This…
this isn’t right, is it?
Inside the sunlit dormitories of St.
Freya Academy, a white-haired, gold-eyed girl stared blankly at the holographic combat invitation hovering in front of her face.
Residue from her massive breakfast still clung to the corner of her mouth, her lips shining with a thin layer of oil.
She was currently dressed in a bizarre blue and white swimsuit skirt.
A single, semi-transparent blue energy wing sprouted from the left side of her back, while three floating blue parasols hovered dutifully on her right.
‘This really isn’t right,’Kiana thought, blinking at the screen.’Why is he sending me a combat invitation?’
She simply could not understand why the newest believer in the chat group wanted to drag her into a fight.
Wasn’t the Arena a feature specifically designed for group members who had actual, blood-boiling conflicts to settle?
She had absolutely zero grudges against this guy.
[Kiana: Human!
What do you think you are doing?
Are you trying to provoke me, the Queen?]
[Dump Truck Hater: No, this is simply my wish.
I want to experience a fight with the Queen.]
[Handsome Big Liar: Alas, the eternal struggle of power levels.]
[Quantum Beheading Barbarian: Could it be that in other worlds, choosing to follow someone depends entirely on the physical strength of the person being followed?]
[Wiš’adel: Pretty much.
If you can’t even beat me in a fight, why would you be worth following?]
[Furina: Is…
is that how it usually works?]
[Quantum Beheading Barbarian: Aren’t you the Hydro Archon specifically because you are the strongest person over there?]
How should I know?
I am just a normal human!
Deep within a luxurious, velvet-draped room on the top floor of the Palais Mermonia, Furina screamed internally, her hands gripping the edges of her ornate desk.
The multiversal chat group was usually a wonderful escape.
It was the one place where she didn’t have to constantly maintain her exhausting, flawless facade as a deity.
Everyone in the group—with the glaring exception of Wiš’adel—was incredibly easy to get along with.
But questions like this always spiked her heart rate.
She was only pretending to be the Hydro Archon.
The true Hydro Archon was Focalors, and if they were talking about raw, undisputed strength in Fontaine, that title belonged entirely to Neuvillette.
[Furina: Of course it is me.
Could it possibly be Neuvillette?]
[Dump Truck Hater: Her Majesty the Queen, regardless of whether you win or lose, I will cover all your meals for the next entire week.
You can eat absolutely as much as you want.]
[Kiana: For real?]
[Dump Truck Hater: For real.
I can also help you buy twenty volumes of manga, plus some other premium snacks on the side.]
[Kiana: Deal.
Today I will personally show you what it means for the Queen to descend!]
[System Prompt: Kiana has entered the Arena.]
Reading the glowing chat group notification, Frez allowed a thoroughly amused smile to touch his lips.
Everything was falling perfectly into place.
Kiana really was far too easy to bribe.
He rolled his shoulders, stretching his neck until it popped.
He fully activated the Limitless, feeling the familiar, absolute distortion of space wrap around his body like a second skin, and stepped forward into the Arena.
The Arena’s environmental setting was entirely up to the participants, and Kiana had immediately selected a tropical seaside.
The endless blue surface of the ocean merged smoothly with the horizon.
Not a single cloud marred the sky for ten thousand miles, and a gentle, salty sea breeze rustled the broad leaves of the scattered coconut trees.
Gentle waves pushed silver-white foam onto the pristine beach, quietly receding to leave shallow, glittering water marks across the sand.
Frez stood casually on the beach.
Opposite him, Kiana had completely discarded her swimsuit.
She was now clad in a striking, interlaced black and white long dress.
Opaque black stockings wrapped tightly around her slender, perfectly straight legs, and she wore sharp high heels while floating effortlessly a few feet in mid-air.
Behind her back, three deadly, orange-yellow Spears of the Void hovered in absolute silence, radiating destructive energy.
Her exquisite face was a mask of cold, untouchable arrogance.
She looked down at him from her elevated position, radiating the oppressive, obvious aura of a true sovereign.
This was the very first impression Kiana gave Frez.
A terrifying, world-ending entity.
And then she opened her mouth.
“It is so hot.
Why did I choose to fight on a beach?
And these clothes, they even have a thick fur collar!
Wait, hold on, let me change the weather first.”
The oppressive, apocalyptic atmosphere shattered into a million pieces in a single second.
“Can’t you just change the scene?” Frez asked, his voice entirely flat.
“Oh, right.
Wait a minute.
Got it, let’s change it to the North Pole.”
The tropical seaside that had just been baking under the sun instantly vanished, replaced by a bone-chilling, desolate ice field.
Massive, jagged icebergs stood tall behind them, reflecting the harsh glare of a pale sun.
Kiana threw her head back and laughed loudly, striking another arrogant pose, but a sudden gust of freezing wind blew straight across the tundra.
She violently shivered and let out a loud, entirely un-queenly sneeze.
“Are you really a Herrscher?” Frez asked, rubbing his temples.
A Herrscher’s constitution was supposed to be completely immune to extreme environments.
They could survive in the absolute vacuum of space without a spacesuit.
Why was the Herrscher of the Void so incredibly sensitive to both a sunny beach and a snowy field?
