Henry kept going upstairs.
The staircase shook beneath his boots as distant explosions rumbled from below.
Alfred's distorted laughter mixed with gunfire and steel clanking sounds.
His breathing came rough now. Because his nerves still hadn't recovered from what he had just done.
"…That was so unbelievably stupid of me."
Henry muttered while gripping the railing hard enough for metal to creak.
"No, stupid is an understatement."
Another step. Another.
His senses still hammered violently. Because he knew something Alfred didn't.
That wasn't the full of Last Suffer.
Not even close. Henry exhaled shakily.
"The proper version would have killed both of us instantly… If the synchronization fully held."
But this?
This was the weaker variant. A mere incomplete version of Last Suffer because he didn't had enough Runic Flow to reach the full output.
The one, Collin had forced him to practice during brutal training sessions days ago because Henry had never properly mastered spiritual binding.
He recognized the past sceneries,
.....
Collin stood crossing his arms, annoyed.
"You suck at stable linkage. Stop trying heroic bullshit with incomplete spells."
Henry remembering the response.
"Then why teach me it?"
"Because half-working is still better than dying stupid."
.....
Henry almost smirked, still going upwards.
"…You really had awful timing for wisdom."
His expression tightened because the truth was ugly. It had been a gamble.
A genuine one.
"The weaker version I attempted didn't guarantee mirrored fatality. If Alfred had detonated my heart, there was a real possibility Alfred would only suffer severe internal backlash like heart rupture while I lay dead outright."
Fifty-fifty. Which made it even worse.
But Alfred didn't know that and Alfred, arrogant as he was, wouldn't risk instant self-destruction without certainty.
Henry exhaled through clenched teeth.
"So I gambled on psychology and somehow won."
Below him, another explosion shook the building.
"Just survive. Need to make Collin's death mean something."
The fifth floor looked abandoned.
Henry had barely stepped into the ruined corridor when figures emerged from every direction.
Thirty. At least thirty Agents.
Black tactical armor reinforced with Runic plating. Cold eyes hidden behind fractured visors. Formation already tightening.
Henry stopped walking.
"…Right."
He looked around once. Running wouldn't work. Fighting thirty alone while Alfred remained downstairs?
His mind was storming quickly.
Someone stubborn enough to survive hell itself. Henry quietly raised his hand.
Runic Flow gathered. A summoning circle formed beneath concrete, dark silver patterns spiraling outward like pages turning in reverse.
"Please work, I will give Ozymandis 5 dollars."
A silhouette emerged slowly from darkness itself. A man dressed in black.
Long dark coat fluttering softly despite still air. He looked around once with his golden predator like eyes.
Then toward Henry.
"You called?" the figure said.
Henry stared remaining actually stunned.
"You are real..."
The man bowed lightly. "I suppose I am."
Then with subtle amusement, he placed a hand over his chest.
"Though introductions feel appropriate. I am Edmond Dantes."
Henry blinked once.
"…From The Count of Monte Cristo."
Dantes smiled slightly.
"You seems to be an introvert bookworm."
Henry looked away awkwardly.
"Well, you are my first summon."
For some reason, saying it aloud felt embarrassing. Then Dantès chuckled quietly.
"Your first? What an honor."
Gunfire safety clicks echoed around them.
The Agents came further in formation. Henry glanced at them.
"Can you fight?"
Dantes followed his gaze. Thirty armed soldiers. He smiled.
"Oh."
Something dangerous entered his expression.
"You summoned me for work… Buy me time."
Dantès extended both hands and two daggers appeared.
"I am going to do this gladly."
He stepped forward and vanished. Hopping in midair, stepping and dashing on it like it's made of solid substance.
Dashing through empty space itself with impossible grace. Coat fluttered like shadow as he descended toward the Agents.
Henry turned away planning the next move.
The fifth floor erupted into violence.
Gunfire split the corridor apart almost instantly. Muzzle flashes tearing through the ruined hallways. Edmond Dante did not rush.
Bullets ran toward him mercilessly.
Yet before fingers fully tightened on triggers, before muscles completely committed to movement, before breathing patterns finalized intent.
