The instant he saw him, Dante knew that he was done for. He made a mistake. A very big one. A mistake that could have been avoided if only he had gone about things a different way.

He could have used 8-3 to grab Red Bull while he was focused on Rose and her crew. He could have opened a portal under Jason and finished the mission before it could even start. Instead, he had decided to let things play out—to let the rest of the crew complete their mission while he provided minimal assistance.

It was all intended to hide his involvement. To make it seem as if the whole thing was carried out by a small crew without any significant powers. All of that went out of the window when he let his anger take control, and when he came across that first Genome, all hope of ending things quietly was lost.

The circumstances didn't really matter. It was his decisions that led him to this point, along with his lack of control. Being a little more careful could have saved him, but there was no point in thinking that now.

Looking up, he saw the abomination hovering in the air a short distance away. The scene felt familiar. Too familiar. Maybe that's why his vision kept flashing red.

That's right. It was the same back then. The sky was dark, and the world was ablaze. He was close to the ground, and the bastard floated in the air. He looked down with those same eyes. Cold. Emotionless. Uncaring. Almost as if the whole matter was a chore.

Those eyes had haunted Dante for years, and just when it felt like he was starting to heal, they escaped his nightmares and came to haunt him in the waking world.

[Dante.] In the silence cast by his accelerated perception, Volcan's voice sounded rather loud. [You need to get out of here.]

Though all his resident AI did was echo his own thoughts, it somehow ended up being the spark that reignited Dante's rage. The fire burned stronger than ever. It escaped the confines of his mortal shell and spilled onto the outside world, manifesting into a tangible pressure that spoke of the boundless hatred he harbored for five long years.

Faced with the enemy he had sworn to take down, his mind went through every course of action he could take, every attack he could deliver, every blow he could deal, then-

'8-6'

The fire suddenly vanished, and he was back in control of his thoughts.

Silence fell on the entirety of Neo-Vatra. An eerie silence was brought by life coming to an abrupt halt, as if every last human in the city was suddenly frozen still. In the seconds that silence lasted, a few things happened at the same time.

Paragon, having just saved another hero from a deadly blow, prepared to take on the villain behind the incident that drew his attention. He didn't have the time to understand what happened in that place, nor did he have the luxury of waiting for backup to arrive. One look at the golden armor told him everything he needed to know, and so he had no choice but to take action.

Seeing him move, Dante gave the command to change his armor. It only took a second, but it might as well be an eternity. Dante felt the world shatter around him, and when the light faded, he saw the destruction his opponent had caused.

The crater created by his Lightning Spear was expanded, doubling in size, and cracks spread from under his feet, making it appear as if the Earth was spreading its maws to swallow him. The fires spreading through the surroundings had been put out, snuffed by a powerful wind.

Dante watched as Paragon brought himself to a stop a few dozen meters from where he stood, looking a if he had been blasted away.

[Attacking someone in the middle of a transformation?] Dante let out a chuckle. [You really have no manners.]

One would think that the brief moment between his armors being swapped was the optimal opening for an attack, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. Whoever created VOLCAN knew that its enemies would aim for that opening, and thus a countermeasure was added, ensuring that the user would be protected until the threads of light had vanished, and the new armor finished forming.

Paragon learned that fact the hard way, having had the full force of his attack reflected back to his face. That didn't deter him, however. The instant he regained control over his movement, he charged back with even more force than before.

He soon noticed that something wasn't right. Despite flying at tens of times the speed of sound, the distance between him and his opponent didn't seem to decrease all that much. It didn't matter, however. His speed hadn't decreased, and neither had the force he was generating. In fact, the increased distance only helped him gather greater momentum, which meant the strike he was about to deliver was going to be many times more powerful.

'Yeah, sorry about that. I'm still not ready to face you yet.' With how fast everything moved, spoken words were impossibly slow. Dante could only think in his head, but somehow, he had a feeling that the hero was able to hear him just fine. 'Don't worry, I will come for you when the time is right.' Slowly raising his hands, he activated another one of the armor's abilities. 'Until then, you can have this.'

All of a sudden, Paragon found himself face-to-face with his opponent, separated by no more than two meters. The two didn't clash, however. Dante vanished from the scene as if he had never been there, and all that remained was the thing he had held in his extended hand.

It was a dot. A black dot. Like a single point painted on the world with matt black ink. It was an anomaly the existence of which messed with the fabric of the world itself. Not a fraction of a second after it was unleashed, it swelled in size, exploding into a massive hole dozens of meters wide, then, it suddenly vanished, disappearing a if it was never there.

The mansion, Red Garden, and everything within it. All of it was swallowed by the black hole, and once it vanished, nothing remained but ravaged wasteland.