The Opening Act

At Seoul, there was a place where fire and destruction was everywhere. Standing at the origin of it was Dante with closed eyes. Screams of fear, crying in despair was music to his ears. His demonic instinct was telling him to kill them. They were humans yet he wanted to kill them.

Show them how superior he was.

Was it because he was originally a denizen of the Chaos world? He had no answer to this question.

But he had an answer to another question. Why was he attacking and causing chaos around this city when he had promised that he wouldn't go around attacking without a reason?

Well that was simple, achievement. Achievements need to be made and the fact was that he wasn't going around killing anyone. In fact, he hasn't killed anyone.

Yet he could smell iron. The smell of blood. The burning smell encompassing this area. Engulfing this neighborhood.

This truly was a beautiful scene.

A scene out of a story,

Or a play-

['I was walking among the fires of Hell,

delighted with the enjoyments of Genius;

which to Angels look like torment and insanity.']

Yes, A play.

Dante quoted William Blake when reading V's Book. A fitting quote as his surroundings were burning, buildings toppled and the smell of flames enveloping everything.

"Die!" A group of hunters jumped at him and swung their weapons. He brought up his arm and blocked it shattering and breaking their weapons. Dante could see their eyes widening in shock as he backhanded them. Sending them flying crashing through buildings and knocking them out.

He smiled and turned to a particular direction. ['The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom: no clock can measure.']

Near Dante, there were people evacuating. In particular, there was a short, plain-looking, and scrawny boy evacuating and helping the people. His black hair was long, completely covering his ears and he wore plain clothes.

The boy looked towards Dante in fear but the monster ignored him still looking at one direction.

"Jinwoo let's get out of here! Everyone's safe." A young woman with long bright orange hair, blue eyes, and pale skin called out to him.

"Yeah, I know." She couldn't tell what thoughts were going through his head at this moment but she could see helplessness. and dread in his eyes.

He could only watch and wasn't able to do anything. A weak hunter was what he was. And he would never be able to change that fact.

Their conversation stopped as they heard Dante close his book making a loud booming sound. Just the act of closing a book was capable of shattering glass.

Dante looked at the rooftop of a building. "Look who has finally arrived, it's the people who tried killing me a couple days ago. I hope you haven't forgotten me yet."

Five people appeared from the rooftop as they gazed down on him. They were the S-rank hunters that were in the meeting and had come here to see what the commotion was about.

Choi Jong-In who heard Dante frowned. "An insectoid monster that is capable of human speech. I've never seen anything like that."

Cha Hae-In brought out her weapon and covered her nose with a handkerchief. "It's definitely a monster. Just smelling him makes me want to throw up. It's way stronger than anything I've ever seen."

"Yeah just being near it gives me goosebumps." Lim Tae-Gyu commented while bringing up his bow.

Baek who was watching Dante was surprised and alarmed. "That thing is much stronger than before. I don't know what it went through to grow so strong but we need to kill it if it can get stronger."

While the S-class faced off against Dante, the news picked up on this by helicopter. It was rare sight to see that a monster was able to single handedly cause so much chaos that the strongest of hunters had to arrive to put a stop to it.

This was live to all of South Korea and even other countries picked up on this. A monster capable of human speech was unheard of. The people who saw this were in fear. Though some who saw this looked with intrigue and personal interest.

This was a test. A test for the Korean Hunters to prove themself against him.

A test for the monster to prove its strength and to make countermeasures against it.

"Know this, my name is Sparda, the Legendary Dark Knight. You all will kneel before me and fear me after this." He lifted up his finger and pointed at Choi. "Especially you human, I'll make sure to pay you back for what you did back then."

"Heh. Didn't know monsters held grudges." Snapping his fingers, red orbs of fire appeared around him. "How about reenacting that scene we performed for the world to see."

"Well it is a show, we have to satisfy our audience, don't we. But how about we change the roles between us. I'm sure that'd be much more satisfying and interesting." Sparda said while grinning showing his rows of sharp teeth.

"Satisfying for you. So let's not do that." The red orbs of fire flew and all aimed at Sparda. His smile didn't fade as he brought up his sword slashing at the orbs. The moment it made contact, the fire disappated as if it was never there. "That all? Pathetic."

"Let's do this together. Don't let your guard down." Ma Dongwook brought up his shield and spear. Jumping down from the building, his landing sent shockwaves. His body began growing larger and larger to giant size. Cha Hae-In and Baek Yoonho followed suit as Cha had her sword out and Baek was fully transformed, his eyes glow orange-yellow, his hair turned white, and his pupils became slits.

Though Sparda seemed to not take them seriously, in his thoughts he was planning things out. 'If I remember correctly from the info I gathered, they've got a good team. Each of them have a good role to fill this comp. A mage, archer, tank and two strikers.'

Baek and Cha dashed to him as they launched their attacks. Chae threw a barrage of strikes while seemingly looking like she was dancing. On the other hand, Baek who was fully transformed used his claws to attack but his pattern seemed more animalistic than his partner.

Dante took Sparda and blocked Cha's attacks with his blade while he diverted or blocked all of Baek's attacks. 'These two are the strike team. Their goal is to find an opening and strike me with full force when they find it.'

Though he was being attacked, Dante didn't look particularly impressed. He easily blocked all their attacks and they started to realize how large of a gap they had.