He stepped aside.
"Ah," Dantès murmured softly, stepping sideways through a narrow opening between gunfire. "Your bullets are too slow."
A dagger flashed and an agent was down.
Another rushed him from the blind spot.
Dantès tilted his head slightly.
"The jaw tension gave you away."
His dagger intercepted a combat knife before the strike fully formed. Body already repositioned through instinct beyond normal cognition.
"Wait and Hope." He chanted.
Tiny details unfolded into outcomes. The trembling hesitation before a fatal mistake.
With this ability, he could read perceptions and body languages. And eventually predict outcomes at some extend.
At times, it felt almost predictive. As if Dantès glimpsed fragments of possibility before they arrived.
A rifleman ducked left.
Dantès moved right before it happened.
An explosive charge rolled forward. He had already stepped over the future location of the blast.
But these Agents were skilled. Far more skilled than ordinary soldiers. Three moved together coordinated.
The third attacked during repositioning.
A blade sliced across Dantès's ribs. Another strike pierced his shoulder. Runic Flow splattered against broken concrete.
For the first time, he staggered. One Agent smiled beneath his visor.
"Got him!"
Dante exhaled. "Mm... Unfortunately to say... Pharaon."
His senses expanded violently.
The wounds along his ribs visibly knitted, flesh restored in dark light while his perception heightened further.
He inhaled once.
The ruined corridor suddenly felt small.
"I do apologize." Dante said softly, lifting his daggers again.
His expression remained polite.
"But I have survived prisons considerably worse than any poisen."
Then he vanished forward. The clash resumed harder than before.
Henry on the side remained standing. Keeping his gaurds up. The path ahead was blocked by these Agents.
All of a sudden, he felt an immense pressure rising behind him.
"Who are you? I know you are there." He replied to the presence.
A cold breath passed through the corridor like a living thing brushing against his spine.
Then the shadow spoke in language.
"I smell you."
The voice was not loud. It didn't need to be.
"I smell bone. I smell fear. I smell the memory of dying things."
Henry slowly turned.
Chernobog stood at the end of the corridor.
It had followed him throughout the path.
Its antlered crown scraped the ceiling as it tilted its head.
"My summoner told me to follow your trail. So I followed meat."
Its gaze locked onto Henry. "Your meat?"
Henry's hand moved instantly. Runic Flow surged violently through his arm. A black blade formed.
"Window of the Sky."
The Astra solidified fully.
A black katana that seemed to swallow surrounding light, edges unstable like fractured space itself.
Henry exhaled once.
"…I don't have time for this."
Chernobog smiled. "Good. I wanted this."
Henry felt stress immediately in his grip on the Astra, in the subtle hesitation of his next step, in the fraction of doubt that should not have existed.
For no reason, " What the... why my hand is shaking... "
Chernobog stood at the far end of the hall. Head tilted like a patient butcher inspecting livestock. Its presence was not rage.
It was inevitability.
"Struggle more. Struggle properly. Misfortune grows sweeter when the prey believes effort matters."
Henry stepped forward anyway.
His Window of the Sky cut through space in a sharp arc but the moment it should have connected, his leg slipped sideways unrealistically.
A fractured tile shifted at the exact wrong angle.
The strike missed by a hair's width. The miss itself felt unnatural, like probability had been nudged aside.
Chernobog exhaled softly.
"Let's see how you adapt against my Bringer of Misfortune."
An invisible field pressing down on Henry's intent. His attacks no longer failed because of weakness. They failed because outcomes themselves had been inverted.
Every clean opening became a closed door.
Henry clicked his tongue,
"So that's your passive… you don't even fight fair. You are just altering fortune."
Chernobog's antlered head slowly lifted.
"Fairness is a human apology for weakness. Now I may unleash 'Shadows of Oblivion'!"
In the sideways, fluid, shadows stepped out of alignment with space. Darkness peeled from the walls behind it.
Coiling into intangible limbs that struck without form or mass.
Henry barely twisted his body in time as Shadow of Oblivion manifested.
