The room still trembled from the last impact.

  Dust and powdered metal drifted through the air in slow spirals, catching the sterile overhead lights and turning them hazy. A spiderweb crack split the wall where Dante’s enhanced arm had struck, fissures spreading like lightning frozen in steel.

  Rei didn’t blink.

  He forced himself to breathe evenly despite the hammering in his chest. His vision tracked every detail. The distance to the walls, the faint seams in the flooring panels, the half-crushed door behind Dante, the locked exit at his own back.

  Think.

  Dante’s mechanical arm groaned as he wrenched it free from the wall with a violent twist. The sound of metal tearing free echoed like bone snapping. He rolled his shoulder once, purple veins glowing brighter beneath the synthetic plating.

  He turned his head slowly toward Rei.

  “Well?” Dante asked, voice laced with amusement. “You look nervous.”

  Rei kept his expression flat. Calm. Detached. “You still missed,” he said evenly. “That enhancer working okay?”

  Dante’s eyes narrowed slightly.

  Rei took a slow step backward. Then another.

  His heel brushed the cold surface of the locked door behind him.

  Dante clicked his tongue. “How long you planning to keep up that act?”

  He began walking forward.

  Not rushing. Not charging.

  Just walking.

  The heavy, deliberate sound of his boots against metal filled the room like a countdown.

  Rei felt the space shrinking with each step Dante took.

  He sheathed his sword.

  The motion was deliberate. Slow.

  Then he holstered his pistol.

  Dante stopped.

  Rei raised his hands into a loose boxing stance, elbows tucked, weight centered.

  For half a second, silence held.

  Then Dante burst out laughing.

  It wasn’t mocking at first, it was genuine amusement. His laughter echoed across the empty chamber, sharp and echoing.

  “You?” Dante wiped at the corner of his eye with his normal hand. “You’re really trying that?”

  Rei didn’t lower his guard.

  “You know I’m better than you in close combat,” Dante continued, smirking. “You’re weak at it. You always have been.”

  Rei nodded once. “Yeah. I am.”

  That made Dante pause.

  “But,” Rei added, shifting his stance slightly, “I picked up something recently. A secret technique.”

  Dante’s purple-lit gaze sharpened.

  “Oh?” he said. “A secret technique?”

  Rei’s lips curved faintly.

  Dante tilted his head. “Go on. I’m curious.”

  Rei pointed over Dante’s shoulder.

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  “Look! There’s a sexy lady with big—”

  He didn’t finish.

  He bolted immediately.

  Dante’s head instinctively turned a fraction.

  That was all Rei needed.

  He spun and lunged for the locked door behind him.

  In his mind, the thoughts were brutally honest.

  There is no universe where I win this.

  Not like this.

  Not in a straight fight.

  He could feel it already. His Grace running hotter than it should, his body screaming at him from the earlier blows. Dante wasn’t just stronger. He was accelerating.

  I’d rather live and run than die proving something stupid.

  Thank you, Oliver. I owe you a meal after this

  Dante roared behind him.

  “MOUTSUKI!”

  The air split as Dante leapt forward, covering the distance in a single monstrous bound. Rei barely had time to pivot before Dante’s mechanical arm slammed into the locked door where Rei had been standing a split second earlier.

  The impact was deafening.

  The door dented inward violently.

  Dante’s arm punched through the metal and lodged deep between the warped layers.

  Rei staggered back, heart racing.

  Dante yanked once.

  The arm didn’t budge.

  He snarled and tried again, servos whining.

  Still stuck.

  For a heartbeat, hope flickered in Rei’s chest.

  Then Dante reached into his pouch again.

  “No,” Rei muttered under his breath.

  Dante pulled out another vial.

  The purple liquid shimmered like poison under the lights.

  He jammed it into the port on his arm.

  The fluid drained instantly.

  The reaction was violent.

  Purple veins erupted across his shoulder and neck, swelling thicker, brighter. His mechanical arm twitched as internal systems screamed, the glow intensifying until it bordered on blinding.

  Dante growled and pulled.

  The door exploded.

  Half of it tore free and launched across the room, crashing into the far wall in a twisted heap of metal.

  Rei’s stomach dropped.

  Dante stood upright, breathing heavier now. Less controlled. The purple light in his eyes burned hotter, less human.

  Something had shifted.

  He wasn’t calculating anymore.

  He was hunting.

  Dante’s lips pulled back in a grin that showed too many teeth.

  “Running?” he said softly.

  Then he charged.

  This time there was no finesse.

  He came like a beast unleashed.

  Rei activated his Grace.

  Gold flooded his vision.

  Paths unfolded.

  He sidestepped Dante’s first charge by a hair’s breadth, feeling the displaced air brush against his ribs. As he moved, he drew both pistols in one fluid motion.

  He fired.

  Burst rounds first. Sharp, controlled volleys aimed at joints and seams.

