Chapter 85: Spatial Cleave

The crack in the air finally closed. The pull on Marcus and Elena stopped. They dropped off the broken wall onto the sand and stood up slowly. Blood ran down both their faces. Neither of them was smiling.

"No–The vessels –are damaged," Elena’s voice said.

"It doesn’t matter." Marcus rolled his shoulders. The red sword flew into his hand. "He cannot use that again. Look at his arm."

Dante’s right hand was a mess. The skin had split open from the fingertips to the wrist, and blood ran down the hilt of Esabella’s sword and dripped from the pommel. He didn’t look at it.

’Don’t think about hand think about what they did to us’

He thought about esabella sacrificing herself and suffering he think About Yenna’s face in the dust and her wounds.

His fingers tightened, the Aura in his body growing, and then– He moved.

’Void Step.’

The sand burst where he had stood. He appeared in front of Marcus with the sword already swinging, and the red blade came up to meet it. Both hit , and the shock rang across the arena.

Dante didn’t stop. He drove his forehead into Marcus’s face.

Bone cracked. Marcus’s head snapped back, and Dante hit him in the stomach with his left fist, then the ribs, then the jaw. Each punch landed with pure raw strength. The red plates split and fell off in pieces.

"You think this..." Marcus started.

Dante hit him in the mouth. Teeth flew across the sand.

"Shut up."

The red sword swung down. Dante caught the blade in his bare left hand. It cut deep into his palm, and he didn’t let go. He yanked Marcus toward him and drove the sword in his right hand through the armor, into the side, and twisted.

"Ahhhhh" Marcus screamed with two voices.

Elena’s dagger came at Dante’s back. But He spun quickly, caught her wrist, and slammed his knee into her elbow. The joint folded the wrong way. Black blood sprayed. He grabbed her by the hair and smashed her face into his knee, once, twice, three times, until her nose was gone.

She laughed through the blood. The rot rolled off her skin in a wave.

He reached into his belt and pulled out the urn.

[Mineral Fluid Extraction activated.]

The black rot jumped off her body and poured into it. Elena’s skin went grey and loose. The fight went out of her arms for a heartbeat.

That was all he needed. He dropped the urn and threw the sphere at the ground.

[Ground Weight Control activated. Target: Marcus. Pressure: 100x.]

Marcus hit the ground on his face. The ground cracked around him. Dante stepped on his back and brought the sword down again and again, into the shoulder, the thigh, the spine. Red armor flew apart. Every time the entity tried to get up, Dante kicked it back down.

"Take it back!" Marcus screamed. "Take it..."

"Noooooo."

He drove the blade through Marcus’s hand and into the sand, pinning it. Then he turned and hit Elena across the face with the sword. Her head spun around, and she crashed into the dirt.

His whole body ached. His breath came in short, hot gasps. Blood ran from his nose and the corner of his mouth, and the red veins along his neck pulsed with every beat of his heart.

’Keep moving, just a little More.’

He kicked Marcus in the head. He kicked Elena in the ribs. He picked her up by the throat and slammed her down on top of him, and the two bodies crashed into each other. He stamped on both of them, over and over, until the sand turned to red mud.

The two entities screamed in unison. Not words, only scream and before they could do anything he keep attacking them. Then a hand closed around his ankle.

Marcus’s fingers were Black. The red light in his eyes had gone out, and in its place was a cold gaze.

"Enough," the male entity said.

A wave of dark force burst out of him. It threw Dante back across the arena. He landed on his side, rolled, and quickly got up on one knee.

Both of them were on their feet. They looked bad. Marcus’s armor hung in pieces. One arm didn’t bend right. Elena’s face was a swollen ruin. But their eyes were steady.

"The–the Law of Stillness," Elena’s said and then She raised her hand.

The air in front of her turned to glass.

It wasn’t an attack. It was a field, spreading across the sand like frost across a window. Dante felt it hit his legs. His knees locked. His arms went stiff. He tried to move his sword, and it wouldn’t.

[Conceptual Status: Absolute Stillness, Level 4.]

’They’re pinning me.’

Marcus’s red sword came down in a easy arc. Dante couldn’t lift his arm.

He didn’t try to block it. He used the Eye of Fate.

The stone eye opened. The world went grey. Lines of energy spun in the air around them, and he saw the field, tied to the dark core in Elena’s chest. Behind it, at the base of her skull, a small red dot glowed.

’Found it’

The sword reached his neck. He tilted his head half an inch. The edge cut a line across his throat, and blood ran down his collar.

