BOOM.

Grey felt like his fists were shattered on impact, his knuckles meeting the Dormaji’s. His heels dug into the earth, peeling splinters of ground splitting off as he slid back.

"Protect them." Grey said to Amunet. But he didn’t have to, she was already acting.

"We should be helping him," Nebb said, getting a bit agitated.

"Probably, but he has the same thick skull problem these stone idiots have." Amunet muttered.

"What is he trying to prove?" Dusk growled out as he was dragged away by tendrils of darkness.

Thi Lan’s leg was healing, but it wasn’t completely over yet. It would take a much longer while before that was possible. So, she could only accept being dragged away as well.

"I don’t know." Amunet said. "That he has the biggest dick?"

Thi Lan didn’t say anything, but she watched Grey’s back as he met the Dormaji head on, understanding something in that moment that Amunet either didn’t, or didn’t want to waste time explaining.

Back on Earth, she had always been an assertive woman, always involved in some form of activism, and when she got older, she tried her hands at politics as well, feeling the rotten infestation of it all.

During those years, she had felt the weight of what it meant to be a leader, what kind of responsibility came with it. And she had realized that sometimes being a leader meant doing the gritty stuff no one else wanted to do.

No one would want to follow someone who just stood from a high perch and handed out orders as they pleased.

Such a person would never truly be respected.

She had never wanted to sign the contract, but she had no choice but to tie herself down in such a way. It was the only way she could protect the humans that were here from being wiped out, and protect from the collateral damage everyone else would face.

Grey was doing the same... just in a much, much different way.

He didn’t just want to win. Like he said...

He wanted to prove a point.

BANG.

The arms of the Dormaji were shredded to pieces. It suddenly fell forward, its body pitching ahead without the same momentum to hold it back.

Thi Lan’s eyes opened wide, but Grey had already taken a step forward, flaming white-gold fires raging around him. They were so dense they billowed out from the corners of his mouth and his eyes, a span of flaming red-gold butterfly wings appearing behind him.

Grey’s body pulsed with circuits and crimson veins.

He activated his Dark Solveign Frame himself.

Then he used his Bringer of Light gloves to forcefully activate his Last Paladin Frame at the same time.

His fist rocketed forward, his steaming breath leaving trails of death in his wake.

BANG.

His fist blasted through the Dormaji’s chest. Blood spurted as he ripped it to pieces.

His mouth opened wide and he sucked, his jaw unhinged. Large amounts of blood cycloned into his belly, erupting like nuclear bombs going off in a series of cascading booms.

The stone of the Dormaji fell to ash.

Grey took a step forward, his blood falling from his knuckles.

At the moment, it was hard to tell if he was angel or demon. His wings had a touch of natural beauty to them, but they flickered with a raging chaos at the same time.

Every breath he took came with more flaming white gold from the corner of his mouth, but the gorgeous, resplendent color could only make one feel holy and purified.

His eyes blazed with so much spilling and spreading gold that it was hard to see his eyes at all behind them. And yet, when you caught them at the right angle, you would see those fiery, crimson irises that formed the basis of it all.

One thing was clear, though.

He would steamroll anything that stood before him.

The eyes of the second Dormaji hardly had the time to widen before Grey had taken a second step.

He shot forward like he was fired from a rail gun, a blitzing pace that combusted the air and shredded everything in his path apart, not even leaving the Dormaji time to blink.

The alien slapped his palms together, a roar escaping his lips as large plumes of earth formed arcs that smashed down from above.

They turned molten the moment they crossed into Grey’s domain. The rocks forming lava-like veins, what parts of it that survived becoming a soot-like black.

Grey grabbed out, the highly compressed rock shattering on impact, and then splitting as though countless white-gold lines of blades had cut it into a million pieces.

Out from within the mess of molten rock, Grey pulled out a spear of his own creation and he stomped a foot down that cratered the ground.

The land beneath him caved in, compressing down a full three meters in depth and 10 meters in diameter in a flashing instant of time.

Grey, however, continued to hover in the air almost as though an invisible pressure was radiating down from his feet toward the earth below.

Then his torso flexed, his hips pivoting, his arm rocketing out like a slingshot. If one slowed his elbow down, the rippling muscles and wave of power would have shattered the sound barrier alone.

BOOM.

A line of white gold left his hand, reaching the Dormaji in less than an instant of time.

Yet, it only took a single step back.

The Dormaji was stunned, and then let out a small, relieved laugh. The attack, it had looked so powerful, but to make him only take a single step...

He froze.

Slowly, he looked down at his chest.

Through it, he could see the blazing line left behind him, a spear of stone cutting apart everything it touched...

Including his heart.

The Dormaji’s eyes started to dim, but not before Grey appeared in front of him.

Reaching a hand into his chest, Grey clawed down on the Dormaji’s flesh, sucking everything dry.