The blinding red explosion filling his vision froze instantly.
Immediately after, the entire world shattered like a dream, dissolving into nothingness.
The sky and earth inverted, and memories flowed backward like a tide.
The glazed look in Luca's eyes rapidly faded, replaced by clarity.
When he came back to his senses, he was still standing in his familiar laboratory.
Just now... did I blow myself up with that meteor impact?
Having just returned to the Marvel Universe, Luca's head was still filled with the final scene from the Devil May Cry world as his memories integrated.
But before he could fully recall everything...
The dreamlike bubbles in front of him rapidly coalesced.
Seeing this familiar sight, Luca froze, his body tensing up slightly.
After all, the last time this happened after the Detective Conan world, the coalescing bubbles had brought Sherry into the real world.
Who's it going to be this time? Nico? Agnus? Uh... it wouldn't be that brat Nero, would it?
However, just as Luca was thinking this, he realized the shape forming in front of him seemed a bit...
"Isn't that way too small?"
Before he could finish his sentence, the light—which was clearly not humanoid—dissipated completely. In its place, a cowboy hat he knew all too well appeared out of thin air, floating right in front of him.
"Eh? It's... the Dr. Faust hat?"
Reaching out to catch the cowboy hat as it drifted down, Luca, who had been bracing himself for a new person, now wore an indescribably strange expression.
But... this isn't bad either!
He flipped the hat over. Sure enough, an "L" was clearly embroidered on the inner brim.
This [Dr. Faust] hat was a tool Luca and Nico had researched and built together in the DMC world. As its primary user, naturally, Luca's initial was inside.
Speaking of the hat itself...
It was a beige cowboy hat that looked quite ordinary at first glance, except for a demonic finger—taken from a demon named "Faust"—wrapped around the crown. Set into this finger was a red gemstone.
Furthermore, there were patterns resembling eyes on the hat.
Well, saying they "resembled" eyes wasn't quite accurate. The hat actually imprisoned the soul of a "Faust" demon, and the hat itself possessed a certain level of sentience.
However, because it was a demon, Luca and Nico had wiped out most of its consciousness during the crafting process. So, it wasn't chatty like a certain "Sorting Hat."
As for the hat's abilities and why Luca was so delighted to bring it back...
If represented by a System panel, it would look like this:
> [Dr. Faust]
> [Creators: Luca Aurantius, Nicoletta Goldstein]
> [Item Description: A Devil Arm crafted by two master human weaponsmiths. The wielder can attack demon-type creatures to absorb their demon blood, storing it as Red Orbs within the hat. These stored Red Orbs can be fired like bullets to attack enemies, or released to orbit the user, blocking ranged attacks. They can also power the 'Soul of Faust' within the hat, allowing it to float nearby and attack autonomously. When the user presses the brim to charge up, they can consume the stored Red Orbs to summon a massive meteor to strike a target. The power depends on the amount of Red Orbs stored and the charge time.]
> [Friendly Reminder: Because a certain clever-clogs creator forcibly removed the upper limit on the meteor charge during the manufacturing process, the meteor can be charged infinitely. However, charging it beyond a certain point will result in an explosion that catches the user in the blast radius.]
That's right. The final meteor attack Luca unleashed in the DMC world was the result of releasing nearly a year's worth of Red Orbs he and Nero had accumulated from exterminating demons.
Its power was easily comparable to a small tactical nuke. Whether it destroyed the Qliphoth roots in one hit was hard to say, but it definitely took Luca out, ending his journey in that world.
Actually, when they first built it, Nico had planned to set a safety limit on the charge so the excess energy in the hat could protect the user from the blast.
But Luca had added a "Limit Release Mode" on top of that, which led to him being swallowed by the explosion.
"What a pity. That last blast emptied all the Red Orbs. Who knows when I'll be able to store that much demon blood again."
Luca carefully put away the [Dr. Faust], feeling a bit wistful.
Having provoked a massive trouble like Mephisto recently, this hat might just become a crucial weapon in his fight against the demon lord.
Next, he briefly organized the knowledge and memories he brought back from the DMC world.
His gaze returned to the laboratory around him.
The first thing that caught his eye was the mechanical arm he had "just" finished synthesizing: [Ragtime].
Yes, although he had blown up several mechanical arms in succession to unlock new recipes quickly in order to enter the "5/5" DMC world...
Since he entered the dream world immediately after synthesizing this final arm, this mechanical arm named [Ragtime] (Mercury Time) naturally remained intact.
This is great. Saves me the trouble of hunting down materials again.
Now that he had fully integrated the memories from the DMC world, Luca actually possessed the capability to build all those previous mechanical arms from scratch.
Even though he had "cleared the game" a bit early and hadn't technically built [Ragtime] in the dream world, he didn't lack the technical skill.
However, unlike the Detective Conan world—which was a "normal" modern society where all materials could be bought regularly—many items in the Devil May Cry world required materials from demon bodies.
Take the [Dr. Faust] he just got, for instance.
If the System hadn't manifested it directly, even if Luca knew the complete manufacturing process, he wouldn't necessarily be able to find another Faust demon in the Marvel Universe.
He might have ended up with a knock-off that only kinda worked.
Similarly, a time-manipulating tool like [Ragtime] required demon materials that were likely even harder to find than the hat.
Having it preserved was a massive boon for Luca.
> [Ragtime]
> [Creator: Nicoletta Goldstein]
> [Item Description: A mechanical arm built for Nero by Nico using fragments of the Elder Geryon Knight as raw material. Through the prosthetic, the user can release the residual demonic power to generate a magical field. Within this field, the flow of time becomes extremely slow. The user of the arm is not affected by the time dilation.]
> [Friendly Reminder: Forcibly overloading the arm will cause the time magic contained within to detonate all at once. This multiplies the degree of time deceleration and the effective range, but it will result in the complete destruction of the arm.]
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