NOVPUBThe atmosphere around Vergil shattered like glass under cosmic pressure.
His aura, hitherto contained like a chained beast, erupted in a bluish-black gale, sweeping dust, ash and dried blood high into the air.
Vergil looked up. His once cold eyes now burned with an icy light, pupils dancing in the ethereal glow. His eyes glowed, following the lines of energy that spread across his face like marks carved from frozen fire.
His body arched. A second of silence, like the sigh before the storm.
And then, the transformation.
Vergil's back opened in a snap, revealing demonic wings formed of solid energy and dense shadows - not feathers, but floating blades of living obsidian. His silver hair floated with the distorted gravity around him, and his skin took on a paler, almost ethereal hue, as if he were between two worlds. The demonic markings glowed red and blue, alternating between chaos and order.
His Yamato - or what it was supposed to be - had also changed. The blade, instead of the traditional thin and elegant katana, had lengthened into a more aggressive version: curved, double-edged, with the blade pulsating in violet tones. It was alive. Organic in parts, forged not just from metal, but from something deeper. Each cut left behind traces of shattered reality, as if the space around the blade refused to be touched by it.
The giant spirit hesitated. A primitive instinct - even in something made of bones and shadows - sensed what was coming.
And then all hell broke loose.
Vergil fired. A rip in space marked his advance, and where his feet touched the ground, the ground shattered into prisms of inverted energy. He didn't run - he devoured the distance. One of the creature's arms came down like an avalanche, but Vergil sliced it through the air before it could finish its arc, splitting the curse that held it together with a sideways slash.
The arm disintegrated into blue flames and spectral fragments.
The monster roared - and this time, it was a roar that not only sounded, but was felt. Vergil staggered for a moment, the spiritual seismic waves hitting him like sledgehammers - but he spun in the air, landing on his back on a wall of bones, using it as momentum.
He screamed, and his scream reverberated with multiple voices - his own, of his demonic essence, and of something ancestral, hidden in the memories of his mother's blood.
The next attack was a storm. Vergil multiplied himself using the same technique as before, but much more refined and with more force
Not in illusory clones, but in echoes of his own movements - each advance creating a new version of himself, slightly delayed, like lightning reflecting off broken mirrors.
Three Vergils - or three instants of one - simultaneously severed the creature's three central arms, creating a triple impact that unleashed a wave of energy so powerful that it made the ground beneath the monster's feet collapse in a spiral.
Spectre, inside the host, screamed in fury. The mask over the creature cracked. The runes bled. He began to channel the Sibylline Roots, a forbidden technique that tied the user's fate to the guaranteed destruction of the enemy.
Vergil felt the binding. Red lines began to sew his body to the creature, as if time was deciding to bring them both to the same end.
"Is that what you call control?" Vergil growled. "Then see what transcending is."
With a subtle gesture, he launched Yamato into the air. It spun once. Twice.
And the instant the sword touched his fist again, the world stopped.
Not metaphorically. Time was interrupted.
The earth froze at the impact of thunder that never came. Flames hovered in the air. The giant's shadow stood still, eyes still glowing.
Vergil walked - slowly - through suspended time. Each step left trails of blue light behind him. He looked at the creature, observing its spiritual structure. The links that bound Spectre to the summoning. The flaws in the incantations. The misaligned layers of the soul seal.
"You're trying to create a god with doll parts."
He raised Yamato. The blade glowed with a light that was not of this world.
And then it cut.
Not the creature. Not Spectre. The bond between them.
Time seemed to go back, to reset itself like a spring being released. The giant spirit's body staggered and, for the first time, its eyes went out.
Time itself hadn't stopped, but for Spectre it had...
Spectre fell from the sky, separated, his soul exposed like a fragment of cracked moon.
Vergil appeared beside him, his foot on his spectral chest. Yamato resting on his ethereal neck.
"That was really disappointing."
And with one last movement, Vergil cut out the soul.
Spectre didn't scream.
He just disappeared - like a shadow that never was.
The field fell silent. The runes evaporated. The crater was now just silence and floating blue dust.
Vergil put his sword away and just looked at the horizon beyond the barrier.
The silence that dominated the crater lasted for an almost cruel time.
