Midnight Prince: Empire of Sin

Adam could feel it from deep within that the Queen was progressively getting faster and faster being able to keep up with his speed and performance and was thus becoming harder to corner. If he had to give an opinion, she reminded him of someone slowly learning back the reflexes they hadn't used in years and was finally getting used to applying the full breadth of their powers.

'She is growing quite fast.'

Adam mused as he avoided a fist that came crashing down from above, fully intent on crushing his face. The pressure compressed around her fist and the subsequent impact of the wind was so high that… for a split instant, he even wondered if just the impact would be enough to kill him. In the end, the impact and the surrounding compressed wind only left some scratches on his face and he was mostly unharmed.

It wasn't just her stats that were growing with time; her skills were also growing alongside them and were reaching a saturation point. If before she was just like a baby that was holding a gun, thinking of it as a toy to play with, now she was more like a soldier with some form of training ingrained into their bones and was on her way to becoming a veteran in record speed.

'It would be a shame to simply kill her, won't it?'

Adam moved away to avoid another fist coming his way before countering it with a roundhouse kick which she blocked with her arms— a scream filled with dream force soon left her lungs with the intent to incapacitate him once more but Adam was ready this time. Covering his head with a helmet he had manifested using Dreamforce, he was able to continue fighting with her while ignoring her terrible screeches.

The exchange of hits between the two of them was slowly becoming more akin to a dance— a moment of pure geniality where the two of them fought to the best of their skills and were aiming to best the other. If this was not a fight to the death, this would have been extremely romantic.

'Yeah… Let's just kill her.'

Adam grunted as her fist smashed hard against his stomach, propelling him more than 20 meters away from their fighting location and destroying the ground in the wake of the trajectory of his impact. The crater in which he found himself in the aftermath was at least 5 meters deep and 10 meters wide.

Adam grunted ever so slightly due to the rebound of the strike but he was otherwise quite alright.

This was nothing compared to the pain he was used to and was in fact just a nice form of training for him.

The laughter of the Queen filled his ears with a note of indifference added into it as he slowly stood up and adjusted himself.

'My robotic hand is holding me down in this fight.'

He did not want to give a simple excuse. He was simply losing ground and he realized that this made him quite happy.

All his important fights until now always had a grand goal or something important attached to it that made it a bit too serious for his liking.

The first time he really fought was to protect Natasha's life. The second fight he got himself into revolved around stopping a demon prince's descent, then he had to kill people for useful information, and finally, he went through a fight that waged the probable descent of the great Lucifer himself.

All those fights had been won through unorthodox means or simply having the luck of making the right choices and attaining the right skillset in the right moment.

Finally— all those fights were far too significant for him to truly enjoy them.

But here, right now, he wasn't fighting for the sake of the world. He didn't have some grand role that weighed him down.

He simply wished to become stronger and she was the perfect grinding stone for this goal.

Adam focused his senses and analyzed his opponent to his fullest capabilities— how she moved, the tick she showed, the telltale signs of her proceeding actions, and how he should answer in response.

His four minds worked more in unison than they ever did before, coming up with hundreds of answers and ways of moving on the spot to attack, avoid, or counterattack against the once queen of the bees.

But he did not just stop there.

While two of his minds were taking care of the commands for the fight, two more were focused on bringing up the different ways he could use his powers or rather the Dreamforce to get an edge on the fight.

He was slowly starting to understand another profound truth of life through his deliberate analysis. In the Dreamscape, everything was possible; no matter what it may be.

He simply needed to find the key and the right amount of power to do what was necessary. That's all.

'I have been thinking about the Dreamscape all wrong.'

Adam distanced himself from the previous queen who was breathing deeply through her nose. He was equally tired but he was making sure to not show it to her and add to her psychological mindset.

His mind was working on overdrive, to the point where he was not even looking at the queen anymore. For him, whoever was in front of him wouldn't have mattered as long as it was someone strong enough to keep up with him.

He seemed to have entered a deep trance of sorts. Even though his eyes were facing the queen, he was looking far beyond her.

'This is not it.'

He threw a dagger at the queen, making her avoid his attack.

'This is not it.'

He moved his body as much as remembered but the more he did so, the more uncomfortable he felt.

'This is not it all.'

He was fighting in the wrong way from the very beginning. He was not using his skills to the fullest. In the first place, with the power of 'Death' on his side, he should have been beyond anything this so-called queen could actually offer to him. He was way out of her league. But here he was, struggling against this puny entity due to a lack of integration.

'What am I lacking here? What is holding me down in this situation?'

Adam breathed in and with that breath, the flame seemed to breathe too…

Thinking about it, he had only used the flame to burn things or fuse them with his power of 'Death' and nothing more.

Logically speaking, he was right in doing this. The only attribute of fire was obviously to burn and destroy. So then, why would he use it for anything else? Wasn't it the most efficient way to use the property of flames?

