The snap of brittle bones. The final, fading pulse of a heart that had stopped beating.

Each death was like a note in a symphony, and she was the conductor of this.

Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty, it showed no sigh of stopping.

The spell continued for what felt like an eternity.

However, in truth, it was less than five minutes. But within that darkness, time lost meaning. The cyclopes experienced every second as an hour, every minute as a day. Their minds, already simple, broke long before their bodies did. Some laughed hysterically. Some fell into catatonic silence. Some attacked each other, blind with terror, tearing apart their own kin in a desperate attempt to feel something other than the consumption.

Lilith watched them all.

She witnessed every single death like a grim reaper—patient, attentive, almost affectionate. No soul escaped her notice. No final twitch went unobserved. She saw the light leave forty-three pairs of eyes, one after another, and she cherished each extinction.

Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three.

The darkness began to recede, not because the spell was weakening, but because there was nothing left for it to consume. The island had become a desert of ash and dust. The huts—made of bone and hide—had crumbled. The central fire pit had been extinguished, its embers turned to cold gray powder. The trees that had surrounded the settlement were gone, not even stumps remaining.

Twenty-four... twenty-five... twenty-six...

Lilith opened her eyes.

Before her stretched a wasteland of absolute desolation. No color. No movement. No sound except the faint whisper of wind across a world that had been scrubbed clean. The overwhelming scent of death hung in the air—not the stench of rotting flesh, but something sharper, cleaner: the smell of absence. Of things that had been there and were no longer.

Thirty... thirty-one... thirty-two...

Her golden bracelet flickered. Numbers raced across its surface, counting, tallying, recording.

Thirty-three. Thirty-four. Thirty-five.

She watched the numbers climb, her smile never wavering.

Thirty-six. Thirty-seven. Thirty-eight.

The bracelet pulsed once, twice, and then stopped.

70.

Seventy mutated cyclopes. In a single spell. In less than five minutes. She had fallen short of Gabriel’s seventy-five by a mere five points—a margin so small it might as well have been nothing.

Lilith tilted her head, considering the number.

Seventy. Not bad. Not bad at all.

But it wasn’t the number that mattered. What mattered was what came next.

She looked around at the ash-covered island—at the remains of seventy monsters that had been reduced to dust and memory. But for Lilith, death was not an ending. It was a beginning.

She raised her hand.

"You served me in life," she said, her voice soft but carrying across the silent island.

"Now serve me in death."

The darkness that had receded surged forward again—not to consume, but to shape. From every pile of ash, from every crumbling skeleton, from every spot where a cyclops had drawn its final breath, shadows rose. They twisted and coalesced, taking form: tall, broad, with single eyes of pale blue flame. Shadow undeads. Dozens of them.

One by one, they emerged from the ground like seedlings sprouting after a fire. Their smoky bodies solidified, their phantom weapons materialized in their hands. They stood in rows, silent and patient, their blue eye-flames flickering in the crimson light.

Lilith counted.

Sixty-five.

Sixty-five new soldiers was a formidable force. Added to her original four, she now commanded sixty-nine shadow undeads.

She smiled, satisfied.

Let Gabriel top that.

"Fufufu!" Lilith laughed, the sound echoing across the dead island. "This is becoming more and more fun."

She could already imagine Gabriel’s face when he saw her army—. He would probably laugh, displaying another method to make things more fun

Good, she thought. Keep me on my toes, my angel.

She turned her attention to her new army. Sixty-nine shadow undeads stood at attention, their blue eyes fixed on her, waiting for commands. She could feel each one through the bond—their hunger, their loyalty, their eagerness to serve.

She divided them.

Not randomly, but with precision. She formed teams of five—five shadows per team, each team led by the strongest among them. She created thirteen teams, with four shadows left over as her personal escort. The teams would not all go to the same island. That would be inefficient. Instead, she sent each team to a different floating island, spreading them across the dungeon like seeds of darkness.

Go, she commanded mentally. Find settlements. Find isolated groups. Find anything that breathes. Kill them all. And when you have killed, raise their shadows as your own.

The teams moved as one.

Sixty-nine shadow undeads shot into the air, leaping across the void, their blue eye-flames trailing behind them like comet tails. Within seconds, they had vanished into the crimson haze, each team heading toward a different destination.

Lilith watched them go, her heart swelling with something that felt almost like pride.

They will cover more ground this way. They will slaughter faster. And each kill will add to my army. An exponential growth.

She floated there for a moment longer, her dragon wings idly flapping, her tail swaying contentedly. The island beneath her was dead—truly dead, not a single scrap of life remaining. But she did not need it anymore.

She had an army to command. A competition to win. And a beloved archangel to impress.

"Let’s see how you respond to this, Gabriel," she murmured.

And then she departed.

Her wings spread wide, her crimson robe billowing behind her, Lilith shot across the void toward the nearest island where her shadows had already begun their work. Behind her, the dead island spun slowly in the darkness—a monument to her power, a promise of more to come.

The dungeon had learned fear when Gabriel dropped his meteors.

Now, it would learn despair.

°°°

Meanwhile, Gabriel had arrived at another island.

It was a modest chunk of floating earth—smaller than the one he had just obliterated, but still teeming with life. He could feel countless presence below.