Sephirot stepped out of the room.
Everyone's eyes turned toward him.
He paused, slightly taken aback. "What's the matter?"
Constantine glanced at him, his gaze lingering on Sephirot's face for a few seconds before he sneered. "Nice dye job. You could open a barbershop when you retire."
Sephirot instinctively pulled out his phone and used the screen's reflection to take a look.
After reaching a 20% bloodline awakening degree, his hair had gone completely white.
But these naturally grown silver strands, in both luster and texture, were far sleeker than anything a salon dye could produce.
"Right. About that sealing technique you mentioned, and the Ouroboros mark you brought back, there's been a new discovery,
Constantine's expression grew serious. "But I still need some time to go through a few manuscripts and study it properly."
"Fine."
Sephirot nodded, intending to leave.
As he reached the doorway, he suddenly stopped and looked back at Angela, who was sitting on the sofa in a daze. "Officer, don't forget the money you still owe me."
All the trouble lately had nearly made him forget about it.
Leaving Constantine's room, Sephirot didn't take the stairs down. Instead, he went up to the rooftop.
With his Devil Trigger unlocked, he could feel that power inside him, desperate to be released.
Outside, the sky had dimmed slightly, the setting sun gradually sinking.
Sephirot walked to the edge of the rooftop. Only the cold high-altitude wind could calm him, if just a little.
He gazed down at this city that called itself the city that never sleeps.
Despite the string of bizarre incidents lately, the city showed no signs of decline, still drawing countless people in droves.
Then, he stopped suppressing the restlessness.
Purple energy engulfed his body in an instant.
Sephirot closed his eyes and felt the power.
In the span of a blink, human clothing and skin receded, replaced by a streamlined set of armor brimming with strength.
Dark black bio-armor covered his entire body, purple magic flowing at the joints and ultimately converging at his chest.
A mane of silvery-white long hair danced in the night wind. His face was concealed by a cold, expressionless visor; only his eyes glowed with a heart-stopping violet light.
Even just standing perfectly still, the ground beneath his feet was already cracked and splintered.
At that moment, the serpentine mark [Valak] coiled around Sephirot's right arm was directly absorbed into the armor, transforming behind him into a one-winged cloak constructed of pure energy.
Sephirot willed it, and the energy cloak shifted directly into a venomous serpent, snapping forward.
"Boom!"
The wall was blasted into a massive crater.
He nodded with satisfaction. This would make his combat style even more unpredictable.
In battle, who would ever expect an unassuming cloak to turn into a venomous serpent at a critical moment and strike?
Sephirot bent his knees slightly and leaped upward.
In midair, he studied the structure of his own body.
Unlike the Devil Triggers of Dante and Vergil, which still retained some traces of human clothing after transformation,
Sephirot's had completely shed all human garments and turned into a pure bio-armor form.
Just as he was about to fall, the thunder sword appeared in his hand. Only by unlocking the Devil Trigger state can the thunder sword Alastor's true worth be fully revealed.
Flight!
As if imbued with life, the thunder sword melded itself to his back and began greedily draining magic.
In an instant, a pair of thunder wings burst open behind him.
With a single beat of those wings, his body traced an arc through the air, transforming into a violet shooting star that shot straight into the clouds.
The gale roared past his ears, and gravity lost all meaning in that moment.
To conquer the sky has always been the will of humanity reaching for freedom.
Sephirot gazed down at the city rapidly shrinking beneath him, savoring the ultimate pleasure of the wind rushing over his body, and couldn't help but throw back his head and laugh.
Across the night sky, a dazzling violet light tore across the heavens, leaving a long contrail between the cloud layers.
On the street, a few young people who had just stepped out of a bar looked up, blearily pointing at the bright light high above. "Is that a shooting star? Or a new military fighter jet?"
In just a few short minutes, at extreme speed, Sephirot had crossed directly from the southern coast of Los Santos to the airspace above the unbroken mountain ranges in the north.
But this exhilarating, utterly satisfying experience did not last long.
Sephirot suddenly felt a wave of emptiness inside his body.
Maintaining the Devil Trigger already consumed enormous energy, and with Alastor's endless drawing, the magic within him was quickly utterly drained.
"Damn, am I about to crash?"
He thought with a sinking feeling.
Almost at the very moment this thought appeared, Alastor, robbed of its magic supply, simply quit. The Devil Trigger Armor on his body's surface flickered twice and then vanished.
Gravity re-captured his entire body, and he plummeted stiffly straight into the depths of the mountains.
In the mountain area, several backpackers with packs on their backs were using flashlights to search the woods for a suitable campsite.
"BOOM!"
The sound of howling wind suddenly came from high above, followed immediately by a massive crash from a nearby patch of woodland that startled vast flocks of birds into flight.
"Look! Something fell down!"
A young girl excitedly pointed in the direction of the sound.
Around her, other campers who had heard the commotion were also full of curiosity and approached with their flashlights raised.
When they pushed aside the bushes and reached the impact point, all they saw was a human-shaped deep crater smashed into the ground.
But the bottom of the pit was entirely empty, with nothing there.
On one side, handprints from a person climbing were visible in the dirt.
Dozens of meters from the deep crater, under a tree, Sephirot leaned against the trunk, gasping violently.
A burst of aching pain came from his stomach, making him frown slightly.
He brushed the green leaves and dry grass from his trench coat and lowered his head to spit out the mud in his mouth.
"My magic reserves are still too low."
Sephirot felt the hunger signals from the cells inside his body and, gritting his teeth against the pain, began walking down the mountain.
He would still have to put effort into raising his bloodline awakening degree. Only when his magic was sufficient could he use flight as a long-distance mode of transportation.
Half an hour later, inside a pizza shop at the foot of the mountain.
The scattered handful of patrons in the shop couldn't help turning their gazes toward a table by the window.
A man, reeking of damp earth and with clothes slightly disheveled, was madly devouring the food in his hands.
At his side, seven or eight large empty pizza boxes were already stacked high.
Sephirot swallowed his last mouthful of pizza, felt that the hunger pangs inside him had finally mostly dissipated, and let out a faint sigh of relief.
Although he hadn't fully recovered to satiety, his stomach had at last drawn enough energy and was no longer protesting.
He raised a hand to summon a waiter and passed over a black card. "Card."
This was the operational fund Patty had given him before, for him to resolve the issue with Carrie.
That money hadn't been needed at the time, and he naturally hadn't returned the card either.
Sitting in the back of a taxi, Sephirot watched the street scene recede outside the window and began to ponder Patty's description.
On this land, the ability to deploy fully armed tactical squads and bulletproof vehicles didn't belong to the authorities alone.
Some deep-pocketed financial conglomerates and factions with intricate ties to the military also maintained their own private squads.
The enemy is in the light, and I am in the shadows.
For a long time now, he had always wanted a dedicated intelligence operative serving only himself.
Now, he was preparing to go find Papa Midnite, to see if this local fixer had any talents skilled in divination in his employ.
(Translated by yourtl.app)