"You're pretty cold and merciless, huh," Erona said quietly.
"Was," Dante replied. "Until certain things change when you grow up."
He helped her stand, but when he saw her knees tremble, he sighed and lifted her easily into his arms.
"H-hey! Put me down, you big dummy!"
"Quiet," Dante said, his tone firm but calm. "You're hurt. Stay still."
He carried her through the quiet streets and stopped at Ronald's doorstep, gently setting her down.
"T…" thanks," Erona muttered, twirling a lock of her dark hair and looking away like a shy tsundere.
"Yeah. I'll be leaving tomorrow night. I'll come by again to say goodbye."
"Okay…" she said softly.
As Dante turned to leave, he paused, glancing back at her hair. "Did you dye your hair faint purple?"
Erona blinked, surprised. "You noticed?" She smiled, cheeks warming. "I just got it done this afternoon on my break. The diner owner said I should try a new style—something that stands out for the crowd."
Dante gave a small smile and stepped closer, brushing a strand between his fingers. "It suits you," he said quietly, "but I think your natural black suits you even better."
Her face flushed deeper, and for a moment, silence hung between them—thick, uncertain, and magnetic.
As Dante turned to go, Erona suddenly reached out, grabbed his sleeve, and pulled him back. Before he could react, she kissed him.
"Oi—"
"Don't say anything," she whispered, her voice trembling slightly. "Just… stay."
Dante hesitated, his thoughts racing. Then he sighed under his breath.
"Fuck it.
He wrapped his arms around her exposed waist and pin her to the wall lifting, holding her close and kissed.
Erona slided her arms up to Dante's neck, pulling his hair as they kissed, both they're eyes glow red as the night air was cold, but the warmth between them was undeniable.
When they finally broke apart, they were both breathing heavily, faces inches apart, and saliva stringed to one another.
"We're both sixteen, Erona," Dante said quietly, the faint glow of their red eyes reflecting in each other's gaze.
"By law in Vidalier…" she began, trying to sound confident.
"I know," he interrupted softly, brushing his thumb over her cheek. "You're an adult here. But still… don't rush things."
Erona nodded slightly, looking down. "Then promise you'll come back."
"I will," Dante said, turning away with a faint smile. "Count on it."
As Dante made his way back to the rented inn, Kilamahi's teasing voice echoed telepathically in his mind.
"Kid, you two-timer. First, you get Zhurong, the Dragon Princess from the Dragon Tribe—and now a belly dancer? Puhahaha! I can't wait to see the look on your face when regret hits you."
"Shut up," Dante muttered, rolling his eyes as he entered the inn.
He walked up to the counter and told the innkeeper, "I'll be staying one more night."
"Of course, sir," the innkeeper replied politely.
Heading to his room, Dante quietly opened the door and found Kaen already fast asleep, curled up like a cat on the bed.
A small smile tugged at his lips as he walked over and gently tucked the blanket around her.
After a long bath to wash off the day's fatigue, he finally lay down, closing his eyes as the faint sounds of the night filled the room.
Within minutes, Dante was fast asleep—his mind drifting between memories of battles, teasing voices, and a single faint image of a girl with red hair, Zhurong smiling at him.
The next day, Dante and Kaen decided to take a rare day off to unwind. They wandered through Vidalier's bustling streets, exploring markets, food stalls, and blacksmith shops—buying supplies and new gear for their upcoming journey.
Even though Kaen was technically Dante's slave, their bond felt far from it. She walked beside him with an easy smile, her tail flicking playfully behind her.
"Nya, Master," Kaen said, glancing up at him, "I never knew you weren't like those other kinds of slave masters. I mean, I never really had one before… not since I got betrayed by the Hero's party, nya."
Dante paused briefly, his gaze softening. "The past doesn't matter anymore, Kaen. What's done is done. All you can do now is keep moving forward."
"Nya…" Yes, Master." She nodded, her catlike ears twitching slightly as she smiled.
By evening, the two returned to the Adventurers' Guild, their bags a little heavier with new equipment.
It was time to collect their reward for the ten A-rank quests they had completed in a single day—an achievement that still had the guild buzzing in disbelief.
Night had already blanketed Vidalier when Dante and Kaen packed their things and left the inn, pay in hand.
They were nearly at the city's gate when Dante suddenly stopped.
"Ah, damn it," he muttered, rubbing his temple. "I forgot to tell Ronald."
"Nya? That blacksmith, Master?"
"Yeah."
They turned back, walking casually toward the outskirts—until a pillar of smoke rose in the direction of Ronald's home.
"Master… that's—"
"I know. Hurry."
They dashed through the streets, the orange glow of fire growing brighter with each step. When they arrived, a crowd had already gathered. Dante pushed through—then froze.
