The world was no longer the sa, and that wasn’t a taphor. What had once been a tournant, a controlled arena where absurd forces collided under implicit rules, had now beco sothing completely different. The floating coliseum no longer rely orbited the sky—it existed on the edge of a reality that was being slowly consud, drained, rewritten by a force that didn’t distinguish allies from enemies. And, at the center of it all, two presences continued to clash with an intensity that ignored any other threat.
Vergil was being crushed.
There was no more honest way to describe it. Each exchange of blows wasn’t a contest, not a asurent of strength—it was a brutal exercise in survival. Angelo was no longer the sa opponent he had faced minutes before. The constant evolution of that entity had surpassed a critical threshold, and now each movent carried a weight that couldn’t be compensated for with technique alone.
The blow ca too quickly for ordinary eyes to follow.
Vergil moved at the last instant, shifting his body just enough to avoid direct impact, but it still wasn’t enough. Angelo’s fist grazed his side, and the re displacent of air was enough to launch his body dozens of ters, crashing through suspended fragnts of stone and colliding with what remained of a destroyed structure.
The impact reverberated through the isolated space.
Stone shattered.
Air exploded.
And, for a brief second... everything was silent.
Then he moved.
Vergil pushed himself out of the rubble, his feet sliding across the uneven ground as he regained his balance with almost irritating precision. His body was injured—that much was evident now. Small fissures spread across his skin, blood trickled in thin lines down his arm, and his breathing was no longer as steady as before.
But his eyes...
His eyes remained cold.
Calculating.
Learning.
Another attack.
Without warning.
Angelo didn’t back down. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t pause. His body no longer operated under conventional biological limitations. Each movent was a perfect execution of maximum force, refined by continuous adaptation. He didn’t just attack—he evolved with each interaction.
Vergil raised Nidhogg.
The scythe found its mark.
The impact was devastating.
The blade didn’t yield—but the space around it did. A shockwave ripped through the air, expanding in a perfect circle that swept everything around it, pulverizing what remained of the terrain and hurling debris into the void that now surrounded the coliseum.
And yet...
Vergil was pushed back.
His feet dragged across the ground, creating deep furrows in the surface as he absorbed the force of the impact. His muscles contracted, not to resist... but to redirect. His body tilted slightly, twisting at the last second to dissipate so of the energy.
Even so...
He spat blood.
But he didn’t look away.
"Stronger..." he murmured, almost to himself.
There was no frustration in his voice.
Just... acceptance.
And analysis.
Because he had already understood.
It wasn’t just a difference in power.
It was a difference in state.
Angelo wasn’t limited by a ceiling.
He was constantly rising.
And that made any direct confrontation... obsolete.
Vergil advanced.
Not because he believed he would win at that instant.
But because he needed to continue.
Every exchange, every impact, every failure—everything was being stored, dissected, reconstructed within his mind. He wasn’t just fighting.
He was rewriting himself.
The next blow ca.
And this ti...
He managed to keep up.
Not completely.
But enough.
His body moved sooner, his posture adjusted better, his reading was more precise. Angelo’s attack was still absurdly superior in strength, but Vergil was no longer reacting rely instinctively.
He anticipated.
And that... was beginning to make a difference.
anwhile, above them, sothing completely different was happening.
Alice didn’t move as before.
She didn’t advance.
She didn’t retreat.
She remained motionless.
But her presence... expanded.
Her eyes were closed, her breathing controlled as her mana spread in silent waves, filling every inch of the floating coliseum. It wasn’t an explosion of power. It wasn’t sothing violent.
It was... absolute control.
Invisible lines began to form in space, complex patterns that intertwined like a living system, enveloping the entire structure of the coliseum. The air beca denser, and space began to behave differently, as if it were being shaped by a higher will.
Then... it closed.
There was no explosion.
There was no sound.
But sothing changed.
Profoundly.
The coliseum was isolated.
Not just physically.
But existentially.
