Ever wondered what kind of final boss waits at the end of an apocalypse?
Devils? Angels? Something so far beyond human comprehension?
Sometimes the answer is simpler than anyone expects.
A name written in the texts of every civilization that ever existed, a constant across every mythology, every religion, every story humanity ever put to paper.
A Demon King.
[Annihilation Ray]
With a single gesture, one claw hand raised and the core in its chest burning red, a beam of concentrated light tore across the entire length of the sky in a straight line.
The atmosphere ignited where it passed, superheated air combusting into a rolling wall of flame visible from orbit.
The shockwave that followed hit like a typhoon compressed into a single point.
Everything inside the blast radius ceased to exist, reduced to charred remains where it could burn and melted into slag where it couldn't.
The horizon burned from east to west in one unbroken line. The clouds reformed visible from space as the atmosphere peeled back into vacuum.
Somewhere in the rubble below, a notification panel flickered open.
[You have suffered damage, spending 150,370 Soul Points to recover]
[Soul Points remaining: 3,601,450]
A man stood at the edge of the blast zone, half his body still bubbling back into human form.
He had dark hair, black and unnatural like a blank void, his eyes glowing with grey light.
His face was that of a man who had been forced to carry hardships too heavy to bear, tight with pain and desperation.
Around him, as far as the eye could see, and beyond, were dead bodies.
Dragons, ogres, giants, creatures pulled from every legend humanity had ever told, all of them lying still.
But most of the bodies were human.
Young, old, men and women, all of them died with their weapons in hand.
He was one of the last two who survived to the end.
"Is it ready!" He shouted into the void, but another blast sparked to life.
This time he reacted in time.
A series of translucent cards fanned across him as he sliced his scythe through them.
[Harvested Skill activated: Aegis of the Human Age [Rank: S]: Nullifies the next attack completely.]
As the card shattered, a massive golden shield materialized from empty air. Its surface was etched with scenes from human history arranged in a continuous circle, every last stand humanity had ever made carved into its face.
The scarlet beam struck it dead center and was swallowed whole, absorbed into the shield's surface without so much as a ripple before the shield cracked apart and dissolved along with the card.
Every skill stored by [Soul Harvest] could only be used once. That was its absolute rule.
He couldn't waste the opening it bought him. He teleported directly to the Demon King and swung.
"Not even a world bearer and facing me? Such insolent!" The demon king sneered, it claws hand swiped though his but it got passed him as his body turned into a translucent form and rematerialized in an instant.
His scythe expanded; the blade widening as its silver edge split open like the mouth of hell.
[Soul Eater]
He swung with full force, the blade dragging a trail of ravenous spirits behind it as it passed clean through the Demon King's body.
No physical impact, the scythe simply went through it as though the Demon King wasn't there.
Physical armor meant nothing against a strike that bypassed flesh entirely and went straight for the soul.
The Demon King's soul split in half.
The damage that landed on the soul translated directly to the body, that was how soul damage worked, perfect penetration with no exceptions.
By any measure it was a fatal hit.
But he didn't relax. His jaw tightened instead, reading the result the system gave him.
[Higher level entity detected: Skill effect reduced]
The Demon King's soul pulled itself back together.
Where a clean bisection should have been, only a thin line of dark blood appeared at its waist, little more than a graze.
The thing looked down at it with something close to mild interest, then looked back at him.
"That power, how did you obtain it?" The Demon King recognized the skill immediately, and the recognition turned to anger fast.
Its core sparked, eyes flaring red.
"Like hell I'm going to tell you!"
He dissolved himself into spirit form to dodge, but the Demon King locked the skill down before it took hold.
It looked at him and smiled, waiting for him to reappear so it could finish the skill.
"SH--"
The beam disintegrated him before the words finished leaving his mouth.
"Even if you had my old friend's power, you are still a fool for daring to face a king."
It directed the words at the man, dismissing the fierce warrior's death without even the courtesy of honoring the attempt.
"All of you people are dead, the true king of this world! Now come and face me! Accept your dimension's defeat!"
The Demon King's voice rolled across the ruined horizon.
[You have suffered damage, spending 451,210 Soul Points to recover]
[Soul Points remaining: 3,150,240]
He reformed a short distance away, pulling himself back together piece by piece.
As long as SP remained, he could die as many times as it took.
But he was still no match for the Demon King, and every point he spent was not a resource.
It was a person.
