“Oswort’s contracts bind flesh, Tide, and star. But read the fine print, between the lines: even Legates fear the Lightsea’s unspoken words.”

  - Roman legal treatise, On Unnatural Compacts

  Dante considered his opponent with caution. The sheer idea of it being Judas brought his heart to a pause. However, as his vision adjusted to the darker glow of the lit roses, he discovered such was not the case. The eyes. They were his own.

  This wasn’t Judas. This was a copy of himself.

  The only question that remained in his head was, of what kind?

  He stepped along the burning flowers, whispering to his passenger embedded beneath his jacket as the fishing rod shifted in shape, “Eidolon. Can you hide in the ground? Then attack the other one from behind?”

  Somehow, the ghost of Geist hadn’t been separated from him, not that Dante would complain. His boots crunched the earth beneath him while his opponent moved, too, their eyes clashing with sparks in the air.

  More than any other battle, these two fought on every level at once. Joan battled with her mind, Rejo with his luck, Sonna with her personality, and Lucius with his body.

  Dante?

  All at once were required for him to win. They were all calculated, every tiny bit. Dante had to be at least good at everything. Such was his job. His role.

  And now he had to prove it.

  His first idea was that it was unlikely the Inferose reproduced Eidolon. He was, after all, a magnificent and impossible feat of Tide.

  The being of Arido answered, trailing down Dante’s clothes and into the earth beneath him, spreading mist across the arena, “Not in the ground, no, but I can cover the room like a fog,” Eidolon replied as he did that very same act.

  Mist hung at their knees, yet Dante couldn’t gleam anything from his copy. His face boasted a passive indifference. It seemed as though nothing mattered to him, as if he believed he would always win.

  With narrowed eyes, Dante’s mind roared to life, the engine within reaching full motion.

  Is that what I always look like? So fucking annoying. Let’s see... He’s wearing the same clothes I did before entering the Inferose. His gait is less winded and a little heavier, too. That means he still has bullets. Where is his shotgun? Hmm...

  Dante’s thoughts whirred constantly, and he unearthed the truth of the Third Trial after just a few seconds of deduction.

  That’s what the illusions were for! The Inferose was copying us and learning about us. This isn’t... an illusion. Wait! In the back there! I see some roots. They look like... the cords of a life-support system. I see... ‘We’ were grown in here from our specifications when it first discovered us. And that means...

  A low curse emerged from Dante’s throat as he realized a grim truth. This would be the only Third Trial to include a veritable difference between opponents.

  This ‘Dante’ still had Reset, arguably the most powerful Stigmata the human had ever seen. He placed Eight’s Dive and Sonna’s Dominate at the same tier, but she did not use hers often.

  They were abilities with boundless potential, should they be cultivated adequately. Dante’s Matchlock stood in a lower category, but its compatibility with the human was more than perfect.

  After knowing what his enemy possessed, Dante became more careful. More subdued. Reset was a trump card, one that could turn the tables on any battle.

  He knew this more than anyone else. It had saved his life countless times, allowing him to fight those far above his level without fear or caution. Recovering from any wound or effect in a second was almost impossible to beat.

  Almost.

  It still possessed a weakness.

  Dante had to consciously use it. He didn’t boast the adaptibility and preparedness of Matchlock when he had Reset.

  A plan formed in the original’s mind as the two ‘humans’ neared one another. Their footsteps left trails in their wake of ashen flowers from the water they carried with them. Hydro coalesced upon both of their hands, yet the true Dante held the advantage.

  Geist’s inheritance had taught him much. It filled in the conceptual basics, teaching him what could be done and what couldn’t. Crossing elements made it less helpful than if Geist was a Hydro, but he learned much nonetheless.

  His water flowed faster, stronger, and more densely. In a single day, he had skipped months, if not years, of training.

  A blade of roiling water formed on his left hand while he drew the shotgun he stole from Friday with his right. It felt rough to his grasp, close to twenty pounds of weight in one arm. The chamber held the six shells from when he had first gotten it. The unique bullets prevented him from using it as he wanted. Furthermore, he either couldn’t use it without a Tide. Between these two restrictions, he curbed himself from using the weapon.

