Chapter 205: Another storm

[Aethel]

[The Grand Colosseum]

The Colosseum trembled under the weight of sheer chaos.

Millions of spectators sat frozen, their voices a collection of shock, awe, horror, and exhilaration. The titanic screens hovering above the arena flickered and crackled, broadcasting the impossible destruction unfolding on the desolate battlefield.

The earth had shattered.

The sky had burned.

The planet itself bore the scars of what could only be equated as the Gods' wrath.

And at the center of it all—Mikoto, unshaken, invincible.

A monster among insects.

"BY THE GODS, ARE WE EVEN WATCHING A FIGHT ANYMORE?! OR IS THIS A MASSACRE?!"

The announcer's voice cracked as he gripped the broadcasting device, his breath ragged, his entire body trembling with a mixture of pure terror and euphoria. His long, extravagant robed billowed behind him, his manic eyes locked onto the destruction unfolding on the largest of the screens.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I DO NOT KNOW WHAT TO SAY! NO! NO, SCRATCH THAT! I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT TO SAY! THIS—THIS RIGHT HERE—IS NOTHING SHORT OF AN APOCALYPTIC NIGHTMARE!"

His voice boomed across the stadium, amplified to reach even those seated in the highest sections of the stands.

"LOOK AT THE SHEER DESTRUCTION! LOOK AT THE WAY HE MOVES! LOOK AT THE WAY HE MOCKS THEM! THIS ISN'T JUST A BOY—THIS IS A MONSTER IN HUMAN FORM!"

His hands shook as he pointed at the feed, at the wasteland Mikoto had left in his wake.

The crowd erupted in a thousand different emotions—

Gasps. Screams. Cheers. Jeers.

Betting slips were ripped apart in frustration. Some onlookers prayed to their Gods, others collapsed into their seats, unable to comprehend the sheer lethality they had just witnessed.

But then—

Then something changed.

One of the floating screens flickered—shifting, switching feeds, drawing attention away from the desolate battlefield.

A different battlefield.

A different aura of power.

The imagery panned in, revealing a vaster ruined scape, bathed in a cold, sterile white light. The air itself shimmered.

And there—standing alone, like an unshaken pillar amidst a dying world—

Dante.

His long white cape draped behind him, fluttering gently despite the absence of wind.

His face was unreadable, impassive, behind his helm as his opponents advanced upon him.

The air grew still.

Even the announcer's breath hitched.

For a moment—just a brief, fleeting moment—the entire Colosseum fell into utter silence.

And then—

The screen distorted.

The ground rumbled.

A new storm was about to begin.

--------------------

[???]

His white fur-framed cape billowed against the violent winds.

Across from him, Gisèle trembled—not with fear, but with sheer, maddened thrill. Her blood-red eyes dilated, lips twitching into an unhinged smile, bare feet pressing against the broken terrain beneath her. Her body practically shook with uncontainable excitement, her bandaged arms flexing as her fist clenched.

"Ohhh!" Gisèle giggled, her voice an erratic in that filled with delirium and hunger. "You stand there so proud, so pristine, like some distant, unreachable moon—I wonder do you ever dream of what's inside the moon?" She tilted her head, cackling breathlessly. "Do you? Do you? Oh, but I know—it's full of teeth, just like you~!"

Dante did not react. His arms remained folded, not a single muscle in his form shifting. Immovable. Unshaken. Only the empty abyss of his helmet faced them.

Beatrice scoffed, her red eyes burning with resentment, green hair whipping around her form. "Enough of this," she spat, her fury barely contained. "This bastard is standing in front of me instead of that damned brat Mikoto Yukio—I don't have time for this."

Aurélie said nothing. Silent, the split-haired woman merely raised a pale hand, her crimson gaze as cold as a forgotten grave.

Aithne stood back, observing. His red eyes flickered with caution, reading the battlefield, reading Dante. Something was wrong—terribly wrong.

Ezerald did not move yet, but deep within, she felt it too. The weight of his presence. It wasn't just power.

Gisèle moved first.

With a shriek of euphoric laughter, she lunged, her bare feet shattering the ground beneath her, launching her toward Dante like a human missile. Her right fist reared back, crackling with raw force—

And yet, Dante did not move.

