Chapter 22
Dante’s Immortality – Chapter 22
When Dante saw Greggory, he hesitated, unsure of what to do. He even contemplated immediately surrendering, but threw the idea out as soon as Greggory opened his mouth.
“It’s you!?” Greggory’s voice was filled with disbelief. Then he laughed uproariously, just like he had when he didn’t receive a Classification. “Is this some kind of joke?”
That was actually a great question. Was this some kind of joke? Dante looked around at the surrounding crowd, trying to identify any familiar faces and get a better idea of why he might be in this situation.
The only person he recognized was Mia, he didn’t see anyone else that he knew.
“Kayla, watch me vanquish this devil spawn!” Greggory wasn’t even paying attention to him anymore, he was just shouting at some girl that was sitting in the Housing District 1 seating area.
His mind was reeling, he couldn’t understand why someone would want him to fight Greggory or their reasoning behind it.
He didn’t even consider Greggory being behind it in some way. Greggory’s pleasant surprise at seeing him in the arena was indication enough that he had no knowledge of the setup. Not only that, but by looking over Greggory’s uniform, he could tell that Greggory was from Housing District 3. There was no way he had enough influence within the academy to organize the fight.
The girl that Greggory was talking to was from Housing District 1 though… All he knew was that her name was Kayla, but she and Greggory clearly knew each other. Unless she was a friend from when the Tibbott’s were in the Outer region, he could assume she was in on this as well.
Regardless, she was someone he needed to have his guard up around.
The only people who he could think of that could possibly have known about his relationship with Greggory while also having influence in the academy were Alexander or Layla. But even that was somewhat unlikely, he had only told them that he had lived in Alazel for a few years.
But no matter if it was Alexander and Layla, or someone else altogether, he still didn’t know why. There was no reason for him to fight Greggory. It could be a test, but he couldn’t see what they could be testing.
There was also a possibility that someone was setting him up. They might assume he would immediately kill Greggory, bringing forth the wrath of his father, but that also seemed like a stretch. Besides, Mia had told him that he could kill anyone who wasn’t in Housing District 1 or 2 without any real repercussions.
The last possibility that he could think of was that someone was trying to do him a favor. Maybe they were handing him Greggory so that he could kill him, and therefore cause him to owe whoever set it up a favor.
Every reason he could think of seemed unlikely, and this entire situation was bothering him.
He was prepared to be manipulated by nobles in his attempt to gain power from them. Even expected it when he went to the academy with Alexander and Layla. It seemed like it was a fair trade, getting used to further someone else’s agenda in return for strength, but he hadn’t been expecting anything like this. It felt too… personal. Like he was being toyed with for no real purpose.
Greggory had none of his misgivings. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you caused me? I was flogged and sent to this damned academy because of you.” He started laughing again. “You can’t run away from me now!”
Greggory began walking toward Dante with an attempted swagger, his sword cutting through the air in an effort to intimidate him. But in reality, he just looked slow and clumsy.
“I’m going to make you suffer before you die.”
Dante just stared at him.
Is he stupid? Even if he could kill me, if he doesn’t do it immediately I can just surrender…
Greggory’s stupidity aside, he was running out of time. Greggory was coming toward him and he still had no idea what course of action he should take. There was too much information that he didn’t have. No matter which way he handled the fight it could cause problems for him.
Dante took a deep breath, then released it slowly. If he didn’t know what he was supposed to do, and wasn’t told what he should do, he would do what he wanted. What that meant, he still wasn’t sure.
Greggory, who was now only a few feet away, elicited another laugh. “Look at yourself, scared shitless and absolutely pathetic. I’ll teach you to respect your betters before I kill you.”
Greggory wasted no time, stepping to Dante while swinging his sword. The slash was aimed at his left side. It was a non-lethal attack. Clearly Greggory meant it when he said that he would make him suffer before he killed him.
So slow…
Since he had gotten his Status, he had never fought someone who moved so slowly. It was almost like something in the air was obstructing his movement. Greggory’s Dexterity and Agility must have been below even the average.
Reaching out with his left hand, Dante grabbed Greggory’s wrist. He stopped the swinging sword immediately.
So weak…
It didn’t feel like Greggory leveled his Classifications at all.
The two of them looked at each other for a moment, both stunned by how easily he had stopped the sword.
Dante hesitated. Killing Greggory would be so easy. Greggory’s sword was held immobile to the side, while his was free and ready to attack in his right hand. But he still wasn’t sure if he should do it.
He had never killed in cold blood, only when he had felt that his life was in danger. Even if Greggory was trying to kill him and tried to have him killed, he wasn’t really a threat now that he no longer lived in Alazel. Despite that, he really wanted to kill Greggory.
Perhaps I shouldn’t…
His line of thinking stopped when a stunned Greggory opened his mouth. “I surren-”
After being manipulated so much that day, Greggory was trying to take his only real decision away. Just the thought of it filled him with anger. He squeezed the wrist in his grip as hard as he could, not stopping until he heard an audible crack, cutting Greggory off with his own screams.
