Hey everyone, I hope you're all right.
I came to see if anyone's still here, as the decisions from the previous chapter might be controversial; that also includes a bit of what happens in this chapter.
Also, remember that this is a self-insertion story; the only thing that's part of me in this story is the humor I use, but beyond that, Dante and I have nothing in common. So, when Dante speaks, it's not my thoughts, but how I think Dante should think and behave at certain times, given everything he's going through, both in his current situation and his past.
When the scenario is in third person, that's when I "speak," with a lot of quotation marks, but I'm only going to give facts; my opinion here, there's nothing.
Finally, for the Devil Fruit, I was inspired by four people, one of whom is the Grim Reaper, literally. The other three are an angel, a hero, and a half-demon, half-human. It shouldn't be that difficult to figure out which three these are, so I won't say.
With all that said, let the chapter continue.
----------------------------------------------------------------
???: "Remember, Dante, don't forget, don't escape, remember again."
Dante's POV
Ah, yes, I've already begun to remember, to remember my entire life before being reincarnated in this world, my old life, my old hell.
I was the middle child in a family of five: my parents, my older brother, my younger sister, and me.
I always wanted my parents' attention, but I never got it. They always gave the resources to my older brother, since, according to them, he would carry us forward, while all the attention and affection went to my younger sister.
For this very reason, I never felt part of the family, I was forgotten by my parents, and I constantly fought with my siblings. I envied them both. Now that I'm older and more mature, I regret that and not having tried to form that bond of affection and love that I lacked with them, since I wouldn't receive it from my parents.
But there was something that could fill some of my loneliness each day: the internet.
Online, I could do whatever I wanted, and there I discovered different kinds of stories. Mythological stories, superhero stories, video games, novels, and all kinds of entertainment, whether on video or in print.
But that didn't stop me from feeling increasingly detached from those I should have called family; in a moment, they were strangers to me.
Thanks to this, I spent more time away from home than I did inside. Since my family never cared about me, they never paid attention to my absence.
This led me to hang out with bad people, and that's why I joined a gang. By the time I was 16, I was already doing a lot of bad things: fighting with other people, smoking, drinking, stealing, and clandestinely fighting. Things I shouldn't have done at my age.
I don't know how, and I don't know when, but my parents discovered what I was doing. The result: a huge argument between my father, mother, and brother against me.
In the end, I decided to leave home; being a minor, I decided to live with my so-called friends at the time.
We lived day to day, but I felt more excited doing all these things. Our situation wasn't good, but we did what we could while evading the law and working under the radar, with a lot of illegal activities.
Of course, I never stopped watching what I liked: entertainment. And as time went by, my interest in heroes grew more and more. I always wondered when my time would come to have a life like the ones in reality. Something that makes your life worthwhile.
By 18, I already had a name for myself; I earned respect. But all good things must come to an end.
It turns out my so-called friends were given a large sum of money to get rid of me, and they didn't hesitate for a second.
I thought I was starting a new family, a real one, but they were just deceiving me. That day, they arrived with several weapons, both knives and firearms. It was a massacre; they tried to eliminate me, but they couldn't. My rage was so great that I destroyed them all; I killed them all; only I remained alive, but I was crippled in one eye and lame in one leg.
And in the end, the police arrived to arrest me. At the trial, they gave me 5 years in prison for self-defense; they couldn't charge me with any other crimes because they never had any evidence.
So I spent 5 years in prison, with no one coming to visit me. During that time, I realized everything I did wrong, all my mistakes, and everything I had done to corner myself at this point.
When I got out of prison, I tried to improve both my situation and my own life, to be a better person, but it was easier said than done.
I never finished high school, so I had no education; my papers were stained, and I was also lame, so I could never get a job or find a job.
In the end, even though I tried to change, the world decided to punish me for my sins. I was left alone on the streets in dirty, holey clothes.
I wondered why my life was like this, if I tried to change, improve, and fix my mistakes, but no one cared, not my old family, not my old friends, not a single person.
