Capítulo 654: What kind of solution was that?
Sapphire’s head was spinning.
It wasn’t ordinary dizziness—it was as if the world were a few seconds behind her senses. She raised her hand to her face and frowned at the sight of veins pulsing beneath her skin, slightly purplish, almost glistening in an inappropriate way.
Her blood was trying to circulate.
And failing.
Her skin, once vibrant and firm, now carried a grayish tone that should never have existed there.
“…”
She blinked, her jaw clenching.
“I was… poisoned?” she murmured, staring at her own hand as if it had betrayed her. “What the hell is this…?”
The pain ca imdiately afterward.
It shot through her entire body like a misdirected discharge—but concentrated in the nape of her neck, making her hiss through her teeth.
“OW—!”
She couldn’t even curse properly.
The mories ca broken. Fragnted. As if soone had cast a thick fog over everything that had happened before.
Vergil.
She rembered eting him earlier.
The wine.
The damned wine.
“…That wine…” she murmured, her brow furrowed. “Was it spiked?”
She vaguely rembered blows. Not a full-blown fight—more like corrections. Surgical strikes after the liquid had already gone down her throat.
Thinking hurt.
Thinking clearly seed impossible.
It was like trying to pull mories through thick mud.
Then, a voice.
Too calm.
“You’re awake.”
The sound cut through the fog.
Sapphire looked up with difficulty—and there he was.
Sitting in front of her, in an upside-down chair, his arms resting on the backrest, his body too relaxed for soone facing the creature that had already made the Underworld bleed.
Vergil. “What are you—” she began, but the sentence died before it could be born.
He continued, as if explaining sothing trivial.
“Hydra venom,” he said matter-of-factly. “With a touch of Abyss energy… and demonic blood from so very powerful being. Or whatever exactly Paimon mixed it with.”
He smiled.
A calm smile.
Sapphire felt her stomach churn.
That wasn’t a smile of execution.
Nor of threat.
No.
It was worse.
She felt sothing tighten in her chest.
A strange pressure.
A specific weight.
…Domination.
The thought instantly enraged her.
Her.
The most powerful Demon Queen.
The demon with titles too extensive for mortals to rember.
The entity whose re presence made armies tremble.
Feeling… dominated? “What a tasteless joke.”
“Damn it, Vergil,” she growled, bringing a hand to her head. “What do you want? You could have just asked—”
She interrupted herself, her brow furrowing even more.
“…Damn it.”
She took a deep breath.
“This tastes like primordial demon blood wine,” she murmured, almost annoyed. “What a fucking hangover.”
Vergil tilted his head slightly, observing her with almost clinical attention—but there was sothing behind that look. Not cruelty. Not triumph. Sothing more… careful than he cared to admit.
“Relax,” he said, resting his elbows on the back of the chair. “I just needed you a little more… Calm.”
Sapphire let out a hoarse laugh, which turned into an irritated groan as the pain in her neck throbbed again.
“You call that relaxing?” she grumbled. “My whole body feels like it’s been fighting with the very concept of existence.”
“Technically, it has,” he replied matter-of-factly. “Your body is trying to expel the poison, but I didn’t let it finish the process.”
She narrowed her eyes, trying to focus better on him. Her vision still wavered, as if the world were lagging behind her thoughts.
“…So you deliberately left in this shitty in-between state.”
“Exactly.”
“Son of a—”
“—calm down,” he cut in, still too calm. “Before you try to rip my head off with imaginary telekinesis that your body can’t sustain right now.”
Sapphire clenched her teeth. She tried to gather energy. Nothing. It was like trying to grab smoke with broken hands.
This genuinely angered her.
“Do you know how humiliating this is?” she growled. “I could reduce continents to ashes.”
“I know,” Vergil replied without hesitation. “And that’s exactly why you’re trapped in this special chair, with runes that react to your emotional pulse even before your demonic energy.”
She finally looked around.
The environnt was too simple to be a dungeon. Polished black stone, discreet runic circles on the floor, chains that didn’t touch her body—because they didn’t need to. The restraint ca from within.
“You planned this,” she murmured, more lucid now.
“I did,” he confird. “For days.”
“Why?” Sapphire asked, her voice lower. Not weak—cautious. “What do you want from , Vergil?”
He rose from the chair and took a few steps, staying out of her imdiate reach. Not out of fear. Out of respect for what she was—even in that state.
“I want you to stop running.” The silence that followed was heavy.
Sapphire laughed again, but this ti there was no humor in it. “Ah. Is that it? You drugged with Hydra venom to play therapist?”
“No,” he replied. “I did it because if I tried to talk to you awake, whole, and ard to the teeth, you would have killed before the second sentence.” Vergil shrugged, “Anyway, I’m not going to arrest you,” he said, and the runes released her, allowing her to move.
“What the heck?” Sapphire narrowed her eyes, anger finally overcoming the mist. “Then why drug , you son of a bitch?!”
She lunged forward without thinking.
Pure instinct.