At the very last moment— he turned his head.

The moment her punch met nothing but air, a shockwave detonated from the sheer force of her swing, obliterating the ground for miles. A massive rupture split the ground in half, cascading outward with an earth-splitting roar. The shockwave ejected slabs of terrain into the sky, sending them spinning into the atmosphere, while the sheer impact flattened the remains of the long-dead terrain.

But Dante—Dante was gone.

Above her.

A shadow loomed over Gisèle, and she looked up just in time to see Dante's white-caped silhouette descending like judgment incarnate.

Aurélie whispered.

"Reject."

Suddenly—space itself collapsed where Dante stood.

Dante twisted his body midair, and in the fraction of an instant, space itself folded where he had once been standing. The ground beneath him ceased to exist.

Not obliterated. Not destroyed.

Simply… gone.

An entire section of the battlefield vanished into nothingness, leaving only a gaping, bottomless void where matter had once been.

And yet—

Aurélie's eyes slightly narrowed. A miss.

Dante reappeared behind them, standing near where the ground once was, untouched by the void. His voice finally emerged, smooth yet dull.

"You believe the absence of existence is enough to swallow me?" He tilted his head slightly. "Feeble."

Aurélie's expression did not change.

But her fingers curled slightly.

Aithne hummed. "Barely even trying, hm?"

And yet—Beatrice roared.

From her outstretched hands, an enormous wave of black fire erupted, a monstrous tidal force of cursed infernos that surged across the wasteland, devouring everything in its path. The ground melted, the air cracked, the sky darkened. It was as if the world itself had been set aflame. The landscape darkened. The ground charred into instant ruin.

At the same time—Ezerald struck.

She raised her hand, and from the heavens above, five colossal divine swords materialized in a shimmering cascade, each as vast as a fortress, glowing with the blinding radiance of a Goddess's Wrath. The very same Divine Relic of the Forge Goddess, replicated in near perfection. And worse—each blade carried an unbreakable charm ensuring they would always strike their target.

"Die."

The swords fell.

The black flames crashed down.

Dante, arms still folded, simply exhaled.

And then—he moved.

With one motion, he threw out a punch.

The force that followed was not of this world.

A single, unrestrained wave of pure kinetic energy erupted outward. It ripped the skies apart, sent waves of pure force spiraling off the planet's surface, and annihilated Beatrice's inferno before it even touched him. The very flames themselves bowed and dispersed, utterly erased from existence.

The divine swords shattered mid-descent, obliterated before they could even reach their intended path.

Ezerald's breath hitched. Beatrice's eyes widened.

And there Dante stood—untouched.

"It's useless." His voice rang out, firm yet composed.

Aithne's fingers curled. "How very wrong." He chuckled, shaking his head. 

Gisèle, she was laughing.

Harder. louder and even more breathlessly.

"Ooooooh! THAT was beautiful!" She clutched her head, shaking with an ecstasy not meant for battle. "Aghh, aahh—I felt that in my bones!" She twirled, facing Dante, grinning with all the mania of a woman lost in bliss. "Tell me, tell me, tell me—what's in YOUR moon?"

Dante did not respond.

Beatrice snarled.

Ezerald suppressed a shudder.

Aurélie's lips parted. Just slightly.

And yet, across from him, Ezerald and Gisèle surged forward.

Blazing speed. Unrelenting force

The wasteland cracked apart under their sheer acceleration, sending massive chunks of earth spiraling into the air as they burst forward—two forces of nature, bearing down upon Dante like calamities.

Ezerald manifested her divine armament—

A radiant spear, massive and burning like a fragment of the sun itself, materialized within her grasp. It was no ordinary weapon; it was the mimicked relic of the Sun Goddess herself, a construct of annihilation. Solar embers trailed in her wake as she spun the weapon, the sheer radiance illuminating the darkened landscape in golden brilliance.

Gisèle, meanwhile, giggled breathlessly, her salmon-pink hair whipping wildly in the winds of battle. The mere act of charging sent shockwaves through the battlefield, the force of her footfalls splintering the already fractured wasteland.

And then they struck.

