Nanites.
I didn't think I'd run into something this advanced so early, but then again, Earth was centuries behind the rest of the universe; it was only natural.
For a long moment, I held them suspended, unsure what to do next, before deciding on a mental shutdown—locking them inside their own bodies. All it took was the intent. Their eyes glazed over instantly.
I wrapped them in protective bubbles of reinforced telekinesis, and with a casual snap of my fingers, I called my Anathema fire, letting it consume the wild wave of PaleFyre, shredding the atmosphere around me.
Within seconds, the demonic energy was overtaken, my Nephilim energy engulfing and corrupting the PaleFyre's corrosive essence.
Floating into the air, I tilted my head in calculation, considering what to do about the abundance of energy before it came to me. A smile spread across my face.
Thick ingots of pre-forged Twilight Vibranium alloy mixed with Adamantium shimmered into existence around me. I heated one bar to white-hot brilliance and reshaped it into massive restraints. Runes crawled across their surface—strengthening, stabilization, suppression. Finally, I added a piece of Devourer material to each one, ensuring they siphoned off energy, then cooled the cuffs by pulling out the heat.
The remaining ingots dissolved under my telekinesis and Fire affinity and reformed as massive cubes—massive blocks the size of my torso. I etched the surfaces with runework: twenty energy-storage arrays divided evenly between my two energy types; Energy transistors, stabilization circuits, and the two central energy generators, one generating wind, the other Nether fire.
The Anti-tampering array went on next. It was a paranoid masterpiece keyed to detect energy, movement, and intent of removal. Any attempt to disrupt the cube would trigger an explosion powerful enough to scour the city of New York.
Last came the psychic trigger tied to a dynamic timer.
I created fifty cubes over the next twenty minutes or so, each humming with energy I channeled through my Sentinel II armor. The strain had been brutal—but rewarding. I could now enhance my physical stats by 500 points across the board.
With that bit of business handled, I felt much more confident moving forward. There were a dozen other ancient houses I needed to eliminate and an entire state's worth of monsters I needed to cleanse so that Corvus couldn't have them.
A few sharp teleportations and detonations, and Mordo's predictions would be turned on their head.
I started with Kessith's clan and the remaining Kree. After detaining the aliens and Kessith, I powered down and teleported us into his bedchamber. A female PaleFyre Dragonoid was there waiting.
My spear took her head off before she could speak, and the slave beside her—a boy in his late teens—only realized his captor was dead several seconds later in my eyes at least.
I calmed his mind, put him to sleep, and sent him to my personal dimension along with the unconscious prisoners, attaching a note to their clothing for Jean. Then I materialized one of the Anathema bombs and set it, giving it a two-hour timer.
I masked its energy signature with the same invisibility and concealment runes I'd used to ambush the PaleFyre patrols and moved on. I blinked across the city, rescuing dozens of mutants while blatantly ignoring the weaker PaleFyres.
Five hundred rescued mutants later, I materialized in the air above the clan's territory and moved to my next target.
The Red Waste.
A section of Limbo so hostile that sentient creatures avoided it entirely. It was home to wyrms that were colder than cities, serpents the size of skyscrapers, scorpions with claws like siege weapons, and abominations that quite didn't fit the earthly definitions of animals. It was a veritable buffet for a mad biomancer. I set my bombs and moved on, bouncing around the globe.
Every destination was a fresh hellhole, soaked in danger, but ultimately predictable.
Near the two-hour mark, I touched down on a hilltop infested with twisted lion-like beasts. They had massive wings, too many horns, and roars that condensed into slicing wind funnels.
The males lunged first.
I could've ended it with a simple spell, but I felt a bit showboaty.
My spear blurred through the air, breaking the sound barrier, and ripping through the chest of the first monster mid-leap. I vaulted over its falling corpse, flipped, and drove a hell through the skull of the second, cratering the stone below it.
The third slashed at me; I batted the claws aside and shattered its jaw with an uppercut. Its body pitched upwards until I grabbed it midair and slammed it into the ground hard enough to crater the hillside. A swift pivot, and I flung it into the cluster of charging beasts, then stretched my hand out as I recalled my double-sided spear.
I pounced on the recovering pride of monstrous lions, finishing them with a blur of thrusts.
"That was therapeutic," I mused as I manifested another cube, placing it in a nearby shrub and burying it in runes I telekinetically stitched into the soil, masking its signature.
A space fold opened behind me, and a figure stepped through.
I'd already drawn on all my runes, my spear blazing with Anathema flame, ready to burn.
Its tip pointed at a familiar face—but the appearance still threw me off.
"Vergil?"
"Long time no see, brother," he said casually. He looked like a mirror of me, only slightly shorter, with deep blue-green eyes, slicked-back hair, and a leather jacket of all things. Yamato was in his hand, and he made a show of sheathing it with practiced elegance.
A faint smile tugged at his lips.
"Still fighting like a rabid beast, I see."
This shouldn't be possible. In every possible future I saw, Vergil didn't appear here." I must've changed something, altering Vergil's path.
"How did you find me?"
"It was kind of hard to miss. You were teleporting around the planet like a drunk whore. Your technique was atrocious." He squeezed his face, and I bit back a growl.
He was right, of course. I wasn't particularly great at teleportation, especially in an alien dimension. Different mechanics
"What are you doing on Limbo?" I asked.
Vergil stared long, unblinking, disappointed.
"Ten years apart, and those are the first words out of your mouth?" he asked. "I thought you'd be happy to see me. For all you knew, I was dead."
"I learned you weren't pretty early on," I said. "And that you ran when things got tough."
Vergil's face hardened at my insinuation, and he stepped closer. "I was a child. Facing Belasco and his children would've been suicide."
"And yet I did it anyway," I shot back.
The emotion behind the words surprised me. It was Dante speaking, not Axel. It was getting harder and harder to tell where he ended and I began.
Vergil needed to hear his anger. And Dante needed to push him. It was the only way we were ever going to cooperate at first. The eventual betrayal was inevitable, but I was determined to get the most out of it while it lasted.
"You challenged his children, yes," Vergil admitted, "but you're not a match for Belasco now. Not as he is."
Oh, I was aware. Not without preparations, at least. But I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of admitting that.
"While you've been playing hero on this backwater," Vergil continued, "I've been tracking our father's jailer across the galaxy. I know where Father is being held. And once we deal with this little mess, we'll break him out."
Grant Sparda is freedom…
It was still on that list of missions Shin gave me. I knew I'd get around to it eventually, but I always thought it'd be in some far-off nebulous future.
I wondered what Shin would say if he saw me now.
"That'll be easier said than done," I replied, finally lowering my spear and pulling my energy back. "We need to move. I used too much power—they'll come looking."
"Who?"
Space stretched and popped, and Lauren appeared with a wide grin. She wore high-tech rogue armor with guns magnetically docked to her thighs and a Japanese sword on her back—one that looked uncomfortably familiar.
"Well, well," she said. "A family reunion. Or should I say… brother and imposter?"
"What?" Vergil's voice sharpened instantly.
Ah, shit.
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