Rylen's gaze flickered between Lucien's descending silhouette and the shivering faces of his allies. Jason coughed as snow melted into blood on his broken pantser armor. Emiluna, tears in the cracks of her face paint, looked torn between relief and disbelief.
Then they saw him properly: Lucien—floating, divine flame surrounding him—descending without a sound that didn't quake the ground. Trees and frost crackled in his presence. He floated before them, hovering thirty feet above the ground like an avenging angel summoned at the brink of disaster.
For Rylen, Jason, and Emiluna, hope exploded in their hearts. In one movement, they scrambled to their feet. "Lucien," Rylen whispered, voice cracking. Jason's armor whined. "We can't— we wouldn't— thank you so so much."
Cho, Lisa, Kisuke, Kagetsu, Ayumu—all of them turned their heads, in complete disbelief. Karu cracked a small and faint smile so brittle only exhaustion held her back. A dozen other Nightguards stared, helpless.
The rest: tentative, scared, uncertain—had Lucien betrayed them? Hunted them? Or would he now cleanse Reiken's final threat?
But even their questions froze and vanished when Lucien's gaze locked onto the colossal beast regrowing before them. Frostjaw Reiken heaved, its second form unfolding more and more: armor-dense scales bulged with raw magic. It rose ten feet taller than before. The ice aura burned brighter. Reiken's roar shattered the stillness.
"Stay back everyone now," Lucien commanded, voice calmer than steel. Every head whipped around toward him. He hovered higher, focus absolute on Reiken.
The ground split at Reiken's feet. They heard the ice settle, magic buzzing like broken electricity. Without a moment's hesitation, Reiken launched a five mile radius' worth of arctic blast—forest glassing into crystalline pillars and the outskirts of Tokyo beginning to freeze with lethal speed.
Lucien spoke, but no one heard him—Purgeflame glowed in his hands. White-blue energy arced outward. It struck ground and monster alike.
A miraculous phenomenon: Total Venom Erasure. The field dissolved toxins that were in the ice, evil magic or demonic taint in the air, neutralizing every bit of poison Reiken might have dripped out of his mouth. Mini Reikens—dozens of strong Level 3 ice beasts—dissolved mid-screech. The air shimmered with cleansing fire. Trees hissed, ice cracked, steam rose from snow.
Lucien remained perfect. Venom dissolved midair before touching him.
As the field retracted, another layer of Purgeflame came: Venom Resistance. He felt energy surge. Any toxins swallowed now converted into cleansing fuel. He grinned, eyes crackling violet.
Reiken roared again in anger, forehead glowing, and spat dark venom irrepressibly. Lucien's eyes flared: Spiritflame Reaction, he flared Purgeflame reflexively. The maw's venom folded back like a serpent's bite, obliterated in flaming retribution.
The enormous beast staggered but steadied itself. Its defense field, strengthened beyond before, glowed iridescent.
Lucien surged forward towards it.
He phased forward near-light-speed, fist glowing with divine aura. He punched Reiken's side—an impact like planets crumbling. Yet the beast staggered but did not even crumble a little bit. Reiken swung its tail at him. Lucien went intangible, ice cutting through where he stood—but he flickered through it, invisible for sixty seconds.
The fight had begun in earnest.
Mini-Reikens descended in waves, but Cho, Lisa, Kisuke, Karu, Kagetsu, Ayumu intervened and stopped them. They fought them off together with everything that they had left to protect Lucien. Lisa wielded crackling axes, bending light into illusions to confuse wolves. Jason smashed rock with kinetic hammers of muscle and armor. Kisuke flashed-stepped, nunchucks exploding on contact with those monsyters. Kagetsu's Silent Launcher fired precise neurotoxin blades. Ayumu's gravity wells crushed lesser monsters like bugs.
Rylen darted around Lucien's perimeter, healing and supporting with abjuration and reality-warping shields. His blades glowed venom-purple but he couldn't challenge Reiken directly without Lucien's help.
Still, the strain showed—they were fighting a losing battle as Reiken raged on and was stronger then all of them, regenerating shards of ice and summoning more minions.
After 10 minutes:
Absolute Cryogenesis – The monster's ice field expanded endlessly. By minute ten, the ocean around Tokyo Bay was visibly freezing more and more.