Why did all this happen to me? Why can't my life be like a comic book or an epic story? Bad things happened to them, due to consequences or something else, but nothing good ever happened to me in my life. Bad things happened to Spider-Man almost all the time, like losing something important, but that's the joke. Peter Parker had something important first; I never had it.
How I sent those stories, how I wished I had something like that, had their lives: it made me angry, it made me envious, and I wanted to be like them, since those stories were all I had, and somehow it ended up disturbing my mind and my life.
In the end, I gave up. I stole a rope, went to a forest, and hanged myself. I ended up being a coward, escaping from all this. Or at least that's how I feel. Before I died, I told myself that if I had another chance, I wouldn't make the same mistakes, and by doing the impossible, I would become a hero, because then I would have fame, I would have glory, I wouldn't go hungry again, someone would hold my hand when I was at my worst, I would never be alone again, and I would never be forgotten in life.
And as if by magic, I was reincarnated in this world as a World Nobleman. I never liked this lifestyle, since I didn't have the hardships I went through, but the people who lived here reminded me of my life when I was in the gang. Abusive people, who looked down on others, were dishonest and immoral, among other things. Characteristics that reminded me of when I lived that shitty life before going to prison. That's why I never liked them; that's why I feel so indifferent and dislike them.
I didn't want to be in this place; I wanted to leave. These people reminded me of my past, and it tormented me. I didn't want to remember; I wanted to forget, forget everything I was before I was reincarnated, and I think my mind listened to me, because as time went on, I began to forget everything.
Another thing I tried to mend was my relationship with my family; I tried to connect, to be a real family, but I only achieved that bond with Alex and Dianna.
Faced with all this, I decided to escape the Holy Land to fulfill my promise to become a hero, but that was just an excuse to never be alone again, to never be forgotten, to never go through the same thing I had to go through in my past life, a life of glory and happiness, a happiness I'd never had before.
But sadly, that detached me from reality, a cruel world that takes away everything it has even if it barely can. Because of my stupidity, Arthur and Hun died.
But I won't make that mistake again. I won't be bound by that moral law of heroes anymore. I won't try to be a hero anymore. I'll make my own decisions based on whether what I'm doing is right or not.
In other words, I won't let my decisions be based on what people think is right and please everyone. Instead, I'll make decisions based on what I think I should do, regardless of whether I happen to someone, whoever it may be. I no longer care about being morally right, since that was the hero Dante, but that person no longer exists; now there's only Dante.
(Note: Dante, within reason, will still be a hero, since it will still be the right thing to do, but it will be 100% based on his judgment. To assume, he will be a mix between the hero Dante and the Dante before he died. Finally, the problem of him gradually losing his memory will no longer exist, since the protagonist no longer wants to forget.)
Third-person POV
The aura emanating from Dante, along with his Conqueror's Haki, was very oppressive, enough to make everyone still alive on the island feel it and automatically remain still.
(Note: When I say aura, I mean the feeling of oppression like killing intent, not staying still with epic poses and incredible shots, just like the type in Solo Leveling or Snyder's Superman.)
With a slow gait, he walked over to Ares and stood before him. The old man felt the oppression as he looked at the empty blue eyes in his eye sockets, which looked like eyes but weren't.
Without hesitation, he landed a punch in Dante's face, followed by a kick to the stomach, which tilted him, and ended with an elbow to the back that made Dante bend over, staring at the ground.
Seeing his son like that, he only laughed a little, as the feeling of fear he'd felt before vanished when he attacked him like that, and the other party didn't fight back.
Ares: "I see that everything is changed; it was of no use, you're still useless." He laughed at Dante.
Dante responded by raising his arm, from which a blue sword of transparent energy suddenly emerged. With a swiftness barely visible to the human eye, he severed Ares's arm.
Seeing his severed arm, he jumped back, distancing himself from Dante. He couldn't see the movement, and he wasn't using Haki, so he couldn't avoid it. But that didn't matter, as a black mass appeared on the short arm and the one on the ground, joining them together, making them as good as new again.
