Chapter 941: Vergil cannot become weak.

Tsukuyomi continued looking at Yamato for a few seconds after her brief manifestation, but the amusement on her face diminished when another fissure in the sky of the Storm World finished closing. Even though it was a dimension created by Susanoo’s own divinity, the cuts produced by the two spiritual swords had begun leaving marks that took increasingly longer to disappear.

“Amaterasu is right. If you keep cutting space every time you exchange blows, eventually this will cause problems for all of us.” Tsukuyomi let out a sigh and sat back down in the air, crossing her legs as she observed the dimensional scars scattered across the sky. “And I really don’t want to find out who will show up first to complain.”

“If you want to keep training, simply use less power or temporarily seal your abilities.” Amaterasu spoke as if she were offering the most obvious solution possible, keeping her arms crossed while her solar aura still worked discreetly on the last ruptures left by Vergil and Susanoo. “You’re training swordsmanship. There is no need for every strike to contain enough energy to open another dimension.”

“Without power, it isn’t training, it’s just—” Vergil began to reply, but didn’t get to finish before Susanoo raised one hand and interrupted him.

“Sorry, sister. You’re right.” Susanoo sheathed Totsuka and observed the fissures around her own domain, realizing that perhaps she had gotten just as carried away as Vergil during the last few minutes. She then looked back at him and asked a question that, in her mind, seemed quite simple. “Can you deactivate all your powers?”

“Clearly not.” Vergil replied without needing to think, looking at Susanoo as if she had asked something completely absurd. “I’ve never been able to do that.”

Amaterasu frowned slightly.

“Can you not, or have you never tried?” Amaterasu asked as she approached, realizing from Vergil’s expression that there was a very important difference between those two possibilities.

Vergil remained silent for a few seconds.

“I don’t even know where to start.” Vergil finally admitted, crossing his arms as he tried to remember whether he had ever truly attempted to completely shut off everything that existed within him. Controlling the amount of energy he released was natural, partially hiding his presence as well, but turning himself into someone completely powerless had never been necessary.

“Then come here. I’ll teach you.” Amaterasu made a small gesture with her hand, calling him closer while Susanoo and Tsukuyomi remained watching.

Vergil approached without arguing. Amaterasu placed two fingers against the center of his chest and closed her eyes for a few seconds, feeling the circulation of energy through his body before pulling her hand away. Her expression changed almost immediately when she realized how many different currents passed through that existence, but she decided to begin with the simplest principle.

“Sealing your power doesn’t mean pushing it down or preventing it from existing. If you try to do that, the energy will keep looking for a way out.” Amaterasu drew a small golden circle in front of his chest with one finger, using her own energy to illustrate the process. “You need to draw everything inward, consciously interrupt the external circulation, and close the connections between your energy and the environment. Your body keeps producing power, but nothing goes beyond the limits you establish.”

Vergil watched carefully.

“First recognize everything that is circulating naturally. Don’t try to control each source separately.” Amaterasu closed her hand, making the golden circle shrink until it became a single point of light. “Draw it in. Compress it. Close it. Then do the same with any Authority that is passively emitting influence.”

Vergil closed his eyes.

His demonic energy began to diminish.

The divine presence partially disappeared shortly afterward.

For a few seconds, it seemed to work.

Then a small black discharge traveled across his arm.

Divine energy appeared over his shoulder.

A cold pressure of Death appeared behind him, followed almost immediately by a subtle manifestation of Wrath that passed through his aura before disappearing.

Vergil opened his eyes.

“It didn’t work.” Vergil stated the obvious as he looked at his own hand and made all those manifestations disappear again.

“You closed it too quickly.” Amaterasu approached again and corrected the position of his hand over his chest. “Do it slowly. Your body needs to understand that you’re not merely reducing the release of energy.”

Vergil tried again.

This time it took almost an entire minute.

His demonic energy disappeared first. The divine energy took a few additional seconds, but it also receded. Even the constant presence of Death seemed to diminish around him.

Then everything returned at once.

A blast of black and golden energy made Amaterasu’s hair sway backward.

Tsukuyomi let out a small laugh.

“Again.” Amaterasu ordered patiently, apparently beginning to treat it as a personal challenge.

Vergil tried for the third time.

Then the fourth.

On the fifth attempt, he managed to keep almost everything sealed for approximately seven seconds before his demonic energy simply began being produced in enough quantity to break through his control.

On the sixth, one of the Authorities reacted.

On the seventh, the divine energy reappeared before he even finished.

On the eighth, something inside his inner world moved and completely destroyed the concentration he had managed to establish.

Amaterasu began to look genuinely confused.

“How can this be so difficult for you?” Amaterasu asked as she walked around him, analyzing his energy circulation as if she were facing a particularly irritating mathematical problem. “You have excellent control over your power. You shouldn’t be failing at something so basic.”

“Thanks for the encouragement.” Vergil replied dryly as he ran a hand through his hair, already beginning to get irritated at discovering yet another apparently simple thing he didn’t know how to do.

“That wasn’t a provocation. I’m genuinely confused.” Amaterasu stopped in front of him and pointed at herself. “Watch.”

The change happened instantly.

Amaterasu’s entire presence disappeared.

It didn’t diminish.

It wasn’t hidden.

It simply ceased to exist.