Glacier Pulse – A ground-pounding attack that caused tectonic ice fissures across the Kanto region. Chiba trembled. Even Yokohama began their evacuation process.
Icelance Ascendance – It conjured spears of compressed glacial mana, each sharper than diamond. A single strike leveled a mountain ridge west of the battlefield.
Reiken began reshifting again—its defense fluxing cold and unnatural. The magic field mutated to something stronger. Even Lucien's combined arsenal—telekinesis, x-ray vision to expose core weaknesses, super strength slams—struggled to breach the shield Reiken had formed. He phased again, this time to block an ice shard that destroyed the twenty remaining trees at once. Invisibility used, growth of magical healing layers: Regeneration one, two, vanishing wounds that were created by Reiken´s attacks. He pressed forward with flight, battering Reiken with blasts of telekinetic debris, hammering at cracks the size of his fist.
Reiken pivoted with lightning reflexes for something that big, frosted claws slashed the air. Lucien dodged at lightspeed—two regenerate wounds later, controlling temperature flux so his body didn't freeze or burn to the attacks he was dodging. He unleashed Purgeflame bolts that exploded across the shield in brilliant white, but still the monster stood.
Lucien locked eyes with Rylen and the others that were fighting—their were small cracks forming in the magic defence field of Forstjaw. They watched as Lucien continued to fight.
The fight shifted out of the forest toward Miura's coast. Lucien dragged Reiken along beneath thunderclouds. Each step cost them frost and a trembling earth.
Sirens wailed in nearby towns. News drones buzzed overhead, emergency broadcast feeds fired up.
The clash between Lucien and Frostjaw Reiken erupted into headlines in real time all over the world. As the battlefield advanced from forest toward Tokyo's fringes, media drones—governmental, rogue, civilian—swarmed overhead, transmitting live feeds across networks. TV screens, phones, and public terminals flickered with frames of a colossal ice behemoth battling a single figure bathed in divine radiance. Within minutes, the world watched.
Breaking News: Beast vs. DemonBoy
"Live coverage from Miura coast... Is that—is that the most wanted person in the world. Lucien? The Traitor-DemonBoy? Facing off against a reincarnated thirty‑five‑foot Dinosaur creature!"
Footage couldn´t keep up with Lucien hurtling at near‑light speed, they only could see a blur of purple-gold flame meeting glimmering ice armor—chilling, awe‑inspiring.
Citizens froze in living rooms, ramen stalls, and train platforms. Confused. Some recoiled in fear—broadcast recaps of "Class One Global Threat." Others watched in disbelief and faith: was this the world's salvation? Or its doom?
Social media erupted in mere seconds. #KillTheDemonBoy trended within minutes. #LucienOurSavior emerged defiantly in counterstreams .Both factions shared angles—some edited to show potential mass destruction, others highlighting Lucien shielding and defending civilians or stopping Reiken from advancing further inland too kill everyone.
By the time Reiken neared Tokyo's edges, panic-quake hit. Authorities scrambled evacuation sirens. The live feed turned into an unbroken, frenetic web‑cam into chaos: waves of runestone ice ripping three‑mile swaths, darkening Tokyo's northern districts in metallic frost.
Lucien kept him moving to the spot that he wanted it to be—no forest would be left standing here. Each punch, telekinetic shove, or Purgeflame burst deflected shockwaves, held back icy waves, detonated frozen shards tagged as hard as armor. Miura's beaches incinerated in his wake. Villagers destroyed and fled—some captured in blown‑stills, others enveloped in warm clouds of steam as Reiken's hold faltered by Lucien's flames.
Public Voices: Shout of Faith or Fear
Faction 1: Supporters"He's containing and fighting it! If he were evil, the ice storm would be Tokyo, not Miura."
"Look—three missiles of Purgeflame just shattered the containment field. He's saving us again, not destroying."
"That wasn't a monster attack; it was divine intervention."
Faction 2: Opponents
"That's exactly how a villain operates: 'hero' mask but wielding ultimate power. He's controlling our entire existence right now."
"See how Forstjaw attacks are near civilian zones? Lucien brought it there to kill us."
"This is a false flag. He's performing for us on a live stage."
Global networks chimed in—Asian allies, American commentators, European analysts—debating, forecasting, fear‑mongering. The prime ministeral emergency council debated whether this was an act of war, or an act of god.
