NOVPUBVergil's laughter echoed off the golden columns and floating debris like mocking thunder in the sky of a collapsing world.
He laughed so hard that he had to lean on a broken pillar, his hand on his stomach, his shoulders shaking as if hell itself had cracked a joke.
"Kraggor ate..." he repeated between short laughs, trying to catch his breath. "The Pope..."
Vergil gasped, his eyes watering, staring at Gwen with an incredulous half-smile, still trying to understand if that had really been said. 𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒑𝒖𝒃.𝙘𝙤𝒎
"No, wait a minute..." he held up his hand, as if asking an invisible audience to calm down. "You're kidding me, right? Like, is this a metaphor? A secret mission with a code name like... 'Swallow the Authority' or some shit?"
Gwen, with her clothes still torn and her expression half-burned by the dimensions she had crossed, simply crossed her arms. Her face? Inexpressive. Serious as a funeral statue.
"No."
Silence.
Vergil stared at her for a few more seconds, as if he was waiting for the invisible camera of some reality TV show to appear from behind a column and shout "MASTER'S FUCK!"
"You're telling me, with a straight face..." he took a step forward, pointing to the horizon as if the cosmos itself had to listen "...that Kraggor, my general, the brute with less vocabulary than a drunken golem, thought it was a good idea to swallow the BODY of the CHURCH LEADER?"
Gwen nodded, slowly, firmly. "Without salt or seasoning, master. Raw. Like a fairground pastry."
Vergil turned away for a second. He put his hand to the back of his neck. He took a deep breath.
"My God..." he muttered. "I took this guy on because he was good at hitting hard. Now he's there, making liturgical snacks."
Gwen scratched her head uneasily.
"I tried to stop it, master... but he growled at me... and said they wanted the body... so he destroyed it by chewing..."
Vergil rubbed his face with both hands like a father who has just discovered that his five-year-old son has painted his dog with a marker. He slid his hands slowly down his face until he stopped with his fingers pressing on his temples, as if it were possible to squeeze the madness out of his own head.
"Kraggor destroyed... the corpse... of the pope... by chewing..." he repeated slowly, as if trying to make each word sound less absurd than it was. To no avail.
"And that was the solution he found most sensible?! Like... not hiding the body. Not killing the assholes who wanted him, no, he decided that the best response to a crisis was to DIGEST A RELIGIOUS ICON."
Gwen, with the naturalness of someone who has become accustomed to the improbable, simply added:
"Technically, he said that the meat was too 'consecrated' to leave to his enemies."
Vergil opened his mouth. It closed. He opened it again.
"...How did this guy not die? He's a demon, the pope's body has received sacred energy all his life, shouldn't it almost be sacred equipment?" Vergil questioned.
Vergil turned slowly towards Kraggor with an expression that mixed shock, sudden realization and a twinge of silent despair.
"Oh no..." he whispered, his eyes widening as if he had just realized that he had forgotten to turn the oven on for three eras.
Down below, on the battlefield where the ground shattered and the sky seemed to bleed constellations, Kraggor stood before Dante. The demon... had barely finished a sarcastic taunt when-
PUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRHHHHH!
A burp. Not just any burp. A thunderclap of distilled faith, a blast of holy energy, a heavenly ray wrapped in the stench of a wet bible and the breath of a fermented wafer.
The blast of golden light hit Dante with enough force to cut him in half. If it hadn't been for his absurd regeneration... He would probably have died... too bad Kraggor wouldn't have given the Demon a chance to react.
He appeared in front of Dante and delivered a powerful blow.
Dante was thrown backwards, hitting a church pillar.
"BUT WHY-" he barely had time to finish before he disappeared into the glare.
Vergil, from the top of the floating hill, watched the scene with the expression of someone who had just witnessed a duck successfully operate a rocket.
"...He's become a sacred biological weapon."
Gwen, who also saw it, only muttered:
"Imagine what happens if he eats an archangel."
"He'll turn into a faith bomb, Gwen. A faith bomb with paws and bad breath."
Vergil turned back to Kraggor, who was now looking down at his hands with a childlike reverence, like someone who has accidentally discovered that they spark.
"Master!" he shouted, his voice resounding. "I GLOWED THROUGH THE HOLE OF MY MOUTH!"
"Yes, Kraggor." Vergil replied, exhausted. "You've become an exorcism dragon. Congratulations. Now close your mouth before you accidentally purify the whole of hell."
Kraggor smiled. A tooth fell out and, as it touched the ground, turned a puddle of demonic mud into holy water.