Portals that were still trying to form simply failed. Spatial disturbances were nullified before they even materialized. Any attempt to escape... ceased to exist as a possibility.
They were trapped.
All of them.
Alice opened her eyes.
And, for a brief mont, her gaze wasn’t fixed on the battlefield.
But upwards.
Her mind connected.
Not through spoken words.
But directly.
Seris.
"External interference is compromising the balance."
Her voice echoed directly into the other’s consciousness.
Cold.
Precise.
No room for discussion.
"Cancel the chanism that drains divine energy."
It wasn’t a request.
It was an order.
"If this continues... it will escalate beyond control."
Their connection ended imdiately.
Without waiting for a response.
Because, at that mont... she already had another priority.
Her eyes lowered.
Fixing again on Angelo.
And on Vergil.
The fight continued.
More violent.
Faster.
More dangerous.
Vergil advanced again, his stance now different, more compact, more efficient. His movents were no longer just precise—they were beginning to adapt to Angelo’s pattern. Not enough to match.
But enough not to die.
The blow ca.
He blocked.
The impact still pushed him back.
But less so.
His counterattack ca imdiately, Nidhogg’s blade cutting through space in a precise arc that struck Angelo directly.
For a mont...
It seed to work. But then...
Angelo’s body responded.
It changed.
It adjusted.
And, in the next movent...
He had already learned.
The counterattack ca faster.
Heavier.
More... perfect.
Vergil couldn’t block completely this ti.
The impact hit his torso, and this ti the air was completely ripped from his lungs as his body was thrown again, crossing the isolated field and violently colliding against the invisible boundary created by Alice.
The barrier didn’t break.
But he felt it.
And yet...
He stood up.
Once again.
His eyes were still focused.
Still calculating.
Still learning.
Even being crushed.
Even being behind.
Even fighting against sothing that was, at that mont, far beyond him.
Vergil didn’t retreat.
Because, for him...
The fight would only end when he decided so.
And, at that mont...
He hadn’t decided yet.
The isolated coliseum no longer obeyed a single will, and for the first ti since the beginning of that absolute collapse, sothing directly interfered with the chaotic expansion that had been consuming everything. It wasn’t a physical impact, nor a brute attack, but a precise alteration in the structure of the very phenonon that Dante had created, as if soone had found the exact point where that entire construction rested... and decided to pull the correct thread. At the top of one of the remaining towers, where the geotry of the coliseum still resisted destruction, a new presence erged, not as an invasion, but as sothing that could always have been there, observing, waiting for the exact mont to act.
Seris appeared without fanfare, but the effect of its presence was imdiate, almost violent in its subtlety. The air around her didn’t churn, didn’t vibrate with excess energy, but beca... stable, as if everything that was distorted was being forced to rember how it should function. Her feet touched the cracked stone of the tower lightly, but the space around her reacted as if it had been anchored to reality again. Her eyes, calm and deeply focused, turned to the distorted sky above the coliseum, where Dante’s influence still manifested as an invisible pressure consuming what remained of divine energy.
She didn’t hesitate.
Her hand rose slowly, and, in the next instant, the sky responded.
A magic circle began to form above her, not small, not contained—colossal. Lines of pure energy intertwined in absurdly complex patterns, layers upon layers of runes that represented not only magic, but laws. It was an entire system being built in the air, a control architecture that expanded rapidly, covering not only the top of the tower, but all the space above the coliseum. The light emanating from it wasn’t aggressive, but it was impossible to ignore. It was... dominant.
And then, she closed her hand.
The effect was imdiate.
The structure Dante had created... failed.
It didn’t explode, it didn’t collapse chaotically—it simply ceased to function as before. The energy flow was interrupted, the draining stopped abruptly, and what seed inevitable... was denied.
And Dante felt it.
The very instant control slipped from his grasp, his presence contracted, and then... moved.
He didn’t run.
He appeared.
