stop, Shiroyasha would be frozen stiff, completely helpless.
"Kurumi mostly uses her time abilities for support. It's her other angel that carries the offensive edge," Kiss-Shot commented, watching the massive screen.
As for KuroNeko (Fallen Demon Cat King, Aka Gokou Ruri)…
She had completely shut down, playing ostrich.
She didn't even dare look at the screen.
It was too terrifying, her nerves couldn't handle it.
If she kept watching, she was afraid she'd break down completely.
She couldn't say a word.
She couldn't ask a thing.