The fist ca swiftly, charged with enough intent to demolish a fortress—
And stopped.
Vergil caught the blow with a single hand.
Effortlessly.
Without even changing his expression.
“Hm,” he comnted, almost assessing. “Cald down?”
He chuckled softly.
Sapphire felt her blood boil.
“I did well to drain a large part of your energy,” Vergil continued, too calm for soone half a ter from death. “You haven’t even checked yet… but you’re at about one percent of your original strength.”
He tilted his head. “Maybe less.”
She gritted her teeth.
“What the hell are you plotting?” she growled.
And then… she changed.
She was no longer Sapphire.
Not the mother.
Not the wife.
The aura around her distorted, the air grew heavy, the ground groaned beneath her feet. Horns broke through the skin of her head, demonic energy leaked out like living, dark, aggressive smoke.
There was Agares.
The primordial.
The terror that preceded nas.
The entity whose title ca before fear.
Vergil observed all of this… and sighed.
CLACK.
The sound was dry. Simple.
A flick.
Right in the middle of the forehead.
“OW!!”
Sapphire—no, Agares—instantly put both hands to her forehead, her eyes wide with pain and surprise, her balance vanishing in the sa instant.
She fell to the ground with a thud unworthy of soone who once ruled legions.
“WHAT—?!” she scread, more offended than hurt. “YOU FLICKED ?!”
Vergil crossed his arms, looking down at her.
“First: yes.”
“Second: you were getting dramatic.”
“Third: horns don’t give you immunity to a flick.”
She stared at him, speechless, her demonic aura flickering… and slowly fading, like a frustrated fla.
“…I’m going to kill you when this is over,” Sapphire murmured, still massaging her forehead, her pride wounded far more than her body.
Vergil rely smiled.
“You can try,” he replied calmly. “But you and your ancestral arrogance will end up liking what I’m going to do.”
Before she could retort, he turned and opened the door behind him.
What lay on the other side was not a torture chamber, nor a containnt circle, nor so absurd ritual.
It was an ordinary room.
Simple.
Made bed. Rug on the floor. A window with light curtains.
And, in the center of the room…
Katharina.
She was sitting on the floor, kneeling, too focused on carefully stacking small pieces of wood.
A Jenga.
Yes. The Jenga ga.
For a few seconds, Sapphire’s brain simply froze.
“…Vergil, what—” she began, her voice faltering for the first ti since waking up.
She didn’t finish.
Vergil picked her up as if she weighed nothing, completely ignoring the choked protest that tried to escape.
“We’re going to work things out between you two,” he said, sighing with genuine exhaustion. “I’ve made a long, complicated, and extrely stressful plan.”
He went into the room and closed the door behind him.
“And honestly? I only have three days for you two to stop acting like emotionally illiterate cosmic entities.”
He put Sapphire down next to his daughter and gave an almost mischievous smile.
“So that’s it. Let’s hang out. Let’s talk. Let’s play.”
He pointed to Jenga.
“And let’s have fun together.”
Sapphire’s face… broke.
Not cracked.
Shattered.
The cold, distant, controlled expression—it all crumbled into a mixture of shock, indignation, and utter disbelief.
Katharina slowly raised her eyes, instantly recognizing her mother.
“…E-even you got caught, Mom…” she murmured.
There was a mixture of nervousness and relief in her voice.
Yes.
She had also been ambushed.
Not in the sa brutal way—no hydra venom, no absurd energy drain—but still…
Kidnapped.
Katharina looked from Sapphire to Vergil, then back to Sapphire. “…He brought here saying it was ‘an important conversation’.”
Vergil scratched the back of his neck. “Technically, I didn’t lie.”
Sapphire finally managed to speak. “…You kidnapped us.”
Vergil shrugged. “I prefer ‘forced strategic retreat for family conflict resolution’.”
Silence.
The kind of heavy silence that precedes an explosion.
Sapphire took a deep breath.
Then she slowly exhaled.
“…You’re completely insane.”
“I know,” he replied with a satisfied smile. “I managed to do sothing no one else has, I kidnapped the most powerful female demon in history. It’s a title I’m proud of.”
Katharina looked at her mother, then at Jenga, then back at Vergil.
“…Are we really going to settle this by playing Jenga?”
Vergil clapped once.
“Among other activities. Simple rules: no killing anyone, no threats, and no leaving the room.” He tilted his head, serious for a second. “I want you both whole at the end of this.”
Sapphire stared at her daughter.
Katharina stared at her mother.
Two won, bound by blood, resentnt, and too much pride to fit into an entire hell…
Trapped in a room.
With a wooden ga.
For three days.
Yes.
Vergil had kidnapped two demon queens to force them to reconcile.
What kind of solution was that?
“Of course, playing Jenga is going to be kind of boring, so I asked Morgana to do this.” He said as he picked up a small jar full of folded papers. “I let her creative wickedness take over. We have so punishnts.”
…The two felt a demonic shiver coming from that sentence, followed by a smile that said, “You’ve exhausted my patience.”
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