  He wanted Archimedes to forge more shells for him so he could use the four-barreled shotgun as he pleased. It was a mighty tool of death, and it stood a shame that he hadn’t used it quite yet.

  Dante thought he would save it to kill Friday with a poetic form of revenge. But he realized he would not get the chance.

  With a finger around the trigger, the pad of flesh rested upon the word ‘Igniter’ on the steel piece. The man held a considerable advantage here but didn’t let it get to his head.

  He knew himself. If this indeed was a duplicate of himself in mind and body...

  This may be the greatest enemy he had ever faced.

  No words were shared, only the probing of eyes and Tides. Step by step, the two neared each other. Two hundred feet.

  One hundred feet.

  Fifty feet.

  Thirty feet.

  Twenty.

  At the crackle of a rose, the two began their battle. There was no exchange of feelings or emotions. No uncertainty. Killing themselves wasn’t as... foreign for the two Dantes as it was for most others.

  They had dreamt of it countless times. Wished for it. Cried for it, both as a young boy and a cynical man. Hesitation had long left their hands and minds.

  A trigger was pulled in two weapons at once. The copy’s revolver shot toward Dante’s head while the original’s shotgun hurtled for the other’s gut.

  One tilted their head, already well aware of the target, while the other dived to the side. A surge of energy left Dante’s hand, entering Igniter, which left a flaming hole in the side of the fake.

  Blood spurted and splashed in lethal amounts, but no Reset came.

  The curse of the slow death.

  Humanity’s greatest strength and worst enemy worked perfectly alongside Reset. It allowed the user to sustain lethal wounds, many in a row, and save the usage of the ability for only when they truly began to affect them. That is what Dante counted on. A single, lethal strike would never work against himself. He would always find a way out.

  Unless... there was none.

  The ‘human’ rushed at Dante, trails of sanguine trailing rearward with each step. He lashed out his hand, slicing Dante with Flick. The compressed gout of water surged toward his face, and he brought up Igniter between him and the Tide.

  Such an impact left his legs trembling and sliding across the grass. But he wasn’t hurt. His shotgun bore a slight indent on the side next to the chamber that was meant to hold four bullets per barrel.

  Still, Dante’s opponent dashed for him. He responded quickly, sidestepping and lashing out with his arm covered with a chainsaw-like Hydro, inspired by Astraeus' admiration of the weapon. The two entered a close dance of death, the subtle sound of whirring augments beneath the roaring Tides of water.

  As he was able to trade wound for wound, the copy sank in close, losing his left arm while Dante scrambled to get away. Immediately, his Matchlock burned one charge for inundating him with water and pulling him away.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  Gasps of air came from both as they stood twenty feet apart once more, yet only one emerged with the presence of death. Dante squinted, witnessing his opponent’s wounds vanish in the span of a single moment. Time itself seemed to rewind for the bastard.

  Such was their first exchange. One lost a life, and the other their method of evasion.

  They were not close to being done yet.

  The mist hung thick between them, curling around their legs like serpents, the roses beneath struggling to maintain their fading light. Both Dantes stood at opposite ends of the battlefield, blood mingling with the ash and fire. Neither moved to speak or taunt. Silence reigned, broken only by the crackle of roses and the occasional hiss of dissipating water.

  Muscles moved, and eyes shifted as countless imaginary exchanges and ideas clashed simultaneously. Both were determined to win at any cost.

  Dante’s chest heaved as he tried to control his breathing. His shotgun hung loosely at his side, still hot from its recent discharge. Four shells remained inside. Each would practically cost his duplicate an entire Reset.

  But he knew better than anyone. The further you push a Penance...

  Across from him, the copy flexed its newly regenerated arm, the stump severed a moment ago now perfectly whole. It rolled its shoulders and tilted its head with weariness but confidence.

  The original grimaced. Reset. It was as powerful and as infuriating as he remembered. He had no illusions about the battle ahead. Victory wouldn’t come from a lucky strike or a single overwhelming attack. Neither had such in their cards. He would have to chip away at his opponent and force it to burn through its stamina and resources until it had nothing left.

  But to do so, he’d need to survive.