Was her power level entirely dictated by her status as a gag character?
“What are you looking at?!” Kiana snapped, rubbing her red nose.
“I am freezing to death here.
This place won’t work either.
Let me see where else…
Got it, the grasslands.
It shouldn’t be too hot or too cold there, right?”
The ice shattered, replaced instantly by lush, endlessly rolling green grasslands beneath their feet.
A mild, pleasant breeze swept through the tall grass.
Kiana cleared her throat, floated back up into the air, struck her imposing pose once more, and pointed a finger down at him.
“Alright, this is it.
Human, kneel before—”
A concentrated sphere of azure light gathered at the very tip of Frez’s index finger.
He didn’t even blink.
The compressed energy of Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue was instantly released.
The blinding azure sphere tore across the distance in a fraction of a second, intentionally grazing just past Kiana’s shoulder.
The sheer gravitational vacuum of the attack ripped the earth apart, leaving a smoking, violently cleanly cut trench several meters deep that stretched endlessly behind her until it completely disappeared over the horizon.
Kiana froze.
Her mouth hung slightly open.
‘I am going to die.
I am going to die.
I am going to die!’Her internal monologue turned into pure, unadulterated panic.’No one told me the newcomer could fight like this!
Can I even win against that?
No, wait, calm down, I am a Herrscher.
Aunt Himeko gave me strict combat training too.
I must remember my training…
wait, I have forgotten it all!’
Before she could even process her panic, the physical space between Frez and Kiana compressed instantly.
Frez bypassed the distance entirely, reappearing a mere three steps away from her floating form.
He pulled his arm back, his fist enlarging rapidly in her vision as he threw a straightforward punch.
Driven entirely by pure survival instinct, Kiana squeezed her eyes shut and threw her hands up over her head.
“I surrender!”
[System Prompt: Mission Accomplished.]
Frez’s fist stopped less than an inch in front of her face.
The resulting shockwave of displaced air gusted violently through her silver hair, blowing it back in a wild halo.
“Waaaaah!
You scared me to death!
Why are you being so insanely serious?!”
Kiana lost her levitation entirely and plopped hard onto the grassy ground.
Thick tears welled up in her golden eyes, her lower lip trembling as she looked completely ready to bawl.
Every single ounce of her previous Herrscher arrogance was gone, replaced by a terrified teenager.
[Handsome Big Liar: Sigh, this is going to be a massive hassle.
It will take a very long time to coax her back to normal.]
The Arena footage was currently being broadcast live to all the members in the chat group.
Without Kiana even realizing it, absolutely everyone had just witnessed her embarrassing, tearful display.
[Quantum Beheading Barbarian: I remember the last time W stole Kiana’s premium instant noodles.
She sat on the floor and cried for quite a while.]
[Wiš’adel: I was hungry back then!
Who cares?
If it is sitting on the table, I am going to eat it.
Didn’t I buy her a whole new box of noodles later to pay her back anyway?]
The chat group’s very first physical gathering had taken place at Kiana’s dormitory, and quite a few chaotic things had happened.
Because Kiana’s core personality was essentially that of a spoiled child, everyone in the group naturally tended to indulge her afterward.
Even the notoriously explosive Wiš’adel ended up caving, simply because she didn’t want to hear the girl cry—it was far too noisy for her sensitive Sarkaz ears.
Meanwhile, standing in the virtual grasslands, Frez was already feeling a deep, heavy sense of awkwardness settling into his stomach.
He slowly lowered his fist.
“Sorry, I really didn’t mean to scare you.
In my understanding, as the Herrscher of the Void, you should be quite powerful.”
He genuinely felt that even in this bizarre, comedic event timeline, the somewhat dim-witted Kiana should still be a ridiculously tough fighter.
At the very least, he fully expected that he would have to use his brain and maneuver around her spatial portals to secure a win.
That first blast of Blue was purely meant as a probe to gauge her reaction speed.
He completely failed to expect that she wasn’t fearlessly tanking it, but rather that she simply hadn’t reacted to the attack at all.
“I-I-I am very strong!” Kiana wailed, aggressively wiping her eyes.
“I just didn’t want to accidentally hurt you, waaaaah!
I don’t care, I don’t care!”
She threw a full-blown tantrum right there on the ground, kicking her legs and nearly rolling around in the grass in a fit of absolute childish frustration.
The Queen’s supreme dignity had vanished entirely, thoroughly shattering the very last of Frez’s grand illusions about the terrifying Herrscher of the Void.
He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck.
“A month of free takeout.
As long as I am free, I will personally deliver it all to you.
How about that?
Plus the twenty manga volumes we agreed on.”
The crying stopped instantly.
Kiana scrambled up from the dirt, dusting off her black skirt.
She pointed a finger to the sky and said something that made it physically impossible for Frez to keep a straight face.
“Hahaha!
This is my ultimate formula for victory!”
As she proudly declared her triumph, a single, shiny snot bubble popped out of her nose and burst with a tiny squeak.
Frez laughed.
He couldn’t stop himself.
Sometimes, when a person is truly, utterly speechless, they really do just laugh.