Ezerald lunged forward, her sun-forged spear arcing downward with fury, the tip igniting the air itself as it tore toward Dante's skull—

Dante shifted.

A breath—an imperceptible movement.

The radiant spear slammed into the earth—and in that instant, the world ruptured.

A blinding explosion erupted from the impact site, expanding outward like a newborn star. The land beneath it did not merely crack—it was annihilated. The shockwave that followed ripped across the battlefield, shattering distant cliffs, sending them collapsing like dominos. The atmosphere itself screamed in protest, a howling wail of displaced air as the sheer magnitude of force created a vacuum of destruction.

Yet—Dante was no longer there.

Before the explosion could consume him, he had already vanished from its path.

Ezerald's eyes barely had time to widen before—

Gisèle struck.

With mad glee, she spun mid-air, her bare foot whipping toward Dante's head, a strike infused with enough force to bend the land itself. The air around her foot imploded, the pressure of her kick warping the air, sending a gravitational ripple outward that crushed the terrain hundreds of meters below them.

Yet—she struck nothing.

Dante had already moved.

Again.

His evasion was not merely fast—it was absolute.

He had no wasted motion. No unnecessary reaction. His movements were so precise, so , that they felt inevitable.

A mere step. A mere breath. And destruction could not reach him.

"Fufufu~! My my my! That was a good one!" Gisèle purred, her blood-red eyes dilated with excitement, her breath coming out in ragged, eager pants. "Did you feel that? That was for you~" Her voice dripped with something twisted, something hungry.

But she had no time to revel in her amusement.

The sky turned black.

A thousand obsidian spearheads materialized in the air above them. Beatrice joined the fray. Her burning crimson gaze locked onto Dante, and with a snarl, she unleashed hell. The black spearheads—massive, serrated, each one as large as a boulder—came crashing down.

Not one.

Not ten.

Dozens upon dozens.

They fell like comets of ruin, their descent so rapid that the very sky wept with the force of their arrival. The battlefield quaked in front of the annihilation, the pressure alone splintering the landscape into bottomless chasms.

And yet—

Dante still did not uncross his arms.

He moved.

A step to the right—a spearhead shattered the land where he once stood. A tilt of his head—a spearhead carved through the air mere inches from his helmet. A shift of his weight—a dozen more spearheads whistled past him, missing by fractions of a hair.

Not one struck.

Not one even grazed him.

His movements were like the flow of inevitability itself.

As if fate itself refused to allow him to be touched.

Ezerald grimaced.

Beatrice's snarl deepened.

Gisèle, she moaned? "Ahn~! Fuuuuh! I can barely stand it!" She trembled, her entire body shivering as if Dante's very presence alone was enough to send her into a state of pure, unhinged bliss. "You're divine, more so than even the one in the moon! Just—just let me taste you! Let me break you! Let me—"

She never finished.

Dante's arms unfolded.

And in a single, lightning-fast motion—

His hands shot out.

A single gesture. Faster than thought. 

Two throats caught in an iron grip.

Ezerald choked, her golden eyes widening in sheer disbelief.

Gisèle shuddered. "Oh~", she exhaled, her voice laced with a breathless sound.

Dante held them both aloft, his grip unwavering. Unforgiving. And then—he threw them.

Not tossed.

Not hurled.

He cast them away like refuse. 

His hands flinging them through the air like ragdolls. The force of the throw sent them crashing into the ground, causing massive craters where they landed. The earth shook beneath them, rocks and dust flying in every direction as they tumbled across the wasteland. The destruction was immense—cracks spider-webbed through the surface of the area, and the air itself seemed to vibrate with the sheer force of it all. The ground quaked beneath their feet, fissures splitting the earth open as the land around them began to fragment and fall away.

The planet itself shuddered.

Dante adjusted the gauntlets on his arms. It was quiet now, far too quiet after the chaos that had unfolded. Aurélie and Aithne stood to either side of him, their expressions unreadable, eyes carefully observing the slight shift in Dante's posture. Beatrice clicked her tongue softly, her gaze flickering between him and the surrounding destruction. 

Gisèle would likely return soon, no doubt emboldened by the surge of power her Ultra Vires had granted her. But for the time being, it was quieter without her, her manic energy absent from the scene. Yet, even in the absence of that madness, there was something unsettling about the stillness. It was a calm, yes—but the type of calm that heralds something far worse. They could feel the tension coiling in the air.