As the sound of a squealing pig being led to slaughter filled the stadium, Dante brought the sword in his right hand across Greggory’s neck, only catching a brief glimpse of the horror on his face before completely decapitating him.
Everything after that seemed to happen in slow motion.
Greggory’s head was the first thing to hit the ground, launching from the body and thumping against the ground as it rolled a few feet away from his body.
Dante stared at the stump where Greggory’s head used to be as it squirted blood in rhythm to his still beating heart, while the body itself still stayed standing, as if not realizing it had lost its head.
He watched as the entire scene unfolded before him in fascination, which surprised him. Usually, after he killed he felt sick, or even disgusted. Just the thought of taking someone’s life usually sent a shiver down his spine.
But something about killing Greggory felt so… good.
His brief moment of contemplation ended when gravity caught up with Greggory’s body. The rotund corpse went crashing to the ground, bringing him back to the present.
That was when he noticed that the arena was completely silent.
Dante looked away from the corpse, taking in his surroundings. When he saw the crowd, he found something that he was familiar with; fear.
It was different though, not the fear he was used to. Usually, when people were afraid of him, it was as if they were afraid to touch or look at him. But the fear he was getting from the crowd was a different kind. It was true fear. As if they were afraid of him even noticing them due to his cruelty.
It seemed that his performance, mixed with his appearance, had a large impact on the crowd. He could only imagine what that had just looked like. Decapitating a random opponent in the arena for no apparent reason while the opponent was screaming and trying to surrender.
He decided he didn’t dislike being looked at li
ke that, it was a marked improvement from the looks of disgust and hatred that he usually got, and not unpleasant overall.
There were only two exceptions in the crowd. The first was Kayla, the girl who was with Greggory. Her face was covered with a massive smile as she took in Greggory’s dead corpse. That seemed to answer one of his questions, she clearly wasn’t Greggory’s friend.
The second exception was Mia. When he glanced at her, she wouldn’t even look him in the eye.
Dante let out a sigh and turned to walk back through the fighting pit’s entrance.
When he got there the attendant from earlier, who was now thoroughly flustered from watching his performance, ran up to him. “M-My Lord, please wait. Y-You have not received your credits yet.”
He had completely forgotten about credits in the aftermath of the fight. In his mind, it wasn’t even an arena fight anyways, just someone else’s spectacle that he was forced to take part in.
After handing the attendant his identification card, the man ran off, eager to be away from him. A few minutes he came back with his identification card. “Here you are, two credits for a w-win in the bronze arena.” The man nervously cleared his throat. “A-Also, you c-can’t come back to the arena for three days during your p-probation for k-killing in the arena.”
Dante reached forward to grab the identification card, which caused the attendant to flinch away. The man was clearly afraid of him, but he couldn’t understand why. Maybe killing people in the arena was rarer than he had thought. That, or the man was worried that he wouldn’t take kindly to his earlier deception if he found out.
After taking his identification card back, and checking to make sure he got his credits, he began to walk out of the tunnel. He was slightly disappointed at not seeing how the credits were added to the card, but it made sense. Layla and Alexander said it was done through an enchantment, so if the enchantment became known, someone would try and exploit it.
When he got out of the tunnel, and back out to the streets of the academy, he found Mia waiting for him. He didn’t say anything to her, just began walking down the streets of the academy and back to Housing District 1. She quickly caught up to him, and the two of them walked in silence.
Their silence was awkward, and he didn’t understand why he was upset with her. He knew that they had no real relationship together, she was only doing her job. If anything, he was the one being unreasonable.
Still… in the last few days, he couldn’t help but feel like they had at least started to form some sort of a friendship… but he was probably misreading the situation, he had no experience in that regard.
“Why?” His curiosity got the better of him.
Mia looked at him, opening her mouth as if she would give a quick reply, then closed her mouth and looked away. “I’m not sure.” The words came out as a barely audible mutter.
Dante let out a breath that he didn’t know he was holding. For some reason, her not knowing made the situation seem better, if only slightly.
Chapter 23
Dante’s Immortality – Chapter 23
Layla Calman
Layla’s eyebrows lifted as she watched Dante savagely cut off the boy’s head. Then without any change in demeanor, turn and walk out of the stadium as if nothing happened.
That’s certainly one way to handle it.
“I must say, I’m pleasantly surprised. I didn’t think Dante had… that in him.” She ceased feeding world essence into the memory stone.
Sir Andres stood across from her, stoically making his report. “Yes. Surprising, to say the least. Based on that performance, and the report that we received on him, I think he may be… unstable. I suggest we collar him before he has a chance to become a threat.”
She could feel her eyebrows narrowing at his suggestion. “Why would we do that? He is perfect.”
“Perfect?”