Space violently distorted around the point where Seris stood, and Dante appeared there with a speed that defied physical movent, his body already in motion, his hand advancing directly toward her neck with clear, direct, murderous intent. There was no test, no provocation—it was an execution.
But he encountered no resistance.
His hand pierced through.
Not flesh.
Not energy.
Just... a remnant.
The image of Seris dissipated the instant of impact, dissolving into fragnts of light that scattered in the air as if they had never been solid. There was no blood, no reaction, only absence.
For a second...
Dante stood motionless.
His eyes narrowed slowly, while his perception expanded, trying to locate the real presence, trying to find the origin, the anchoring point of that interference. But all he found... was emptiness.
And then...
A laugh.
Soft.
Light. But completely out of place.
Echoing.
Not from a specific point.
But from everywhere.
Dante clenched his teeth.
His expression changed.
It was no longer just irritation.
It was anger.
Cold.
Cutting.
"Playing gas with ..." he murmured, his low voice carrying a tension that made the very air around him vibrate irregularly.
He raised his hand again, trying to reactivate his authority, trying to pull back the dominance he had established, trying to rebuild the flow that had been interrupted. His energy responded, advancing, seeking to regain control...
But it failed.
Simply... it failed.
As if the space no longer accepted it.
As if the rule had been rewritten.
The silence that followed was short.
And then... he cursed.
Low.
But full of intention.
"Damn it..."
His hand moved. And this ti, he didn’t try to recover.
He decided to destroy.
The sword appeared in his hand as an extension of his own will, materializing with a weight that wasn’t rely physical. Rebellion. The blade that cut not only matter, but concepts, limits, structures. He gripped it firmly, his fingers adjusting to the hilt as if that were the only language that still made sense at that mont.
Without hesitation, he attacked.
Not horizontally.
Not at a specific target.
But at the sky itself.
The blade rose in a perfect arc, and when it descended... the world responded.
The cut wasn’t visible in the usual way, but the effect was impossible to ignore. The space above the coliseum was torn open, an absurd fissure opening as if reality itself had been split in two. The colossal, complex, perfect magic circle of Seris... was struck directly.
And began to unravel.
The runes shattered, the lines fragnted, the pattern lost its integrity and collapsed in a cascade, like a structure that had lost its foundation. The light dissipated, the magical construction disintegrated, and for a mont... it seed that Dante had regained control.
He took a deep breath.
And smiled.
But the smile didn’t last.
Because, even with the circle destroyed...
The presence didn’t disappear.
And then...
The voice ca.
Loud.
Clear.
And completely serene.
"You are quite temperantal..."
It didn’t echo as before.
Now... it ca from above.
Far above.
"How about you calm down?"
Dante looked up.
And it was at that instant that the sky answered.
Not with rupture.
But with judgnt.
A point of light ford above him, small at first, almost insignificant, but carrying an absurd density. The surrounding air compressed, space tensed, and for a fraction of a second... everything seed to stop.
And then it fell.
The lightning didn’t descend like ordinary electricity.
It plumted.
Like an axis.
Like a pillar.
A column of pure energy that traversed space in a straight line, without dispersion, without hesitation, connecting heaven and earth in a single absolute instant. The impact was imdiate.
And devastating.
The sound didn’t co first.
The light ca first.
A blinding flash that engulfed everything around it, completely obliterating vision for an instant, followed by a roar that felt not just like sound, but pressure, crushing the air in every direction. The tower where Dante stood... didn’t withstand it.
It ceased to exist.
The structure was obliterated at the point of impact, reduced to fragnts that didn’t even have ti to fall before being vaporized by the released energy. The ground beneath opened up, cracks spreading like a living web as the discharge pierced layer upon layer of stone, descending until it disappeared into the depths.
And, at the center of it all...
Dante was struck.
Directly.
Unblocked.
Undeflected.
No chance of avoidance.
For a brief instant...
There was nothing there but light.
And silence.
As if the world had decided to stop...
Just to see the result.
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