The blood-red blade in Dante's hand purred—not with sound, but with intent. His silent fury bled into the weapon like ink into water. Infernum Fulgur, sentient and hungry, fed off its wielder's thoughts. It could taste his wrath, his conviction. And it agreed.
The blade hummed with resonance, vibrating subtly with anticipation. The will inside it—ancient, elemental—thrilled at what was to come.
Dante's form tensed, a breath of wind shifting around him—then he vanished.
A blink later, he reappeared in front of an Inquisitor clad in ancient demonic armor. A streak of red light split the space between them—and the Inquisitor was cleaved clean in half, from helm to groin. No ceremony. No sound beyond the faint hiss of sizzling blood as it hit the ground.
The squad behind him—dozens of Old-Satan loyalists—snapped to attention, springing into attack.
But they had made one fatal mistake.
They underestimated him.
One knight lunged too soon. Dante didn't move—he just turned his wrist and swung. Infernum Fulgur met the knight's blade, sliced through it like mist, then carved through armor, through bone. The knight's head hit the ground a moment before his body followed. Dante never looked back.
He surged forward, a crimson blur of force and fury. Two more fell—he didn't slow. The blade passed through hardened steel and enchanted plating as if they were paper. Its glass casing glowed with manic delight, as if the weapon itself rejoiced in the slaughter.
Dante's expression never changed. His eyes stayed cold. Focused. Empty of mercy. The heat of his rage burned silently under the surface.
A grieving husband clutching his wife's headless corpse.
Dante appeared beside another Inquisitor—one who hadn't even drawn his weapon yet. Dante grabbed the top of the devil's helmet and yanked him downward until the devil's spine bent like a bow. With a calm, surgical motion, he raised his sword high—and dropped it like an executioner.
The body collapsed. The severed head rolled to his feet. Dante held it in his hand for a moment, regarding it like a broken tool, before casting it aside without a second thought.
A mother clutching what was left of her child—charred bones and ash.
Dante spun the blade once in a deliberate motion, then lunged forward like a missile. The point of the sword speared through another Inquisitor's chest. An instant later, Arc energy detonated from within, burning cloth, charring flesh. The devil screamed as fire consumed him. Dante let the blade go, leaving it buried in the body, and turned away.
One of them fled.
Coward.
They always ran when the tide turned. They never faced justice. Only dished it out when they were sure they couldn't be touched.
Dante extended his arm. "GET OVER HERE."
The fleeing devil stopped mid-stride—then hurtled backward as if yanked by a chain. He flew through the air in a helpless arc, straight into Dante's waiting fist.
The uppercut connected with a sickening crack. The head snapped back, tore from the shoulders, and spun off into the shadows in a trail of gore.
Silence followed.
Dante exhaled, a slow breath that hissed through his teeth. He hadn't even realized he'd been holding it. Around him, nothing moved. The once-proud inquisitors lay broken and still, scattered like trash.
Only one remained.
A high-class devil noblewoman stood trembling, her body pressed against a pillar, eyes wide with horror. Blood splattered across her once-regal robes. Her hands shook violently at her sides. She didn't speak.
Not yet.
But when Dante turned his gaze to her, she broke. Words spilled from her mouth, garbled, panicked—a clumsy accusation of demonic allegiance, of treason, of blasphemy.
She didn't finish her thought.
Dante moved.
In the blink of an eye, his hand was wrapped around her throat. Not tight enough to crush, but enough to remind her how fragile she truly was.
Her body locked up, eyes bulging.
He looked into her face. Into her fear. Into the way her pride died behind her irises.
"Why do you fear me?" he asked quietly.
It wasn't a question. She couldn't answer anyway.
"Is it the brutality? Or is it the fact I'm stronger?" His voice was calm. Measured. Terrifying.
He leaned in.
Infernum Fulgur, still dripping with the blood of her comrades, shimmered on the floor behind him. Red arcs licked up Dante's arm, reaching toward her. One of them danced across her cheek. She spasmed violently as it touched her skin.
"Don't pretend you're different. Don't lie to yourself," Dante said, eyes narrowing.