“I have been looking for a retainer to groom. All of my current retainers dislike getting their hands dirty…” She shot a glare at Sir Andres. “And mother won’t let me keep any of hers. Dante has the demeanor; now I just need his loyalty.” Layla drummed her fingers on the desk in front of her. “Speaking of which, did everything go smoothly in setting up the fight?”
“Yes. According to Mia’s report, he didn’t suspect anything.”
Layla smiled. “Good, we will slow things down for now. Too much, and Dante may get suspicious. Besides, I don’t have the time for this at the moment. You may leave.”
“Yes, my lady.” The Sir Andres gave a bow and turned to leave her office.
* * *
“How?” Will turned to Archie. “This isn’t fair; I’ve been working on my world essence manipulation just as much as he has.”
Archie just scratched his chin with a smile as he looked at the manipulation orb in Dante’s hand. “Not bad, not bad. It’s even denser than most when they first condense it.” Without taking his eyes off of it, he addressed Will. “I would suggest you start acting a little nicer to the boy, unless you want two people kicking your ass during your swordsmanship training.”
Dante couldn’t help but smile at Archie’s praise. In the three days that he had been banned from the arena, he had solely focused on training with his manipulation orb.
Apparently, Mia had been holding out on him before. Her peace offering after the situation with Greggory had been to help him with his training as much as possible.
There were a few small bits of information that she gave him, like meditation exercises to help your focus and control slightly. But the day after he killed Greggory, she gave him a vital tip; spreading out his awareness to harness more world essence.
Before he would just manipulate the world essence in the air around him that touched his skin directly. Mia’s tip was to actually spread his awareness out so that he could ‘feel’ more world essence, and harness it even if it wasn’t touching him directly.
It was done by channeling your mana through your mind, then spreading it immediately through your body, and then outward. As long as you can maintain a connection to the mana once you send it out of your body, you can harness any world essence in its range.
Even though it sounded simple, in practice it was extremely challenging. After two days of what felt like his mind being torn apart, he was finally able to increase his awareness to about half an inch away from his body.
Despite that, the new training, combined with Mia’s other techniques, not only almost doubled the amount of world essence he could harness, but it also significantly improved his control.
The best part was that the mana cost was negligible. It was only a tiny fraction of the mana regenerated from his Wisdom attribute. Although, Mia had said that as his efficiency in the technique increased, and therefore the amount of mana he utilized increased as well, the mana drain would also rise along with it.
It was only a short time after utilizing his new awareness that he was able to condense the world essence inside the manipulation orb. The process wasn’t challenging, after he fed enough world essence into the manipulation orb, all he needed to do was force it to the center while trying not to let any slip out of his control.
There was something strange about the world essence though, the feel of it seemed to change as he added more to the orb. When he manipulated a small amount, it was easy to shape it exactly how he wanted. But the more world essence he added, the more slippery the world essence became.
It was almost like the world essence was alive, and the more he added, and therefore the more sentient he made it, the harder it was to bend to his will.
He cut off his connection to the essence in the manipulation orb, breaking Archie out of his trance.
Archie turned to Will. “Alright, get out of here. We have real Swordsmanship training to do.” Will opened his mouth as if to say something, but then just let out a sigh of defeat and sullenly turned to leave.
Archie watched the defeated Will walk off with a smile on his face. “Yard boy! Bring me a few wo
oden swords.”
No healer, thank the Goddess.
As soon as the yard boy brought over the swords, Archie tossed one to him. “Alright, let’s see what you’ve got. Go ahead and fill it with world essence.”
Dante just stared at him, unmoving. Whether he brought a healer or not, he didn’t trust Archie at all. Archie was unbothered though, he just stared right back at him with a smile on his face.
At some point, it became a contest. Neither of them were willing to give an inch to the other, and the two of them remained like that for several minutes, until he eventually gave in. “No.”
Archie’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “Don’t tell me, you’re afraid?”
I’m not afraid, I just don’t trust you…
He didn’t answer him immediately. Instead, he thought about how he could ensure that he wouldn’t end up with shards of wood lodged inside of him when training with Archie.
He couldn’t think of a single way, other than asking someone else, which didn’t seem like an option. Letting out a sigh of defeat, he raised the sword and prepared to fill it with world essence when he was interrupted.
“Oh, by the way, it might be worth mentioning that you must first isolate the essence within the core of the blade, then let it seep out, or it’ll explode again.”
Dante just stared at him, eye twitching.
How was that an afterthought?
Taking another deep breath, he began to condense the world essence into the sword.
It was different than the manipulation orb, but not substantially. There was far less resistance in the world essence as he pressed it through the hilt. But as he added more to the center of the sword, not allowing it to seep out, it became harder and harder to control.
Archie observed his progress attentively. “Good, good. Now, when you are about to lose control, allow the essence to seep out at the same rate you condense it.”
Dante's Immortality: Beginnings Page 21