Chapter 71: Finding Yenna

Dante walked down the deep red corridor with his hands shoved inside his hoodie pockets. Crude oil torches burned at regular intervals along both stone walls, casting long, dancing shadows across his path. A carpet muffled the sound of his boots, swallowing every footstep. At the very end of the hallway, a massive open archway let in the continuous, rhythmic sound of hammering.

He passed a heavy side door on his right and abruptly stopped.

The door was exceptionally tall. A cold brass plate was riveted to the center: BOSS CHAMBER 55. SEALED.

Dante knew this door intimately. he had stood on the exact opposite side of it, his back pressed hard against the wood as his stamina pool hit zero and a massive obsidian claw came rushing down through the dark.

He slowly pulled his right hand out of his pocket and pressed his bare palm against the iron band. It was freezing cold, the metal radiating a faint trace of residual tower energy.

Not a single muscle moved on his face. His expression remained a complete mask. He stood there, holding his hand against the door for three long breaths, before calmly pulling his fingers away and continuing down the corridor.

The arena layout was much vaster than he remembered. Rings of ancient stone benches rose high toward the ceiling, surrounding a wide, circular floor covered in black sand. Directly in the center of the arena stood a crude wooden stage, and hanging over it by a rusted chain was a colossal iron cage, completely empty. Massive banners carrying the winged sun sigil of the Radiant Dawn guild covered the stone walls.

A hundred lower-tier reconstruction workers were scattered across the floor, frantically nailing planks and carrying wooden buckets.

One worker turned around, saw the figure walking out of the tunnel, and instantly dropped a wooden plank.

A woman a few feet away froze, backing away slowly while tightly gripping a bucket in her hands. Nobody screamed. Nobody yelled for guards. They looked at the dark young man in the torn hoodie, noticed the absolute coldness in his eyes, and they immediately understood exactly who he was.

"Run," Dante said.

They didn’t hesitate. They ran. Buckets clattered loudly against the stone, tools were abandoned in the sand, and within less than ten seconds, the entire massive arena stands were completely empty.

Dante walked onto the open sand, his eyes tracking the empty cage hanging above.

’Two days,’ Dante thought to himself, his reconnected system interface smoothly running data lines across his vision. ’They’re setting up a public execution or a guild showcase. Marcus really thinks he cleaned up all the evidence.’

"Stop right there!"

A sharp command split the quiet room. Twenty armored guards came rushing out of the dark tunnels on the far side of the arena. They wore long capes over their iron breastplates and carried tower shields. Leading the squad was a thin, tall captain who held a long silver spear, pointing the tip straight at Dante’s face.

"You are trespassing in a restricted guild zone!" the captain shouted, his voice shaking slightly as he tried to maintain his posture. "By order of the Radiant Dawn management, state your name and—"

Dante didn’t bother letting him finish. He silently willed his interface to trigger.

[Ground Weight Control activated.]

[Target Area: 15-Meter Front Radius.]

[Pressure Applied: 100x Override!]

BOOM!

The black sand beneath the guards’ boots sank instantly by three feet. The sudden, monstrous weight spike drove their tower shields deep into the ground, crushing their arm structures. The captain’s silver spear snapped cleanly down the middle under the sudden gravity, and his face violently slammed into the ground. Dante walked calmly across the shifting sand, while the twenty guards looked up at his approaching step with their mouths wide open in pure survival terror.

He didn’t pause. Moving with systematic, ruthless efficiency, he cut each throat using a single fluid movement of his invisible edge, never slowing his pace for a single second.

[Soul Reaper Protocol activated.]

[Permanent Attribute Gain Processed!]

[Rewards: +30 Strength, +28 Agility, +20 Vitality permanently added to your baseline.]

The thin captain was the last one left alive, his fingers clawing frantically through the sand as he tried to drag his crushed lower body backward.

Dante stopped right in front of him, looking down with a deadpan stare. "Where is Cell 9?"