  The copy moved first and coalesced Hydro in its hands, forming jagged bolts that showed his desperation. Dante raised his left arm, the spinning blade of liquid along his forearm moving into position. With practiced precision, he swept it across the projectiles. Still, the force left him stumbling backward. Yet even as he countered the first attack, the copy was already on him, moving with the reckless speed only Reset could grant.

  Even now, both were creating new ways to use their Tides. There was no better teacher than oneself, after all. They learned from each other, adapted, and grew with each consecutive collision. This growth earned the duplicate a new technique as a spinning wheel of water arced toward Dante’s throat.

  Dante barely had time to react. With a curse, he twisted his body and brought his left arm up again. The blade met his own, the two streams of water clashing with a screeching hiss. The compressed water spun faster as the clone arrived, slamming his palm into it and forcing Dante’s arm downward. The edge nicked his throat—a shallow cut, but one that sent a warm trail of blood trickling down his chest.

  The original clenched his teeth and retaliated while retreating. He brought Igniter up from his hip, firing at point-blank range. The roar of the shotgun was deafening, a gout of superheated pellets tearing into the copy’s chest. The force of the blast sent it skidding across the scorched ground, leaving a trail of blood and singed petals in its wake.

  But the copy didn’t scream. It didn’t flinch. It rolled to its feet with the inertia of the impact, clutching its chest as crimson slipped between its fingers and its heart ceased. Dante watched, both in frustration and awe, as the wound sealed itself in an instant. Reset again.

  The fake lunged, faster than before, and Dante barely managed to sidestep the reckless charge with a growing sense of weakness. He swung his blade of water in a wide arc, aiming for the neck. Still, the copy ducked beneath it, retaliating with a palm strike imbued with a web-like formation of droplets. The impact hit Dante’s ribs like a cannonball, sending him head over heels rearward.

  After spinning and landing with one hand on the ground, he coughed, tasting blood in his mouth, but forced himself upright. Still, the other pressed its advantage, relentless just as Dante would be. Dante earned yet another injury as he failed to recover in time.

  His counterpart moved like a man possessed, heedless of its own safety, trading blow for blow without hesitation with those pin-point eyes. Each attack came with the risk of a grievous wound, but the copy didn’t care. It knew it could recover.

  Dante, on the other hand, couldn’t afford such recklessness. Every wound he took mattered. His Matchlock had limited charges, and his body wasn’t nearly as forgiving as Reset.

  A gout of compressed water—Flick—shot toward him. Dante already had his hand up, flooding his arm with more Hydro as he saw his opponent preparing the move. His arm deflected the attack, but not entirely. A fragment of the compressed water ricocheted off his arm and bounced to his neck, tearing a jagged gash across his throat.

  Pain flared, and for a moment, Dante misstepped, choking on blood. The man’s eyes widened as he clutched his throat with one hand, and his other moved instinctively. A surge of energy activated Matchlock, sealing the wound with a flood of water that steadied into a temporary barrier. It wasn’t a perfect fix, but it stopped the bleeding.

  However, that attack left Dante with only one stored charge in his Stigmata. Flick. He hadn’t used it much with the usual method due to his enemy’s recklessness. There was never any time to prepare the move. While the copy could take an injury in exchange for Flick, Dante did not have that luxury.

  And to prove Dante’s caution, the beast of a clone lunged for him once more. It closed the distance with a determined silence. The prime could only tense his muscles before its shoulder slammed into Dante’s chest and knocked him to the ground.

  The original rolled with the impact, narrowly avoiding the stake of water that embedded itself in the dirt where his head had been. Hydro wasn’t the sharpest Tide, but the two had already mastered compressing it for lethality. Every move could mean the end for either if it struck the brain.

  Dante scrambled to his feet, whirling Igniter toward the copy and firing again from his roll. Another roaring blast of superheated pellets tore through the air, catching the fake’s shoulder and ripping a chunk of flesh free. The position forced the gunman’s aim to suffer, but it didn’t affect his opponent.

  A revolver fired twice more before the shot blared in opposition. Two chunks of lead pierced Dante’s flesh, and the man fell to one knee. Across from him, however, Reset triggered, the shotgun’s devastation vanishing as though it had never existed.

  Dante cursed under his breath. He was running out of options. The shotgun’s remaining shells were limited, and he wasn’t doing well. Between the bullets, cuts, and everything else, he was running on empty. If he couldn’t end this soon, the battle would turn entirely in the copy’s favor.

