Primeval Couple

Meanwhile, on another floating island, Gabriel hovered in the crimson-tinged sky.

His six pairs of golden wings flapped gently, each movement stirring the thick, mana-laden air into soft eddies. The countless mysterious runes etched upon his feathers pulsed with a tranquil, rhythmic glow—like a heartbeat made of light. He looked godly. His golden hair cascaded past his shoulders, and within his irises, small cross-shaped patterns shimmered, faint but unmistakable, as if a divine signature had been stamped upon his very soul.

He looked down at the forest below and chuckled.

The trees were ancient—impossibly tall, their bark dark as charcoal, their branches twisting toward the gray sky like the grasping fingers of buried giants. Moss hung in long, tattered veils from every limb, and the ground was carpeted with years of decayed leaves that muffled all sound. Shadows pooled thick between the trunks, and from within those shadows, one could feel it: danger. Many dangers. Lurking, waiting, breathing.

This was no ordinary wood. It was a predator’s cradle.

Gabriel closed his eyes and spread his mana outward.

It flowed from him like an invisible tide—warm, vast, almost limitless. The wave washed over the floating island, seeping into every hollow, every cave, every tangled thicket. Nothing escaped his perception. He could feel the heartbeat of every creature hidden beneath the canopy. The skitter of claws on stone. The slow, rhythmic breathing of slumbering beasts. The hungry stirrings of those already awake.

Countless presences. Dozens. Perhaps more.

He identified them by their shape, their size, their mana signature. Cyclopes. All of them. Various types—some small and wiry, others massive and lumbering. A few carried the dense, twisted mana of mutation, their horns longer, their bodies covered in bony plates. It seemed that at the edge of this Red-level dungeon, cyclopes were the primary inhabitants. The first layer of defense. The appetizer before the main course.

Gabriel opened his eyes. A smile played at the corner of his lips.

Not bad for a warm-up.

He flexed his fingers, feeling the golden mana coil around his knuckles like obedient serpents. His cross-shaped pupils gleamed with quiet anticipation.

Below, the forest waited.

And deep within it, the monsters had no idea what was about to descend upon them.

"I bet she must be taking her time to deal with them at the beginning," Gabriel murmured to himself, a knowing smile tugging at his lips. "She is the type to savor her prey slowly. Hehehe!"

He hovered there, golden wings gently undulating, the runes on his feathers flickering like distant stars. His eyes—those strange, cross-shaped pupils—gleamed with something that did not belong on the face of an archangel.

"I won’t follow the same pattern," he continued, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "If you have overwhelming strength, better to go hush bang. Overwhelm your enemies—especially in the current situation. Let’s go for some explosion."

He wore a deranged smile. It did not suit his angelic features—those high cheekbones, that serene jawline, that halo of golden hair. And yet there it was: a grin that spoke of carnage, of joy in annihilation. He was talking about massacre with such a smile, as if planning a pleasant picnic.

Unlike Lilith, who preferred to draw out the hunt—to taste each kill, to play with her food—Gabriel favored a different philosophy. Why dance around when you could simply erase? He would unleash a devastating attack. One big, beautiful blast. Obliterate this entire floating island in a single, cataclysmic stroke. No survivors. No escape. Just fire and ash and silence.

He already had an idea of which element to use.

Gabriel could wield almost every existing element—fire, water, earth, wind, lightning, light, time, space, and more. The only exception was darkness. Darkness was incompatible with his angelic constitution, just as light was incompatible with demonic flesh. Even the greatest archangel could not touch that abyss without corruption. Similarly, Lilith—despite her mastery over darkness and space—could not wield light. It would burn her like holy fire. She was also not particularly skilled with the time element, which happened to be one of Gabriel’s specialities.

Elemental affinities, he mused. Even we have our limits.

But fire? Fire was universal. Fire was destruction given form. And fire answered his call without hesitation.

He ran countless scenarios through his mind—each spell, each angle, each possible outcome. He considered giant fireballs raining from the sky. Too scattered. Too many chances for survivors. He considered gigantic flame spears piercing the earth. Too linear. Not enough coverage.

No. Neither will do.

He closed his eyes, and his thoughts drifted back to Earth—to the countless fantasy books he had devoured in quiet hours, to the animations he had watched with wide-eyed wonder. Memories of another life. Another world. In those stories, the mightiest spells were not born of simple flame or lightning. They were cosmic. They were final. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

His eyes snapped open.

That’s it.

He would summon meteors. Giant, powerful meteors from outer space—from beyond this dungeon’s false sky, from the cold void where ancient rocks drifted since the dawn of creation. The spell would combine both fire and earth elements: the blazing heat of atmospheric reentry and the crushing mass of celestial stone. A twin devastation.

Gabriel raised his hands toward the churning, bruised heavens.

Golden mana coiled around his arms, spiraling up to his fingertips. The air grew heavy. The temperature spiked. Far above, beyond the clouds of crimson and purple, something stirred. Something massive.

He smiled again—that same wrong, wonderful smile.

"Let there be light," he whispered. "And let there be ash."

After that, the combo spell began to take shape.

Golden mana surged from Gabriel’s core, flowing up through his arms, his palms, his fingertips. It siphoned a full quarter of his gigantic mana pool—a cost that would have killed any ordinary archmage, yet only made Gabriel’s smile widen. Above him, the sky answered.

Thunder.

Not your gentle rumble, but a deep, guttural roar that shook the floating island to its core. The red clouds that choked the heavens began to churn violently, twisting into spiraling vortexes.