  Then phantom shots, distorted trajectories that curved unpredictably mid-flight.

  Dante blocked most of the bursts with his arm-shield configuration, metal ringing under impact. But the phantom rounds slipped past his guard, striking his side and thigh.

  He flinched.

  Just slightly.

  But it was something.

  Rei repositioned, firing again, keeping distance.

  Dante shifted tactics.

  He dropped into a defensive stance.

  Waiting.

  Rei saw it immediately through the golden haze.

  He’s counting.

  Three seconds.

  The glow in Rei’s eyes flickered.

  Two.

  One.

  Darkness.

  The Grace cut out.

  And Dante moved.

  He charged straight through the gunfire, taking minor hits without slowing. His shoulder slammed into Rei’s chest, sending him skidding backward.

  Rei rolled, barely avoiding the next punch that cratered the floor where he’d been.

  The ground cracked under Dante’s enhanced strength.

  Fragments of flooring broke loose.

  Dante seized them.

  With terrifying speed, he hurled chunks of debris like cannon fire.

  Rei triggered his Grace again to dodge.

  The world fractured once more into golden possibility.

  He slipped between the incoming projectiles, bullets of broken steel whizzing past his ears, one grazing his thigh.

  Then Dante ripped up a massive slab of flooring. Nearly the size of a small car and launched it.

  Rei’s Grace showed him the path of impact.

  He dove.

  The slab smashed behind him, exploding into dust and shrapnel.

  For a split second, his vision was completely obscured.

  That was all Dante needed.

  A fist slammed into Rei’s abdomen.

  The world inverted.

  Air fled his lungs in a violent burst as he was launched across the room, crashing into the wall hard enough to rattle his teeth.

  He slid down slowly.

  Blood filled his mouth.

  He spat it out weakly, clutching his stomach.

  His vision wavered.

  Dante approached at a slower pace now.

  Confident.

  Rei forced himself upright.

  One more time.

  Just one more activation—

  He tried to trigger his Grace.

  Agony detonated inside his skull.

  His eyes burned.

  Then something warm trickled down his cheeks.

  Blood.

  Veins throbbed painfully around his temples, dark lines surfacing beneath his skin. His vision distorted violently, flickering between fractured possibilities and harsh reality.

  The backlash hit full force.

  Rei dropped to one knee.

  His breathing became ragged.

  The world tilted.

  Dante stopped a few steps away, watching.

  “Oh,” he said, amused. “There it is.”

  Rei clenched his fists, trying to steady himself.

  Dante crouched slightly, examining him like a specimen.

  “You pushed it too far,” Dante continued. “Your body can’t keep up with your Grace.”

  Rei tried to stand.

  Pain shot through him like electricity.

  Dante smirked.

  “First time?” he asked. “Feels like your head’s splitting open, doesn’t it? Vision collapsing? Limbs going numb?”

  Rei’s teeth ground together.

  Dante stepped closer.

  “Your time’s up,” he said quietly.

  He stood directly in front of Rei now.

  Close enough that Rei could see the faint tremor in Dante’s veins. The instability beneath the enhancement.

  Dante raised his mechanical arm.

  “I’ll make it quick.”

  The arm came down.

  Rei moved on instinct alone.

  He twisted sideways at the last possible second.

  The mechanical hand smashed into the ground where his head had been.

  The shockwave rattled his bones.

  But the motion wasn’t clean.

  His left shoulder twisted wrong.

  There was a sickening pop.

  Pain exploded through his arm.

  Rei gasped, staggering away, his left arm hanging uselessly at his side.

  Dislocated.

  He didn’t stop moving.

  He couldn’t.

  He stumbled toward the broken doorway, vision blurring, breath ragged.

  Dante straightened slowly.

  He clicked his tongue.

  Pathetic.

  Rei’s boots scraped across the floor as he forced himself toward the exit. The door Dante had half-destroyed earlier.

  Freedom.

  Distance.

  Survival.

  That was all that mattered.

  Behind him, Dante’s footsteps resumed.

  Unhurried.

  “You’re clinging to life,” Dante called out casually. “It’s almost impressive.”

  Rei’s head swam.

  Every step felt heavier than the last.

  His left arm throbbed violently with each movement.

  “Run,” Dante continued. “Run as much as you want.”

  Rei reached the broken doorway and stumbled through it, barely keeping his balance.

  Dante followed.

  “I’ll break you even more next time.”

  His voice echoed through the corridor beyond.

  “And I’ll enjoy it.”

  Rei didn’t look back.

  He couldn’t afford to.

  Behind him, Dante walked at a steady pace, purple glow pulsing like a heartbeat in the dark.

  Hunting.

  And not in any hurry.

  The distance between them wasn’t closing fast.

  But it didn’t need to.

  Because Rei was running out of strength.

  And Dante knew it.

  [End of Chapter]