Ronald was on the ground, being beaten bloody by none other than the Hero's party. Erona was restrained by the party's tank—a massive Berserker with veins bulging like cords of iron.
"YOU FILTHY BLACKSMITH!" the Hero roared, his sword gleaming in the firelight.
"YOU FORGED MY BLADE, BUT DIDN'T BLESS IT! BECAUSE OF YOU, I WAS HUMILIATED! I HAD TO TAKE PEASANT QUESTS—WITH A PEASANT SWORD!"
He stabbed Ronald again and again, blood splattering across his armor.
Ronald coughed up crimson but smiled weakly. "A blade… is only as strong… as the one who wields it…"
"Insect!" The Hero spat, enraged. "Still defiant at death's door?!"
Then he turned to Erona, eyes filled with malice. "You raised quite the fine daughter, old man. Sixteen years old—an adult by Vidalier's law. Be grateful—after I end you, I'll make sure your bloodline continues… through her."
He leaned down, whispering in Ronald's ear, his grin venomous.
"I am the son of Vidalier's ruler."
Then came the sound of a kick—the Hero's boot slamming into Ronald's ribs, sending him coughing blood onto the ground.
"Please… anyone…" Ronald rasped, crawling forward as he watched the Hero approach Erona. But the townsfolk averted their eyes. No one dared interfere with royalty.
"Time to dine," the Hero sneered, reaching for her trembling form. "Ah, those eyes… glowing red. Beautiful. I'll carve them out and sell them after I'm done."
Erona's fear burst from her throat unknowingly and unconsciously yell,
"MALADEVAAAA!!!"
Then—SWING!
Blood sprayed across the Hero's face. He blinked, disoriented—then looked up.
The Berserker's head was gone. His body collapsed in a lifeless heap.
"What the—"
He barely had time to speak before a voice, cold and dark, whispered behind him.
"Looking for me?"
Dante stood there, eyes glowing molten red, veins pulsing, blood tears dripping from his face.
"You… you're—"
Before he could finish, Dante's fist struck like a meteor—slamming into his gut with such force that bones cracked and organs burst.
The Hero flew through three stone walls before crashing into the dirt, choking on his own blood.
The rest of the Hero's party froze in horror.
From the darkness behind Dante, shadows writhed and solidified—forming Lustia, the former Sinner of Lust, and her spectral soldiers.
"My liege?" she knelt, awaiting his word.
Dante's voice was low, shaking with fury. "Take Erona, Kaen, and Ronald out of Vidalier—NOW."
Lustia hesitated only a moment. She could feel his wrath like heat from a forge, his fists bleeding, his tattoos beginning to pulse.
"As you command, my liege."
With a wave of her hand, she vanished into shadow with the three of them.
Dante stood alone amid the flickering flames, his cloak falling away. His shirt split apart as tribal markings burned and crawled across his skin—sigils of the War Goddess Mode awakening.
"Kid," Kilamahi's voice echoed in his mind, tense. "You're in no condition to use my full power."
"Doesn't matter," Dante muttered. "The tattoos are enough."
He cracked his knuckles, his face void of emotion. When he looked up at the remaining members of the Hero's party, his words were like death itself:
"It's slaughter party time."
The priestess began to chant, holy light coiling around her hands as she bolstered her allies' defenses and called for healing. She sneered at Dante, confident. "Ha—let's see you withstand—"
Her words stopped mid-sentence. Dante dissolved into shadow, a blur no eye could track.
He was at her side before the holy glow could form—then a jagged hole opened in her chest.
She gasped, crimson spilling from her mouth as the glow died. The others gaped; she shouldn't have fallen so easily.
"You supported your team," Dante murmured into her ear, voice cold as iron. "But you didn't support yourself."
He slid his fingers into the rent in her armor, hooked bone and jaw, and ripped. The sound was wet and final.
Blood fountained like a ruptured hose as her head went limp; her body slumped and hit the cobbles with a sickening thud. Silence fell, broken only by the priestess's blood pooling into the gutter.
"Impossible… she was a high-ranking priestess!" one of the remaining members croaked. Panic trembled in his voice.
From the shadows, an assassin moved—silent, precise—her blade a whisper in the dark.
She leapt, aiming for Dante's back, the dagger finding flesh and punching straight through his heart… or so she believed. She drew back, a triumphant grin forming as she prepared the killing stroke.
Dante didn't even blink. The wound sealed in a millisecond; the blood closed and the cut vanished.
He smiled, amused. "Learn to study your opponent before you stab them," he said. He caught her wrist, spun, and drove his elbow into her gut.
Ribs cracked. A knee crashed into her face; she flew, flipped, and landed in a heap, dazed.