"Wonderful. Now I have a monster that spits faith and farts salvation." Vergil sighed.
But Vergil barely had time to finish his sentence when a metallic clang cut through the air, loud and shrill like sharp thunder. The sound reverberated through the destroyed columns and made even Kraggor stop smiling. The clouds above, laden with red lightning and fragmented auroras, opened like curtains being pulled apart.
And there they were.
In the sky, crossing spirals of light and shadow, two battles were going on at once - a brutal ballet of blades and fury.
Kaori, the Japanese Blade, shot through the red spirals like a vengeful comet. Her sword, Ryugetsu, left red trails in the air with each blow against Lucian.
"You're pissing me off, Lucian!" she shouted between one cut and another. "You're just some son of a bitch who stands in the way of my King!"
Lucian blocked with his spear and replied coolly: "Shut up, Bitch."
The explosion of their weapons colliding created sound waves all around, as well as enormous pressure.
But that wasn't all.
Further down, in a spiral of sacred debris and floating pillars, Valerie was dueling with Seraphina;
Valerie spun with an almost cruel elegance, her twin blades reflecting a thousand distorted versions of herself, clones of speed, confusing her opponent's reaction time. Seraphina, meanwhile, clad in a very strange dominatrix's lingerie, slashed with a sword that left trails of sacred energy. The exchange of blows seemed never-ending, and one always cancelled out the other.
"I'm going to kill you, you slut!" Seraphina shouted, her fallen angel wings spreading and launching steel-hard feathers towards her.
Valerie responded with a crooked smile and a sword swing that made her opponent lose sight of her, confusing her senses with its speed.
'I hate fighting like that...' Valerie muttered.
Vergil watched from above, his eyes squinted. He sighed deeply once again, while Kraggor next to him beat Dante unmercifully...
Gwen pointed to the sky with a subtle gesture, her gaze assessing the fights.
"Kaori's in a frenzy. If she keeps this up, Lucian won't last long. But Valerie... she's pushing too hard. If she doesn't back off soon, Seraphina will make her forget how to hold a sword."
"And what do you suggest?" Vergil asked, his voice heavy with irony, as if each word had to cut through a layer of ancestral frustration.
Gwen looked up at the sky where swords tinkled like war bells. "Why don't we just kill them? They're weak."
Vergil let out a dry sigh, as if he had heard a brilliant plan coming from a stone.
"That's the problem," he replied, his eyes squinting. "These guys... weren't weak. Not before."
"Huh? What do you mean?" Gwen asked, confused.
"You probably don't know, but I fought all three of them. At the same time. And they held out. They fought back. They almost made me back down."
He regarded the battle with subtle unease. "Now? Kraggor is dealing with them as if they were scarecrows with swords."
A thought grew like a crack in the back of his mind. 'Something's wrong...'
The Spectre he faced earlier... wasn't the original. That was clear. Too clear.
"Gwen," he said suddenly.
She turned to him attentively.
"Did they say anything? Any phrases? A provocation? Anything that... sounds like them?"
Gwen scratched her eyebrow thoughtfully.
"Hm... No. Just generic swear words. 'Get out of the way', 'die'... Empty stuff."
Vergil smiled. But it wasn't a humorous smile. It was like the blade that curves before it kills.
"Got it."
And then, in an instant, he disappeared - the air sizzling where he stood.
He appeared behind Seraphina like a cut in time. Silent. Relentless.
His hand went through her chest with supernatural precision. His fingers pierced not flesh - but something colder, more false. Like glass encased in false light.
He lifted her as if she were made of paper.
But Seraphina didn't scream.
She just... stared at him. Without pain. No surprise. No soul.
Then, slowly, she began to melt.
Like consecrated wax under the heat of truth. The light in his eyes fading to emptiness.
The body dripped down Vergil's arm, leaving behind only armor and the smell of burning incense.
He stood there, watching it dissolve into nothing - as if an illusion had finally been shattered.
Then he turned back to Gwen in a flash of presence, his clothes still dripping with the liquid light that ran off the copy.
"That's not them."
Gwen took a step back, absorbing what she had just seen.
"Then... what are they?"
Vergil looked up at the sky, where the fight continued with increasingly mechanical movements.
"Puppets." He said. "Probably Spectre magic. The originals must be safe somewhere."
He cracked his neck, "They're planning something..." Vergil muttered before... "I'm going to kill them all, make sure Kaori's okay." He said before disappearing.
