But the touch never landed. Instead, Lilla's own hand, still slick with the blood of the warbeast, became a blur. It was not a wild swing but a piston strike of pure, concentrated force.

She drove her fist forward with the unrefined, brutal power of a Low Planetary Champion, a power he had foolishly believed she did not possess. It was a blow that carried the weight of a world's defiance, and it connected with his face before his brain could even register the movement.

The sound was not a crack but a thunderclap of shattering bone and condensed energy.

A wave of raucous laughter erupted from the remaining Pirate Kings, their voices echoing across the battlefield. "Hahaha! What are you doing, Krog? Did that little human slave really send you flying?" one of them jeered.

Another doubled over, slapping his knee. "And he still dared to say he was stronger than me! Buahahah! The great Krog, laid out by a single punch!"

From the plume of dust and shattered rock, the disgraced Pirate King emerged. He snarled, wiping a stream of blood from his now-crooked nose before gripping it with a sickening crunch and snapping it back into place.

The mocking words of his peers were like salt in the wound. He was a Tier 5 Powerhouse, and a point-blank blow from another Tier 5 was no trivial matter; escaping with only a broken nose was, in truth, a testament to his durability.

"You bitch!" he shouted out, his voice thick with rage and humiliation. A twisted, admiring gleam lit his eyes. "That's how I like my women! The wilder they are, the better they are for breaking!"

In a flicker of distorted space, he used his instant movement again, reappearing directly before Lilla. This time, he was not careless. In his hands materialized a massive, brutish club, humming with violent, condensed planetary energy that made the air waver around it.

Thus, their duel began in earnest. They became a whirlwind of destruction, a storm of clashing forces that tore through the forest. Their movements were so fast they were barely blurs, their impacts so devastating that ancient trees were uprooted and massive boulders were pulverized into dust, flying outward with every concussive blow.

Though the Pirate King, Krog, was physically stronger and his attacks carried world-shattering force, he could not touch her. Lilla flowed around his assaults like water, her movements impossibly precise, each dodge a silent taunt.

"Tsk! Stop dodging like a damn eel and stand still!" he shouted again, his temper finally shattering. In his fury, he poured more energy into his weapon.

The club swelled, becoming grotesquely massive, radiating a pressure so immense it could have flattened a battle tank under its sheer aura alone. As the weapon's tip merely brushed the ground, it carved out a colossal crater.

He brought the gargantuan club down in a sweeping, obliterating arc right where Lilla had been standing. The earth trembled, and a cloud of dirt and debris exploded into the air. Krog grinned, panting. "Oops," he sneered. "I think I just converted her into pure... paste. Oh well, there should be prettier slaves in that city! Hahaha!"

His laughter was cut short by a sound he was beginning to dread... the clear, celestial chime of a tinkerbell. It was the only warning he received before a bare foot, moving faster than his sight, connected with his face in a devastating flying kick.

The impact was brutal and precise, sending him rocketing backward once more to crash into a new pile of rubble.

"You bitch!" he shrieked, clawing his way out, his face a mask of blood and fury. "Why did you hit my fucking nose again?!" His nose was now a ruined mess of cartilage and bone, an injury that would require extensive regeneration to ever fix properly.

It was an injury Lilla had no intention of letting him survive to repair.

In the blink of an eye, she was upon him. Hovering in the air around her own arms were a pair of gigantic, silverish armored gauntlets, ethereal and solid all at once. When she threw her next punch, it was not her flesh and bone that struck, but one of these spectral silver fists.

The beating that followed was merciless. Lilla delivered a relentless barrage of punches, a storm of silver light that hammered into Krog without pause. He could not block, could not resist, and could not even summon his energy to fight back.

The reason became terrifyingly clear: the planetary energy Lilla wielded did not come from a common planet's nucleus. It was a divine gift, channeled directly from the Lady in White.

And just like her son, Rex, this energy carried the fearsome attribute of the Silver Titan Clan. With every shattering impact, with every blow that connected, she did not just inflict damage.

