Dante lifted his head, gazing at Gabriel with a smile that widened with each passing second.
"Then…" he said quietly, a twisted hint of respect in his tone, "let's have some fun, Ash."
Almost at the same moment, Dante's Mana surged violently. Thick, inky blackness enveloped his body, writhing like a living creature before forming a pair of demon wings that expanded with brutal force.
"Demon… fifty percent."
Instantly, the Gravity Magic pressure that had already been present intensified exponentially—as if it erupted from within Dante himself.
The snow-covered ground beneath him collapsed, forming a massive crater nearly fifty meters across.
Yet Gabriel remained completely unmoved.
And that alone made Dante's smile widen—madness sparkling in his eyes.
"Hahaha… fascinating," he murmured. "Even at fifty percent demon power, it's still not enough to bring you down? You impress me…and make me envious, Ash!"
Dante raised his right hand.
Instantly, a massive boulder rose several meters above the snow-covered ground.
"Gravity Magic: Evil God's Pressure Craft."
The floating pages of his grimoire flipped rapidly.
In the next moment, the rock was compressed by gravity, roughly yet brutally sculpted into a colossal sword radiating immense pressure.
With a single swing, the giant blade shot toward Gabriel. It pierced through the young man's body and slammed into the ground behind him, triggering a cataclysmic explosion that sent snow flying into the air.
BOOOM—!!!
Watching it, Dante's crazed grin slowly faded. His expression flattened, then shifted to a hint of disappointment—contrasting sharply with the excitement he had shown moments before.
"Is that all your power…?" he said coldly. "You disappoint me."
But then, he abruptly paused.
"No… wait," he muttered, frowning. "He's actually been impaled…?"
The snow slowly settled, drifting gently back to the ground. Dante could see clearly—the massive sword had indeed pierced Gabriel's body. Yet… there was no blood. Not a single drop.
Then, Gabriel's head lifted slowly.
A faint smile still lingered on his face, shrouded in the ever-thickening pale mist.
"What… is happening?" Dante muttered, his voice laced with an uneasy confusion he hated to feel.
Gabriel's right hand extended forward. His index and middle fingers pressed together, pointing sharply in a direction—just to their right.
Dante furrowed his brow and turned to look.
And his eyes went wide.
About a hundred meters away, sitting—not standing—was another Gabriel. The figure leaned calmly on a pale throne, three pairs of pale white wings unfurled majestically behind him.
"Huh…?" Dante muttered, struggling to process what he was seeing.
Instinctively, he glanced back at the Gabriel who had just been impaled.
But at that moment, the figure collapsed—shattering into pale white feathers that scattered through the air, spinning slowly before each one vanished, as if it had never existed.
Dante stood frozen.
For a brief moment, the world around him seemed to recede. His consciousness sank inward, reaching out to communicate with the presence dwelling within him: Lucifero.
"That's an illusion," the deep voice echoed in his mind. "Yet… strange. I feel no trace of conventional illusion magic."
Dante clenched his fist.
"I feel it too," he muttered quietly. "No mana distortion. No layers of magic. Yet… my perception is clearly being toyed with."
"Not a visual obfuscation," Lucifero continued, his tone hardening. "Nor is it spatial manipulation."
Silence returned.
The truth was simple—and that was what made it terrifying.
What Gabriel was doing wasn't merely hacking existence with eyes and embedding an illusion into their minds.
This was Hira Gankyū, placed at the very beginning.
Yet, Gabriel had added an additional layer.
The laws of his Dark Matter Magic.
With Dark Matter, subtle electric waves were generated at specific points in the surrounding space, triggering a resonance within the perception of existence.
As a result, Gabriel's presence felt real, even though he wasn't physically there.
Indirectly, Gabriel's illusion became far more complex. To simplify, its mechanism was akin to Aizen's Kyōka Suigetsu—a perfect illusion that worked without the target ever realizing it.
Even Ki users remained completely unaware of Gabriel's presence, as their perception had already been locked.
Dante remained silent for a few moments longer than usual.
The corner of his mouth lifted slowly—not with a manic grin, but with a thin, cold smile.
"So… that's how it works," he muttered quietly.
"Not an illusion that deceives the eyes. Not magic that deceives mana."
He lifted his head, eyes fixed on Gabriel atop the pale throne.
"You're forcing the laws of reality to acknowledge something that doesn't truly exist," he continued, his voice low but heavy with pressure. "Cunning… and disgusting."