Adam breathed out and with his breath, the fire started to flicker once more and dance to a tune of its own, as if it was alive and moving in its own rhythm; ever-changing and splendid.

Flame was a beautiful mystery. Despite all its destructive power and its inherently chaotic nature, there were still few things more beautiful than the flickering of a flame in the darkest of nights.

A flame was also not only used for destruction. gorging, cooking, or even heating. Flame was the source of life as well as the start of knowledge for all humans.

Fire or Flames— was the beginning of all civilization.

An image started to form in Adam's mind. An image of the world of fire his mother had created when she decided to show him what a true Executor was capable of. This had been eye-opening for him and this was also the reason why he became able to use 'Burning Blood' in the first place— a skill that no matter how you looked at it, made no scientific sense in theory.

Slowly, Adam stopped moving and the Queen Bee, noticing his immobile self couldn't help but move back in a hurry. All of her instincts were ringing alarms in her head as if something dangerous was about to happen.

'What is happening.'

She waited a few seconds with bated breath and rising tension. But she was startled to notice that nothing actually happened no matter how long she waited. Adam simply stood still and did nothing as he floated in the sky.

'Is he finally tired?'

She wondered briefly before deciding that the thought didn't have much significance. This was an occasion for her to end this fight once and for all and she would gladly take it.

[Golden Armor]

Slowly, as the name indicated, an armor seemingly made of pure gold started to spread and cover all of her body from head to toe, leaving no place for Adam to even see a millimeter of her yellowish skin.

At the same time, her aura doubled in density. The end tail of the armor opened and slowly started accumulating power in order to launch a full-power blast that would erase everything in its path, Adam included.

"This is going to be the end."

"Indeed it will."

Time seemed to come to a crawl, as the Queen noticed something fly past the corner of her eyes.

'A red butterfly?'

BOOM~!

She was not able to form any more coherent thoughts as she was immediately covered in a blast of power and death so hot that she felt like she was about to suffocate.

"What is happening here!?"

The moment she escaped from the smoke with her mind in disarray, she looked widely all around her before her eyes slowly started to tremble in fear.

"Butterflies…"

Not one. Not two. But hundreds of red butterflies were flapping their wings all around her and surrounded her from all sides. They were so numerous that it seemed as though they were covering all of her vision, leaving her with absolutely no chance to escape and flee from the grasp of the terrifying entity.

"Did you know?"

She looked past the seemingly boundless butterflies and landed her gaze on the man who was giving her a gentle smile as a large butterfly wing manifested on his back and spread itself wide. His attire had also completely changed, transforming into that of a man in a red suit and a black top hat.

"Someone once said— Art is simply the beauty of a single fleeting moment."

The moment he spoke, all the butterflies stopped flying aimlessly and started to converge on her position, blocking all possible escape routes for her in full.

The Queen bit her teeth to chase away the fear and immediately gathered as much power as she could… Knowing full well that the next few moments would determine her victory or defeat.

Sadly for her…

"Fighting you has been a delight and you will become a great nourishment for me. As such, though you failed, I will give you the honor of being a name for this new technique of mine."

[Mournful Cry of the Nameless Queen]

All the butterfly's flames immediately took on a darker-than-black hue. Darker than even the darkest of night and more ominous than even the silence of death and it was at that moment that the once glorious Queen Bee realized…

There was no escape from this attack.

BOOOM~!!!

Dark flames blazed, the explosion occurred and the power of Death swept through anything and everything, blinding even Adam, the caster of this power, for a split instant.

When the light of the explosion finally subsided, a large crater that was more than 20 meters deep could be seen and the forest in a few hundred meters radius was completely razed down to the ground. Completely obliterated out of existence itself…

In this world filled with death and desolation, only one man was standing tall and proud, gazing at the result of the devastating technique he had created at that moment.

Death and Life. Creation and Destruction.

Adam did not think he had yet reached the level where he could touch and understand such profound concepts. But neither did he truly need to.

This place was the world of dreams.

A world where an ant could become a god and a god could be trampled on without understanding what was happening in the next moment.

Following logic and using his power like he used elements through 'The World', in reality, was wrong, to begin with.

Tilting his hat, Adam started to walk ahead until he reached the place where a seemingly charred corpse could be seen without any proper shape.n0.0

"Even now, you are barely alive. How impressive."

He looked down at what was nothing more than the husk of what could have been a great powerhouse.

"Usually, this is the moment when I propose to recruit you. But sadly, I cannot trust a mother who would not hesitate to devour her own children for power."

Adam did not think he had any moral ground left to act as a good person. But he did not care. He hated what he hated.

Nothing more, nothing less.

"Your Queen's Gambit failed. As such— Begone."

He ignored her begging face and stepped on it with all his might, crushing it immediately and thereby— ending the life of the Insolent Queen of Bees.

It was now time for him to reap the fruit of this fight.

(AN: Been a while since I wrote a big chapter. But I wanted to finish this with a bang.)