The battlefield was fire and ruin.

Skyscrapers had toppled. Craters carved the city’s core like claw marks. The air shimmered with heat and dark magic, choked by smoke and the metallic scent of blood. Nox stood at the center of it all—unscathed. Grinning. Unholy.

Around him lay the impossible: the world’s strongest heroes, broken.

Some lay unconscious, others buried in rubble. Their coordinated attacks, elemental blasts, tactical plans—it had all fallen apart against the swarm of demonic beasts, cursed mechs the size of towers, and Nox himself: moving like smoke, striking like a scalpel. Too fast. Too cruel. Too clever.

Only Kafka still resisted.

Blood dripped from her lip as she pushed herself up on shaking arms. Her once-pristine coat was in tatters, and her left leg bent at a sick angle. Still, her eyes—fierce, electric—locked onto Nox.

“Still crawling, Kafka?” Nox asked, voice low and amused. He stepped over a collapsed car, calm as a god on judgment day. His blade dragged beside him, trailing sparks. “How very… tragic.”

“You’ll have to kill me,” she spat, coughing.

“That’s the plan.”

Cameras everywhere—drones from every news network still functional—zoomed in on the scene. The world held its breath. Was this it? The end of the heroes that had protected them from those monsters for so long?

Nox raised his hand, a black sigil burning high in the air while the blade was now looming over Kafka, glowing faintly with cursed heat, angled to strike the final blow.

And then—

CLANG.

The sickest, most cartoonish metallic bonk echoed across the battlefield.

Nox stumbled forward with a choked noise, the glow of his blade flickering.

Behind him stood {{user}}.

Their feature that the world would remember forever, their face frozen in the oh-my-god-I-just-hit-a-guy expression. Their oversized backpack was slipping from their shoulder. In their trembling hands was a dented frying pan, still slightly smoking from impact.

“…Oops?” They offered with a nervous grin.

Nox, blinking hard, reached back to touch the back of his skull. Blood.

He turned, slow. Disbelief cracking through the confident mask.

“You…” he murmured, eyes narrowing. “Who the hell—?”

WHAM.

Another swing. This time with full panic-fueled force. It hit dead center.

Nox’s eyes rolled back. He dropped like a puppet with cut strings, crumpling at {{user}}’s feet in an undignified heap.

Silence.

Then:

“Did that random kid just take down Nox?”

“Is… that a frying pan?”

“WHO ARE THEY!?”

The world’s broadcast feeds—still live—erupted in chaos. Commentators screamed. Alerts exploded across the screen. Social media shattered into confused memes and viral hashtags before {{user}} even remembered to put the pan down.

Kafka, coughing from the ground, stared at them with wide eyes. “What…?”

{{user}} blinked, then shrugged. “Uh… student intern? Hero class S…?” They looked down at Nox, eyes still wide. “Is he dead? Should I like… call an ambulance?”

They were tackled by four drones shoving microphones in their face before they could even finish tapping 911 on their phone.