Everyone who had already given everything they had just so they could stand here at the end.
Every soul he burned through was another human life that died for them.
He didn't want to waste them.
He only did this for her to finish preparing.
"It's Queen, actually."
The voice came from the void.
Space fractured, and she stepped through the crack.
The air around her simply stopped, as if existence itself paused to acknowledge her presence.
On her chest pulsed a white core, identical to the one beating in the Demon King's chest.
She was beautiful. Long white hair that fell like silk, a face so perfect it belonged to the memorial of a goddess.
She laid her bright blue eyes on the half-naked man and smiled.
"You look pretty terrible, Rowan."
She giggled, as if the world, and him, hadn't literally been blown apart twice by the Demon King.
"I wasted 2.6 million lives, 700,000 of them our own people, just to stall for you, and you want me to be happy?!"
Rowan, a man kept alive only by the sacrifice of others, shouted back without a single care for her beauty.
Only rage filled his heart.
Before the fight between him and the Demon King even started, there had been a war, both forces grinding each other down to nothing.
He was the last one standing only because his class shone brightest when death surrounded him on all sides.
But there was no more death left to collect.
They were the last 3 lives in existence.
"You dare ignore me!"
[Annihilation Ray]
"Don't worry, I got you now!"
She smiled as her hand shot forward.
[Time Stop]
The ray froze mid-air. "Quickly! I can't hold this long!" She shouted at him.
Even powered up to the same level of being as the Demon King, she was still weaker.
"I know!"
Rowan called a card and selected a skill.
[Harvested Skill activated: Word Devourer [Rank: S]: Consumes a target into the void and converts it into energy for the user.]
A dark tear opened in the air and rushed along the frozen beam, eating it whole.
The Demon King ignored Rowan completely, its attention snapping to Orelia instead.
"So, you are the Queen of this world!"
It summoned its great sword, a dark blade that swallowed the light around it like the night sky folding in on itself.
"Orelia!!"
He shouted to warn her.
[Time Alter]
She suddenly split into four afterimages that converged on the Demon King from every direction at once.
The Demon King drove it sword in circle of death aura before stuck down.
[World Ender]
The energy detonated from the point of impact, the shockwave blasting outward in a perfect circle of destruction as the direct force shot skyward.
Tectonic plates tore open across the entire battlefield, the ground buckling and melting, turning the world into a crater of molten rock in every direction.
Three of her bodies exploded and vanished into dust.
Only one made it through, because it was never a speed technique.
She had split her future into four possible paths and committed to all of them simultaneously.
The other three were always going to die. This was simply the one that survived.
Orelia drove her sword straight into the Demon King's abdomen.
"Agh!!"
The Demon King screamed as light burst through the sky from the force of the blow, but it endured and tried smacked her away.
Then its body slowed, or she sped up; the distinction barely mattered.
[Time Dilation]
The time frame between them shifted. She slipped out of its attack range as a clock symbol materialized on the embedded sword and expanded outward in four directions around the Demon King. The core on her chest shone brightly as she smiled.
"Sorry, I'm a specialist class, not a combat class. So, I won't be the one landing the finishing blow~!"
[Time Prison]
"Yo-"
The Demon King froze solid mid-word.
Orelia looked up at the man above and cheered. "Rowan! Give it your all!"
His cards appeared, but not one at a time. They expanded endlessly, stack upon stack, spreading out in a vast circle around the frozen Demon King.
He knew his own attack alone wasn't enough. He knew a single skill couldn't penetrate something at that level.
There was only one way to do this.
The plan was, and always had been, to bet on the power of humanity.
A crown of souls materialized on his head.
The millions of cards transformed into gates, and through each one a figure stepped forward, silhouettes of dead warriors who had fought until the very end and entrusted him with their will.
Every single one of them had chosen him to carry it forward as their [Soul Reaper].
The dark sky illuminated with the souls of deceased humanity, every one of them who had faced hardship all the way to the end. Each carried the last skill entrusted to him, pushing forward against the deadlock that had befallen the world five years ago.
"If you can survive this, then we accept our defeat. But until then, face it!!"
And in that moment, the last fragment of every one of them used their ultimate skill, a skill that represented each of them as a person.
[Ultimate Skill: The Last Will of Death]
The sky lit up with the blazing light of souls burning themselves away, lighting a path forward to a future that finally existed.
[You have successfully defeated the Demon King]
[Congratulations: You Won!]