Chapter 102

The Homunculus's hands blurred, and my brain kicked into high gear as I twisted and vaulted, relying on my Evasion and reading his body movement. I was able to fairly accurately predict the direction which his blue energy blades would land.

For nearly three seconds, my body gyrated in a frantic dance, time which I took to charge Ebony with Focused Shot. I fired when he advanced; however, he raised his tower shield and tanked my shot. The beam refracted, scorching the ground and other platforms around us.

Pulling on my Myriad martial arts skills, I leveraged my experience, predicting the Homonculus's next actions. I flipped back before his spear came for me and slashed out using Osiris, batting away the weak end of the weapon and opening him up for a swipe to the face.

 It landed, but so did his titanic swing.

The world slowed down moments before it hit, and I spiked all of my enchantments—two Protection runes on my breastplate. The protection rune on each greave, pauldron, and vambrace.

Even with all of that protection, he punted me like he was hitting a home run. The world blurred around me as my ribs cracked, and I skipped over several platforms. My body abruptly stopped at the very edge of a small island. Blood spurted out of my nose and mouth as I removed my warped chest plate and switched it out for my Red Jacket. Even though I fucking hated Shin, I couldn't afford to be petty right now.

I spiked Angel Regeneration, consuming most of my Angelic energy as I sat up with some effort.

Predictably, Shin's offer popped up as I spied the Homonculus racing towards me. I dismissed it without a look as I readied myself for a desperate Hail Mary.

I grunted as I summoned up three unrigged bombs and stuck them over the platform's edge before opening Shin's store. I dumped 5000 Red orbs into Osiris, upgraded it to the third grade, and grinned when I saw the updated description.

Osiris Grade 3

The first angelic form of Rebellion, Osiris, is a light-speed scythe that delivers fast, reliable damage while allowing Dante to embody the weightlessness and agility of an Angel. Deals 0.8 times the damage of Rebellion at this tier but moves 45% faster. Damage quickly accumulates with Angel Energy infusion and the innate Feed ability.

Abilities: High-tier Wind manipulation.

I tried to buy some Stims with my red orbs, but the products were predictably blacked out. In fact, damn near everything in the store was. 

"He can block me out from the rest of the store, but not my weapon upgrades." I wondered what that meant for upgrading Rebellion. All five of my enchanted knives went fanning out the second the monster hit the platform. He tanked three of the five knives and blocked the other two, which bought me enough time to cartwheel away from my previous position, where I'd left a little gift. A high-yield grenade with a four-second count.

I filled my blade with energy as I swung at the Homunculus, and surprisingly, the energy blade connected, sending it reeling back.

It blinked with its four eyes, and so did I.

High-tier Wind affinity really made a fucking difference.

The blade had moved faster than I could follow, and the power was ridiculous. I bet that with enough time, I could even beat down the cost.

Why hadn't I done this earlier again?

Right. Shock. Life and death situation. Uncertainty.

Enraged by my attack, it was no surprise when it leaped at me, but between Gust, which was rapidly eating my limited Angel Energy pool, which was under 50 now, and my passive speed boost, it was easy to twist underneath the cleave, switch to Arbiter at the very last second and strike with a Burst strike. The blow sent it skidding back just in time for me to Burst and Gust off the platform. The resulting shockwave still carried me far, and I had to pull out my M4 and shred the approaching debris before they reached me.

I fetched a huge Orb the size of my head covered in runes and several pointy bits from my inventory as Ophion shot out and gripped the platform where I'd previously planted my bombs. As I landed on the platform, I roused what was left of my angel energy, connected it to the Orb, and pulled.

 43/510

+1

"Thank fuck, it worked. I wouldn't have known what to do otherwise."

As you might've put together, the Orb was an Angel Energy storage device.