The solar circle behind her head vanished, the supernatural glow in her eyes disappeared, and even that instinctive sensation of standing before a primordial divinity ceased to exist. Her hair was still beautiful and her clothes remained extraordinary, but energetically she seemed like nothing more than a human woman.

Vergil tried to sense her.

Nothing.

No divine energy.

No solar Authority.

Not even the slightest spiritual pressure.

If he weren’t looking directly at Amaterasu and didn’t know who she was, he could have believed that an ordinary human woman had simply appeared in the Storm World.

“Even I can do this without difficulty.” Amaterasu raised one hand and remained completely devoid of any divine manifestation as she spoke. “My energy production is practically inexhaustible within my own domains, but that doesn’t matter. Production and manifestation are different things.”

Vergil narrowed his eyes.

“That’s irritating.” Vergil commented as he continued trying to find any trace of her divine presence and couldn’t detect absolutely anything.

“Thank you.” Amaterasu replied with a small smile, apparently interpreting that as a compliment before undoing the seal.

Her presence returned at the same instant.

Solar energy once again filled the courtyard, the golden circle appeared behind her head, and her eyes once again carried that red luminosity resembling two stars. Susanoo didn’t even react, making it clear that she had seen her sister do that countless times.

Vergil remained thoughtful for a few seconds before looking at his own hands.

“There are probably three factors complicating this.” Vergil began mentally organizing everything he carried, realizing that his existence might be far less simple than Amaterasu’s method assumed.

“I’m listening.” Amaterasu turned all her attention toward him, clearly interested in discovering why a man with such immense energy control was incapable of performing a basic seal.

“The first is my race.” Vergil raised one finger as he explained. “As I said before, I’m the progenitor of the Aethernox. My body produces demonic and divine energy simultaneously. I’m not converting one into the other; both are produced naturally and function as different parts of the same existence.”

Amaterasu slowly nodded.

“That really would complicate the process.” Amaterasu began to understand why the first source always seemed to reappear whenever Vergil tried to close the second.

“The second problem is my Authorities.” Vergil raised another finger. “I have six Deadly Sins integrated directly into my existence: Wrath, Lust, Greed, Envy, Gluttony, and Sloth. In addition, there is the Authority of Death.”

Tsukuyomi stopped smiling.

“Death as a concept?” Tsukuyomi asked as she slowly uncrossed her legs, remembering that Vergil had only mentioned the Sins when she analyzed his Authorities earlier.

“Horseman of the Apocalypse.” Vergil replied while touching his own chest. “I’m the Horseman of Death. So this Authority doesn’t work exactly like the other six.”

Susanoo looked at Tsukuyomi.

Tsukuyomi looked at Amaterasu.

Amaterasu remained silent for a few seconds.

“You forgot to mention that earlier.” Amaterasu finally spoke, and her expression made it clear that she considered that detail quite relevant.

“No one asked.”

“Vergil, that isn’t the kind of information that normally requires a specific question.”

“In my defense, I have a lot going on.”

Amaterasu opened her mouth.

Then closed it again.

She couldn’t find a sufficiently good argument against that.

“And the third factor?” Susanoo asked, deciding to bring the conversation back before her sister started another interrogation.

Vergil grimaced slightly.

“That’s probably the worst one.” Vergil raised a third finger and began mentally counting the presences that shared his soul. “I have Niddrog, Qliphoth, Nivara, and Crymsaria inside me. Some are bound by soul contracts, others by seals, and others by connections that became much more complicated over time.”

The three goddesses remained staring at him.

Vergil continued.

“Niddrog is temporarily connected to my soul. Qliphoth has a deep connection to me because she literally took root in my existence.” Vergil lowered one finger as he organized the explanations. “Nivara and Crymsaria are bound to my soul in a way that even I can’t simply undo. So even when I try to shut off my own energy, there are still four independent sources inside the same system.”

Amaterasu remained completely still for a few seconds.

Then she brought one hand to her face.

“Now I understand.” Amaterasu let out a long sigh as she finally realized that she had tried to teach a conventional method to an existence that possessed practically everything except a conventional structure. “You’re not trying to seal one person.”

Vergil raised an eyebrow.

“You’re trying to seal an entire community.” Amaterasu concluded as Tsukuyomi began laughing beside them.

“I told you my inner world was becoming problematic.” Vergil replied with absolute seriousness, although the comparison had been far too accurate for him to truly dispute it.

Susanoo ran a hand across her forehead.

“Then find another way.” Susanoo spoke after thinking for a few seconds, finally returning to the reason they had started that discussion. “You don’t need to shut down your entire existence. You need to prevent your power from participating in the fight.”

Vergil looked at her.

Susanoo touched Totsuka.

“If you can’t stop producing energy, then keep producing it.” Susanoo kept her hand on the sheath while her expression once again took on the seriousness of an instructor. “But don’t put a single drop of it into the sword, your body, or your movements. Don’t use Authorities. Don’t use regeneration. Don’t strengthen your muscles. Don’t cut space.”

Vergil immediately understood where she was going with this.

“You want me to fight using only what my body can naturally do.” Vergil said as he lowered his eyes toward Yamato, realizing that this would also solve the problem of his sword’s jealousy.

“No.” Susanoo corrected without hesitation as she approached him. “I want you to fight using only your sword.”

Vergil raised his eyes.

Susanoo smiled faintly.

“That’s what you came here for, wasn’t it?”