To surpass twilight and become an elder dragon, Luminous had to discover the full scope of light and all of its wavelengths. She had managed to see far past the visible light and extended her dominion even to the radiowaves and microwaves.

With her light, Luminous could outshine a star, and her mere existence was a hazard to all living beings. The fact that she had managed to tame her own light down to the point she is just blindingly bright was a miracle.

Time, Light, Void, and Mana dragons were all magic dragons, on the same level of power. If an Elder Void dragon could carry entire solar systems into war, it also made sense that Light dragons would be on the same scale of power.

But that was her problem as well; she couldn’t unleash such powerful light here in the mortal world without frying it. To win this fight, they needed either something precise or to get Nyar out of the universe where they can blast him.

Linda was an Elder drakaina as well, but she lacked the experience gained from fighting in the war. When facing Nyar, not knowing what he could do is deadly. In this fight, Linda would’ve been killed ten times over if not for Luminous keeping an eye on her.

For Linda, it felt like she was a new recruit, a soldier on their first day, and they were faced with carpet bombing and an air strike. Linda had managed to surpass her twilight, but even such a huge achievement wasn’t enough to make her ready to face such an alien horror.

Not many dragons surpass twilight because the limit and gate blocking the path isn’t just raw power, wealth, or authority; it is knowledge, wisdom, and the talent needed to assert their will upon the world.

Linda had to fuse with her own shadow in the shadow realm to surpass twilight, and that only helped her because one’s shadow is one’s image from the past. Your shadow doesn’t exactly follow your moves in the present; it follows your moves in the past, because light takes time to cast it. When you look at your own shadow, you’re looking at yourself from the past, just a tiny fraction of a second, but it was still enough to allow Linda to glitch out of time and surpass her twilight.

Right now, Betty was nowhere near facing twilight. She wasn’t even a true dragon yet, only boasting a powerful light bloodline. But, due to the very nature of what is needed to surpass twilight, the dragon doesn’t need to discover it in their last days, or while dead.

At this moment, even while not knowing the full extent of what she was dabbling in, Betty was touching on that key, on that knowledge that would one day allow her surpass twilight if she was ever to become a true dragon.

Quantum physics, or at least the very first concept and start of it all. A photon, the light particle, is neither solid nor a wave. Light travels as a wave, and stays in that state until observed; its state is then decided.

Right now, the universe hasn’t decided if Betty is dead or alive, and it won’t be able to decide that until she slows down, is observed, and that reality is set into stone. She had started moving while she was still alive after all.

From what Betty guessed so far, the universe can’t decide if she is dead or alive as long as she is a wave of light, and so, Death isn’t able to harvest her soul. So, when she stops, the universe will finally make that decision.

But she also guessed that the universe doesn’t want her to die, for whatever reason, it is related to Arad. She suspects it is due to fate, and that Arad is fated to do something big, which would never happen if she were to die, so the universe is trying to avoid that scenario.

So, to survive, Betty has to give the universe an excuse to decide she is alive when she is observed, and that excuse had to be powerful enough to warrant surviving a stab from Nyar himself.

The answer was simple: Betty had another creature just as horrid, powerful, and deadly as Nyar. She never prayed to Yog before, simply because of how annoying she could be, but now, she needed her healing magic, her divine protection, and most importantly, her name to convince the universe.

So, using Yog’s healing magic to heal her wounds would help, but then, she still had to get rid of Nyar’s eldritch magic. Now that part is going to be painful. If she is moving at the speed of light, and her time is stopped, then she cannot die anyway, so the solution to Nyar’s eldritch magic was simple.

For just a split moment, Betty clenched her teeth and then turned back her heart and lungs into tangible matter, causing them to explode, burn, and get blasted out of her back as they were erased by the immense pressure caused by moving at the speed of light. And with them, Nyar’s eldritch magic was blasted away.

Physical matter can’t endure moving at the speed of light, but Betty knew that her grandmother could punch at the speed of light, so it was possible. The problem was that Betty was nowhere as durable as her grandmother, so this trick worked, and all of Nyar’s magic was washed away with her infested organs.

