[Present.]

​"DIE!!!"

​The Dragon’s roar shattered the sound barrier. Its massive, rune-carved battleaxe eclipsed the sky, arriving directly in front of Jessica and dropping down to cleave her broken form in two.

​"Hehehe, this dragon is too cute."

​"....?!"

​A chilling, playful voice echoed through the ruined plaza, bypassing the chaotic noise of the battlefield. Before the mutated Dragon could even process the foreign energy signature, a concentrated, hyper-dense energy blast smashed into its armored flank with the force of a falling meteor, violently sending it flying backward, away from Jessica and the remaining students.

​"...?!"

​They all turned around, their combat-fatigued eyes staring up at the ash-choked sky. Suspended in the air was a demon girl. She had flawless, porcelain-fair skin, glowing red eyes, and flowing crimson hair that moved as if underwater. She descended from the sky with the absolute grace of an apex predator.

​"Another monster?!!" Nirvana exclaimed in sheer disbelief, her grip tightening on her shattered arm as she anticipated their final execution.

​"Monster? You dare call me that?" Vespina’s playful aura vanished instantly, replaced by the suffocating killing intent of a Nine-Star entity. She glared down at the students:

"You should be lucky my Master wants you guys alive, I would have drained all your vitality." Vespina snapped at them, her prehensile tail twitching in annoyance.

​"...?!"

"Master?"

​The Sword Academy’s team was completely dumbfounded. They stared at the terrifying demon girl above them, then turned their heads to the Lv500 Dragon gatekeeper—who was groaning and still struggling to get back to its feet—and then turned back to the demon girl again. A single, unified thought appeared in their traumatized minds:

​’Who the hell is the Master of this new monster?’

​On the ground, Jessica exhaled a long, shaky breath. The violent, chaotic demonic energy that had temporarily hijacked her core faded away into nothingness, leaving her physically and spiritually drained. Her spinning Mythic eye powered down, its complex geometric irises closing back up.

​"Thank you for your help." She said, her voice strained but maintaining a thread of a captain’s dignity.

​"Seems not all of you are stupid." Vespina licked her lips, her red eyes gleaming as she lightly landed on the cracked ground, her feet making no sound.

​"I wonder why mere Lv300 and below wants to fight such a Dragon, what were you thinking?" She asked, her tone dripping with genuine condescension as she began walking slowly towards the recovering Dragon.

​"Demon?" The mutated Dragon stood up, heavily shaking its massive head to clear the concussion. It gripped its battleaxe, staring at Vespina in bewilderment.

​"What are you doing here? And who can be your Master? Is it a master from the Third World, or the fourth?" It asked, trying to map her energy signature to the known geopolitical factions.

​Vespina paused, tilted her head to the side like a curious child, and after some seconds, she shook her head dismissively.

​"My Master gave me the privilege to run wild. I am free to kill every single monster in all the cities... If my guess is correct, you are also a monster." She said, sensually licking her sharp claws, preparing to harvest its vitality.

​Nirvana watched the exchange with a frown. ’She hates the name, Monster, but will call every other thing monster...’ Nirvana thought with gritted teeth, wiping the blood from her cheek, and turned to Jessica:

​’But why did she back down? Yes, I know we can’t defeat that monster, but backing down means we lost all the third objective points.’ She thought, her ambition blinding her to their near-annihilation. Academy points dictated their future ranking, their resources, and their survival in the long term.

​"Let’s go! We already lost ten members in this battle, we can’t stay here anymore... Leave the rest to her." Jessica commanded, forcefully turning around and sheathing her sword.

​"What? What about the points?" Nirvana asked in surprised, her voice pitching up as she was holding her bleeding arm.

​Jessica stopped and shot her a look of absolute, cold authority.

​"Look at you?! You can’t even fight. 50% of our team died here, and we also lost our Healer. We need to go and meet up with the others, so the remaining healers can heal your injuries. If you plan to stay back, it’s all up to you." She said coldly, stating the brutal reality of their raid statistics. And without waiting for Nirvana’s reply, she ran away into the ruined streets of Brooklyn. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

​The remaining eight survivors stared at Nirvana for a brief second, calculating the odds, and quickly followed behind Jessica. They were all critically injured, and absolutely none wanted to stay back and watch the catastrophic battle between the two realm-shattering creatures.

​Nirvana stared at Vespina’s back, her teeth clenched in bitter, helpless anger: ’I will get stronger! I must get stronger, this will never repeat itself!!’ She thought, searing the humiliation into her memory, and finally followed behind her retreating team.

​Vespina looked over her shoulder, staring at the group of students who were running away, terrified, not even looking back once.

​"Phew, at least I won’t mistakenly drain them... A lot of things can go wrong." She muttered to herself, relieved she wouldn’t accidentally violate her new Master’s strict orders regarding collateral damage.

​"Are you ignoring me?!!" The Dragon yelled, its pride as a gatekeeper wounded. A massive, gravitational wave of abyssal energy burst out from it, spreading all over the plaza and crushing the surrounding debris into dust.

​Vespina slowly turned to him with a deep, bored frown: "You are annoying."

​She stretched both delicate hands towards the towering dragon. The next moment, thousands of razor-thin, vitality-draining tentacles shot out from her palms, heading towards it with insane, unreactable speed.

​"You evil demon!!" The dragon yelled in panic, desperately slashing its heavy axe at the incoming wave of tentacles.

​"Evil?! You just killed ten youngsters, and you called me Evil?! Although I have killed more than a million Humans, but still you are the evil one!" She said without an ounce of shame.

___

​[Somewhere in Brooklyn.]

​The Sword Academy team kept on moving through the shattered urban landscape, not slowing down their pace, desperate to put as many grid coordinates between them and the plaza as possible.

​"Captain! What were you murmuring back then? That you won’t let it happen again?" Andrew asked, his breathing ragged as he was moving beside Jessica, trying to make sense of the anomaly.

​"What are you talking about?" Jessica asked with a slight frown, her tone devoid of any deception, only pure, untainted confusion.

​"Huh? Didn’t you remember? You kept yelling, saying you won’t let it happen again, then demonic energy surrounded you, and you injured that monster." He narrated, his hands gesturing to emphasize the sheer scale of the power she had just unleashed.

​"Demonic energy? What are you talking about?" Jessica asked in genuine confusion, slowing in her tracks.

​Her question acted like a physical blow, stunning the remaining group into dead silence. They stared at her clear, uncorrupted eyes, dumbfounded.

​"Seems the Captain lost her memories after that battle." They muttered among themselves.

___

​[Galaxy Fall - Second World.]

​[Sword Empire’s Deepest Chamber In the Palace.]

The chamber was bathed in oppressive shadows, heavy with the scent of ancient incense and condensed spirit energy.

​In the dark room, a figure cloaked in cosmic fabrics raised his head, staring intensely at a complex array of glowing soul stones levitating before him. One specific stone, tied directly to a mortal vessel on Earth, was violently fluctuating between a brilliant golden hue and a corrupted, demonic crimson.

​"She almost regained herself," The figure muttered, his voice echoing with centuries of calculations. "Luckily; I was quick enough to inject demonic energy into her core again, and block those memories..."

​He waved a hand, weaving a complex seal of suppression that stabilized the fluctuating stone back into a dormant state. He had engineered her new strength, and he refused to let the original persona overwrite the obedient pawn he had cultivated.

​"As long as she doesn’t get stimulated again, all will be well." The figure muttered, a chilling finality in his tone, slowly lowering his hooded head again into the shadows of the Second World.