Lines of void-like darkness passed through steel barriers as if they weren't there at all, grazing his shoulder and forcing a sharp retreat.
Henry hissed through his teeth.
"Spiritual constructs… they don't block normally…"
"Correct. They do not obey your definitions of defense."
Henry's breathing grew heavier as the space itself became hostile.
His perceptions were malfunctioning.
" Tch. I feel like floating in a white void alone being watched by thousands of eyes. "
Yet he pushed through anyway, blade flashed again and again.
Forcing proximity where none was given, refusing to accept the distance Chernobog controlled so effortlessly.
Chernobog observed him with something almost like curiosity.
"Impressive. Even when misfortune has already decided the shape of your failure."
Henry narrowed his eyes.
"Then I will just cut through your decisions too."
"Oh. Then show me if you can cut what has already been denied."
Chernobog didn't move in the usual sense anymore.
It disappeared from comprehension first.
Henry blinked once and the corridor was suddenly wrong in a way his instincts couldn't immediately define.
The pressure of its presence had been there a moment ago, heavy and undeniable, like a starving god slowly eating his sanity.
Now it was gone.
His senses slid off it as if the world refused to acknowledge it existed.
"Presence concealment, huh? Now you can even negate your own presence?"
Then the shadows writhed.
Walls of darkness formed behind him without warning, collapsing forward like execution blades shaped from absence itself.
Henry reacted purely on instinct, swinging his Astra in a sharp horizontal arc.
"Wind Slash."
A compressed blade of wind tore through the corridor. Concrete behind it exploded outward.
Chernobog's voice echoed from nowhere and everywhere at once.
"Good. You are learning to fight what refuses to exist."
The shadows thickened again. This time not forming weapons, but space denial.
Darkness spilled across the floor like ink bleeding into paper, attempting to erase footing itself.
Henry's balance wavered as gravity felt unreliable for him.
And then a second presence entered.
Edmond Dante stepped through a broken wall opening sliding sideways.
His eyes narrowed slightly as he observed the distortion field.
"So that is what you are fighting." he said calmly.
Henry didn't look back.
"Can you interfere?"
Dante exhaled softly.
"Yes, I can interrupt actions and illusions in a minor rate. That is all."
His expression sharpened.
"Let me show it. Lost Vengeance."
A thin illusion spread outward. It was not visual in a normal sense, but psychological misalignment.
For a fraction of a second, Chernobog's "absence" gained structure.
Its concealment desynced Henry felt its presence immediately.
"Let's do it."
Henry nodded and rushed onwards. He raised his blade high. Then dropped it.
"Thousand Sword Style."
One slash became ten. Ten became a hundred. Hundreds became thousands of overlapping wind blades detonating outward in a collapsing spiral of violence.
The corridor screamed as reality itself was shredded into layered impacts of compressed force.
Entire sections of the fifth floor disintegrated under the storm of simultaneous cutting pressure.
The illusion broke and Chernobog's concealment failed completely under the scale of destruction.
Standing amid ruin. Shadow constructs dissolving into uncontrolled fragments of darkness. Its voice was no longer certain.
"…Ah. So this is extinction shaped by will."
Henry stood still, breathing heavily, blade lowered slightly.
Chernobog looked at him but in an amused way.
"You are not prey," it smirked.
Then its body began to break apart into particles. Fading ink dissolved into the air.
As it disappeared, its final comment came,
"Misfortune… will remember you."
Henry lowered his blade completely.
"…It's gone."
Dante stepped beside him, glancing at the ruined floor.
"It was a necessary conclusion."
Henry turned slightly. "Thanks."
Dante gave a small nod smiling lightly.
"It was your opening. I merely clarified it."
Then Henry raised his hand slightly. Runic Flow activated again. Dante looked at him
"Ah. So that is how your summons end."
Henry didn't respond. The circle formed beneath Dante. Light swallowed him gently.
Before disappearing, Dantès offered one final expression.
"Do not let victory become habit."
Then he was gone.
Henry stood alone in the ruined fifth floor.
Only silence remained where gods and monsters had been.