"You commit the same atrocities—only you hide behind hierarchy, behind old bloodlines and tired laws. The only thing separating us is that I have limits. Lines I won't cross. You? You destroy the innocent and call it justice."
He let the words hang for a beat. Then:
"Remember this: The undoing of the vile always comes at the hands of the victim. And I'll collect every debt with my blade."
He released her.
She collapsed in a heap, legs refusing to hold her. Tears mixed with blood on her face. Her mouth opened once, twice, but no sound came out.
"Tell your masters," Dante said, stepping away. His voice, now loud, cut through the dead air like thunder.
"GO!"
Dante watched her flee, the noblewoman's terrified sobs echoing faintly down the corridor as her figure vanished into smoke and ruin.
His blade lowered, and the silence that followed felt unnaturally loud.
Adrenaline faded. His body relaxed—but not completely. His mind didn't, either.
A dull ache pressed behind his eyes. Not from pain. From conflict.
He stood there, surrounded by corpses, soaking in the aftermath of his own rage. What disturbed him wasn't the carnage. It was the ease of it. The efficiency. The coldness that had crept into his actions like rot under the skin.
He had threatened a terrified woman—one who, not moments before, had grieved someone she'd lost. He wasn't the kind of man to promise death to the broken.
And yet… he had.
He wasn't the kind of man to kill without hesitation.
And yet…
He looked down at his bloodstained hand, fingers still flexed from their last act of violence. A thrum of energy pulsed through him then—radiating from the weapon in his grip. A heartbeat in his palm. Hot. Ancient.
The whisper came.
They deserved it.
It wasn't a voice exactly. More like a pressure behind the words—thoughts pushed into his mind from another. Twisted, yes. But… comforting.
They don't deserve your kindness.
It is not theirs to have, nor is it theirs to feel.
Be at ease, master...
Infernum Fulgur.
The soul bound within the blade—old, demonic, and unshakably loyal—was speaking to him.
And it wasn't wrong.
Dante had seen what these monsters had done. The innocent lives reduced to ruin. Families shattered. Entire bloodlines burned out by extremists who called themselves "purifiers." The Old-Satan faction weren't rebels or revolutionaries. They were terrorists. And what they gave the world… they deserved back a thousandfold.
Forgiveness was not part of the ledger.
A faint, bitter laugh escaped him. He remembered something he'd once told himself, back in a moment of fury long buried:
"Some monsters don't deserve to die clean."
He'd meant it then. He meant it now.
But before he could sink any deeper into his thoughts, a presence behind him flared to life—burning, weak, but full of defiant spite.
He turned on instinct and leapt back a full foot, blade up and ready, eyes locking onto the shattered form staggering toward him.
An Inquisitor. Or what remained of one.
The devil's left arm was gone. Blood leaked freely down the center of his ruined chest. His helmet had been stripped away—revealing a middle-aged man with sunken, pain-filled eyes and a face cut clean of hair. His breath wheezed in gurgling gasps.
Dante said nothing. He watched.
The devil's lips parted, trying to force out last words…
THUNK.
A sharp, clean impact. The man's head snapped back, a sleek, crimson arrow buried in his skull. He dropped without ceremony. One twitch, then stillness.
Dante blinked. Anti-climactic.
But effective.
He turned toward the source. And found not one, but two figures stepping out from the shadows.
Their silhouettes were distinct—familiar.
He knew them.
Abigail Valac. Nyx Oriax.
He'd seen both of them flash across the Jumbo-Tron screen before his own match. He remembered the breakdown of matchups, the hype reels. Abigail had been listed as his third opponent. Nyx as his second-to-last.
Now they were allies. For the moment, anyway.
Dante narrowed his eyes, assessing. He wasn't naïve. This attack wasn't random. Someone inside had opened the gates.
There was a mole.
And he wasn't about to rule them out.
Abigail approached first, her stride confident, elegant—and slightly theatrical. Her hips swayed with a kind of deliberate poise, eyes glinting with flirtation as they locked onto his. She wore her charm like armor.