The air in the arena seemed to freeze the exact instant Dante closed his eyes. To the spectators in the stands, it was the final gesture of a condemned man, the passive acceptance of the executioner. To Smith, it was the climax of a tragic comedy he had been rehearsing with delight. But for Dante, the outside world—the distant screams, the ozone scent of the fluorescent lights—had become mere static, a radio frequency tuned to the void.
Zack, still wearing his serene smile, stepped forward. Gravel crunched beneath his boot. That sound, which minutes earlier would have made Dante jump in fright like a wounded animal, was now processed by his brain as an exact geographic coordinate. He didn't just hear the snap; he felt the vibration in the ground and the shift of Zack's weight.
"Giving up is a form of art, Dante," Zack said, his voice smooth as silk. "It is the acknowledgment of natural superiority. Do not be ashamed of your fear. It is the only honest thing about you."
Zack advanced. It wasn't an all-out attack, just a precise thrust aimed at the side of the neck. Dante didn't open his eyes immediately. He tilted his head to the side in a millimeter-perfect movement. Zack's ceramic blade grazed his ear, cutting only a single strand of hair that floated slowly to the ground.
The Frequency of Fear
In the stands, the silence was so absolute that the hum of the lamps sounded like a scream. Harry leaned so far forward his chest touched the concrete railing.
"His heartbeat... it stabilized," Harry whispered, his voice trembling with disbelief. "In the middle of a death match, he's entered a state of controlled bradycardia. He should be in shock, not a trance."
"It's not that he stopped feeling fear," John's voice echoed, deep and gruff, coming from the dark tunnel entrance. The soldier leaned against the wall, his uniform still stained from the previous combat. "He just stopped fighting the panic. When a man accepts his own death as a calculation variable, he becomes something logic cannot reach. Fear is like steam in a boiler: if you let it leak, it weakens you; if you compress it, it explodes with the force of a piston. Dante stopped leaking. He is the piston now."
Dante opened his eyes. The moisture and terror that used to define them had evaporated. What remained were two fixed spheres, cold and predatory. He no longer saw Zack as a monster; he saw him as a collection of joints and pressure points.
The Legacy of the Fox
Dante remembered the cold nights in the cave when Foxy forced him to train to exhaustion.
"Agility isn't about running fast, Dante," Foxy's voice resonated in his memory. "It's about being unreachable. If they can't touch you, they can't kill you. Be like a fox: don't fight the wolf's strength, play with it. His fear is your seasoning."
Zack attempted a sequence of rapid slashes. Dante did not retreat. He moved around Zack. It was an erratic, fluid, and low movement that recalled Foxy's sinuous style, but with a speed Foxy himself would have struggled to match.
"What's the matter, Zack?" Dante spoke for the first time. His voice did not shake. It was laced with a cutting irony, a dark echo of Foxy's personality. "Your smile is starting to look a bit forced. Are you tired of cutting the air?"
Zack frowned, his smile faltering. He attacked with fury, the ceramic blades becoming a white blur. Dante exploded into motion. His agility was now overtly superhuman. He wasn't just dodging; he seemed to occupy two spaces at once.
Foxy, watching from above, flashed a wide, dangerous grin. "Look at him..." he murmured with sadistic pride. "He's stopped being the prey. He's starting to savor the hunt."
Zack tried a powerful side kick to drive Dante away. Dante didn't jump back; he slid under Zack's leg and, with a rotating motion, delivered a quick slash to Zack's Achilles tendon. It was a subtle but strategic touch.
The brown-haired youth regained his balance, but his serenity gave way to palpable irritation. Blood began to stain Zack's sock. "Little rat..." Zack growled.
"Rats run to holes," Dante replied, spinning the dagger with hypnotic dexterity. "I'm just choosing where to start peeling you."
Zack lunged again, but Dante didn't wait. He used his agility to create visual feints, moving his shoulders one way and his torso another. When Zack tried a desperate strike, Dante grabbed his opponent's wrist and, in one fluid motion, drove the tip of the dagger into Zack's forearm, tearing the skin down to the elbow. Zack let out a guttural scream, recoiling as blood sprayed.
"Look at his eyes," Alex said, her voice tense. "He's more restrained than Foxy, which makes him ten times more dangerous. He's calculating the greatest pain with the least effort."
Smith, from high above, clapped and laughed. "Oh, what a divine twist! The little bunny grew wolf's teeth! See how he moves! It's as if Death itself is dancing on its tiptoes!"
Zack was wheezing, his face now pale with shock. The smile was completely gone. He attempted one last suicidal attack, throwing his entire body at Dante with both blades extended.
Dante didn't move until the very last millisecond. He executed a backflip, using Zack's chest as a springboard. While spinning in the air, he delivered two rapid kicks to Zack's face, breaking his nose and disorienting his vision.
Dante landed lightly on the sand and stood with his back to Zack for a second. He took a deep breath. The air in the arena now tasted of the sweet scent of victory.
Zack, staggering and with vision blurred by blood, tried to turn around. "I will... I will reduce you to nothing..." Zack stammered.
Dante turned slowly. His face was a sculpture of ice. The dread had been transmuted into a coldness that made even the veteran spectators shiver.
"You talk too much, Zack," Dante said, his voice low. "And your stage time is up."
He advanced. It was no longer the frenetic agitation of the beginning. It was the movement of a beast that knows the prey is already beaten. Dante delivered a sequence of strikes that Zack didn't even see. Each cut was destined for a nerve, a tendon, a joint. Dante was dismantling the mechanics of Zack's body with surgical precision.
In the stands, the group watched in a trance. Dante was no longer the boy who apologized for existing. He had united Foxy's technique with John's discipline, tempering it all with his own unnatural speed.
"He has become unstoppable," John repeated. "Fear died. And what's left in its place... is what will get him out of here."
Dante stopped before Zack, who was now down on his knees, his ceramic blades discarded in the sand. Zack's body trembled violently due to the collapse of his central nervous system.
Dante slowly raised the dagger. The tip, soiled with Zack's blood, was pressed under his opponent's chin, forcing him to look directly at him. Zack saw the reflection of his own death in the boy's amber eyes. And for the first time that night, a smile appeared on Dante's face—a restrained, lethal, and absolutely terrifying smile.
Zack was at his mercy. Dante felt the pulse of life beneath the tip of his blade. He could end it right there; he could extinguish 그 light with a single flick of his wrist.
However, instead of delivering the death blow, Dante only pressed the blade hard enough to leave an indelible mark.
"You're not worth the effort of an execution, Zack," Dante whispered, his voice sounding like an echo of Foxy. "You will live with the memory that you were destroyed by someone you considered a 'rat'."
Dante walked away, leaving Zack broken and humiliated in the sand. The match ended with Dante walking toward his group, his body still vibrating with superhuman agility, while Smith watched, fascinated, at the birth of a new and silent beast.