Lilia, clad in golden light, felt an immense amount of energy coursing through her.
This was the greatest ability she had obtained and allowed her to borrow power that was well beyond her.
Then while the Archdevil, who had just undergone a fiendish transformation, was watching her in bewilderment, Lilia disappeared from his view.
In a flash she jumped up towards Rolthor and delivered a punch straight to his face.
Feeling the danger coming his way, the Archdevil snapped out of his daze and swung his newly acquired mace to intercept Lilia. But was stunned again by what happened.
Lilia easily evaded the attack in midair and flew right up to the Archdevil and delivered a blow square to his face.
As the impact hit him and he felt his bones shatter and his teeth get knocked out, the Archdevil could not understand what had happened.
The restriction of this floor should have made it so that no one without his permission could fly or maneuver in the air in any way.
Yet Lilia had just changed her momentum while airborne as easily as she breathed.
It should have been completely impossible for her to go against a function of the system that governed this floor, but the absolute power seemed to have stopped working.
This was simply how absurd Lilia's Divine Might race ability was.
Even the restriction of the special dungeon no longer had any hold on her.
Blow after blow Lilia smashed her fists into the huge body of the Archdevil, and each time she connected she shattered bones and ruptured organs.
Her attacks were relentless and unstoppable no matter what the Archdevil tried.
When he attacked, she simply moved too fast to be hit, when he tried blocking, she would move to an unguarded area instead. If he attempted to put up a mana barrier around himself it broke in one blow, and even omni directional attacks were brushed aside and easily dealt with.
Nothing the Archdevil did even after receiving greater power by signing his soul away to a higher entity was able to stop Lilia.
While her Divine Might ability was active, she was all but invincible.
Each one of her attacks scored big and by the time ten seconds had passed the Archdevil had been turned into a bloody pulp.
However, with every second that went by, Lilia became more frantic.
She continued hitting with all her power to try and finish off the Archdevil, but he was incredibly tough in his own right, and by solely guarding his head he managed to withstand Lilia assault.
Feeling her body giving out under the strain of her own power, Lilia knocked the Archdevil out of the air and to the ground and followed up with her strongest attack skill.
'Hammer blow.'
With both her hands interlocked Lilia brought them down together and slammed down against the Archdevil's torso.
The ground under him shattered and turned to dust and his body rippled like a lake that just had a large rock thrown into it.
Blood burst out from his body like a tomato that had just been crushed and his bones shattered into thousands of pieces
Still, with his brain not destroyed the Archdevil clung to life and his abundance of mana and high speed regeneration went to work on fixing the immeasurable amount of damage he had taken.
All of his strength though was now gone, and his arms which he had been using to protect his head fell limply to his side
Lilia only needed to now deliver the final blow. But she could no longer move.
The instant after the eleventh second she had used Divine Might, her body stopped responding and she felt her blood vessels burst and her bones that had barely been holding up cracked in multiple places.
A waterfall of her own blood began pouring out of her body, and in an instant, she was in a similar shape as the Archdevil was after taking all of her attacks.
Her Divine Might ability was simply too much for her to handle for an extended period of time and the strain it caused was even greater than all the damage she had taken earlier.
Her normal limit, which she had tested a couple of times, was around seven seconds. Any longer had proved to leave her with injures and horrible fatigue that took days to go away, no matter what type of medicine she was given.
Except this time, she had pushed well beyond what she could safely handle and held onto the power for eleven seconds in a bid to finish the Archdevil.
Now she was having to suffer the consequences of using the power she borrowed that was greater than the confines of the system that governed Mirrion.
Like a puppet whose strings were cut Lilia's broken body fell over, and she lay unmoving on top of the similarly broken Archdevil.
Yet while neither were dead and in similar conditions, the Archdevil was overall in the better position.
His wounds were quickly being fixed by his regeneration, but Lilia was barely recovering at all. The aftereffects of her Divine Might ability slowing down her naturally recover greatly.
Her life was not in danger, but she would not be getting up anytime soon.
The Archdevil on the other hand likely only needed a couple dozen minutes to recover despite the immense amount of damage he had taken.
In fact, he focused his energy solely on his right arm to get it to be able to move faster.
This meant that his heavily damaged body would need more time, but his only goal right now was to finish off Lilia.
When he finally gained the use of his arm again, he slowly pulled it up and creeped his way towards Lilia.
His plan was to crush her to death the moment he got her in his grasp. But his hand never reached her.
Once he was only a few feet away an amethros scythe jammed into the top of his hand and into his torso. Pinning his one moving limb down.
"Looks like I made it in time." Marcus said as he cradled Lilia in one arm and pressed his scythe down with the other.
A soft white glow quickly escaped from his body and enveloped Lilia, and while it was not much, it helped to slowly increase the rate at which Lilia's wounds healed.
"How!? You were down and weakened to the point of being unable to move. There is no way you could have recovered your strength in such a short amount of time!" The Archdevil roared with blood still spilling out of his mouth.
By all counts Marcus should not have been able to move, and certainly not be able to swing around his scythe at full force.
However, he seemed to no longer be out of strength or even weakened by the backlash of using Soul Burst.
Of course, the answer was simple, Marcus had destroyed himself.
When he saw the Archdevil receive power from an outside source and come back even stronger, Marcus made the decision to activate his revival unique skill even if it meant essentially killing himself.
From his past experience against the Doomsday Worm, he knew that the negative effects of using Soul Burst were reset when he came back. So, by activating Deny Destruction and immediately reappearing in perfect condition, he was able to fight again.
The process had taken him a while though, since it had been difficult for him to amass the power he needed to end himself. But once he had, he was able to enact his plan and come to Lilia's rescue at the last moment.
"Though it seems that I had no need to." Marcus said as she cast his gaze over to where a certain pair were waiting.
A couple seconds after Lilia had activated her Divine Might ability, Quillon and Lyra had arrived after meeting up themselves.
Even without Marcus recklessly destroying himself to restore his form, they would have been able to help Lilia and finish off the Archdevil.
Light seemed to leave the Archdevil's eyes as he realized he was beaten and surrounded by enemies. But a moment later hope seemed to arrive.
Another soul from one of his subordinates came flying towards him.
"Ha, this is not the end, my minions' powers shall revitalize me."
"Like hell I am going to let that happened again." Marcus said with an unimpressed expression.
Right before the soul reached the Archdevil, Marcus used his spectral arm to pluck it out of the air and drag it away.
A look of absolute disbelief came over the Archdevil's face as his emotions took another rapid turn.
In fact, when he caught sight of Marcus' spectral arm, he saw that another of his subordinate's soul was already in its grasp.
There was absolutely nothing the Archdevil could do other than pray for some of the other devils to appear and save him.
No other miracle happened for the Archdevil though, and all he could do was watch as Marcus walled up his broken body and place his scythe at his throat.
Without saying anything else Marcus removed the Archdevil's head from his body. Then to make sure no other recovery was possible, incinerated it with fire magic.
Rolthor's head destroyed, and his life ended, the rest of the hulking form of the Archdevil turned to black mist and disappeared.
All that was left was his soul which promptly vanished away. Claimed by whatever entity he had signed it away to in a last desperate attempt to survive.
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