The entrance was unimpressive. A warped manhole, hidden behind a plate sprayed with graffiti—an emblem of a hive.
Dante knelt down and brushed the metal. There was blood, dried with time, embedded in the cracks. The Caledrons marked their territory with blood.
He descended.
The tunnels opened before him, the stench suffocating, stagnant water, sweat, cheap perfumes, and beneath it all... something fouler. A sour note of cooked flesh.
The light came from rusted electric lamps.
Then he reached a door. Thick, made of red iron, engraved with screaming faces frozen in the metal.
A camera swiveled. A nasal, mock-cheerful voice crackled :
— "Password, darling ?"
Dante stared straight into the camera with a cold gaze. He didn't answer. He raised his fist... and struck.
Three times. With bare hands. The metal bent like bone. The alarm blared inside, but it was too late—the door was already opening.
Beyond it, a red hallway. Chains hung from the ceiling.
Glass chambers lined the walls, where emaciated bodies, naked, tattooed with shifting glyphs, silently endured unholy rituals.
Golden-masked torturers froze in surprise.
— "The intruder! one of them shouted."
— "It's him ! The troublemaker !"
Then the blood began.
Dante leapt forward. The first torturer raised a gauntlet, but Dante's dagger severed the hand.
Blood spurted in a geyser, repainting the walls. Another tried a technique—too slow.
Dante lifted him with one hand and hurled him against a glass wall.
The impact shattered one of the chambers. The captive inside—her eyes hollowed—screamed in a piercing, inhuman wail, possessed by an unfinished spell.
The sound shattered lightbulbs. Dante staggered, ears ringing.
— " They twist souls here. They break them to sell… or consume. The world before the Fall wasn't so bad, after all."
Dante plunged his dagger into the ground. With both hands, he channeled the corruption he carried into it.
Black tendrils burst from his skin, spreading like violet tentacles around him.
The glyphs on the walls began to flicker, disrupted.
He advanced, eyes bloodshot. At each step, he met a torturer, a tattooed guard—none survived.
He struck with vengeful fury. Entrails ripped out, limbs severed, skulls crushed against the walls. The floor became a red mire.
Then finally… the chamber at the end.
Sarn. The man was old, bald. His body scorched with symbols burned into his flesh.
His gaze was that of a man who had seen, done, and inflicted everything.
— "Dante."
— "You remember my face ? Cock sucker." the young man asked.
Sarn smiled—a slow, repulsive smile.
— "I remember her. Your mother. Brave. Beautiful. Too proud. I took one of her eyes myself. It was... delicious. She screamed, but it was for her precious son. You want revenge, don't you ? Yet she came to us willingly… to sign the deal."
He raised his arms. The symbols lit up with fire. Flaming chains erupted from the ground.
But Dante was already on him.
Sarn summoned debt-wraiths—the souls of those who had signed without reading.
Dozens of translucent bodies swarmed Dante, scratching, biting, unleashing all their rage upon him.
He screamed. His skin tore open, revealing black veins. He spat blood. His leg nearly buckled under a phantom bite.
But he didn't retreat.
In a single move, he broke his own arm and used the jagged bone as a weapon.
He stabbed it into Sarn's throat with a beastly cry. Blood erupted in a geyser.
Sarn, stunned, tried a final spell—but Dante slashed his belly open in one broad stroke, eviscerating him. Sarn collapsed to his knees, eyes rolling back.
— "She forgave you, you know. She never wanted you to become this, bastard son…"
Dante crouched, grabbed his face, and said :
— "I'm a bastard son. It's only natural I ignore her wishes."
Then he decapitated him with the bone.
In battle—especially one like this—, Kang Soo Jin, became someone else. The corruption amplified his darkest emotions, devouring him. Ginny, too, gave him strength through her rage.