Y/N POV

After my small run-in with Trish, I knew my next order of business was to find Lady and then find this laboratory underneath the castle, wherever that was. I sighed to myself before deciding to cut my exploration short and head back the way I came.

I reached in my pocket and pulled out my phone. You may be wondering WHY I had a phone on me and why I hadn't used it before. To answer the first question, why wouldn't I have one? And for the second, I didn't feel it relevant to mention before now.

Luckily, I had Lady's number easily accessible and rung it. Soon I heard her voice on the other end, calmly asking "Hello?" I replied "Hi Lady, where are you right now?" She answered "Just heading down some blank hallway, why?"

I informed her "I just met up with Trish, she tipped me off that there's apparently a laboratory located somewhere under this castle. I'd say that's out best bet." Lady seemed to disregard the last part and instead just asked "Wait, Trish is here as well?"

I nodded, though I knew she couldn't see me, before saying "Yep. Head back to that large room we first entered through. I'll meet you there." Lady finally replied "Okay, I'll see you then." With that she hung up and I placed the phone back into my pocket.

Instantly, I retraced my steps all the way back to the large entrance hall. With the picture of the Order's leader hanging over it. Only this time, I walked in on an interesting sight. As soon as the door closed, I saw the giant chandelier swing through the air and strike the giant portrait creating a hole in it!

I'm also pretty sure I saw a person on the chandelier, however before I got a look at them, they disappeared. Normally, I would pursue, however I deemed it more necessary to remain here and wait for Lady.

Sure enough, shortly afterwards, she arrived. She approached and asked "So, find anything of interest?" I shrugged and said "Nothing aside from what Trish told me. Speaking of which, it seems a stranger has provided us with a new route to explore." I pointed towards the portrait which had a massive hole in it now, created by the chandelier.

Lady grinned and stated "Well then that's where we're going." I just said "Sounds good." With that we turned towards the portrait ourselves. I briefly used Devil Trigger to leap up onto the higher ledge directly in front of it, Lady used her grapple to reach it as well.

Heading through the hole, we found ourselves in a dark stone pathway that clearly wasn't as explored as the the rest of the place. It was lit by dim torches and that was about it. Nevertheless, we readied our weapons and headed forward.

We came to a giant hole in the ground. Staring down it, I said "Well seems we found our little laboratory." Both me and Lady leapt down into the pit. Lady broke her fall using Kalina Ann, preventing any injuries. Of course me being part demon, I didn't have to worry about such a thing. 

Sure enough, our surroundings now definitely seemed more technological than the initially antique looking castle. That meant we were getting closer. We headed down the only available path and found ourselves at a door.

Said door lead us to a long tunnel, it stretched out before curving to the left. Naturally we headed in that direction and that's when we encountered our first opposition down here. When literal BLADES shot up from the ground like shark fins.

Image of the Cutlass:

At first, I had to dive out of the way as one of the blades shot towards me, cutting through the ground in the process. Occasionally one of them would burst through the surface giving us a glance of its almost fish-like body.

After just evading for a few seconds. I eventually decided to fight back. I waited for one of the demons the head towards me before performing a violent slash attack, I cut into the demon causing it to flip out of the ground. I then performed two more finally taking it down. The second one was also dealt with in a similar fashion, a well placed gunshot took it down.

Lady actually found this opponent slightly easier through the use of her grapple. She just pulled them out of the ground and when they were exposed, she'd blast them with a rocket. This was probably one of the few instances where she took the lead in a battle as opposed it either being me or both of us sharing the glory. Either way, it didn't take us long to deal with all the demons in the corridor.

As soon as they were dealt with we wasted no time carrying on until we reached another door. And that door lead us to a strange room. I could only describe it as a puzzle of sorts, with a giant dice. Me and Lady just looked at one another.

The floor was covered with multi-coloured dots and on one end, statues appeared baring likeness to both of us! If my assumptions were correct, we would need to reach the end of the little board to proceed to the next chamber.

Striking the large dice our first result was a SIX! So far so good. The models both moved six spots and landed on a blue square, several red orbs rained down from the ceiling. Once they'd all been collected, the dice returned.

Our second result was a five, this time it landed on a red light causing demons to swarm the room. We dealt with them and once again the dice returned. From there it was just a matter of striking it over and over, dealing with the reward whether it was red orbs or demon enemies until at last, we arrived at the end.

With the puzzle complete the magical barrier surrounding the room lowered and we continued through the door. Next we arrived in another room which proved to be an interesting one to say the least.

It was a large circular room. Though it definitely had seen better days, it seemed that there had been a struggle in here recently. There was a window that had been shattered that lead to another room, me and Lady leapt up to check it out.

This room appeared to be a research centre of sorts. Definitely the lab Trish mentioned. We both began looking around as Lady asked "What could the Order have been doing here?" I initially replied "I'm not sure."

I then noticed in the centre of this room was a blue energy field forming a cylinder shape at one point it probably held something of importance. I don't know why, but I felt an odd feeling from the energy field, I approached it and added "But whatever it was, I have a feeling it wasn't good."

Little did we know, a security camera was mounted on the wall watching our every move. On the other end, a man sat in a chair shaking in rage "M-more guests. I-it seems I will need to l-let my toys out to p-play..."

Author's Note: And that's it for this chapter. I know a few of you really want Nero to be introduced, that will be the chapter after next at LEAST. I don't want to just shoehorn his introduction in early since he will have a relatively important role in the rest of the book particularly the DMC5 segment. I really hope you liked this chapter and as always, thank you for reading.