Across the Pacific ocean, "Lucien Watch" dashboards listed timelines, timestamps, predicted his potential next moves. A hesitant question repeated among anchors and civilians alike: Is this a redemption story, or the start of something bigger something apocalyptic?
The Battlefield: Coastline and Rising Tension
With each mile traveled and leaving nothing behind but just ruins, a symphony of destruction grew. Tokyo's north district entered total freeze-mode; commuter trains shattered via ice-lance impacts. Reiken ferried its arcane power openly, whipping snowstorms 20 miles wide, biting coastal towns with continental-grade cold. CNN-equivalent reported "plume of deep frost reaching out to the Philippines—icy winds forecasting as far as Guam and even California."
In the meantime, Lucien pressed Reiken onward—past Toyokawa, along the Miura Peninsula, south toward Ōshima. He had to move it before it would destroy everything. Evacuation corridors opened, citizens retreated with help from emergency nav drones—many guided by broadcast arrows highlighting Lucien's passage as if trail of salvation.
Internally, the Nightguard squad tried to follow him. Cho's speed and her revolvers fired through gravity corridors created by Ayumu's forging; Kagetsu's afterimages slowed mini Reikens behind them. But Reiken was consuming them – fallen shells of ice warriors strewn in swamps and rumbling Pacific waves.
Their breath came in raspy exhaustion.
Emiluna healed every team‑mate she could reach with her powers. Jason knelt, fists splayed in snow and steam—ready to recharge his kinetic pulse. Rylen hovered on an icy pillar, dual-blades shining faintly, aura slivers of abjuration crawling across rubble.
Through every barrage of ice spears, Reiken found unseen weaknesses in the ground—solid rock turned brittle. Panda islands shattered to battlements of white.
People across Tokyo went comepletly silent, watching: "It's destroying towns—but he's stopping it from hitting people and taking those attacks on by himself." Some prayed for his success. Some chanted for a sword or jet to shoot him down. He lived… and he died—with our eyes on him.
Countdown: 20 Minutes Into the Fight.
Twenty minutes had gone by on the top‑right overlay of screeners and phone views. Lucien had used both Invisibility charges now; stricken monitors couldn't track when he vanished. He had invoked Invulnerability once already to stop a continent‑scale ice blast's disc, then reappeared with his divine fist glowing. Blue Purgeflame swept a raft of towns, clearing windows with scorching touch—but still Reiken's aura regrew and became stronger every time.
Northern municipalities evacuated already, broken highways buckled and were destroyed comepletly. First instances of panic in Reiken's wake—though Lucien guided survivors, handing out warmth shards, picking people up, protecting from collapsing frost.
"And look—he's carrying someone under rubble to safety…"Public sentiment shifted. The news anchors swapped fear for "miracle worker" murmurs. Governments issued statements: "Remain calm; follow evacuation routes; we are monitoring, do not provoke this force."
Lucien's single focus remained frost‑titan and coast‑wave. He flew with it. Each time Reiken tried to beam ice‑straight at Tokyo, Lucien intercepted with tangle of telekinetic force pulled forward, flinging it to somewhere no one would be harmed.
Now near Miura's southern bay, Reiken slowed down. The ground shook; the cold hissed. Lucien knew he'd achieved enough clarity: the battlefield had been shifted; civilians spared—the battle entering the deep waters now. He knew it was almost time.
He'd bought himself time—and loaded Cosmic Punch would arrive in another ten minutes.
Lucien's message echoed on-screen in moments of calm, despite tears freezing on migrating silhouettes:
"I won't let him kill my world… not today, not ever."
Behind the camera, viewers froze—some applauded, others didn´t know how to react. A single sentence hammered through feeds worldwide:"Lucien, the Demon Vessel, could yet be our savior we need."
Izu Ōshima burned beneath a ceiling of stormlight.
The battle had dragged into its final stretch—twenty-nine minutes of devastation, of continent-shaking fury and rage. What once began as a clash of beasts had escalated into a war between divine will and elemental apocalypse.
Lucien stood atop the shattered peak of Miharayama, the island's sleeping volcano. He had no clothes left. Frost clung to every fiber of his exposed skin, yet he didn't shiver in fear. His left eye bled softly down his cheek, glowing with residual Purgeflame light. The other tracked Reiken with divine calculation.
