I back away from Pandora, putting distance between us as I decide to use my trump card. It's normally not very useful, but against an opponent like Pandora, it's perfect.

[Inverted Moon Mirror] I immediately use this ability. A immense silver light erupts, and even Pandora backs off to avoid being affected as this silver aura envelops my body.

Instantly, the silver aura copies Pandora's form. Four additional translucent silver arms float around my torso, while numerous translucent silver eyes drift around my body.

I feel the surge of power I've gained. It's not an exact copy of Pandora, but rather an ability that functions like a mirror.

"..."

"Hahahaha. How ironic for you to say I look like a monster and then copy my form," she says, lunging at me with a punch. With the extra eyes, I perceive her movements and block her punch, while the silver hands grab her other arms.

'It's different...' I want to say it's not the same thing, but I still can't speak, so I let it go.

I fire a silver blast from my hand, while she simultaneously shoots a bizarre black energy at me.

"..." She soon begins firing dozens of those rays while throwing punches, trying to pressure me, but all the extra silver eyes observe the pattern, and I manage to dodge relatively well.

'How... terrifying...' I look at the stones hit by the black ray. Some explode, others melt, some turn to salt, others into blood, while some turn to dust and others into crystal, showing just how chaotic those black rays are.

Pandora tries to use the Crescent Moon she copied from me to sever the silver arms I have, but the attack just phases through them and strikes the ground instead, allowing me to land a punch on her face, sending her reeling back.

They aren't real arms and eyes. It's just my power simulating the form and function of those limbs. I fire multiple silver rays at her while crescent moons materialize, attempting to slice her apart.

She defends against everything, and her own attacks increase in number, but I easily dodge them, combining my experience with the observations of the silver eyes.

Yet, every dodge is exhausting. She's deliberately forcing me to evade, having noticed how much power this ability consumes.

"[Demon King's Gravitational Pressure]." She uses magic, and I quickly feel gravity intensify, slowing me down and causing her attacks to graze me.

'Without my other options, it's hard to defend... and I'm not used to moving six arms...' I decide to let the eyes and four silver arms operate on autopilot since I can't control them well, and I charge straight at Pandora.

"[Gr—" Pandora tries to use magic, but I deliver a powerful blow to her face, disorienting her, while her tail strikes my stomach, making a deep cut.

'Maybe I can push a little further...' I increase the power of the [Inverted Moon Mirror] ability, and with that, silver mouths emerge, floating around my body, completely copying Pandora's current form.

The Inverted Moon Mirror ability creates an abstract copy of my enemy. For example, if my enemy were a giant, a giant silver copy would envelop my body.

With Pandora, the ability is copying her inhuman form, and with the extra mouths, I feel I can use magic again. However, seeing this, Pandora begins violently firing magic at me.

I try to speak, but she's suddenly already in front of me, delivering a kick to my stomach that pierces my defenses. With her extra arms, she manages to punch my face while her other arms restrain mine.

"..." She starts punching my face while kneeing my stomach. I try to do something, but the pain easily disorients me since I'm not used to taking damage.

'It's better to use everything I have in one attack...' Pandora has already started adapting to this form of mine. It's noticeable that at the beginning I was dodging, and now she's already on top of me.

She's clearly dragging this out on purpose to humiliate me, but I won't give her the satisfaction of seeing me fearful and desperate.

If the problem is her adapting, then I just need to end the fight with a new attack she's never seen, and thanks to the Inverted Moon Mirror, I can do that.

"[-----]." The moment Pandora senses it, she leaps back, putting an absurd distance between us, sensing the danger.

'After this attack, I won't be able to fight anymore...' I deliberate whether to kill or incapacitate Pandora, but the memory of her regeneration quickly comes to mind. I hate to admit it, but I'm incapable of leaving Pandora incapacitated.

In other words, my only option is to try and kill her. I can't say this is the best course of action, but it's a matter of honor; from where I come from, this is how these kinds of duels are.

I decide to use lethal force and hope that Pandora either dies or is rendered unable to fight if she's hit.

"[New Moon]." All the silver aura around my body dissolves, merging into me. However, the entire Palace also begins to darken completely while my body starts to glow.

"..." Pandora looks around and seems to decide to confront me directly. A bizarre aura emanates from her, the energy spreading is chaotic and destructive as it expands violently.

'Is she going to try to face it head-on?...' Her confidence is... unsettling, but I won't give up because I know I have a chance to win. All the energy I've accumulated is condensed into a compressed white mass.

Pandora does the same, as if copying me. I immediately fire this immensely powerful mass at Pandora in a massive beam, and Pandora does the same.

The collision of the attacks is so massive that the entire Palace begins to completely collapse. I maintain my power output at its maximum while Pandora's chaotic, dark wave of magic tries to completely swallow my attack.

'W-What a monster... This attack could evaporate three Earth planets stacked together...' Pandora is monstrously strong to be able to clash head-on with this attack.

Slowly, her attack begins to consume mine. The darkness is so vast and massive that it starts to cover my attack. I try to increase the beam's size and power, but even so, I can't gain the upper hand.

Her attack seems even stronger than mine. Even using [Inverted Moon Mirror], which should make us equal, I'm still beneath her.

'If I...' I could dissolve the Palace. That would give me the power to continue the fight. The palace is an autonomous structure, so even without me powering it, the structure remains here.