Dante looked at Ares and noticed the lines that appeared on his body.
Dante: 'I see, so that's how it works; it looks like the mystic eyes of mortal perception, but they are not the same; they don't work the same way,' he thought as he looked at the ability in his eyes.
Our protagonist never lost his memories but rather blocked them by wanting to forget. But thanks to these circumstances, he unlocked his memories and accepted his former self in its entirety, and by default, he remembered every series, anime, or movie he'd ever seen, including all of Type-Moon and One Piece.
According to Vegapunk, the fruits may have come from collective thought, or in other words, from the beliefs and ideas of these same people, so their abilities will be rooted in the general idea of the world's people with that concept.
The Hito Hito no Mi, Moderu: Shi no tenshi, better known as the Death Fruit, is a concept; people further developed death as someone you can't see or feel that takes you to the afterlife; hence, the concept of the Angel of Death.
This being must be capable of two things. The first is to always have a weapon to take your soul, even if it's through force; no matter what happens, you'll go with it sooner or later. And the second is the ability to kill any living being, whether immortal or not; if they are alive, then they can die.
Based on this perception, Dante's two abilities are the ability to conjure various spectral weapons, and the second is the eyes of death. He can see the lines of death, which, depending on how many lines a person has, show their life expectancy. When the angel cuts them all, the soul is separated from the body, leaving it unreunited under any circumstances.
In other words, if all the lifelines are cut, one dies. To be able to cut them all, the usurer can also conjure weapons in case he has none left; this way, he can achieve his goal, since death is inevitable.
Dante realized that Ares has 10 lifelines, of which 2 are already broken—not cut, but broken. This means that Ares's life and deeds reduced his life expectancy to 3/10 of what it had been. In other words, if he lived to be 100, now he'll only live 80 years at most.
If he cut all the lines he could see on Ares's body, then he automatically won. But Dante wouldn't settle for that; he had to make him suffer, humiliate him, like he did when he worked as a mercenary/thug for the underworld. He would have only been satisfied with everything this old man had done to him from birth until now.
Dante: "Did you touch me? I didn't feel it; I was just winded and very sleepy from this fight." He said, humiliating Ares, making him understand that his blows had no effect. Ares only got angrier when he realized that Dante didn't have a single scratch or mark of dirt from what he had just done.
Ares brought his arms together, which began to deform and merge into an energy cannon, from which a full-power laser beam erupted. Dante responded, wielding a blue energy longsword in one hand and the Muramasa in the other. With both weapons in front of him, he launched himself at Ares, repelling his attack without difficulty.
Seeing that his attack wasn't working and that Ares was close to his position, he stopped, and before doing anything, Dante threw the energy sword slightly to the right. Ares dodged this by moving to the left, jumping back, something he expected him to do.
Dante continued forward in a straight line, stopping when he was facing Ares. When he looked at him, he swung his Muramasa sword back, ready to attack, but before doing so, he activated Conqueror's Haki twice as if in a pulse.
On the other side of the island, Trini felt this. Their fight had been interrupted by Dante's presence all around the place, standing still.
Walt: "What was that all about? Ares couldn't have done that, could he?" he asked the air more than anyone, sitting on the ground from the fall of Isis's previous attack.
Trini, seeing where Dante was, opened her eyes wide, not only because of his appearance but also because of what he was going to do. She quickly grabbed Sulli by the neck and knocked him to the ground, doing the same herself.
The others saw this but didn't understand why, but once all this was over, they were going to attack again. The only one who didn't do anything was Walt, who was still rubbing his hip from the blow.
Dante, using all the Haki he had to unleash at once, launched a horizontal slash at Ares. Seeing the attack a few moments ago, Ares dodged with a high jump. But that attack wasn't aimed at Ares.
