"You made it my business the moment you dragged your private vendetta into my match."
Dante's words were quiet, almost conversational, yet they cracked across the corridor like a leather whip. The edge in his tone—at once scolding and razor‑keen—caught Rosalina so off guard that her violet eyes flew wide. Before she could recover, he advanced, every syllable honed to a blade.
"I don't know what picture you've painted of me, Lady Rosalina Phenex, but let me daub in the correct colors." His gaze sharpened, storm‑gray irises narrowing to a sliver. "I will not be your lapdog. I'm shocked my first impression misled you so completely. Reconsider where you place me in your little hierarchy—quickly—for I'm not a man who loiters."
The rebuke landed like a mailed fist; Rosalina actually stepped back, lips parted in speechless surprise. For the first time since Dante had met her, the noblewoman looked… unsure.
He turned from her without another word, boots ringing against marble as he strode toward the arena archway. The blush that flared across Rosalina's high cheeks went unseen.
"Thank you for the advice, Lady Phenex," he called over a raised hand, the gesture as dismissive as a monarch closing court. "But I refuse to sully the Gremory name with a 'lapdog' collar. Handle your grudges yourself."
Once, when he was barely tall enough to spar with his father, Dante had been taught three immutable truths: respect your parents, honor your obligations, and bow to no tyrant in fine clothing. Those lessons had carried him through battlefields and ballroom intrigues alike. Rosalina—beautiful, brilliant, catastrophically entitled—was merely the second bona‑fide narcissist to cross his path.
Was I too harsh? The question flickered across his mind, but only for the span of a heartbeat. In the cutthroat web of devil nobility, harshness was often the first language anyone understood.
He exhaled, scrubbing a hand through wind‑tossed hair. "Drama," he muttered, half amused, half weary. "No matter the realm, it sniffs me out." Moments ago he had been riding the euphoric high of an interviewer's spotlight—in Hell itself, of all places—and now he was ankle‑deep in petty noble feuds.
With a low growl he pushed through the final gate and halted on the threshold. Golden floodlights washed the coliseum in radiance, but it was the spectacle overhead that stole his breath.
Suspended nearly a hundred feet in the air hovered a titanic hologram of his own face—rendered in crystalline 2160p clarity. Eyes closed, smile faultlessly charismatic, one hand frozen mid‑wave. Beneath the portrait blazed the Gremory crest; animated scarlet roses spilled down either side in a slow, opulent cascade.
The crowd erupted. Thousands of voices—predominantly female—rose in a tidal scream that rattled his ribs. Dante's pulse skipped. Where—when—did I acquire a fan club large enough to eclipse kingdoms?
For the highborn devils packed into velvet‑lined skyboxes this tournament was merely the latest gamble: win a higher military rank, earn the right to command troops against the Old‑Satan faction, then toast to victory in obscene luxury. But to the lowborn multitudes thronging the cheap seats, this was a weekend‑long carnival, equal parts blood sport and holy day. Power displays, he had learned, struck them like fervent gospel—half warfare, half sensual intoxication.
He swallowed, throat suddenly dry. The roar felt physical, like thunder trying to hammer him flat. Roses kept falling around his holographic doppelgänger, each digital petal a brazen reminder that he, too, was now a spectacle.
A crooked smile crept across his face—part pride, part disbelief. Father always said humility was armor, but even armor can gleam.
Somewhere behind him, beyond the arch's shadow, Dante sensed Rosalina still lingering—in shock, in fury, in… something he could not name. But that was her storm to weather.
Ahead lay the arena floor, pulsing with anticipation. The announcer's voice boomed, summoning combatants like demigods to a dais.
Dante squared his shoulders. If drama insisted on following him, it would have to keep up.
He stepped into the light.
Showtime.
For all the petty sparks between Rosalina and Brinyalf, nothing compared to the wildfire of anticipation that pulsed through the coliseum. Only now did Dante grasp the true scale of the Gauntlet. What he had once dismissed as a checkbox on his march toward the Old‑Satan front was, for devils of every caste, a crucible where reputations were forged and dynasties recalibrated.
