Dante stood motionless, a mundane pistol held in his extended right hand. The sound of gunfire continued to echo in his ears, but even that soon faded, leaving him with the silence of his surroundings.
At his feet, a young girl with crimson hair lay motionless. The mascaraed mask that accompanied her costume had disappeared at some point. The bracelet that controlled her outfits was tinkered with, most likely by Caligo’s short Diver, to ensure she wouldn’t change till they were done filming, but the electromagnetic pulse from his guard’s rail gun must have messed it up.
The girl’s deep blue eyes stared back at him, the fearless glimmer in their depth long extinguished. Right above, at the center of her forehead, a dark hole pierced deep into her head, and the crimson liquid overflowing from it blended with the uneven strands of her hair.
Sucking in a deep breath, Dante turned his sight to Epsilon’s motionless corpse, walked over, then pointed his gun.
A click followed the last shot, informing him that he was out of bullets. The short bastard had died from the first one, but there was no harm in making sure he didn’t get up.
[The process has already been initiated, as per plan.]
Hearing the AI’s even tone, Dante focused only on the last word. Once he learned of the abilities Type 8 granted him, a scheme quickly formed in his mind. Instead of using 8-3’s Rift Creation to escape, he decided to take on Epsilon and what remained of Caligo’s pawns in the underground hideout.
He studied the model created through the Spatial Awareness ability and chose a few spots to lay his traps. Type 8-3’s portals helped him reach those spots, but the strain was quickly getting to him. That’s when his mind was illuminated by a brilliant idea.
Volcan had informed him that each armor inherited the abilities of the Levels below it, so in a sense he didn’t need to rely on Type 8-3 for everything. For the other steps of the plan, he switched to the lesser versions of Type 8, weakening the strain on his body and giving 8-3 time to recover the energy he used for portals.
Spatial Awareness and Spatial Lock were both abilities that originated from Type 8-1. Though their range and effectiveness were very limited compared to the enhanced version 8-3 had, they still served their purpose.
Spatial Lock allowed him to fix an object or a part of it into a specific point in space, making it impossible to move said object unless he released it himself. In the spots he previously chose, he locked several parts of the floors in their place.
Whenever he was done with one, Dante would switch to Type 8-2, which increased the strain on his body more, but he needed the Spatial Distortion ability of that armor to execute the next step.
Reinforced or not, if concrete were to bend slightly, it would simply snap.
Dante used Spatial distortion to bend the floor around the spots he previously locked in space, which severed them from the rest of their surroundings, and just like that, he had several pit traps ready to be used in case his enemy tried to escape.
Surprisingly, the process took far less time than he had expected. He even had the leeway to go back and collapse the passages leading to the lower floors, trapping the henchmen who went down to look for him.
After that, Dante put on 8-3 and went to the arena. He freed the young hero so she could serve as a distraction then let things play out as he watched from the side, only putting 8-3 one more time to deactivate Spatial Lock as Epsilon passed over his traps and escaped the mob that had cornered him in the emergency stairs.
Volcan’s voice rang in his mind, severing his line of thought.
Having a sigh, Dante spaced out for a few seconds then gave a mental command and opened a screen on his OAM. From it he selected a certain item, held his hand out, and gave another mental command. An instant later, a small pouch appeared in his palm.
Technically speaking, his plan was a success as soon as he got his hands on this one item. At first, he thought it would be in Epsilon’s possession, but when he arrived at the arena and saw the other cloaked person and the mask hiding their face, his intuition told him otherwise.
"Heh..." Dante scoffed, the corners of his mouth curling up slightly.
After mocking her for trusting something as unfounded as intuition, he had gone and done the same. Turns out on top of everything, he was a hypocrite as well.
Shaking his head to banish the thought, he unzipped the pouch and grabbed one of the identical items it contained. It was a small flat box the size of his palm, its surface gray and simple. The box itself was mundane, and so was the soft foam inside it. What mattered was the small blue capsule resting at the center of that foam, and more importantly, the power it would grant to anyone who dares to swallow it.
Caligo had planned on testing their product against a Genome of Eidolon’s creation, and for that reason Dante expected them to have some of it nearby. Said product wasn’t going to be left in the hands of a random henchman, of course, which left only two of the gang’s core members who just so happened to be visiting a mostly abandoned hideout.
Dante put back the gray box in the pouch and stared at it for a few seconds, a frown finding its way to his face. Inside were nineteen more of the miraculous drug. For something of such immense value, the container used to store them appeared to be quite lacking. Caligo’s core members were known for being exceedingly careful so Dante was more than a little confused when he grabbed the pouch off the cloaked woman’s headless corpse.
[Dante,] Volcan spoke up, severing his line of thoughts once again. [If you still have something to do here, then you better finish it soon. There is a big caravan heading in our direction.]
Heaving another sigh, Dante asked the AI to send the pouch to the Storage, making a mental note to have him automate the process later. He took another look at his surroundings, his eyes stopping on the dead young hero for several seconds, then turned away and walked.