"Under... under the east tunnel..." the captain choked out, dark blood leaking from his lips as he pointed a trembling hand toward the dark corridor. "Third door... please... don’t..."

SLASH.

Dante cut him too, his expression entirely emotionless as the captain’s soul was pulled into the invisible hilt. He shoved his left hand back into his pocket, gripped the iron keyring he had taken from Brann, and walked straight into the dark east tunnel.

Floor 54.

Esabella stood right in front of the open gate, her long black claws casually picking up a torn piece of a white banner from the floor.

...COME BACK, DANTE.

She read the words twice, her eyes narrowing slightly. The other half of the banner lay a few steps away in the dirt, cut cleanly through by a single, horizontal strike. She didn’t need anyone to explain what had happened here. She knew the neat line of that invisible edge perfectly.

Dante’s name, written for him by someone else.

She dropped the fabric carelessly, letting it fall back into the ash, and walked down the quiet corridor. Her black cloak stayed pulled up.The oil torches along the walls flickered violently whenever she glided past them, and the dark, crackling black fire on her fingertips burned a little brighter with every step she took.

Halfway along the hall, she stopped right in front of the massive side door marked BOSS CHAMBER 55.

At the end of the long corridor, the open arena expanded in front of her. The wooden stands were entirely silent, completely empty. Twenty heavily armored carcasses lay scattered across the black sand in a neat, perfect ring, and the ground beneath them had been pressed completely into a crater by an immense gravity spike. She counted the bodies casually, her eyes analyzing the clean throat cuts, before looking down at the fresh footprints left in the sand.

There was only one set of prints. They led straight toward the mouth of the east tunnel.

Esabella smoothly glided after him, her hips moving with a dangerous grace.

The east tunnel , Dante moved through the dim corridor, walking past rows of empty iron cells, the keyring from Brann resting firmly in his left hand.

Cell 1. Empty. Cell 2. Empty.

He kept moving. Cell 3, 4, 5.

Cell 8.

At the very end of the long row, a single, flickering oil lamp burned dimly over a reinforced door. A small rusted plate on the front read simply: 9.

Dante stop. He had thought about this exact moment for weeks while surviving in the depths of the abyss. He had practiced every single word he would say when he finally found her. But right now, standing in front of the bars, his mouth felt completely dry, and his right hand remained frozen, unable to move the keys.

Through the narrow bars, he looked down at a body huddled on the cold floor.

She sat with her knees pulled tightly up to her chest, trying to make herself look as small as possible. Her black ears lay completely still against her knotted hair, and her tail was wrapped tightly around her ankles to protect herself from the damp cold. Her hunter clothes were torn into rags, her skin covered in dark bruises and dried blood.

She didn’t look up when his boots stopped. She didn’t even register his presence. Her pale lips were moving continuously, repeating the same words over and over in a quiet, broken rhythm.

Dante leaned his head close to the bars, his breathing stopping as her voice reached his ears.

"...I agree," Yenna whispered into the dark, her voice completely devoid of life. "I agree. I agree. I agree. Just stop... I agree."

Dante’s fingers closed violently around the bars, the metal groaning under his sudden grip.

Behind him, at the very top of the slanting tunnel entrance, a female figure in a black cloak stepped slowly out of the shadows and stopped.

Esabella stood completely still in the dark, her eyes tracking Dante’s tense posture. She had heard the exact same broken words drifting up from the cell. She looked past his shoulder, her gaze locking onto the small girl on the floor, her mind instantly calculating who this person was to her King.

The memory of Elena’s voice come in Dante’s mind, cutting through the damp quiet of the east tunnel.

"Yenna~ and most importantly, let me tell you what I did to her. When she was locked in that cage, I took my blade and I completely tore apart her–**********..." She had burst into a loud, frantic laugh. "You understand what I just said, right, Dante?"

Dante’s own response burned in his memory, raw and furious: "You crack bitch. I will hunt you down. No, I will make you pay so severely that you will beg for an end to it."