NOVPUBThe crater was still shaking from the last blow when Vergil launched himself forward again - without mercy, without warning.
Spectre had barely risen completely. His cracked skull gave off small, dark sparks, but his eyes still shone with the coldness of a strategist who believed he had the upper hand. His bony hands held the air as if pulling invisible lines. Rune after rune pulsed around the field, fueling the chaos he concocted.
But Vergil was something different. Something you can't engineer.
Flames engulfed his body in a furious spiral. He disappeared in a blazing trail, cutting through the countryside like an enchanted bolt of lightning.
Appearing next to Spectre, Yamato arced downwards. The blow wasn't just physical - it came with a cutting gust of wind, an invisible wave that tore apart the surrounding reality. The sound was like glass being torn.
The impact was dry, but it only hit the vacuum. Spectre was no longer there.
A shadow, thick as oil and alive as flesh, had opened up on the ground - a circle of strange runes engulfing the skeletal body like ink seeping through cracks.
Vergil didn't hesitate. He didn't step back. He just took a step forward.
And then the shadow rose... behind his back.
"Damned tracking." Spectre's voice echoed like an inverted choir, coming from all directions.
A centipede of darkness, made of skeletal arms and tentacles of shadows, grabbed him from behind. Runes appeared on Vergil's skin like living tattoos, burning with ancient curses: numbness, blindness, soul-draining.
Vergil just smiled. There was no haste in his expression. Just a disguised irritation.
"Ah... street tricks." His body exploded in an aura of demonic wind.
A violent whirlwind of evaporated air and blood formed, destroying the shadow centipede in a gale that ripped the skin from the very ground.
With a twist of his fist, Yamato cut through the air - and with it, the curses themselves. The runes shattered like mirrors struck by a cruel truth, disappearing in bluish light. 𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙥𝙪𝙗.𝒄𝙤𝙢
'I see... Yamato's divine energy can cancel out these attacks...'
Vergil spun his sword and pointed at the vacuum. 'You should know better, little skull. You don't curse fate."
Spectre reappeared in the distance. The black cape swirled like a whirlpool of living ink. The flames around the camp trembled under his presence.
He raised both hands - and the battlefield shook.
From the ground, pillars of bone and necromantic energy rose up like stakes from hell. From each of them, curses took shape: a blind angel crying silver blood; a child with a thousand eyes, repeating Vergil's name like a spell; a woman made of shattered mirrors, each reflection showing a different end for him.
"Twelve Curses of Sibylline."
Spectre invoked horrors with the arrogance of a schoolboy who has finally learned to make fire with his bare hands. But Vergil saw it. It wasn't mastery. It was an attempt.
Vergil closed his eyes. He breathed. And moved.
Wind. Fire. Blood.
In the snap of a finger, flames engulfed Yamato. The blade spun, cutting through the child's curse before she could utter the last syllable. A dry blow destroyed the mirror woman's face. Incandescent fragments flew in all directions. The blind dancer was engulfed in a vortex of cutting wind, reduced to dust.
The field became a cruel dance, a bloody choreography where Vergil didn't react: he dictated.
Spectre clenched his fists. Cracks spread across the runes of his armor, and the pressure increased. But he couldn't stop now.
"You're fast... but not invincible."
He pointed to the ground. A triangular rune glowed like embers under the ashes.
An ethereal thorn came out of the ground, piercing Vergil's thigh - but not his body. The spirit. The pain wasn't physical. It was existential. The world lost color. Time wavered.
Vergil looked down. Blood dripped from a place that didn't exist.
"Ah... that's a good one."
He pinned Yamato to the ground.
And then his shadow rose.
The energy of the blood, primitive and indomitable, took shape. His shadow molded itself into a crimson clone, eyes blazing with icy fury. 'Talking to Raphaeline about her techniques really gave me a good arsenal..."
'Let's see if I can... give him a weaker Yamato...'
"You like summoning horrors, don't you?" Vergil laughed.
The clone attacked, as fast as a live arrow. Spectre raised his hand to block, but Vergil was already on the opposite side.
Yamato's power was split in half, giving the saugne clone a weapon... then... Two Yamato... Two attacks.
Spectre stepped back. The skull cracked hard. The runes wavered. A brief flash of real fear crossed his empty gaze.
Vergil didn't smile this time. He analyzed. Spectre's every move. Every gesture, every invocation, every indecisive pause. He wasn't a master. He was a powerful apprentice with dangerous toys.
With a horizontal slash, he disintegrated three defense runes floating around Spectre. The necromantic field lost its glow.