She drained his very life force, siphoning his own planetary energy away and weakening him with every successful, draining hit. He was not just being beaten; he was being consumed.

Left and right... left and right... a brutal, rhythmic cadence of silver fists. A right uppercut snapped the Pirate King's head back with a crack that echoed through the sudden silence of the forest.

To finish him, Lilla launched into the air, delivering a flying kick to the side of his head that sent his broken body tumbling through the dirt like a discarded ragdoll.

But his punishment was not yet complete. Even with his face a pulpy mess and his arms bent at unnatural angles, one eye remained open, its vision blurred but functional.

Through that single, hazy lens, he saw Lilla appear beside him once more, her movement as silent as a shadow. She raised her foot slowly, deliberately, aiming the sole directly at his ruined head.

"N-No... Please," he gurgled, the words a wet, desperate plea from a man who had long forgotten how to beg.

There was no hesitation. Lilla's foot came down, and with it, the delicate, chime-like sound of the tinkerbell on her ankle rang out. It was a horrifying contrast... the cute, melodic tinkle accompanying the wet, crushing sound of each impact as she methodically smashed his face into the ground with her bare, blood-smeared feet.

It was then that the air itself grew heavy with killing intent. The Pirate Overlord appeared next to her, not with a roar, but with a sigh of profound annoyance. He made a casual, almost dismissive flick of his wrist. In response, a beam of pure stellar energy, white-hot and dense enough to unravel reality itself, lanced toward Lilla.

It happened in less than a heartbeat. Had it not been for the Lady in White, whose consciousness was intertwined with her own, forcibly moving Lilla's arms into a desperate cross-guard, she would have been vaporized.

Instead, the colossal force of the blast sent her flying backward like a shot from a cannon, carving a trench through the earth for a full kilometer before she finally skidded to a stop.

"Haaa... it hurts..." Lilla's cry was a whisper of pure agony as the searing light faded. The damage was catastrophic. Her arms were charred and mangled, the silver gauntlets flickering and dying. On one arm, the flesh was gone entirely, revealing blackened bone from the forearm down.

Back at the crater, the Overlord glanced down at his subordinate. "How is he?"

Another Pirate King prodded Krog's lifeless form with his boot. "Not good, boss. He's totally gone. His only usefulness now would be to feed your pet."

"Tsk. Trash!" the Overlord spat, his composure finally cracking into fury. "The three of you, go and capture that human. I will torture her until I am satisfied for making me lose face!"

As one, the three remaining Pirate Kings summoned their own energy clubs and descended upon Lilla. Even crippled, with her arms hanging uselessly, she fought back with a fierce, desperate grace, using her legs in a whirlwind of kicks to keep them at bay.

But she was one, and they were three. Her Paladin and the brave soldiers who rushed to her aid were cut down or grievously wounded for their valor.

The frigates above tried to provide covering fire, but the Overlord simply swatted them from the sky with contemptuous ease, their hulls exploding into silent flowers of flame against the atmosphere.

"I'm sorry, my Lady..." Lilla whispered through their shared link, her strength failing as she tumbled from a blow, entering a free fall from a shattered cliff edge. Her body was broken, her spirit battered. "It seems... you will need to find a different vessel to accomplish your task..."

As the wind whipped past her, a profound warmth bloomed in her mind, a presence as vast and calm as the cosmos. "Your task is not done yet, my little Lilla. And you will not die today."

Through half-lidded eyes, gazing up at the sky she was falling toward, she saw it. A beautiful, silverish meteor, trailing light like strands of molten moonlight, was streaking across the heavens.

It was coming from the void, moving with impossible speed, growing larger and brighter with every passing second, and it was headed directly for her.

And even as the wind screamed in her ears and the broken ground rushed up to meet her, a strange peace settled over Lilla. The sight of that silver comet, a solitary brushstroke of brilliant light against the darkened sky, filled her with a warmth that pushed back the edges of her agony.

It was a feeling as instinctive as it was irrational... the deep, bone-deep certainty of a child safe in their parent's arms. It was a promise, written in starlight and streaking through the atmosphere just for her.