  Now, he still had Eidolon in wait, but he couldn’t waste it. The ambush had to guarantee his victory. There could be absolutely no escape.

  With a groan, Dante stood again and waved his hand over his bloodied clothes, ripping the two bullets from his calf and side that hit him mid-roll with his Tide.

  He moved to stop the bleeding, but his enemy had already arrived. However, it was slower. Weaker. The copy, for all its recklessness, was beginning to falter. Its strikes grew less precise, its movements sluggish.

  Even Reset couldn’t mask the toll the battle was taking on its stamina. In fact... Reset only worsened the issue of endurance.

  The extra moments he earned from his change allowed him to form a Flick as he lowered his armor on his arm. The roiling wave on his left arm had grown to a piercing headache. Dante knew this would be his last attack of this caliber to come from his own Tide.

  Beyond this, his mind would melt, and his body would break down. The copy was no different, likely already on the brink and forced to dive. But that is when they were most dangerous.

  The duplicate saw the compressed Hydro on Dante’s fingertips and halted. Eyes contracted more narrowly than slits as the duplicate leaped backward in a desperate maneuver to evade the slicing water.

  Nevertheless, with the fatigue of Reset, the impossible Stigma, the fake fell to the ground, cleaving through the copy’s thigh, sending it collapsing to one knee. It had lost a whole limb.

  Dante stepped back, panting, his hands trembling from exertion. Across from him, the copy knelt in the mist, blood pooling around it. Its chest heaved, its eyes burning with defiance. Even now, with its body broken and its energy drained, it refused to fall with that lone leg helping him rise. Flickers of... something radiated around the fake like illusory mirages.

  They seemed to be him struggling to activate his Stigmata, only to fail. And that failure didn’t break him. It only made those eyes burn brighter.

  The azure turned into a pale, blinding white.

  The look in its eyes was so real, so human, that Dante hesitated. His own resolve wavered, his right hand faltering as he raised the shotgun for what he hoped would be the final shot.

  It was like staring into a mirror, seeing his unbreakable self staring back at him.

  So this... this is who I am?

  Regardless, his finger still squeezed the trigger. An explosion occurred inside the weapon, hurtling out the burning projectile at hundreds of miles an hour. It pierced the air, primed for the Third Trial’s skull.

  But... this was Dante.

  Even if it was a copy. Even if it wasn’t real. Even if... even if... even if it knew the same.

  Two fingers tapped against each other in the center of his chest, mimicking the movements he had seen amongst Dirge.

  He was still Dante Penance.

  The sound of a droplet falling into an endless, unimaginable river echoed within their minds as time froze. A voice, detached and more emotionless than when he was at the peak of Nullify’s crescent, entered this timelessness.

  “Domain Collapse: Our Requiem.”

  Rain splattered from above as the world belonged to the dying figure. It was as if the droplets played a melody, a cruel one that possessed only melancholic notes. All his frustrations, his guilt, his pain, and his ambitions surged into a single moment.

  That first drop, resonating with both men, slammed into the shotgun shell, diverting it straight to the ground like an act of a deity.

  Dante had always been an avid pianist. It was his one hobby. His one outlet. And he hadn’t touched a piano since the day before he earned his Qualae, partially because of a lack of time but also because his emotions had outgrown what the keys could afford.

  But this note brought both of their eyes together.

  Then, all the water halted in mid-air, yet the melody continued. It echoed so hauntingly in the darkness, lit only by the dim fires beneath the low fog.

  Still, Dante didn’t just stand motionless. He had expected such a gambit. This was him, after all. He had killed far too many who thought Dante Penance would die soundly. His father, though cruel, had raised and beaten him to be unbreakable.

  Unkillable.

  Dante's other hand ignored the Domain Collapse. Calm and sure, it surged forward and erupted with a Flicker from the final charge he had stored. It came out suddenly and without an ounce of preparation from Matchlock. The duplicate’s eyes widened in awe as the compressed water bore straight toward his skull.

  At the same time, Dante spoke the first word since the battle had begun, “Now.”

  All at once, the lingering fog that had spread out across the entire arena collapsed upon the center. The fake. Eidolon had finally made his move.