But if I absorb it, I could gain more power, maybe 20% more. But if I do that, we'll reappear in the castle, and this attack will completely destroy the entire planet.

'If I dissolve the palace, I could win... but it's not worth winning if I have to sacrifice a whole planet full of life.' My attack slowly loses power while hers gains even more.

The difference is obvious. I've always relied on external power, gained from worship, while my personal power was stable but not enough for complex, prolonged fights.

Pandora, on the other hand, is the opposite. She usually uses only her own power, ignoring environmental power or power she could absorb from external sources, and since she uses only personal power, she surpasses me.

'Maybe... if I can withstand her attack without dying...' I decide to try something else: invert the position of my attack. If my attack is a beam going in a straight line, I'll swap its position to make it strike directly from above Pandora.

This will make Pandora's attack hit me directly, but I'm confident in my body's high resilience. Meanwhile, I know Pandora relies more on regeneration than defense.

'Ironic... we're opposites in everything, fighting style, honor, and body...' I push my body to the limit, swapping the attack's position. It's extremely costly for my body, but in an instant, the positions of the attacks are swapped.

Pandora, who wasn't prepared for this, receives the [New Moon] directly on top of her, while I'm hit by that chaotic beam. However, her attack lasts at most 10 seconds before dissipating because, as expected, she has less defense than I do.

I fall to the ground, looking ahead to see my attack engulfing everything. I can't see Pandora inside it, but it's still an attack capable of destroying multiple planets, so there's a high chance she'll die.

The attack lasts a while until all the power I spent on it disperses. The Palace regains its colors, although it nearly collapsed completely. A little more, and the palace would have been destroyed, and we would have appeared back in the castle.

"..." I get up, ready to go see my victory, but suddenly my body shudders with a sickening dread as I look at the crater left by my attack. From within, I see black tentacles crawling out.

Then Pandora emerges from inside. She looks even more dreadful and terrifying than before. Her hair has grown longer, the ends generating black tentacles that she uses to climb out of the hole, while blood-red eyes are scattered all over, staring fixedly at me with a sickening bloodlust.

I see a black slime covering the ground near her, spreading like a spider's web, threatening to devour everything.

"A-Ahh..." I fall to the ground in fear, my legs too exhausted to carry me away from this frightening thing. I try to crawl backward, staring at it.

I see her blood dripping to the ground as her body visibly regenerates.

"Good move, Tsu-dear... you managed to knock Pandora out," she says in an even more distorted and sickly tone as she starts walking towards me.

I see black drops trickling down her body and dripping onto the floor, while I notice the top of her head contorting into a spongy, viscous black mass that fills me with disgust.

"...You know, if I were weak, that would have killed me... but still... this attack is weaker than Mikael's attack... pitiful, truly pitiful... Mikael has roughly your power, so I guess that makes sense? Well, Mikael's attack was still more lethal than yours." She rambles in this bizarre tone, getting closer and closer.

I try to move backward until my back hits a piece of rubble too large, forming a wall that prevents me from going further back.

"I never expected to receive such a strong blow to the head... but it was enlightening... It seems your mastery of spatial manipulation is incredible... I'm genuinely praising you here," she says in a casual tone.

"A-Ahhh!! H-HMmm!!" I try to say that I want to give up, but I can't. My throat, injured from her blow, won't emit my voice, and the [Inverted Moon Mirror] ended now that I used everything in one attack.

"Teleporting the attack above me was a good strategy since I wouldn't have been able to defend... I never expected you to bend space that way... Was that a wormhole? Well, whatever it was, I had fun..."

"Tsu-dear, I still have 75% of my total mana left." When she says that, the terror intensifies.

'Impossible... She only used 25%? H-How?' Those devastating attacks and the copies of my abilities only used 25%? This seems like a bad joke.

"You look scared.... I love that despair... You must be thinking it's impossible, right? And normally it would be, if it were just Pandora..."

"It's a pity, but Pandora spends too much power in a fight... however, Pandora finally allowed me to enter the fight... and I cut Pandora's useless expenditures by 80%."

"I trained my lovely little whores to help better too, so we had the minimum expenditure possible." When she speaks again, referring to Pandora, I realize this isn't Pandora.

'Tsu-dear and Tsukuyomi... t-two different ways of calling me...'

'W-Who are you! W-Where's Pandora...' I try to ask, but I can't speak, so only a strange sound comes out of my mouth, but she seems to notice.

"I am Pandora, Tsu-dear, but I am one of Pandora's facets. You could call me Pandora Y... I congratulate you... you are the second to know that we exist in this body. The first is Grimm." She speaks in this sweet tone, coming even closer.

"You know, Tenebris Abyssus don't normally lose consciousness. The body doesn't allow it. You knocked Pandora out because your attack was direct to her head and it was very strong... but just because you took Pandora out of the game doesn't mean that I, who am the primary one for the body, was taken out of the game too."

"Now, Tsu-dear, let's have some fun... I was so eager to fuck you. Pandora almost never lets us use the outside; she's so stingy..." All her eyes fixate on me, and I realize I'm screwed, completely screwed.

The darkness begins to cover the floor while her bizarre eyes stare at me with a sickening fixation.

"Aaahhhhh." All I can do is let out one last scream before everything begins to be engulfed by this disgusting darkness.