Chapter Thirty-One
FIGHT ON PAUSE
"Crap, you really know how to liven things up!"
QUAKE
Negata landed on one of the surrounding roofs, and meanwhile, Dionysus was still in his alternate dimension that was all the way at the bottom of the alleyway.
"I've got no information about your ability Dionysus, but through fighting you, I'm starting to understand just what you have."
Negata took off the white cloak, which left him in only his black tank top and white shorts that went down to his knees. Dionysus was a bit more shocked about his fashion sense instead of his combat sense, but that wasn't exactly the issue to prioritize at the moment, and he understood that.
"You seem to have a box made of glass that lets you see the outside world, but I don't know about much else. I think I also saw some things inside of it, so maybe you can store stuff inside?"
Negata said all of this while continuing to skim his surroundings, as Dionysus had not revealed himself yet. While he now knew how the inside of Behind the Curtain looked like, he didn't know it's transportational capabilities, which was why he was on guard.
Just based on common sense, Negata had already gotten really, really long-range transportation out of his mind, as he couldn't fathom how an ability like that would allow someone to travel hundreds of miles.
However, just by narrowing it down to something below that, it didn't make it any easier to guess it's capabilities.
Meanwhile . . .
'What do I do?'
Dionysus was in a deadlock of sorts. He knew his range, and there was no way that he could appear anywhere without Negata sensing it. His best bet would be to appear and disappear as fast as possible, but considering what had already happened, it was a very risky move.
'His ability only supplies him with a certain amount of metal, and from what I've seen, he can't use the surrounding metal. Still, with the speed that those things shot at me . . .'
Dionysus easily recalled just how fast each and every single one of them shot out at him. While none of them surpassed the speed of sound, they were very well on the brink of it, that is, if they hadn't hit it already.
'I don't have faith in my capabilities, but there is something that I can try to do.'
Dionysus' granted ability, Behind the Curtain, had actually hit the fourth stage back when he trained with Cerberus, meaning that it only had one more stage before it unlocked its full potential.
Yet, even without the final stage, it was plenty powerful.
'I guess I can try to apply that into actual battle.'
He had tried something while fighting against Cerberus, but he never considered that it might, one day, genuinely be useful to him. However, now that such a scenario presented itself, Dionysus saw it as a prime moment to try this.
WHOOSH
"There!"
WHISH
As expected, a metal rod shot right in front of the curtain, which was where Dionysus would have emerged from if he actually did walk through it. Therefore, as unfortunate as it was for Negata, the metal rod . . .
CLANK
Just hit the ground of the alleyway before seemingly disintegrating. It shattered the ground because of the power that it had behind it, but that didn't matter.
WHOOSH
WHOOSH
WHOOSH
WHOOSH
WHOOSH
WHOOSH
WHOOSH
One after another, dozens of curtains opened. Dionysus spared no expense to his mental health when he did this, opening as much as he possibly could. While he definitely could open up an infinite amount of them, the more that he opened, the tenser the strain on his mental strength. His awakened ability somewhat helped him maintain a balance, but it didn't go very far in helping him.
The reason that it put a strain on him to open all these curtains is a simple one. In essence, he was not only opening multiple portals to an alternate dimension, but also maintaining them. He was doing something that a normal mortal would, usually, not have the capability of doing.
The only relief was his awakened ability, which, because of how it worked, naturally strengthened his mentality.
"What?!"
Also as expected, Negata quickly got flustered at the scene unfolding before him. There were curtains in the sky, on other rooftops, down in the alleyway, and some even right next to him. He counted at least twenty different ones as of right now, and that number was still increasing.
'It's ok, this is just a plan for him to try and get away. I just have to-'
Before he could even finish his thought, his mind had already gone empty so that he could hear anything. Once again, he heightened his senses to their very limits, all in the hope of catching Dionysus somehow.
As fate would have it, however, this would backfire very terribly.
What Negata failed to notice was the fact that all the curtains were arranged in a pattern of sorts, one that he hadn't picked up on. They were made in a way in which no sound would be able to escape the area, allowing echoes to constantly reverberate. The only reason that this could work was because a person could hear audio cues from Dionysus' alternate dimension even if they weren't in it, and vice-versa. They could only be heard through the curtain, but it still worked in the end.
In short, Dionysus had just constructed an echo chamber.
For Negata, whose senses were heightened to their very limit, including hearing, things were about to go terribly wrong.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Dionysus yelled as loud as he could while he had ear plugs on, something that he could thank Cerberus for picking up on his behalf.
Just as planned, the sound continued to echo, and at some point, Negata was on the ground holding his bleeding ears. And then, Before long, Negata was running away from the scene.
But, it was too late for him to run. His eardrums had already been ruptured, and Dionysus had already ran out from one of the curtains, and away from the scene. Negata didn't even bother to look behind him to see where Dionysus had gone, something that would result in him unable to find Dionysus for a while after this.
Dionysus, who was currently extremely relieved, quickly disappeared from the town edges, and was heading back to the center of town.
'Shit, how'd a dungrat like him mess me up so badly . . .?'
"Haaaaaaah, I've gotten too old for this crap . . ."
As he headed back to town, he continued to lament the aging process of mortals.
--- SEQUENCE 2 ---
Dionysus had made it back to the center of town, but he decided to not get close to the bar that he works at, as Negata would most definitely sweep the bar in order to find him. Instead, he decided to go and live at the edge of the city until this whole ordeal passed by.
'Wait, why don't I just leave the city?'
As he began to think through that thought of his, he actually thought that it wasn't a half-bad plan. He thought that Negata wouldn't be tenacious enough to pursue him all the way out of the city, and he definitely didn't believe that he would be caught leaving it, as there were thousands of people leaving and entering in just a single day.
'Still, I'll probably lose my job now . . .'
Before the Royal Invasion, Dionysus really didn't care all that much about the money that came with working a job, but ever since that day where he quickly ditched his bullies to meet up with Daphne, he never got robbed of his money again. He was now living life as a semi-normal person, the only weird part being that he still slept in a random place everyday, whether it be on the roof or in an alleyway.
Now that he was able to keep his money, he really didn't want to go back to being utterly broke financially.
'Well, I'll just find another job.'
Determined to make it out of this safely, and also without attracting attention, Dionysus set out to leave town.
--- SEQUENCE 3 ---
'Negata failed me, I'm going to need you to finish it.'
"I don't want to do anything though."
'Want to die?'
". . ."
No more words were needed, as Incidamus accepted his fate to hunt down Dionysus.