Yet his smile widened again.
"But remarkable. Truly human. You honestly make me envious."
He drew a deep breath, his shoulders swelling as demonic power surged through him.
"No wonder even Lucifero felt it," he said without turning. "This isn't some cheap trick. This is domination."
Dante raised his right hand slightly, feeling gravity pulse in response to his will.
"But listen carefully, Ash," he said loudly, his arrogant tone fully restored. "I don't care how many layers of reality's laws you hide."
His eyes burned a deep crimson.
"As long as you still rely on perception to play your games…"
"That means you can still be destroyed."
He let out a short, sharp laugh.
"You've managed to make me serious."
"Now… let's see if your mist can survive when I force the world itself to kneel."
The gravitational field around Dante shuddered, denser and more merciless—a clear sign that the battle had entered a truly lethal phase.
"Demon… eighty percent!"
The black substance immediately spread, covering nearly his entire body. Two sharp horns jutted from his forehead, radiating a terrifying aura.
From his back, the feathered cloak fell away, and a second pair of wings sprouted lower, thickening the undeniable demonic form.
A tail extended, its tip forming a unique symbol—resembling a crosshair—aligned with the pattern on his chest.
The gravitational field around him began to warp sharply. Space and snow seemed forced into submission, crushed under the weight of his presence.
Almost simultaneously, Gabriel extended his hand. His digital form moved without a sound. The pages of his Grimoire flipped rapidly—too fast for ordinary eyes to follow.
Dante moved to strike—but to the enhanced Gigan, his motion was no more than a series of frames, each step frozen in time.
The Grimoire halted.
"Mana Zone."
"Fifty Unit: Output Release."
In an instant, the natural magic in the area bent entirely to Gabriel's will, synchronized with the activation of all Compression Energy Units.
[- Dark Matter Creation Magic: Zadkiel Urteilsspeer des Leerenlichts -]
{Translate: Dark Matter Creation Magic: Zadkiel Judgment Spear of the Void Light.}
Within 0.01 seconds, sleek, pale white spears erupted from the ground, piercing Dante's body. His expression shifted—not from pain, but from brief shock.
Dante prepared to unleash his inherent magical attributes.
Yet before a single word escaped, Gabriel's Grimoire in digital mode flipped its pages again.
[- Dark Matter Magic: Haniel Umgestaltung des Leerenlichts -]
{Translate: Dark Matter Magic: Haniel Void Light Transformation.}
The spears shattered instantly. In the next heartbeat, they were reconstructed—sprouting into branching thorns that pierced Dante's cells and bloodstream like living roots, binding him from within.
Dante's body was restrained. His regeneration did not fail—but it was no longer absolute.
He tilted his head slightly, staring at the pale thorns binding him from within.
Then—a soft laugh escaped his lips.
"…Heh."
Dante lifted his head. A thin, sharp, dangerous smile etched across his face.
"So this is how it feels…"
"This body…" he continued softly, "…is not entirely mine."
His red gaze locked directly onto Gabriel, still seated calmly on his pale throne.
"You're not trying to kill me."
"But trying to seize… the meaning of it."
A brief silence.
"…Interesting. Very interesting."
The smile vanished. His voice dropped, cold and low.
"If this body is not entirely mine—"
The gravity inside Dante's body suddenly converged into a single point. Organs, flesh, and bone were compressed mercilessly, torn apart from within by their own pressure.
In an instant, only his head remained, floating in midair.
"So then…" Dante said calmly, "…I'll just replace it."
A burst of regeneration erupted.
Blood, flesh, and bone blossomed anew, cell by cell, forced back into their original form as if the body were being recreated from nothingness.
Watching the process unfold, Gabriel muttered to himself:
"Hee~ …quite bold, indeed."
Feeling that his previous trick had been inefficient—since Dante had already figured out how to break free—Gabriel finally rose from his throne.
In digital mode, the pages of his Grimoire flipped rapidly, glowing intensely, before coming to a stop.
[- Dark Matter Magic: Haniel Umgestaltung des Leerenlichts -]
{Translate: Dark Matter Magic: Haniel Void Light Transformation.}
The pale throne he had been sitting on trembled, then shattered. Its pale structure disintegrated into swirling mist in the air before being reconstructed—forming a pale shovel in Gabriel's hand.
Meanwhile, Dante had grasped a curved sword in Middle Eastern style, created simply by compressing a massive block of stone through gravitational pressure.
___
Author's note:
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