The dark clouds in the sky slowly drifted apart, but the massive hole the meteor had punched through them refused to close. From below, it looked like the heavens themselves had been cracked open.
An armed helicopter roared in from the distance.
Soren glanced up at the aircraft. A warm current surged through his body, instantly washing away the exhaustion and replenishing every drop of demonic power he had spent controlling Faust's Hat.
He looked back down at the crater beneath his feet.
Time to go.
He had zero interest in sticking around to be treated like a zoo exhibit.
Besides, the commotion this time was way too big. If the authorities dragged him in for "tea," he'd get sucked into a mountain of political bullshit.
He stared at Valak's demonic corpse. The surface was already flickering with light—clearly in the middle of converting into Devil Arm form.
He wondered what kind of weapon one of the Seventy-Two Pillars would become.
Usually, a demon's Devil Arm retained its fighting style and signature traits from life.
In the legends, Valak ruled over snakes in Hell and possessed the power to command venomous serpents and blaspheme the divine…
Please don't turn into some kind of poisoned snake-bone whip, Soren thought.
He tossed the corpse straight into his Silent Hill domain.
While the dust cloud still hung thick in the air, he tugged up his coat collar, blurred, and vanished from the pit.
Moments after he left, the dust settled. Rope ladders dropped from the helicopter. Fully armed special forces rappelled down and quickly established a perimeter.
On the surrounding streets, troop carriers and FBI SUVs sealed off the main roads. Dozens of agents and military personnel flooded the scene.
Even though the incident happened in the suburbs, right next to the massive metropolis of Los Santos, the official response was lightning-fast.
The first squad leader to reach the bottom of the crater swept the area with his rifle, boots crunching over rubble.
"Command, this is Alpha Team. No meteorite remnants detected. No life signs either…"
He pressed his earpiece, voice low.
But none of that had anything to do with Soren anymore.
He was already lounging in the back seat of a taxi.
The driver was a chatty white uncle who kept glancing at him in the rear-view mirror, excited. "Buddy, did you see those black clouds and that red streak in the sky earlier?!"
"FUCK! The news is calling it a sudden localized thunderstorm, but I swear that was a meteor that almost flattened Los Santos! Or maybe an alien ship crashing!"
Soren gave noncommittal grunts while most of his attention stayed locked on the system notifications floating in his mind.
[Side Quest: The Blasphemous Nun]
[Objective: Completely kill the demon Valak]: Completed
[Rewards: 3,000 points, Bloodline Awakening +3%, Hell Demon Essence (Mental) ×1]
[Current Points: 10,000]
[Demon Bloodline Awakening: 9%]
Staring at the five-figure balance, Soren felt genuine excitement.
After saving for so long, he could finally unlock the Devil Arm he'd been eyeing—Alastor.
Thinking back to how annoying the fight with Valak had been, if he'd had a proper weapon in hand he wouldn't have needed to punch a Demon God in the face with his bare fists.
The second he got back to the office, he was pulling that trigger.
Once the thrill faded, Soren frowned at the bloodline percentage.
The system had only awarded 3% for the kill. Added to the previous 5%, it should have been 8%.
So where had the extra 1% come from?
He closed his eyes and replayed the last couple of days.
Was it the intense battle against a Demon God that stimulated the bloodline? Or…
Had Alessa's absorption of Yutun's corpse caused the Otherworld to grow and feed power back to him?
It meant there was another way to awaken his bloodline besides the fixed quest rewards—one he had completely overlooked.
He couldn't confirm it yet, so he tucked the question away for later.
This fight had also given him a crystal-clear picture of his current strength.
Mid- and low-tier demons? He could steamroll them.
Upper-tier demons? With a decent Devil Arm in hand, he was confident he could kill them.
But against a lord-class Demon God like Valak? Still not enough.
And that fight had every advantage: Constantine and Papa Midnight supporting him, plus Valak was at its absolute weakest while forcing its way across the worlds.
Even then, he hadn't been able to inflict real damage quickly.
If he wanted to fish in the muddy waters of Mammon's descent soon, he needed to get stronger—fast.
His thoughts drifted to his unreliable uncle Dante.
As Sparda's actual son, Dante's situation was completely different. His demonic blood had been awake from birth, only sealed by a lock. Getting stabbed by the Rebellion had simply turned the key, unlocking Devil Trigger and the family's legendary "stab-the-heavens" talent.
Soren's current state was more like having paid a fortune to build a reinforced alloy wall—now he had to smash it apart piece by piece to release what was inside.
Lost in thought, the scenery outside the taxi window suddenly blurred. Thick fog rolled in silently, swallowing the entire highway.
"Damn, where the hell did this fog come from in broad daylight?" the driver grumbled, flicking on the fog lights and easing off the gas.
Then, right in front of the car, a towering black silhouette appeared in the mist.
It had a triangular head and was holding something in its hands, standing motionless in the middle of the road.
"Shit!"
The driver panicked and slammed the brakes.
But they were too close. The taxi plowed straight into the shadow—only to pass right through it without any impact, coming to a safe stop on the shoulder.
"Motherf—did I just hit a ghost?!"
The driver gripped the wheel with white knuckles, sweat pouring down his face.
Soren, sitting in the back, smiled inwardly and called out in his mind: "Alessa, you awake?"
The fog and that black figure were all too familiar.
Before, they had only appeared when the Otherworld fully descended. Now they could manifest on their own.
Looked like absorbing Yutun's corpse had changed Silent Hill far more than he expected.
"Mm…"
Alessa's soft voice echoed in his head.
"I've already synced the changed parts of Silent Hill to you."
A massive flood of information poured straight into Soren's mind through their mental link. He absorbed every bit.
He closed his eyes instinctively.
This time it wasn't like before, where he could only toss things into the domain from afar.
His consciousness descended directly into Silent Hill town, exactly like the very first time he had entered it.
"Feels kind of like carrying a small world inside my body now…"
He looked around. The town felt strangely unfamiliar.
The once fog-shrouded, ash-falling wasteland was now overgrown with a dense black forest. Pitch-black trees grew between the houses, thick vines wrapping around walls and roofs.
It seemed that not only had Yutun become nourishment for Alessa, but even its unique traits had fused perfectly into the Otherworld.
Soren opened his eyes again and glanced at the fog outside the taxi window.
This mist was Alessa's power leaking out uncontrollably now that she was awake.
With a single thought, a towering figure slowly materialized on the seat beside him.
Pyramid Head sat perfectly upright, hands resting politely on its knees. In the cramped taxi, the massive creature looked comically cramped.
Two small deer antlers had even sprouted from the top of its iron triangle helmet.
Soren stared at the oddly adorable new look and his eye twitched.
…Was this Alessa's sense of humor?
He waved his hand and dispersed the projection.
Digesting the new information, Soren now understood the major upgrades the Otherworld had received.
Monsters could now be summoned into reality as projections, completely unbound by Silent Hill's restrictions.
Even if they were destroyed in the real world, they suffered no real damage—he could simply resummon them with demonic power.
The thick fog could be deployed as a domain skill in reality.
Any enemy whose will wasn't strong enough would, upon inhaling the mist, fall into a mental illusion and be forced to confront their deepest fears or relive their most despairing memories on loop.
Like that meeting right before quitting time…
Or typing a huge document only for the computer to shut down without saving…
Even if your will was ironclad, the fog would keep generating illusions to disturb your mind, trying to drag you into the abyss of corruption.