[SYSTEM STATUS: TOTAL SPIRITUAL ECLIPSE]
[LOCATION: THE VATICAN - ST. PETER'S BASILICA]
[VIRAL METER: THE NEW TESTAMENT OF CHAOS]
The rain over Rome was no longer water; it was a viscous, black sludge—a chemical fallout from the "Dirty Industries" Dante had ignited in the East. It fell upon the white marble of St. Peter's Square like ink on a death warrant. Dante Vane stood at the foot of the Obelisk, not as a conqueror, but as the Cosmic Auditor.
"The Swiss Guard has been neutralized," Sia reported. Her voice was a flat, dead frequency. She had reached a state of Neural Numbness—the result of Dante's "Ego-Dissolution" therapy. "They didn't fight. When I showed them the live feed of their families in the Detroit 'Iron Lung' factories, they laid down their halberds and asked for the soma-vapor. They chose the dream over the duty."
Dante didn't look at the Basilica. He looked at his own hands. "Duty is a leash for the unimaginative, Sia. Tonight, we don't just occupy a city. We perform a Vivisection of the Divine."
The Darkest Tactic: The "Confession of the Damned"
Dante entered the Basilica. He didn't walk; he glided through the incense-choked air, his presence a physical weight that caused the very candles to flicker and die. In the center of the nave, he had ordered the installation of a Psychological Pressure Chamber—a ring of high-definition screens facing inward toward the High Altar.
Kneeling at the altar were the twelve High Cardinals. They weren't just praying; they were hooked into Bio-Feedback Induction loops.
"Welcome to the final audit," Dante's voice echoed, cold enough to crack the marble. "You've spent two millennia selling the 'Afterlife.' Tonight, I'm bringing the Afterlife to you."
Dante activated the "Mirror of Judas" protocol.
On the screens, the Cardinals weren't shown their sins. They were shown the Mathematical Futility of their faith. Dante had used the stolen Aladdin algorithms to calculate the exact amount of human suffering the Church had ignored to maintain its gold reserves. He didn't just show them numbers; he used Neuro-Linguistic Hacking to force them to feel the collective hunger of every child abandoned by their missions, the cold of every homeless soul they turned away from their gilded doors.
This was Hyper-Empathy Torture. Dante was forcing their brains to process ten thousand years of human agony in ten seconds.
One Cardinal's eyes literally rolled back into his head as his nervous system collapsed under the weight of the "Calculated Guilt."
"You see?" Dante whispered, standing over the gasping men. "Your God didn't fail you. He simply couldn't compete with my Return on Investment."
The Outscaling of Imagination: The "Ye" Eucharist
Outside, the monoliths didn't just play music. They emitted a Infrasonic Pulse—the "Hither" frequency—that resonated with the human skull. The crowd of the "New Vanguard" didn't just march; they entered a state of Collective Psychosis.
Dante walked to the balcony of St. Peter's. He wasn't alone. He had dragged the Pope out by his vestments. But the Pope wasn't a man anymore. Dante had used Deep-Tissue Neural Re-wiring to turn the Pontiff into a human puppet—a "Meat-Interface."
"People of the Void!" Dante's voice thundered, broadcasted into the very minds of the millions watching via their Vane-Net collars. "The old God demanded your sacrifice. I demand your hunger."
Dante produced a silver chalice filled with a dark, shimmering liquid—a concentrated form of the "Soma-X" mixed with the blood of the Blackstone executives he had executed in Chapter 8.
"This is the New Covenant," Dante declared. "The Eucharist of the Machine."
He forced the puppet-Pope to drink, then turned the chalice toward the crowd. Below, the masses began to tear at each other, not out of hate, but out of a Predatory Craving Dante had engineered into their biology. He had turned the "Bread of Life" into a "Virus of Need."
The square became a sea of moving shadows—a mosh pit of the damned where the only law was the Will of Vane.
The Machiavellian Peak: The "God-Heist"
"Why?" the Pope's voice croaked, a spark of humanity flickering in his drug-fogged eyes. "Why destroy... everything?"
Dante leaned in, his face a masterpiece of Absolute Evil.
"Because as long as one man believes there is a power higher than me, my Art is unfinished," Dante whispered. "I don't want your followers to fear me, Father. I want them to forget you ever existed. I am deleting your history. I am burning your archives. By sunrise, the word 'Holy' will be a slang term for 'Profitable'."
Dante then performed the ultimate act of desecration. He ordered his "Ye" vanguard to enter the Basilica, not to loot it, but to re-purpose it. By morning, the Sistine Chapel was no longer a place of worship. It was a Server Farm. The bodies of the dead Popes were removed from their crypts and replaced with high-cooling racks for the Vane-Net core.
He was literally running his global tyranny on the bones of the saints.
The Final Disgrace: The Digital Ascension
As the sun rose—a sickly, orange disc behind the smog—Dante stood alone on the balcony. St. Peter's Square was littered with the broken bodies of those who had fought for a drop of the "Soma-X."
He looked at the camera. He didn't look like a man anymore. He looked like an Equation.
"The world is a ledger," Dante said, his voice now integrated into the global audio-stream so it sounded as if he were speaking from inside the listener's own head. "And I have just cleared the debt of morality. You are no longer 'human.' You are Assets. And under my management, you will finally know the peace of the void."
He snapped his fingers.
In every city on Earth, the church bells didn't ring. Instead, the Vane-Net collars emitted a single, harmonized tone: The Frequency of Submission.
[VIRAL METER: REALITY OVERWRITTEN]
[STATUS: THE ARCHITECT HAS ARRIVED]