The idea had come to me late last night while I was working, and I'd thrown several bits of metal together, sketched storage seals on them, and filled them up with energy. My current storage construct could only hold onto 60AE per rune, and there were about four runes, so I was sitting pretty. The spikes were added on a hunch that it would transform the storage device into a weapon, and it worked.

As far as prototypes went, it operated well enough. Unfortunately, though, nearly half of the energy I attempted to reabsorb went to waste. I didn't know whether it was the metal or my terrible energy control.

While I had the Orb refilling my stores in one hand, I summoned a sniper with my other, aiming at the reemerging Homunculus. Its shield was completely gone, as was the hand holding it, replaced by black tentacles. One of its heads was charred, its armor in disrepair and melting, and its visible skin was scorched with visible marks. It moved swung from platform to platform.

It landed with a stumble and pulled out a crimson flask to heal itself.

"Oh, hell no!"

My gun went off, and the flask exploded, drenching it in healing juice. Its singular head snapped in my direction, and it roared. Its tentacle surged, spreading out to cover its body while it tried to heal.

I wasn't having it, so I chucked a live grenade at the monster. It exploded when it made contact, sending him tumbling. He lost most of his tentacle, and his body was on fire again. More black tentacles sprouted out of the seams of his armor to stamp out the fire.

We locked eyes for a moment in tacit understanding. I wasn't sure as hell going to let him recover, and his best chance to put me down was right now while I was presumably low on resources but not on weapons and tricks.

Once again, the Homunculus flared its golden aura and leaped at me.

I pushed more energy into cloak as well, causing the fire around me.

He hefted his spear and made a move to throw it, sending forward a spectral spear that whizzed past my head as I dodged. The Homunculus had disappeared from the platform when I looked again, he was already moving. I summoned Osiris and banished the storage Orb. He came flying over the edge of my platform in the blink of an eye, swinging his glowing blade at me.

Evasion activated, and I grinned, sliding under the blow, summoning multiple fingers of Orochi. Two went into the legs, and I kicked a third into its back before it swung its tentacle at me.

I immediately noticed the look of discomfort on its face. It motioned to yank out the daggers stabbing into his back while swinging all three of his weapons at me, but I activated parry, shoving back his attack and getting pushed back in the process, but not before I sent three more daggers flying into its large chest.

It grunted and practically whined when I pulled and fired a point-blank sniper shot through his knees.

His gigantic blade swung out again, crashing onto the platform floor just as it missed me, but he was even slower. His tentacle bunched and exploded towards me, but I summoned Infernal's blade with my second hand and made short work of it before switching to the sniper and taking off the monster's wrist.

More black tentacles surged out to reinforce and stabilize the wound, but unfortunately, that left it open for the Arbiter Flush I fired at it. Weak as it was, it was enough to put it on its ass. The rest of my dagger went into its body, rendering it a blubbery-shifting mess. Its body became undone as it struggled to force itself back together.

But I was one step ahead. I switched to Aquila and fired several Round trips that pinned it on the spot, continually shredding it. To be extra petty, I dumped all of my remaining explosives at it, which amounted to three sonic grenades, two regular ones, and the last of my bombs on me. It was one of the few Angel energy bombs I had made. One of the bombs I'd stuck on the platform was also made from angelic energy.

Mixing energies paid off when the bomb went off. The shock wave tossed me so far away from the platforms that I crashed into the stone plinth I'd formerly shattered to free my memories from. It was a few kilometers away, and the fallout was magnificent.

At the center of the realm, there was an orb of purple fire, burning, illuminating the void, while rapidly spreading to eat up other nearby platforms. It set off a few leftover bombs.

My heat resistance got a buff from the entire experience, and my mouth fell open.

I recognized the purple energy. It'd happened once before, and I wondered why Shin didn't give me the skill. Now, I understood why.

It was ridiculously overpowered.

 (The arc is about to be over and we're moving onto Dante's upgrade Arc. I really enjoyed writing it.

Read up to Chapter 121 on Patreon.com/artandcreativewriting)