"You Ancestors never struck me as the types to be this foolish," Dante's voice cut through the silence, deep and resonant. He folded his arms, leisurely. "Save for the Ancestor of Malice." He corrected.

The words hung in the air but there was no immediate response. The stillness was suffocating. Aithne and Aurélie simply observed, their gazes unwavering, unflinching.

Aurélie shifted ever so slightly, her arms folding with a calm grace. Her eyes, though betraying little emotion, bore into Dante. "Foolish?" she echoed, her voice measured, yet laden with a quiet certainty. "True, your might is overwhelming, undeniable. But even so, you stand in the way of our objectives. It is a certainty."

Dante didn't flinch. His gaze remained as he studied her.

"It's because you're too righteous for your own good. All your efforts, all your might, only to fight for an era that's already slipping from your grasp. What would you call that? Stubbornness? Delusion?" Aithne interjected, his voice laced with a thin veneer of amusement, though his eyes remained devoid of any genuine warmth. A faint, almost imperceptible smile tugged at the corners of his lips, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "Barring Britha, the goals of us Ancestors go against what you fight for, don't they? The prosperity of this era."

Beatrice huffed in irritation, her gaze drifting briefly to where Ezerald had been tossed aside like a ragdoll. Then, her eyes snapped back to Dante. "I still can't fathom why you would fight for this era. You're an idiot. Even if you believe in your cause, you're still chasing after something you can't ever reach. You're trying to fight for something that's already been decided," she muttered, her words thick with disdain.

Dante shook his head as if in mild annoyance, the gesture almost imperceptible as he met Beatrice's gaze. "I made my reasoning very clear," he stated evenly, his voice cool, detached. "Though, despite knowing of my power, it seems you've all still the confidence to start issuing challenges." His tone shifted, a subtle shift in pitch that made the words sound colder. "Very well then, I shall show you the true gap in our strength."

"Then I shall respond in kind," Aurélie's composed gaze set upon Dante like a sculptor analyzing a block of marble—cold, detached, and entirely unimpressed. There was no fire in her stance, no reckless ferocity, no outward signs of aggression. She carried herself with an air of absolute control, every movement calculated, every breath measured.

The Ancestor held no ranking of power; Rhiannon was the mightiest, and that much was accepted.

However, if any of her brethren could be considered a threat, it would be her - the bane of Gods, dragons, and The Keepers of Order alike. More than a mere annoyance, she was the Ancestor of Pestilence.

And so beneath that stillness, power stirred.

Aithne still stood further back, his arms crossed, watching with a neutral gaze. Unlike the others who may have felt apprehension at Dante's power, Aithne felt nothing. No fear. No concern. Just mild curiosity.

Aurélie's sharp gaze flickered toward him for the briefest moment. "Stop being useless." Her voice was smooth, unshaken. "Fight."

Aithne merely blinked.

Aurélie no longer paid him any mind. Instead—

—a weapon of abyssal darkness coalesced into existence within her grasp.

The air grew heavy, almost suffocating, as reality itself seemed to recoil from the manifestation of her scythe. It was immense, yet weightless in her grip—an executioner's blade hewn not from steel, but from something far darker. The curved edge gleamed with an eerie absence of light, as if it did not merely cut, but erased. Strange inscriptions, long-forgotten and pulsating with an ominous rhythm, twisted along its length, shifting as if alive.

The moment it fully took shape—

The ground beneath her feet collapsed.

The sheer presence of the weapon sent spiderweb fractures tearing through the earth, splitting the already-broken terrain apart. Cracks spread outward in jagged, erratic lines, stretching for miles in an instant, causing entire sections of land to sink violently into the void. Loose stones and debris, caught in the sudden upheaval, rose unnaturally into the air, levitating as if gravity itself had been momentarily distorted.

Then—

She moved.

The instant her foot left the fractured ground, a cataclysmic force erupted outward, turning the very air around her into a concussive shockwave. The force of her acceleration obliterated the surrounding terrain, sending entire slabs of earth careening into the sky.