"You're a master of curses... huh..."
Vergil took a step back. He raised Yamato above his head, channeling wind and blood around the blade. A vortex formed around him, as if the universe was holding its breath.
"...it looks like it."
And with that, down came the blow.
The resulting wave of energy opened a fissure in the field. Spectre was thrown backwards, through two pillars of bone that exploded on impact. Dust, light and darkness mixed together.
For a moment... silence.
Vergil didn't move. He watched.
From the rubble, Spectre rose. Slowly. But standing. His shattered skull was beginning to rebuild itself. The runes on his body were now changing color, something Vergil hadn't seen before.
"You underestimated me." Spectre muttered.
Vergil responded with a slight raise of his eyebrow. "Actually... no. I'm just studying you."
Spectre spread his arms. The shadows around him twitched like hungry snakes.
"Then take a closer look at me." And the second phase began.
Vergil tilted his head slightly, watching the shadows churn like tides about to break. A cold heat ran through the field - the kind of energy that didn't come from a common element, but from something ancient, untouched by light or logic.
Spectre muttered words in a forgotten language, each syllable forcing the air to creak. The runes around his body spun, inverting their shape, as if refusing to remain what they were. From his feet, the shadow began to widen and contort, as if the earth were opening up not to swallow, but to spit something out.
Vergil narrowed his eyes.
From the center of the crater, where the earth had been torn apart by the last blow, a gigantic hand emerged. Bones as black as obsidian, muscles made of smoke and dead flesh. It was a six-fingered hand, as thick as the trunk of an ancient tree.
Five more arms rose up soon after, each one coming out of a different point in the summoned circle, like the petals of an unholy flower.
And then, the torso: wide, monstrous, made of ribs that looked like the fangs of a predator. The summoned spirit rose to its full height. It was at least four meters tall, curved by the very cursed density that supported it. Its head wasn't really a head - it was a sacrificial mask, split in half, with six eyes alight in different positions, each rotating in opposite directions.
"Sorrows of Eternity... answer my voice!" roared Spectre, with fanatical fervor. "Crush the son of fate!"
The giant bowed like a caged beast - and then advanced.
Vergil didn't move. Yet.
The first of the six arms came down, like a hammer. The earth shattered under the impact, forming craters inside the crater. Vergil had disappeared a second before, reappearing over the creature's shoulder.
He spun Yamato around, driving it straight into the monster's trapeze.
Nothing happened.
The spirit turned one of its heads, and an invisible mouth opened in a high-pitched scream. A sonic boom hurled Vergil away - but he used his own momentum, spinning in the air, landing lightly.
'Immunity to direct spirit slashing... so this isn't just an evocation... this is a host. Spectre is inside it.
He snapped his fingers, and the blood clone returned, rushing to his side like a hungry wolf. They both launched themselves at the creature.
The six arms moved with terrifying independence. One blocked, another attacked, another threw shadow projectiles. The others traced seals in the air, launching new curses like artillery fire.
Vergil whirled between the attacks as if he were dancing on a thin rope - but each defense cost energy. Each move was studied.
The creature used brute force - but Spectre... Spectre was coordinating everything from within. Vergil could feel it. The time between attacks, the curse patterns, the premeditated movements.
'He's learning. Adapting. Every second.
The blood clone was crushed by two crossed arms. The crimson mist broke up into screams and smoke.
Vergil roared. Not in anger. Of affirmation.
The flames returned - but this time, not like before. He channeled fire, wind and blood around his body like three intertwined serpents. The ground around him began to float, distorted by the intensity of his energy.
He ran down the side of the creature, using the very walls of the crater as his impetus. Each step, a leap. Each leap, a charge.
He cut off the first arm with fire - but the spiritual flesh regenerated. Then, with a twist, he slid under another arm, and with the wind, cut the magic seal that held it. The arm fell, writhing, disconnected.
The beast screamed. Spectre felt it.
But even so, he didn't back down.
Instead, Spectre projected his presence out of the creature - for an instant, his spirit was visible, hovering above the monster's head. It was pale, cracked, but its eyes burned with hatred.
The strange beast's body had completely regenerated. "Let's see how long you can last. Young Child." He said looking at Vergil who had his sword on his shoulder, looking at him.
"Hahaha what a joke" Vergil said before his eyes lit up. His aura increased even more as his body twitched...
'I need to increase my power in this form... I only fought my mother with this...'
His body twitched and then, from within his human shell, his demonic trigger was met with a transformation.
"Shall we start for real?" He said, grinning like a maniac as his body flowed with demonic energy.
