Dante surveyed the battlefield, his eyes scanning the grotesque, twisted bodies of the hybrids. Something was off, not what he expected after so many fights. He felt something very wrong about the situation, but couldn't quite put his finger on it.
"Something's seriously wrong..." Dante murmured, looking at the scene before him again, once more in an open field littered with countless, utterly distorted hybrid monsters.
"Dante, I don't want to doubt you, but are you sure this isn't some plan of Fenrir's?" Siren asked while cleaning the blood from her claws.
"I'm starting to doubt myself too. I don't feel any divine energy coming from them... Something's definitely off with these guys." Dante replied as more hellhounds emerged to absorb the hybrids.
"Indeed, there's no trace of divine energy from them," Lilith knelt next to one of the dead carcasses.
Her eyes gleamed as she began analyzing the body before her, but unfortunately, she could do nothing. Having lost her immortality, she had also lost a great deal of her former analytical prowess. Now, she was no different from a Demon King.
Of course, she was still far above any of the current Demon Kings, and even if all of them combined their strength, they wouldn't measure up to half of her current power.
"I'm sick of this shit," Valentina said, slamming Gungnir into the sandy ground. "Let's head to the capital. I'm wiping out every single werewolf until I find who's responsible for this." Her voice was seething with rage.
It was hard to blame Valentina. She had been fighting for hours against what felt like an endless wall of mindless flesh. As a natural-born warrior, she craved a real fight, something challenging. But all she found here were hollow bodies that barely reacted.
"Stop acting on impulse, Valentina," Dante said, his voice deep. He felt a strange pain course through his body for an instant, as though something was trying to invade his very essence. But he took a deep breath, and the dark energy of Tiamat absorbed the disturbance, stabilizing him. "These monsters are just the symptom.
There's no point in obliterating everything without understanding what's behind it."
Dante looked toward the horizon with a mix of frustration and fatigue, his eyes fixed on the twilight beginning to descend over the field. "Ah, shit," he muttered, his voice dripping with disdain. "I'm starting to get sick of this shit too." He no longer displayed the same anticipation as before. The endless battles, the answers that never came... it was all starting to weigh on him.
But as always, he faced the situation head-on.
Without much hesitation, Dante gestured with his hand, summoning the dark power that resided within him. "Come here," he commanded, his voice resonating with authority as an army of infernal creatures emerged from the shadows around him.
The power flowing from him... the strength. But more than that, the resonance between Dante and the infernal entities.
"The Demon Emperor is absorbing part of Tiamat's energy... fascinating." The figure tilted its head, a curious expression just visible beneath the hood. "But how... is he managing the corruption so well? That's not something an ordinary demon should be capable of. Even a sovereign of his own realm... this energy should be tearing him apart from within." A crooked smile formed on the pale lips.
"Or perhaps... he's not so ordinary after all."
The figure rose from the chair, the long robes dragging across the stone floor with a hissing sound. It walked toward the nearest mirror, extending a hand toward the image of Dante. "You should be writhing in agony by now, Emperor. And yet, here you stand, absorbing every fragment of power that should have been a curse."
Closing its fingers into a fist, the figure distorted the image in the mirror, as if the liquid surface was resisting the touch. For a moment, a dark aura radiated from the hooded figure, making the air around it vibrate and the mirrors flicker, but it soon relaxed, letting out a soft, amused sigh.
"Well, this is merely a setback. Nothing we can't work around... or learn from." The figure took a step back, its eyes now burning with renewed determination. "If the Emperor wants to absorb my creations, then so be it. He's only giving me more information about himself." With a gesture, the mirrors began to rearrange themselves, showing other locations where the hybrids were still hiding.
But one by one, the mirrors displayed the same thing: Dante's miasmic hounds emerging from the shadows and tearing through the creations. The hybrid beasts, which were supposed to be the figure's most terrifying weapons, were being hunted like easy prey, crushed without mercy. And it wasn't just happening in one place. It was happening across the continent, simultaneously.
The monsters were being wiped out.
The hooded figure stared in silence for a moment, the weight of the situation settling in. Then, with a deep breath, it spoke softly, though the words carried a cold, menacing weight.
"Very well, Demon Emperor. You want to play with darkness? Let's see just how deep the abyss goes."
"Damn you..." he muttered, though there was a faint tone of admiration in his voice. "You really are destroying everything, aren't you?" His eyes gleamed with a new fire. "If that's what you want, Emperor... then I'll give you a true challenge."
The figure turned toward the deep shadows behind him. There, indistinct forms shifted, presences far more dangerous than the hybrids. Beings he had kept hidden, waiting for the right moment. "Prepare yourselves," he said with a sinister smile. "Let's show the Emperor the true power of Tiamat."
With a gesture, the shadows began to take shape, and he watched as his darker creations awakened. These were not mere hybrids, but entities forged from fragments much closer to Tiamat's own power. Creatures of pure destruction, shaped by chaos and malice.
"You want to hunt my creations, Dante?" The figure's voice echoed through the dark chamber. "Then hunt this."
With a simple movement, he unleashed the creatures, sending them to the surface, directly toward where Dante and his allies were located. A new wave of monsters would emerge, much stronger and deadlier, ready to face the Demon Emperor and test the limits of the power he dared to absorb.