Beneath where she once stood, the wasteland collapsed into a crater so deep that its bottom was swallowed by darkness. Rock formations crumbled into dust, stone structures—detonated into fragments, sent spiraling outward like shrapnel from an explosion.

She closed the distance in a blink.

Her scythe screamed through the air, a blackened crescent of sheer devastation arcing toward Dante's throat. The pressure alone preceding the blade's edge was enough to slice through the distant remnants of formations.

And yet—

Dante did not move.

The abyssal blade was inches from his neck—

Then, in a motion so effortless it was almost insulting, his hand rose and caught the scythe.

The world lurched.

Time itself seemed to recoil, as if struggling to comprehend what had just happened.

The result was instantaneous.

The energy condensed within Aurélie's strike had to go somewhere—and it did.

The mere impact of Dante's palm against the scythe released a shockwave so devastating that entire tectonic plates groaned in protest. The land beneath them, already fragile, could not withstand the strain—

It buckled.

Then it broke.

The very foundation of the wasteland ruptured outward in every direction, massive sections of the planet's crust ripping apart as though torn by unseen hands. Mountains didn't merely collapse—they disintegrated, reduced to nothing but swirling clouds of dust. Craters, once shallow scars upon the battlefield, now deepened into colossal abysses, swallowing the remnants of a dying world.

And yet, amidst the large-scale destruction—Dante remained motionless.

His grip on the abyssal weapon was unshaken, his fingers curled around the void-forged edge without so much as a scratch upon his gauntlet.

He lifted his gaze to meet Aurélie's.

Her expression remained unreadable.

There was no frustration. No shock. No flicker of doubt.

She merely adjusted.

With an abrupt shift of her grip, she ripped the scythe free, spinning into another strike. This time, the blade curved low, aiming for his legs with a sweep designed to bifurcate anything in its path.

Dante stepped forward.

A single movement.

Yet it carried the force of an unstoppable force.

His foot slammed into the ground, and in that instant—

The wasteland might as well have ceased to exist.

A shockwave erupted downward, so vast in scale that entire landmasses in the distance began to break apart. The remnants of the planet's surface—already fragile—could no longer hold itself together. Fissures spanning thousands of miles tore through the world, consuming everything in their path. Entire valleys crumbled. The very curvature of the land shifted violently, sending tidal waves thousands of feet high crashing in all directions.

And yet, amidst this annihilation—

Dante merely exhaled. "You're predictable."

Aurélie landed gracefully a distance away, her grip on her weapon still firm. Her gaze did not waver.

And then—

She moved again.

This time, it was faster.

Blinding.

Her form became a blur, a streak of black and dark mana cutting across the fractured land with a velocity so intense that the very atmosphere howled in protest. The scythe, still pulsing with its eerie inscriptions, carved through the air in a sweeping arc, a strike designed not just to cut—but to erase.

Yet—

Dante was already gone.

In the fraction of a second before the blade could reach him, he shifted, his body tilting just enough to let the edge pass within a breath's distance of his armor. The sheer proximity of the attack distorted the space around him.

His counterattack came not from brute force, but from precision. His left hand snapped upward, an open-palmed strike aimed directly for Aurélie's chest. There was no wasted motion, no unnecessary theatrics—just a single movement, executed with inhuman exactness.

Aurélie reacted in kind.

Rather than retreat, she twisted midair, shifting the angle of her scythe with a single, fluid motion. The blade curved around her own body, following her rotation like a crescent of annihilation. The moment Dante's strike neared her, she reversed the momentum and brought the weapon crashing down toward his shoulder, its trajectory guided by pure calculated expertise.

The air detonated between them as their movements clashed.

Dante's foot barely grazed the ground, but the sheer pressure of his repositioning sent a radial shockwave surging outward, flattening the land in a hundred-meter radius. The jagged rock formations caught within the blast shattered instantaneously, pulverized into dust that was immediately sucked into the wake of their movements.

They were moving too fast for the land to keep up.

The planet itself seemed to be breaking apart beneath their battle.

Aurélie attacked again. A dozen strikes in the span of a single breath.

Each swing of her scythe was an execution in motion, the blade carving through space itself in a deadly web. Every strike was aimed with absolute intent—the head, the throat, the ribs, the legs—each a killing blow, each inescapable.

