"That's why," Dante said, as his laughter echoed throughout the dream dimension. Not even Asmodeus understood what was happening; she was confused by Dante's reaction to seeing his deepest desires from all his lives.
"Asmodeus, you're a great friend! You gave me direction! A goal!" Dante said, a terrifying smile in his eyes. Whatever he had seen, it excited him greatly... Those small memories... Dante wanted to see more, wanted to have more ambitions from his past lives, wanted to understand more about himself, and Asmodeus...
did the worst deed of all.
"I want you, Asmodeus." Dante's eyes turned black as the abyss; he was obsessed. Dante wanted to steal power from him; he wanted to consume him and turn him into a slave if necessary.
"Come here!" Dante shouted, the dimension began to destabilize, and Dante felt his presence. Yes, that demon was already doomed; the only thing he wanted was to kill Asmodeus.
WUUUSHH!
Dante's black aura began to spread as he focused on capturing Asmodeus. He still felt Asmodeus's presence in his soul, poking at specific places in his memories. It was a race against his own soul; if Asmodeus reached something that affected him...
"Careful." Dante heard in his ear, like a whisper; it was his own voice, a bit more distorted, but he recognized it perfectly. "What happened?" Dante wondered; it was his alter ego trying to connect.
"We have a problem. Asmodeus is heading to other parts of our soul where I have no control," Alter-Dante said. He was like a guardian of Dante's soul, protecting and helping it develop and transform into a progenitor. He wasn't just a backup of other progenitors' memories; he was Dante himself in a future where he had already become a progenitor, merely providing support for him to ascend.
"Since when is Asmodeus so powerful?" Dante questioned, focusing on trying to protect his soul with his energy. "He isn't," Alter-Dante replied. "Then... why is he-"
"Our soul has always been broken," Alter-Dante said, leaving Dante in silence. Why could Asmodeus access even the memories of other lives? It was a simple fact... Dante's soul had always been fragmented. It wasn't simply because Asmodeus was strong; it was simply that Dante was a reincarnate who hadn't suffered celestial purification, where his soul would be recycled and reintegrated into the world.
Dante, however, was merely a spark of a soul that had never been recycled.
"Damn," Dante said, "So he's going to keep attacking my soul?" Dante questioned. "Yes, but we will fight against it, let him show his desires," Alter-Dante said, after all...
"The more you remember, the stronger you'll become... after all... We've never been small beings in these various lives." Dante heard, and his eyes glowed black as he fell to his knees.
Lust is not just sexual desire; many confuse this, but lust is nothing more than what makes you feel pleasure. From a life of riches to a happy life where you always seek more pleasures for your life. This was Lust, and Asmodeus perfectly controlled this aspect; after all, he was the very living representation of lust.
"Ahgt!" Dante screamed, falling to his knees as the memory of his last life before being Dante Scarlet passed through his mind.
When he realized it, he was standing in a dark room, where a girl with long black hair was curled up in her room.
"So that's how it was, what a pity," Dante said as he walked around the place. The room was nothing special; even the windows seemed poor. "Hm... it wasn't much, really, despite not seeing myself in these situations," Dante said and looked at the girl, who slowly lifted her gaze to him. "So you see me," he said. The girl nodded.
Dante knelt close to her and stroked her head. "You did a good job; it's not your fault," he said, and the little girl continued to cry. For some reason, he remembered Eldrax seeing the little girl. Well, she should have been about seventeen, but Dante only saw her as a cute and sad little girl.
"I understand, so that was it," Dante said while stroking the girl's long black hair. It was as if he felt the connection between them. "I will take you away from here," Dante said, and his hand began to release miasma and engulf the little girl completely. "Tsk, this feeling... It's not Lust...
it's the lack of it," Dante said, feeling bitter as he recovered the darkest memories of that life, so much contained rage, so much despair, neglect, lack of care, lack of love, just a huge void...
"I understand... I wasn't run over that day by accident..." Dante said, looking in the mirror and seeing only the girl's reflection. "I killed myself," he finished, as he saw his world shatter like glass. Several memory fragments began to return to him, and he completely remembered his life before Dante.
"So that was my name..." Dante said as he consumed the soul fragment and placed it back in the place it shouldn't have even separated from.
While Dante was being taken to this world of dreams and memories created by Asmodeus... A woman had just exterminated over six armies of demons; the desert was nothing but a battlefield distorted by reality.
The ground was a sea of melted glass and charred remains, where heat waves distorted the air, creating mirages of horror. Demonic corpses lay scattered everywhere, cut into so many pieces that the scene resembled a nightmare from a horror film.
In the center of this carnage stood Valentina, unscathed, her red hair floating in the air. Her clothes were stained with blood, but her presence exuded overwhelming power. In her arms, held up by their necks, were two demons who dared to challenge her strength, reduced to mere shadows of themselves. Their bodies trembled with pain and fear, life force slipping away like sand through their fingers.