  The falling beads turned in the air, a feat beyond anything Dante had ever accomplished with his Tide. Once Hydro was expelled, it became far more difficult to control it without direct touch.

  Nevertheless, the sea of watery tears pointed toward him. Each and every drop shifted as if puppeted by a marionettist.

  Dante struck out with his stored Flick, piercing through two of the droplets, but he saw that there were dozens more. The requiem struck a chord in the human’s heart. He wasn’t sure what to do.

  He had run out of options. Igniter expended all its bullets. He was out of Matchlock uses. As for his Tide... he might be able to force out a Flick, but that wouldn’t be enough. Another wound or two wouldn’t kill him, but they’d put him out of the running for the Inferose. Three or four... let alone a dozen?

  Without any of his powers to guide him, Dante fell into his roots. The physicality of a near-perfect human being. His frame relaxed, and the shotgun in his arm rotated toward his vitals.

  Augments whirred with howling pain as his foot slid to the side, shattering even his fastest movement. One pearl of water scraped past his head, slicing a trail along his ear. The next came as a pair, and he twisted just enough to fit in between the two. For the third, he strode forward, meeting the impact with Igniter over his forehead.

  Once more, he flipped backward, but this time, he let the momentum slam him into the ground. More beads of death flew overhead.

  Had anyone been watching this battle, they would have stared in astonishment, struck with awe by how the human had moved. It was flawless, every muscle contracting or relaxing in the perfect sequence he had foreseen at just a glance.

  One of Dante’s most outstanding traits was his ability to predict and anticipate another’s move, no matter how abrupt. And he used it to the absolute maximum, surviving over eight sure-kill strikes in a split-second.

  However, the assault was not yet over. Twelve more pearls, sharpening in the air, flew toward him, originating further away than the other eight.

  Dante merely stared at them, not in defeat or surrender.

  But absolute confidence.

  For...

  His greatest strength was not his prodigious mind. It wasn’t his augmented and experimental body. Nor was it his unique Stigmata or Geist’s inheritance.

  It was, instead, his words: his ability to surround himself with the right people, no matter how grim the world he walked in.

  Inches from his eyes, the droplets paused like strings plucked by their marionettist. Then, they fell to the ground powerless as the Domain Collapse rescinded, revealing not rain above, but instead, the impossible sky, poking through holes formed by the requiem as the storm broke.

  Dante remained on the ground after his counterpart’s death. His mind whirled with endless ideas for both his Tide and what that Domain Collapse meant for him. This ‘trip’ to the Inferose had cost him much, but he had learned almost as much in the few days here than he had in the months with Astraeus and Thanaris.

  A humanoid fog hovered over Dante, urging him to stand, “We need to go. One blossom has already reached the top. A fight is happening on another one that’s broken open.”

  With a groan, Dante rolled over onto his back, not yet responding. His hands moved to the gunshots he received and did what he could to stem the bleeding. There had been worse in the past. Plus, with his Tide maintaining the injuries, he hadn’t lost enough blood to knock him down yet.

  The man stood a moment after, just as the blossom began to rise, lifting into the air bit by bit. He ignored the passing of his Third Trial, instead stumbling toward the corpse. It was only a few dozen feet away, but every step was painful.

  Eventually, he hovered over it with the ghost by his side. The corpse wasn’t torn apart or bisected. It had simply been robbed of all moisture until it succumbed to death. No tears were shed for this dead Penance, just as his namesake believed he would receive the same.

  “How strong do you think he was? The average Judge?” Dante inquired with breathlessness.

  Eidolon laughed in his face, amused by the question, with his fog undulating at each chuckle. Then, he answered simply, “No. He would have killed any Judge. Most Centurions. If you truly are the same person...”

  His words didn’t finish, trailing off with his thoughts. Dante was the same. The human couldn’t get the desiccated face out of his head, his own skull that had forced itself out of his skin. It burrowed within him like a cancer, something that would never leave, for he had finally succeeded.

  Dante had killed himself.

  He killed the part that was always alone.

  One question remained. Was he weaker for it? Or stronger? Even with the proof raising him into the sky, he wasn't sure if he was prepared to see it.

  He had spent a long, long time with that gun under his pillow.