Zeoticus Gremory's lessons echoed in his mind: Status blooms two ways. Either you tumble, newborn, into a lineage already entwined with the 72 Pillar Council, or you earn it in the field. This arena was that field—a gilded shortcut to prestige that promised glory without the stench of battlefield rot. For the lowborn, it was the lone avenue to be seen. For the highborn, a rare chance to cast off ancestral shadows and bask in personal radiance.
Yet high‑class devils seldom dirtied their boots here anymore; political leverage purchased their rank for them. Dante—half mid‑class, half noble by adoption—had chosen the harder ascent, and the copycats who nipped at his heels had swelled the Gauntlet into a sold‑out spectacle.
Accidentally engineer an event that feels like a week‑long music festival, he mused. Add that to the fantasy bucket list.
A fresh roar detonated overhead, snapping his attention to the announcer's booming narrative. They were recounting his past with theatrical zeal, each anecdote spoon‑fed to the masses like spun sugar. When the voice pronounced his birth name—Dante Vale—the lower tiers erupted. These were devils cut from the same modest cloth as his mother's line; to discover that their new idol was "one of them" lit the stands like a fuse.
A pleasant tremor rippled down his spine. He'd grown up watching heroes hoisted on shoulders, never craving that perch yet never spurning it either. Now, to hear his own name ricocheting off obsidian walls and soaring into the hellish heavens—it struck like warmth against cold iron.
"The Bael Clan proudly welcomes Lord Dante Vale Gremory to the field!" The announcer's jubilant timbre rolled out; the stadium answered with a thunderous chorus. Scarlet petals—some illusion, some real—spiraled from the rafters, meeting firework bursts along the rim. Sparks of crimson and cobalt painted the darkling sky.
Outwardly, Dante stepped onto the sand with tranquil poise, his cloak billowing just enough to catch the light. Inwardly, his pulse jackhammered. This is a mere weekend tourney? he marveled. Feels more like the final match of a demonic Stanley Cup. And he, apparently, was the favored team.
As his boots pressed the chalk‑white sigil at center ring, the cheers simmered into a respectful hush. Lowborn and mid‑class spectators settled, reverent. Up in the gilded skyboxes, a smattering of nobles offered polite applause—tokens of etiquette more than admiration—as his opponent emerged.
"The Bael Clan welcomes Lord Brinyalf Stolas to the field." The same announcer now sounded curiously neutral.
Booing cascaded from the cheap seats, and Dante bit back a smile. Classic heel entrance. Brinyalf strode across the sand bare‑chested, flaunting a lattice of ornate, eastern tattoos that rippled with every confident step. An indigo war‑skirt swirled around lean calves, metal‑shod boots gleaming. The entire ensemble screamed mobility and showmanship.
Dante's gaze narrowed. Days earlier, Brinyalf had boasted that no blade could pierce him, that Dante's beloved "twig"—the alloyed sword‑spear he'd built by hand—would crumple against whatever mystical defense cloaked that tattooed flesh. Yet here he was, shirtless, practically begging for a strike. Some kind of supernatural dermal armor, then.
I've shattered Sirzechs's demonic plate before, he reminded himself, wincing at the memory of the coma that followed. I can shatter this.
Brinyalf halted ten paces away. "Heard your mouth flapping, filth," he sneered, launching a wad of spit that arced impressively before splattering against Dante's steel‑capped boot. "Thought I'd run? From you?"
A flick of Dante's hand vaporized the glob into harmless steam. He might have applauded the sheer distance covered—ten feet, minimum—if the arena hadn't erupted into fresh torrents of disdain. Jeers rained down like hailstones.
Dante exhaled, centering himself amid the cacophony. To the crowd he was a symbol; to Brinyalf, a target. But to himself, he was simply Dante—tempered by family, by failure, by fire.
The colossal hologram of his face still hovered high above, roses drifting lazily across the projection. He lifted his spear and let its alloy catch the torchlight, silent promise etched along its length.
One match between me and the quarter‑finals, he thought. Let's give them a memory worth cheering for.
The referee's sigil flared at the arena's edge, signaling the start.
Sand shifted. Muscles coiled.
Showtime...again.