[I believe you were able to resolve this matter far better than one might expect, considering its sudden nature.] Volcan said.

'Well, it's still a pain in the ass.' Dante replied.

The heroes showing up was one thing, but the blonde bastard? Dante had been preparing to fight a Level 6 ever since he heard about Paragon moving into the city, which made it all the more shocking when a different one appeared before him. Though he had never believed the tale of only one Level 6 existing, it was still shocking that one of them would show himself in the open just like that.

Thinking back to his battle against the blonde bastard, Dante couldn't help but grimace. He came out on top. VOLCAN had more than enough power to deal with Level 6 Genomes, which should have been news worth celebrating, but Dante didn't feel like it. He might have won a contest of raw destructive power, but he doubted that was all there is to his enemy.

Just like he could have used the more complicated abilities of his other armors to end the battle fairly quickly, he felt that his enemies were likely to have other powers that could counter him, or even defeat him before he could make any move, and that's without considering the likely situations where they would come after him in groups. Fighting one Level 6 might not have been that big of a deal, but against a team with a variety of powers and training to make the most of them would be a much harsher challenge, and Volcan alone might not be enough to claim victory.

Kaiser Tigris seemed like he was the weakest among the Level 6s, relying entirely on physical strength. It might just be that he came unprepared and was caught off guard, but that wasn't an excuse that had much weight in life and death matters. Sadly, that didn't erase the bad feeling that victory left in Dante's mouth. It was his first win at that Level and yet he couldn't even enjoy it properly.

As he thought back on their fight, Dante found himself focusing on the conversation they had at the end. There were a lot of questions he wanted to ask, but getting an answer from the Tigris scion would have been a very difficult task, as was keeping him hostage. In the end, Dante settled on three questions, and the answers he got weren't what he expected.

[How much do you know?]

He was referring to himself and VOLCAN with those words, and he kept it purposefully vague, wanting to hear the kind of answer the scion would say. Eventually, Kaiser said that they were aware of him using a highly adaptable weapon with multiple abilities, and that it originally belonged to them, hence why he was trying to retrieve it.

That much seemed to fit the basic conclusion Dante had arrived at—of course, the most powerful people in the world would want to own any weapon capable of threatening them. They went after Klaus Stahlwölfe for his attempts to create something that would allow him to use Sorcery freely. Still, Dante felt like he wasn't being told the full story, making him wonder how much more was there to it. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

He didn't dwell on it for long, however. The first question was nothing but an opening, and the other two were his main focus. When he went ahead and asked the next one, the blonde bastard gave an unexpected response—he laughed.

"You… to think you had been that close before." He said after Dante asked the third question. "Now I'm starting to understand why he had been protecting you."

That part was a much bigger revelation than anything the blonde bastard had said, and even now, Dante was still shocked by it. The questions he had asked the Tigris scion were ones that had tormented him for a while now, mainly because only someone at the very top of Eidolon could possibly answer them. One concerned the identity of the one capable of tampering with memories. As for the last one, it was more of a demand.

[Eidolon has facilities in Polaris Ultima. I want their coordinates, all of them.]

The strange dreams of walking through endless snowy fields had occupied him for a while. It has been months since he had one of those, but the last one had stuck with him, and for some reason, Dante had been doubtful of its nature ever since.

"Polaris Ultima, huh?" Kaiser Tigris had sighed wistfully back then, his previous arrogance entirely gone. "Sorry to say this, but not even I know. In fact, until you mention it, I never even considered that we might have a presence there."

The blonde bastard had treated it lightly, but Dante could tell that it frustrated him quite a bit, and the reason was understandable. Kaiser hadn't answered his second question, the one about the memory manipulator. Apparently, the one in question was the representative of one of the twelve families, though even the validity of that fact cannot be determined for one reason. The bastard manipulates the memories of everyone around him, erasing his presence and anything he doesn't want to be known, and one of those things had been VOLCAN's location.

"This is getting really interesting." Kaiser had said. "Can't wait to know the reason he's going this far, just for you."

The mysterious man. The reason behind it all. Dante didn't expect to find out much about him any time soon, but to think he was never even close to doing so, even after getting to interrogate the scion of one of the twelve families. Still, he couldn't entirely say that he hadn't earned anything from it.

The twelve families weren't the monolith they appeared to be to the rest of the world. Some of them had more power than the others, and they clearly had clashing goals. Eidolon wasn't being more active in their pursuit of VOLCAN, not because they hadn't figured out the relic's location, but because someone was preventing them from doing so, protecting Dante as a result.

Why would that person do that? Just thinking about it fueled Dante's frustration, and he was left wondering whether any of his actions had been orchestrated by someone, and if he was missing other parts of his memories without him even realizing.