"I'll let you live," Dante said as he hauled her up by the throat, dragging her toward a ruined wall. He dangled her upside-down, blood trickling from her nose as she gurgled. "You're new. You replaced my Sha'karr—Kaen. You acted without thought."
Her breath rasped. "They… said she—"
"Rumor is a blade," Dante replied coldly. "And an assassin who trusts rumor is dead." He threw her like a rag doll. She smashed against stone; the masonry trembled.
Across from them, the necromancer barked a defiant laugh. "You insignificant commoner! This is treason!"
He summoned bones from the earth—five B-rank skeletons clacked together and rushed forward, brittle teeth chattering. "Face your end! These bones held against the Orc King!"
Dante tilted his head, amused. He lifted a hand and snapped. "Rise Up..." The shadows answered—a roar of darkness swallowing the alley.
From the void, twenty shadow soldiers erupted; their forms coalesced into S- to SS-class silhouettes, cold and precise, armaments black as night.
Two figures strode forward behind Dante side by side—towering, undeniable: Lustia, the former Sinner of Lust, and Taouon, the former Sinner of Sloth, their presence a crushing certainty.
"You called me insignificant," Dante said softly, watching the necromancer's bravado fracture. "Claudia." He spoke the name like a command.
From the black rose a massive orc woman—Claudia—stepped into the light. She was a living storm: broad-shouldered, scarred, and bearing an axe the size of a man.
The necromancer's face blanched. "That's… the Orc King's wife!" he whispered, horror-struck.
Dante's voice dropped to a whisper in the necromancer's ear. "I resurrected her after her cowardly husband of a king used her as a shield and left her for dead. She serves me now because I gave her vengeance." He straightened, calm and terrible. "You think rules bind me? Rules are for those who obey them."
Claudia stepped forward, eyes like chips of coal. Dante handed her a grotesquely familiar weapon—the axe he'd once forged for her. She swung.
The necromancer's protests turned to a choked scream as metal met bone and flesh. "No...no....NOO!!!!"
"Grind him to pieces," Dante ordered quietly. "Feed what's left to the dogs and cats in Vidalier."
Claudia obeyed with the efficiency of a winter storm. The axe fell. Flesh and bone gave way under its weight; the necromancer's voice cut off mid-plea.
*AAAHHH!!!"
ACK!!!
GUH!!!!
GHSH!!!
KRSHH!!!
Limbs separated, organs spilled, the alley filled with the sick metallic stench of blood and iron.
Claudia cleaved down through the corrupted spellcaster, each strike precise, each movement an execution. The skull cracked; the body collapsed into a malformed heap.
Dante watched without flinching. Then he turned to the remaining member, the assassin who had been tossed earlier, now struggling to pull herself free beneath rubble. Shadow soldiers closed in, dragging away broken limbs of the already-fallen.
Somewhere beyond the smoke, Lustia burned the other two corpses to ash and scattered their remains to the gutters.
The slaughter was surgical, not chaotic. It was as if Dante had carved a line through the world and left the air clean where he'd walked.
His breathing was steady; his hands were stained. Tribal tattoos writhed across his skin, pulsing like living script.
When the last of the Hero party lay silent, the alley was a tableaux of ruin and red. Dante stepped forward, soles splashing in gore.
He reached down, scooped some of the Hero party's blood in his palm, and let it run through his fingers as if testing the taste of victory.
"Let this be a lesson," he said low, to the stunned crowd, the survivors, and any who would listen. "You prey on the weak, you will die by my hand or by the weak."
A hush fell. Somewhere, a child began to cry. A rooster crowed. The city, for a moment, held its breath under the weight of what had been done.
Then, from the shadows where Lustia and Taouon gathered their wounded and the rescued, Dante's voice carried—a cold, quiet promise. "We leave now."
And with the smoke still curling into the night, the shadow soldiers faded, carrying with them the living and the dead as Dante walked away, the war tattoo's on his skin heating to a slow, terrible glow.
A burst of rubble exploded outward—
Dante stopped mid-step, eyes narrowing.
"Well, well… the pedophile lives, huh?"
"YOU'RE DEAD, MALADEVA!!!"
The Hero roared with blind fury. Half his blonde hair was scorched away, teeth shattered, and the remnants of his once-handsome face twisted into something grotesque—pure arrogance and madness.
"DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE!!!"
He swung his sword wildly, each blow driven by rage and desperation. Dante moved through them with calm precision—ducking, sidestepping, letting the blade slice through nothing but air.
Then, in one fluid motion, he caught the Hero by the throat and lifted him up, his fingers tightening like an iron vice.
"I'm glad you're still alive," Dante said coldly, raising his other hand into a fist. "Because now… I get to show you what losing really feels like."
He struck—once, twice, again and again. Each punch landed with the weight of his memories.