Death watched from the back and almost got splashed by all of the ash. It really didn’t matter how injured Betty is; she won’t die until she stops moving. But then, Betty wasn’t going to stay wounded for long, because thanks to Yog’s flowing magic, her wounds started to heal rapidly.

Yog gives divine magic to wizards based on their magical knowledge, achievements, and power. She doesn’t really care about prayers or anything religious. That is why a genius like Betty could pull a flood of divine magic from her. So now, Betty had discovered a way to allow her fragile, tiny, halfling body to endure the speed of light.

If she keeps moving at the speed of light while using holy magic to heal herself and recover from exhaustion, then she should be able to move indefinitely.

Jumping through the air and spreading her arms, Betty’s body healed, her mana regenerated, and Death behind her frowned, watching as the little halfling started to surpass mortals in their knowledge.

And then just like that, the halo of light around the mortal world twisted, shifted, and turned toward the gate of the labyrinth like a laser beam. Betty flew right in, moving at a speed most would never understand the magnitude of.

As she stepped into the maze, she didn’t slow down a bit, moving at 100% of the speed of light. She cast the spell, [Time Stop], on the entire maze and froze time for just a fraction of a second. They stack!

Such a short time was useless to anyone else, but she was moving at the speed of light. In that moment alone, she could’ve run a lap around the entire mortal world if she wanted to.

Betty walked through the maze, moving at the speed of light through the stopped time. She saw everyone stuck in place; everything looked either black, white, or blurry as clouds. This was a universe only she could step into, and she didn’t waste her chance.

She moved past Arad’s other wives, past the gods, and to the battle where Nyar stood, mid-swing at Maharaja’s face. She jumped on his shoulders, wrapped her legs around his neck, grabbed his head with both hands, and then.

CRACK!

She tore it off at the speed of light, causing the entire thing to vaporize.

When time flowed again, to everyone else, Nyar’s head just suddenly exploded into blinding light, and it took them a second to notice Betty standing between them. Her body looked as it always had, except that her entire skin shimmered with light, one made from her own draconic bloodline, and the other was the golden shimmer of divine light.

Her diamond eyes refracted the light and glared right back at Nyar with a cold stare. He, too, could see her, even without a head or eyes, that horror could perceive his surroundings with uncanny clarity and precision. He was also the only one feeling it; Betty was there, but at the same time, she wasn’t. Her entire body looked like a mirage; an illusion created from shimmering light.

"You should be dead. Death never let anyone off." A voice boomed from Nyar’s body, and Betty smiled. "Death? I left her in the dust."

Betty had successfully managed to outrun her own death.

Then, she disappeared before Nyar could even finish understanding what she meant, racing toward him at the speed of light.

Her grandma, Luminous, joined her as well. She didn’t know what her granddaughter did, but she was willing to assist her. But, to Luminous’s surprise, Betty disappeared from her side a moment later, and Nyar’s arms were torn off before she could reach him.

Was Betty faster than her? No, that didn’t make sense. Unless you bend space to make distances shorter, you can’t reach a spot faster than light could. But Betty was doing just that, so how was she achieving that?

It took Luminous a moment to figure it out. Seeing the threads of time magic taking hold, she became aware that her granddaughter bent time instead of space to get faster, which was more achievable through pure magic.

But there was one problem: even if Betty could move faster than Luminous or Linda could, she still only had a fraction of their power and output. If the two were slow cannon balls, she is a smaller, but faster bullet. Betty doesn’t have enough destructive power to kill Nyar, but she could probably hurt him a lot if she could hit a weak point, like a needle through the eye.

Nyar growled.

"AH! That one twists space to move faster, and you twist time." He was referring to Arad’s mother. "But using time magic instead of draconic magic is really janky, and it won’t bend the world that much to your will." He disappeared, and his arm turned into a sharp tentacle spear, reaching just an inch away from Betty’s eye.

He had to kill Betty this time and make sure she won’t become a bigger threat in the future. This halfling reminds him a lot of Yog, and he is starting to have a phobia of all things similar to halflings at this point.