At the same moment, he snapped the sphere against his own legs.

[Ground Weight Control activated. Target: self. Pressure: 1/100.]

The weight vanished. His body went light as a feather. The stillness field couldn’t pin something that weighed nothing. He rose out of it like smoke.

Marcus stumbled forward, off balance. Dante drove his elbow into his chin and flew past him.

He landed on the sand ten meters away and looked up.

Elena wasn’t looking at him anymore.

Her eyes had turned toward the stands, at the top of the stairs. At the bench where a healer sat with white light pouring from his hands, and two women lay still beneath him.

"Brother," she said. "The demon queen is heeling i can feel it, i need to kill them."

"Go."

She ran. She moved in a blur, faster than before, her broken leg dragging black light behind her. The stands loomed ahead. The healer looked up, and his face went white.

Dante saw everything.

’No.’

He didn’t think. He had one chance, and he knew how it would end.

He pressed the ring.

[The Asura’s Eye of Fate. Weakness Extraction.]

Her back lit up in his sight. A bright red point at the base of her skull, the size of a coin.

He planted his feet as hard he could and the ground beneath his feet cracked.

[Void Step. Maximum output.]

The world stretched. The sand blew apart beneath him, and the air screamed. His body crossed the arena in a single breath, faster than he had ever moved. He came out of the blur directly behind her.

She was in the middle of a step, with one hand stretched toward the bench.

She felt him. Her head began to turn. Her eyes widened. But —She was too late.

Dante lifted the sword with both hands and he opened his mouth, only two words come.

"Spatial Cleave."

The air split. And a line, clean and black that opened from his sword and ran straight through Elena’s neck. For a half second, nothing happened.

"W–What?" She said as if nothing happened.

But Then— her upper body came apart. It didn’t fall. It crumbled, like dry sand blown away by wind. The head, the shoulders, the arms, all of it turned to dust and scattered across the stairs. The dust remained in the air for a moment, glittering.

Her legs stood there. They wobbled, and fell.

"You low level human i will never forgive you, you think you can kill me with this?"

Dante didn’t stop. The female entity was already moving, a dark shape tearing out of the ruined body and flying for the sky. He chopped down with a backhand and cut the lower half to pieces, a dozen small bloody chunks that rolled down the steps.

And then a high scream rang out above his head.

"AAAAAAAAHHHHH"

The shape twisted. It was black and ragged, and it screamed with a female voice. For a second it remains over the arena, burning with hate.

Then it turned and shot toward Marcus.

But then –Dante staggered. The pain hit him all at once.

His right arm was on fire. The skin of his hand had torn apart to the bone, and blood poured down the hilt in a stream. His eyes were wet, and when he touched his cheek, his fingers came away red. A line of blood ran from each nostril, and more from his ears.

[Body integrity: 41%.]

[Warning: Further use of Spatial Cleave might be result in death.]

The horn on the left side of his head cracked down the middle. A small piece fell and landed on the stone.

His knee gave out. He dropped to the steps with the sword stuck in the stone beside him, panting.

He looked at the pieces on the stairs. At the dust, still settling on the benches. There was nothing in his chest. No relief, no satisfaction.

’One.’

The female entity slammed into Marcus’s back.

His whole body jerked. His head snapped up. A pillar of black light rose from his spine and punched through the sky. The ground shook. The stone cracked in rings around him.

Two voices screamed together, then one.

The red light in his eyes turned black. Dark veins ran across his face like a spider web. His armor cracked and fused, plates sliding over each other, until his whole body was wrapped in dark red type armour. His hands grew longer, and his fingers ended in points.

He turned his head.

The eyes found Dante across the arena.

"You killed my vessel," the new voice said, a deep, double rumble that made the sand tremble.

Dante didn’t answer. He pulled the sword out of the stone and stood.

...

Meanwhile Up in the stands, on the bench, someone moved.

Esabella’s fingers twitched. The healer gasped, and white light flickered around his hands. He was sweating hard, and his lips had gone blue, but he kept going.

Her eyelids fluttered. Slowly, with great effort, they opened.

Gold eyes, half-lidded and hazy, stared at the sky. She tried to lift her head and couldn’t. Her gaze drifted sideways, down the stairs, to the arena.

She saw a man with a broken horn. His back was to her. His shoulders shook, and blood dripped from his hand. In front of him stood something huge and dark, walking forward.

She knew that back.

"D–Dante " she whispered.