"This is for Ronald." Crack!
"This is for Erona." Thud!
"This is for the people whose lives you destroyed." Crack!
"This is for being a damn pedophile." Thud!
"This is for Ronald's home—his forge—his pride."
He seized the Hero by the collar, lifted him higher and slammed him into the ground. The impact shook the street.
"And this…" Dante's voice trembled with fury. "This is for Kaen, you worthless, traitorous scum!!!"
He raised his fist one final time, magic bursting around it in a fiery glow, and brought it down.
The earth split beneath the blow—cracks spiderwebbing outward as the Hero's screams vanished into dust and silence.
Dante pulled him up, hanging him by the throat off the ground, and was about to choke him slowly to death. The hero ground a smug smile and chuckled.
Dante raised a brow. "Dying for one last laugh?" he asked. The hero responded arrogantly,
"No, cough, cough, just that I am the chosen hero by the goddess, and my father, the king of Vidalier, is a demi-god."
From behind them Dante noticed a fire meteor like blaze streaking toward the street. The heat threw their shadows long, and a roar cut through the air.
"GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY SON!" a voice bellowed.
A boy no older than fifteen emerged from the blaze, polearm clutched in both hands. He slammed the polearm into the ground and shifted into battle stance. The attack sent embers spitting into the sky.
The town around them had already become a wasteland, buildings half collapsed, rubble scattered, and smoke curling into the night. Dante scanned the ruined street, then looked at the boy through the haze. "You are..." he began.
"I am the King of Vidalier," the youth proclaimed, voice high and ringing, "I am the demi-god in secret. I am Zhe Ha."
Silence fell for an instant. Dante did not buy the claim at first. "Yeah right, you are no older than me," he muttered, then slapped his forehead as realization hit.
"Oh yeah, right. This kingdom counts sixteen as adult, I forgot."
Zhe Ha raised his polearm, eyes hard. "I know who you are. I know your true name."
Dante raised a brow. "Oh? Do you?"
"I have no ill intentions," Zhe Ha said, voice shaking between menace and pleading. "Just let go of my son and we will forget this ever happened."
Dante laughed, disbelief and contempt in the same breath. "So all the crimes your spoiled son committed? You think I will let him go?"
He tightened his grip on the hero, lifting him higher until the man gagged. "Ack! Father, do something! Kill him! Kill him!" the hero choked.
Dante slammed the hero hard onto the rubble three times, each impact making debris scatter, and said, "Shh, the negotiation is in progress."
He turned back to Zhe Ha and spat, "I do not care about your son or your titles. Because of what he did tonight to my friend and her father, I am going to kill him."
"DO NOT YOU DARE!" Zhe Ha screamed, and unleashed a roar of fire that lanced forward in a blazing torrent.
KRRSSHH! The air cracked with heat. Dante used the hero as a gravity anchor, wrenching the boy so his neck snapped with a sickening crunch.
In the same motion his fingers plunged deep, cutting the neckbone and tearing. The grisly scene that followed was sudden and absolute.
The hero's skull came away with spinal cord attached, blood arcing in a spray that splattered both Dante and Zhe Ha. For a heartbeat the youth staggered as if in a nightmare.
"GOKUUUU!" the boy screamed and lunged. His polearm stabbed through Dante's chest, driving him backward with brutal force.
Buildings blurred as Dante was hurled through the street, slammed into a scout tower, and thrown clear.
"YOU ARE DEAD!" Zhe Ha roared and charged.
Boom. Dante burst out of the rubble, coughing and glaring. He roared in reply, "TAKE UP YOUR SPEAR AND DIE WITH YOUR SON!!!!!!"
""RRRAAAGGGHHH!!!!!""
The two launched at each other. They fought from one ruined building to the next, trading brutal strikes, blows that shattered stone and sent splinters flying.
Zhe Ha moved with the fierce, reckless speed of youth enraged, polearm whirling in sweeping arcs that could fell a man.
Dante countered with practiced brutality, closing distance to land crushing blows, absorbing strikes that would have killed lesser fighters.
Each time Zhe Ha struck, Dante felt the heat of his fire and the sting of impact. Each time Dante hit back, the boy staggered but came on like a storm.
Dust and sparks filled the air. Dante's tattoos flared under the strain, black markings crackling into view across his skin.
Blood ran down both their faces, and the wrecked city around them echoed with collapsing timbers and the cries of those who fled.
They were close in age, Dante sixteen, Zhe Ha fifteen, but neither held back. The duel became a brutal ballet of rage and grief, each strike a punctuation in their collision.
The hero's death had been a spark, but now the entire square burned with consequence as the two young combatants hammered at one another, neither willing to yield.
---
Chapter 42 — End.