Frostjaw Reiken was beyond monstrous now—he was legend incarnate.
His body, forty feet tall and now double-plated in frozen obsidian, pulsed with inner storms. Every roar birthed micro-hurricanes in the region. The crater of the volcano was now a frozen battlefield—one Reiken had shaped like a cathedral of death, sharp ice spirals jutting from the ground like spears, each infused with magic that warped light itself.
The air temperature had dropped so severely that even a big part of the Pacific ocean had frozen in jagged plates. News channels analyzed that about 30% of the Pacific ocean was frozen by Forstjaw Reiken. Ice bridges formed out toward the coastline. Miura was coated in frost. Tokyo trembled.
And Lucien was still standing after everything he went through.
But barely.
He'd burned through every trump card in his arsenal.
Invisibility: gone.
Invulnerability: gone.
Three regenerations: already used. Only two left.
Flight: still active, but slower then usual, no where near light speed.
X-ray, Telekinesis, Super Strength, Purgeflame: still usable, but weakened drastically.
Cosmic Punch: 29 minutes and 40 seconds loaded.
He just needed 20 more seconds.
But Reiken knew that he had to finish it here and now.
The beast's eyes—ice blue, ancient, intelligent—narrowed as it lowered its massive head and exhaled a breath that froze the atmosphere into diamond shards. The crater cracked under the weight of his killing intent.
Reiken lunged towards Lucien which reflexies were weakened. The sky rippled.
But Lucien darted sideways with the speed he had left, barely avoiding a slash of Reiken's tail that shattered the summit and sent a wall of ice down the mountain's southern slope.
The volcano growled beneath them, disturbed by the magnitude of the blows.
Lucien wheeled mid-air, dragging up a wave of volcanic rocks with his mind. He hurled them like missiles—each stone amplified by telekinesis and blessed with Purgeflame. They struck Reiken's side, and for the first time, his armor cracked.
The beast screamed.
Lucien used the opening to dive beneath it, slamming into Reiken's underbelly with a full-bodied uppercut. The sheer force sent a shockwave down the island's spine. A crack formed in Reiken's body, but it sealed almost instantly with magic ice.
It wasn't enough. None of it was, everything he threw was almost nothing to comapre with the power Forstjaw had.
Lucien dropped to his knees on the fractured ground, panting, fists steaming. Frost bit at his lungs with every breath he took. One more minute. Just one. But Reiken gave him no time to rest.
The monster raised both clawed mini arms and slammed them into the earth—sending glacial eruptions skyward. Icy spires tore through the air like spears.
Lucien screamed, "No!"
He flew upward, spinning wildly, dodging three, four, five icy lances—until the sixth pierced straight through his left side.
Blood splattered the frozen stone. Steam rose.
He dropped, staggered, hit the ground, rolled, and rose again—his body glowing with regeneration.
One left.
Lucien clenched his jaw. This has ends soon. Otherwise everybody dies.
He didn't speak. Didn't flinch. He moved.
He was miraculously faster then before.
He vanished mid-sprint and reappeared behind Reiken's leg, driving both palms into the tendons with the full force of his super strength. The limb bent unnaturally—Reiken stumbled, just for a second. But that was enough
That second was all Lucien needed.
He launched himself high into the sky. The stars above had emerged through the parted clouds. Moonlight glinted off his bloodied skin. He hovered, thousands of feet above the crater, eyes blazing white-blue.
Reiken snarled and looked up.
Lucien pointed one burning hand toward the beast. The other—his right hand—began to tremble. A sound echoed in the silence. Not thunder. Not flame.
A hum. Like the song of collapsing galaxies.
The air rippled.
From Lucien's right hand, a flame burst forth—not just fire, but something deeper, purer, more cosmic than anything this world had ever seen. It wasn't color—it was concept. A fusion of purple, gold, white, and something beyond mortal comprehension.
Cosmic Punch was ready and loaded.
His entire body became a unit of a divine being. A miniature sun formed around his hand. Energy snapped in arcs across his skin. The pressure cratered the atmosphere, and the island shuddered as if the world knew what was coming.
Reiken roared up at him, but Lucien didn't flinch one bit. He was ready
He hovered in silence, arm glowing, wings flared, frost curling at his ankles—half-devil, half-god.
His voice was soft. Icy. Clearer than truth.
"You're not even the worst thing I've seen.