The mystical embers floated like ashes from a world that no longer existed. The air was heavy, dense, as if reality hesitated to continue after such a rupture. Even time seemed to avoid resuming its natural rhythm.
"Too weak." He muttered nervously.
His body went through the spiral of energy left over from the battle and fell to his knees, the impact resounding like the bell of an execution. His demonic form shattered into dark blue particles, snaking through the air before disappearing altogether. His skin returned to its pale hue, his eyes lost their supernatural glow, but there was something deeper in his gaze now - a cold, ancient, unyielding shadow.
He slowly raised his face. The three heroes, once spectators of the last part of the massacre, stared at him with tense expressions.
Vergil didn't say anything immediately. He just watched them, with an almost contemptuous calm. Then he stood up with the calmness of someone who wasn't even panting.
His gaze cut through the group like the blade of his sword.
"Get back to training." His voice sounded like stone being dragged across marble. "You're weak."
Fury bubbled up in the trio.
Eva couldn't take it.
"You're too strong!" she shouted, her voice filled with frustration, anger, admiration and fear, all at the same time. 𝑛𝘰𝑣𝘱𝑢𝑏.𝘤𝑜𝘮
Vergil turned his face only slightly. His eyes narrowed in ancestral weariness.
"He wasn't even real."
And then the world screamed.
The battle dimension - already unstable, sustained only by fragments of magic and desire - simply collapsed.
The ground shattered like porcelain under an invisible force. The ancient runes that held the fabric of reality together broke with a sharp sound, like bells being tortured.
The sky, black and silent until then, ripped open with pulsating lines of white and crimson-red light, revealing something beyond - something that was never meant to be seen.
A devastating crash filled everything, like the cry of an ancient god trapped for eons.
And then, without warning, a body was thrown through the dimensional rift, flying at high speed.
Vergil raised his hand as if time were still in his grasp. With a fluid and absolutely precise movement, he held her by the waist, cushioning the impact as if she were made of glass.
"Lost, are you?" he asked with a subtle, almost debauched smile, as he watched Gwen in his arms.
She gasped, her gaze shocked, her eyes wide from the dimensional collapse, from the force... and from him.
"M-Master..." she stammered, without the strength to stand up.
Vergil's gaze changed in an instant. The smile disappeared, replaced by a cutting coldness.
"Who hit you?" the question came out dry, direct, like the edge of his sword.
And before Gwen could answer, he had already seen it.
No words were needed. In the distance, two familiar figures were fighting desperately against Spectre's surviving minions. Kaori and Valerie, still trying to contain the instability of that decaying world.
Vergil carefully set Gwen down on the ground and stood up, his eyes searching for more. Always more.
It was then that the gates of reality adjusted. With a dimensional snap, the Vatican appeared - intact, majestic and impassive, as if it were all just a fever dream.
And then - them.
"Oh, you're here too..." Vergil murmured with a slight smile, recognizing Seraphina and Lucian among the rubble of the shattered space.
The reunion had no time for emotion.
He turned his gaze as if he already knew what was coming... and saw it.
At the opposite end of the new scene, between golden columns and pulsating shadows, Kraggor, his other general, was engaged in a brutal fight - not against shadows, not against spectres...
But against Dante.
The two moved like titans, exchanging blows that shaped the air around them, each impact echoing like war drums.
Vergil frowned. His silence was the storm that preceded the trial.
"What did they want?" Vergil asked, his voice calm but firm, as he helped Gwen to her feet with a gentle, almost protective gesture.
She was still shaking, trying to catch her breath, her eyes fixed on the floor for a second before she faced him.
"The Pope's corpse..." she replied, her voice hoarse, still tinged with disbelief.
Vergil arched an eyebrow slightly. "And what have you done with him?"
Gwen hesitated.
She swallowed.
"Kraggor... ate it."
Silence.
Absolute silence.
Heavy as stone.
Even the sound of battles in the distance seemed to cease for a moment.
Vergil remained motionless. The wind blew through the ruins, carrying ash and dust, as if the world itself had stopped to process the information.
He blinked slowly.
He looked at the horizon.
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA" The entire Vatican shook with Vergil's laughter...
It was the only thing he could do... what he had just heard was so absurd that he simply couldn't stop himself from laughing.