"How pathetic," Valentina murmured, looking at the demons with disdain. Her voice dripped with dissatisfaction; she had fought endless armies for these two pieces of filth to attempt to kill her next without posing any risk. "Did you really think you could stop me?
You're nothing more than insignificant worms," she said, so disappointed that she threw both bodies to the ground, wiping blood from her face. The wind stirred dust and glass fragments around her. "Did you really think I wouldn't know you were just trying to buy time?" Valentina said, her cold gaze falling upon them...
Both looked at her without understanding why she had only just started speaking. She had fought without uttering a single word; all that madness suddenly disappeared during the battle, and they were just massacred.
"I believe it is Lucifer, your master, who tried to keep me busy. You don't know the current world situation." Valentina pointed to the Giant Tree. "I have already sensed all the trees in this world and would like to update you on the status of your invasion," Valentina said with a macabre smile.
"The powers can defend themselves, so the trees on the Vampire and Witch continents are already being destroyed by Vlad and Musashi. But you should have anticipated that, so I'll tell you something interesting..." Valentina said as she approached them slowly. Their eyes widened in terror, and they crawled backward, but the glass shards on the ground began to cut their hands...
"I love the smell of fear," Valentina said, sniffing the air. "Ah~ how refreshing," she said with a wide smile.
She was happy; it had been a long time since she had let loose everything she had, yet she continued there, offering even more terror to those poor demons.
"They split into four trees," Valentina said with a cold smile that seemed to cut into the souls of the demons before her. "Two of them have been destroyed, and you bet on the smaller, lesser continents, thinking it would be easier to dominate a base there. But I'm sorry... It seems the Demi-Humans have just destroyed the tree that was there."
Fethy, one of the captured demons who was already powerless, somehow found the energy to scream. "Th-That's impossible! They don't have the strength for that!"
Valentina laughed scornfully; she truly enjoyed taunting small fries. "Ah, well... maybe that's true. That idiotic king must be sleeping, but let's just say that witch bitch Dante wants me to call sister just erased that tree." She closed her eyes briefly, feeling Morgana's familiar aura and the explosion of magic emanating from her. "How sad for you, isn't it?
Now only that one remains, the last tree," Valentina said, pointing to the remaining tree in the distance, while she walked calmly and picked up the powerless bodies of the two demons.
Verall and Fethy groaned in pain as Valentina lifted them by their heads, her hands wrapped in an almost palpable energy of sheer strength. They tried to struggle, but Valentina's strength was surreal, relentless, and inescapable.
"URGT!" Both roared in agony as Valentina pulled them, directing their gazes to the last tree.
"Watch the show!" Valentina said with a voice that sounded like a sinister call of the apocalypse's trumpet. When the demons looked at the tree, a flash of light and bluish energy emerged from it.
Suddenly, a huge cut in the shape of three claw marks in the air tore the tree into pieces, the bluish energy pulsating and expanding, clearing the sky of all clouds. The tree, once towering and full of malevolent power, was torn apart, each fragment of its demonic wood crackling and fragmenting into small particles of light.
The demons looked on in horror as the tree was reduced to nothing. "Wh-What... what is this?" Verall shouted, his voice filled with terror.
Valentina merely smiled, her face illuminated by the bluish light. "This, my dear demons, is the true power of a woman." She squeezed the demons' skulls even tighter, her eyes shining with an intensity that seemed to pierce their souls. "You thought you could control these lands, use these trees as bases for your invasion."
AWOOO!
The piercing howl reverberated across the battlefield, a primal sound echoing with savage force. Valentina paused for a moment, her eyes gleaming with a look of anger, after all... she wasn't exactly friendly with the owner of that howl.
"It's been a while since I heard that howl," she murmured, a hint of a smile curving her lips. "Seems like she's furious..."
She glanced at the demons in her hands, their broken and defeated bodies. Fethy and Verall were bloodied, their expressions a mix of despair and pain. Valentina tilted her head, observing them with a cruel curiosity.
"But well... you don't matter anymore, do you?" Valentina said, her voice soft and almost affectionate, a disturbing contrast with the strength of her grip.
The demons merely whimpered, unable to respond, their bodies trembling with the impending sense of doom.
"You don't need to live anymore," Valentina declared, squeezing the demons' heads with relentless force.
BOOM!
The two heads exploded in her hands, pieces of brains and bones flying in all directions, splattering the battlefield with a grotesque splash of blood. The headless bodies fell heavily to the ground, their existences reduced to nothing more than inert flesh.
"Long time no see, Siren Sirius Stela," Valentina said in a straight direction, after all, that howl was directed exactly at her.