'Our attacks aren't working.' They thought and gritted their teeth. But they weren't alone and they knew that.

A blue arrow flew at a high speed and struck Dante in the face making him let go of his sword and knocking his head. 'An opening!' The two who saw this attacked seeing him vulnerable.

Just as their strikes were nearing, Dante caught their sword and arm with the palm of his hands. Their face turned into shock as he rose back up with the arrow in his mouth. He looked at the rooftop to see Lim Tae-Gyu in shock with his bow pointed at him.

'Legolas over here's job is only to annoy me. Constantly putting me on guard and having to always take out the arrows he throws at me.' Dante crushed the arrow in his mouth and munched on it.

"How about shooting more, your arrows taste much better than I expected it to." He grinned and pulled both hunters slamming them into each other. With them disoriented for a moment, he kicked Baek in the face sending him to the ground with Cha.

He pulled out his sword and was about to slash them with it but something interfered. It was the hunter Ma Dongwook and he diverted the attack with his shield and spear.

"Here comes the punching bag." Ma ignored his comment and swung his spear sideways but Dante narrowly dodged it by sliding below it.

'The tank is pretty much here to cover both that girl and dog. When I break their chain of attacks, he comes in and blocks my attack. Taking him out first will get rid of a lot of trouble.' Dante thought.

He jumped up and kicked the spear away from his hands and used his sword to strike at the now cracked shield knocking it away for a moment. Electricity came out of his hands as arrows were shot at him. The lightning blocked the arrows breaking them away from their original target.

Lightning filled his hand as he smashed it on the tank burrowing his head to the ground. Dante then heard a roar, turning around he was met with a giant flame dragon.

The dragon swallowed him whole and kept running through the city until it exploded in a giant ball of flames.

Choi who just shot the dragon at Dante was sweating and nervous. "This monster just took out half of our entire team so fast. This is really bad, I don't see a single notion of us winning."

Lim who landed next to him chuckled nervously. "Yeah frankly I want to run away. But let's do this Choi Jong-In, I'm not giving up and neither should you."

In the distance, the explosion of flames was suddenly destroyed as lightning broke out of it and made it dissipate. Walking out of the smoke was Dante with burnt marks but no real damage was visible as he patted the dust on his shoulder. "Don't think it'll work twice Red Aizen."

"You ready?" Lim said with a nervous smile. He brought up his bow and a blue arrow appeared.

Choi pushed up his glasses with his eyes closed. "As I'll ever be."

Dante burst in a flash of red and ran at them. The two long range hunters fired at him sending an astonishing number of balls and spears of flames and arrows at him.

Dante dodged the attacks but he began seeing their plans. With an area so open, they attacked and brought down the buildings near him making a single pathway where he could only go forward. "Is this also part of your master plan, Aizen? Well I'll play your game."

With only one way, he didn't have much room to move so he could only teleport and block the attacks with his sword and lightning.

"This isn't working!" Lim yelled out while still firing his arrows.

Choi who heard this screamed back. "Of course it isn't! Did you expect it to?!"

Lim knew he was doomed and so was Choi. He stopped firing arrows and took out hurdle of essence stones, each the size of a football and placed them on the string of his bow. "Hey if this backfires then don't blame me when we're dead."

Before Choi could even say anything, Lim pulled back the string as he concentrated all his magic at the stone making it shake from the chaotic amount of mana. "Just die!" He fired the stone and the power sent shockwaves around.

Dante who saw this smiled at the challenge. He lifted up his sword as lightning came down from the sky wrapping it around Sparda.

When the arrow arrived at him, Dante swung his sword making both attack meet each other. What it resulted in was in a giant explosion of mana that razed everything around them from 2 miles out.

Luckily the population was evacuated as Dante gave them time at the start to do it. Those that were unfortunate was the helicopters as they suffered a lot of damage but ultimately managed to remain stable at the end.

But down below, Dante rushed out of the dust storm that he was in with his arm completely charred up. But soon his arm was beginning to heal. 'I didn't know that Legolas had a f*cking nuke in his quiver. He was lucky that it worked or else the mana inside the stone would of exploded it in his face killing him.'

Choi and Lim spotted him. "For crying out loud, he isn't dead yet! Choi you have to get him, my right arm is completely useless for now. I'll use my left hand to shoot."

They continued shooting at him but it was evident that now the attacks were weaker. Lim's attacks were so flimsy now that Dante could even ignore them as he focused on the flames now.

He clasped his hands out and an electric storm surrounded the two and hit them head on. They screamed in pain as their bodies began being fried from the attack.

Choi had a better resistance to burning as he was a fire mage though his body was still burning. He looked up to see Dante swinging his massive weapon down at him.

'So this is the end.' Choi thought as he closed his eyes. He knew he couldn't defeat someone like Dante alone. They made a huge mistake letting him live. They should of made sure he was dead. Just the thought of letting a monster like this loose on his country made his heart ache in pain.

But what else could he do. He wasn't strong enough. No matter how cunning he was. In face of the strong, he was nothing. An average man that one can easily defeat. As he was awaiting his death, he noticed something wrong.

The pain... there wasn't enough pain.

Where was the feeling of having his body being sliced in half.

Opening his eyes, what greeted him was Dante standing in front of him. His sword still held up high but what caught his attention was that his mouth was bleeding. Blood was seeping out of his mouth.

He heard him chuckle in pain. "Well... this is surprising."