The white floor stretched endlessly, polished like glass, and on it lay a girl as though discarded by the world.
Her long purple hair fanned around her like spilled ink, strands clinging wetly to her face.
Blue lipstick painted her slack mouth, her chest rising and falling in shallow, desperate breaths.
Inked across her clear skin were sharp, gangster-like tattoos, crawling down her arms and curling up her thighs, it was basically a snake surrounded by black lilies, and skills biting down on the body of the snake.
Her body was wrapped in a short black dress clinging too tightly to her curves.
She wore a thigh high boots, with heels.
Meanwhile a tilted red fedora still clung stubbornly to her head, absurdly stylish for someone who looked one heartbeat away from death.
Voluptuous.
Broken.
Reeking of despair.
A cruel mix of Negativity radiated around her body.
Dante on the other hand stood over her, one hand rubbing his chin, the other buried in his pocket. The Administrator's void was empty as always, pure white stretching to infinity, yet somehow, she looked out of place even here.
"…So this is what I dragged in... Wow she is so beautiful, I dare say she could make a living as a top selling supermodel back in my world." He muttered to himself, his tone more curious than compassionate.
He crouched down, studying her face. Her lashes fluttered weakly, and even unconscious, there was something feral in her expression, like a cornered dog that still thought it could bite.
Dante smirked. "She really burned half her lifespan for that egh?" His voice carried no pity.
If anything, it carried the amusement of someone watching a speedrunner fail the tutorial level. "Although she really egged all those spirits, cried her lungs out, and they still laughed her off… damn, that's cold."
He leaned closer, his reflection ghosting across her glossy lipstick.
Her hand twitched faintly at her side, nails digging against the floor as though still clawing for something.
Dante chuckled, the sound low and humorless.
"Pathetic! Desperate! Impure! Perfect!" These words meant nothing to him, but as newborn Outer spirit he instinctively found the word Impure as annoying, and despite this girl being impure, he was more excited to test his new abilities, more than anything else.
"Still, I can't leave her here like this... I think I have time to quickly pain a proper domain." Adam said as the Administrator's void was silent awaiting his words and imagine to birth a vivid world.
Dante stood still, staring at the unconscious girl, and for the first time since waking in this body, a strange itch gnawed at him.
"Hmm First impressions matter, don't they?" It wasn't a human thought. It was something deeper, woven into him since his soul fused with this Rank 0 body. Instinct for this thought was the best way to describe it. A primal need that whispered. "Make her look at you with awe. Make her kneel. Make her know she is but human... That she needs you, and not the other way around."
It made him feel like a damn attention whore.
He rubbed the back of his neck, both amused, and mostly annoyed with his own existence. "Tch… it's like I want to flex just for the sake of flexing. Why the hell do I even feel this way? I never cared about stuff like this back home."
Human emotions and ideology started to break with his Negative nature, despite him thinking this shouldn't be the way one should think.
But deep down, he knew why. Animals followed instinct, and he wasn't human anymore. Something inside him demanded recognition, demanded the right to crush other spirits beneath his heel. He could fight it, but… another part of him wanted to see what would happen if he didn't.
"Fine." Dante muttered, smirking. "Let make my domain a grand space, and visually pleasing to the eyes, after all, that is what a dream is, good or bad, it should always leave an impression on the on looker.
With that he turned around from Beatrice showing her his back, as he closed his eyes, breathing slow. The white void became his blank canvas. And in his mind, he imagined it. The impossible beyond humanity, the theoretical, the primordial.
A single point.
A singularity of heat, pressure, energy — infinite, condensed, and suffocating, unstable yet perfect for life.
The Big Bang.
And the moment he thought it, the void answered, as he imagine the grand birth of his domain.
BOOOOOOOM!!!
In the far distance, a spark ruptured reality. No sound should have existed in space, but this wasn't space, it was his dream. And so the roar of creation thundered across the void, a sound like every god screaming at once.
The blank canvas tore apart. Light surged outward in floods of fire, galaxies spinning into existence like paint splatters, stars igniting, planets rolling into place. Energy and matter spiraled in perfect symmetry, and time itself stretched like an expanding breath.
In one instant, infinity bloomed.
And at the same instant, Beatrice's lashes fluttered open.
Her vision swam.
"Ahhh, my head she said." She said as she looked around. "Ha!?" She said confused as to where this is.
At first she saw only an infinite white. As soon after she saw the white floor beneath her dissolve, and saw herself floating weightless in a void blooming with suns and nebulae.
And before her, a plain man stood with his back turned, his silhouette framed by the birth of a universe.
Then she heard him.
"Let there be light."
She froze, not at him but the reaction his voice seem to have caused upon this world.
Her breath caught in her throat, heart hammering against her ribs.
And then the universe obeyed him.
Color exploded across the void, a cathedral of starlight unfurling in silence, galaxies stretching across endless dark.
Her body trembled. The air if it even was air seemed to hum with his voice.
"...W-What… what is this…?" She whispered, her words devoured by the infinite dream.
Dante lowered his hand, staring out at the cosmos with a sheepish grimace, as he whispered to himself.
"Man… I always wanted to say that. But wow, doing it out loud feels way more cringe than I expected."
Despite himself, he snorted. "Sigh, actually doing something you always wanted to do, but when doing it - it actually is not as fulfilling as one might originally think."
But Beatrice wasn't laughing.
Her entire body shook as she stared at him, tears prickling at the edges of her eyes. A mortal in the face of something truly divine. She wasn't floating too far from him, bound to his presence it would seem, but even so, she pressed her palms together against her forehead, bowing as much as weightlessness allowed, as she floated and spin. As of now countless stars, galaxies, and planet was born all in instance.
While Dante just saw this as a dream, a mere illusion not of the real world, but the creation of his ideal world, and star themselves being a reminder of his old home he nodded satisfied. But soon he heard a familiar voice behind him, full of reverence. "This unworthy mortal… greets the Great Divine."
The words came out hoarse, desperate, reverent. She believed she was showing the outmost respect to a being like him she hopes.
Dante turned around, blinking at her like she had just told him the Earth was flat.
"…Huh?"
His gamer's brain short-circuited.
One second he was role-playing "God" for his own amusement, the next he had an actual woman bowing at his feet or rather floating all over the place, calling him divine.
"What the hell? No, no, no...wait. Don't...don't start calling me that."
He rubbed his face, groaning.
"Goddammit, this is going to get so awkward so fast…
"Sigh, Beatrice can you stop doing that please, your making me feel weird."
"Ahhh yes."
She undid her praying bow, and then said.
"Ahhh... How did you know my name!?"
She asked, she knew she was calling upon a spirit but she didn't gave her name, bit what he said next only fuel the misunderstanding even more. "Oh, because I saw you, to be honest I know quite a bit about you, beside you call me, I merley just responded."
"W-What!!" She said in utter shocked. "Are you a God or something!?" Beatrice asked Dante who merley shook his head. "No, I believe the people of this world calls me, an Outer Spirit. Beside stop calling weird stuff like Great Divine, or God just call me ahhh... He paused for second saying to himself.
'I can't give her my True Name... Ahh that could work. Coming to a quick decision be proceed "Dante then looked at her folding his arms and said. "D... Call me D!"