And yet—

Dante dodged.

Not with effort. Not with struggle.

But with absolute ease.

He moved like a ghost, shifting just enough to make every attack miss by the smallest fraction of space. The scythe would come within a hair's width of his throat—only for his body to lean back at the perfect angle, letting the abyssal edge pass harmlessly through the air where his flesh had been moments before.

She swept for his ribs—he pivoted on his heel, letting the blade whistle past. She feinted low before launching a strike for his face—he twisted his neck just enough to let it pass beside the jaw of his helmet.

Every single attack failed.

It wasn't just speed. It wasn't just reflexes.

It was something beyond that.

It was as if Dante saw every move before it happened.

Aurélie didn't falter.

She simply adapted.

The next moment, she vanished.

No, not vanished—accelerated.

A sonic boom detonated at her previous position, sending seismic waves rippling outward. The force of her movement was so abrupt that the shockwave uprooted the very ground, launching tons of rock into the air as if gravity had lost meaning.

She reappeared behind him.

Her scythe, now wreathed in dark mana, curved downward in a two-handed arc aimed to cleave Dante cleanly in half from the waist. The force behind it was enough to bisect mountains.

But—

Dante turned.

A single step—effortless, fluid—and he was already facing her. His hand lashed out with blinding speed, catching the base of her scythe's handle before it could complete its swing.

The land around them exploded.

The moment their forces clashed, a crater instantly formed beneath them, sinking the ground for miles in all directions. The pressure of their struggle sent a visible shockwave through the sky, distorting the clouds into chaotic spirals before blasting them apart entirely.

Aurélie didn't hesitate.

She twisted the handle—shifting the weight of the scythe in an attempt to throw him off—before launching a brutal knee strike toward his ribs.

Dante caught her leg with a single hand.

Another rupture in the wasteland.

The planet cracked.

But before he could react further—

Aithne finally moved. He raised his hand without a single word.

And suddenly—

The sky screamed.

From the void above, five enormous objects appeared in a sudden shift, scraping against the air.

Not falling—plummeting.

Their descent was not gradual.

It was instant.

Massive burning celestial bodies, each large enough to dwarf cities, surged downward at incomprehensible speed. The force behind them was so staggering that the very atmosphere caught fire, turning the sky into a swirling inferno of apocalyptic red. The heat wave alone was enough to vaporize the surrounding terrain, leaving only charred, blackened remains in its wake.

Aurélie immediately disengaged, leaping backward in a blur of speed.

But Beatrice acted next.

Darkness of decay bloomed.

The very fabric of reality trembled as a pulse of entropy rippled outward, coating the meteors in an unnatural black aura. What once burned now rotted, their surfaces crumbling into writhing, decayed husks as they fell—yet their momentum was not slowed.

Dante remained still.

The five meteors impacted all at once.

The world shuddered.

The moment of impact sent a colossal wave of destruction surging outward.

The first meteor struck, and a shockwave erupted, flattening everything in a five-hundred-mile radius.

The second meteor followed, sending a fissure so deep through the planet's crust that molten rock spewed into the sky, forming a temporary second sun.

The third meteor crashed next, its decayed surface fracturing upon impact—only for the sheer force behind it to send a tidal wave of devastation rolling across the land.

The fourth meteor landed, and with it, the tectonic plates beneath them buckled and broke apart. Entire regions of landmass sank into the abyss, consumed by the resulting void.

And the fifth—

A wall of dust and fire surged upward as it impacted, consuming Dante's figure entirely. The shockwave ripped through the atmosphere, sending hurricanes of ash spiraling in all directions. The sheer force of destruction reverberated across the entire planet, sending quakes so powerful that distant, untouched landscapes—miles, no, kilometers away—began to fracture.

Silence.

For a moment, there was only the aftermath.

Aurélie stood at a distance, her scythe at her side, watching.

Aithne exhaled slightly, lowering his hand.

Beatrice narrowed her eyes toward the choking storm of dust and ruin.

And then—

From within the devastation—

Dante stepped forward.

Unaffected.

Unscathed.

His pristine form clashed with the absolute devastation around him.

"Hmph."