The CP0 members had already moved. Isis, who was in the sky, was still about to attack by descending to the ground, but Trini stopped her while she was still lying on the ground with a hand signal. In less than a second, a Haki-filled energy blast swiftly swept across the entire island, passing above Trini and Sulli and below Isis.
The next second, everything on that side of the island was cut off, including the remaining seven CP0 members, who were sliced in half and died instantly. The only survivor there was Walt, who was still on the ground, but he didn't escape unscathed.
Walt: "My hair, my beautiful hair," he groaned, only to see that Dante's cut had severed his hair, leaving the entire top of his head bald. The shock of this and his shattered image, coupled with the fear of what had happened before and being alone, caused him to faint.
At this, and seeing that there was no more enemy, the three of them rushed to Arthur's corpse, only for all three of them to begin to cry, and there were more than a few of them. Trini and Isis began to weep nonstop, while Sulli shed a few tears while holding Hun's corpse in her hands.
Only to be interrupted by the loud sound of two weapons clashing in the distance. Ares and Dante are locked in a clash of weapons, with Dante having the advantage. But Ares manages to move past his son's guard and, with a sword technique, manages to take the crimson katana from him.
Quickly, with a spin, he tries to slash Dante, but Dante stops him with a long staff he generated with spectral energy so that a sickle appears at the end. And with a twist of his scythe, he repels Ares, making him retreat.
With his appearance and weapons, Dante looked like the Grim Reaper himself, ready to snatch his opponent's life. But he had no intention of doing so; the longer Ares was alive, the better for him.
With that, he launched himself at Ares, ready to continue the exchange of slashes. Now with greater range, Ares could barely attack Dante, and he was taking more cuts from him.
Modifying his sword, making it sharp on one side only so that cannons appeared on the other, and with a burst of energy from the cannons, he broke Dante's scythe, but his victory was short-lived, as he immediately generated another, as if he hadn't destroyed the first.
With a blow to the stomach, Dante sent him flying, destroying his intestines in the process, which regenerated almost instantly.
Dante: 'It must be that talk of Imu's immortality that some high-ranking officials in the holy land have,' he thought, seeing how the damage he dealt to Ares was regenerated in a few minutes.
Ares generated a ball of energy, joined his hands with the ball, and as he opened them, several of the same ones appeared, which he threw at Dante. Dante responded with the same number of small blue swords.
Several small explosions occurred, obscuring both of their vision. When he stopped, Ares realized that Dante was no longer in his initial position, only to receive a punch to the face with enough force to send him to the other corner of the city.
Dante kept up with him with great ease; thanks to the Zoan-type fruit, Dante's base stats grew enough to make him two or three times faster than before; that includes his Strength, Stamina, and Defense.
Thanks to this, Dante now has the power to stand up to an admiral and have a chance of winning, without having to learn Advanced Armament Haki.
Dante reaches Ares and kicks him, sending him flying. He then reaches out again and, with a punch to the stomach, sends him sprawling to the ground.
With the same speed with which Ares fell, Dante followed him, ready to land a solid blow. But Ares reacted in time, moving to the side, landing his fist on the ground, and completely destroying the place.
The wave and the blast of air slightly disoriented Ares, only to receive another blow to the face, then one to the ribs and another to the chest.
Dante grabbed Ares's arm to prevent him from flying away and keep him in the same position. He began bombarding him with many punches that gradually destroyed his weapon. Finally, he let go and, with a backflip jump, kicked Ares in the chin, sending him into the air and causing him to fall without his transformation.
Dante: "You're the best punching bag I've ever seen. With that regeneration, I'll be able to find out if he could kill one of you with just a few clean blows. That way, you'll be more mangled than garbage, and you'll be reduced to an insect."
Ares, hearing this, jumped up and, with all his strength, donned half of his armor and began generating a lot of energy around him. Dante looked at him without surprise, despite the fact that with his transformation, he couldn't show emotions.
Ares: "I won't let a useless person like you do this to me," he said, his eyes red and furious.
Dante: "Well, let's begin the final round, then."