Chapter 138: Pets

When Dante opened his eyes, he found himself in a familiar space. It was the space of the time he awakened his class.

’I’m advancing to Rank 2…’

Dante understood his current situation instantly. His current stats should be…

Existence Essence ⟨600/1000 → 1000/1000⟩

• Vitality: 58 → 62

• Spirit: 50 → 54

• Mind: 38 → 42

• Demonic Energy: 62

One thousand Existence Essence.

Whenever a Rank 1 reached this number, they’d go though the process of advancement, even if they didn’t want to.

There were only three rewards for that.

The first would be an improvement in an individual’s Core of Existence. It’d turn from a circle-shaped core into a triangle-shaped core.

That wasn’t only a change in appearance. The performance of the core itself would increase significantly, making the energies stronger when used to cast spells or perform techniques.

In other words, even with the same stats, a fireball from a Rank 2 being would be stronger than that of a Rank 1.

Unfortunately, Dante’s silver Ether wouldn’t be included in that. Maybe in the future, but currently, his ether was separated from his core for some reason, as though the World Runes thought that Dante’s core wouldn’t be able to handle it.

The second reward was—just like the time of awakening the class—a wave of knowledge from the World Runes.

At this moment, he received knowledge about mana, chaos energy, his aspects, demonic energy, and even silver Ether.

However, Dante only absorbed the knowledge silently, no excitement or happiness visible in his hollow eyes.

’It was my fault…’

As for the third reward of advancing to Rank 2, it was obviously the second class ability, in addition to a possible improvement to the first ability.

There was another possible reward, which was an improvement in a trait, but that was extremely rare.

But for Dante, he had more things to earn.

The knowledge he received was more than normal people.

The abilities he gained for his class were two instead of only one.

And most importantly, he gained a boost to all his stats, when normal people got none!

And so, Dante waited for his awakening.

…

When he opened his eyes for the second time, he found himself in the real world, but the sight he had seen wasn’t what he had expected.

Instead of the strange room with glowing purple lines, he found himself in a place made of pure darkness, just like the space he had been in but without stars.

But surprisingly, Dante could see everything without any source of light. And what he saw made his shock skyrocket.

There were countless people of all different races and species. There were the humans, giants, and frost elves that he had met before, but there were also some demons with distinct features, showing their different bloodlines. Some even had pairs of wings and halos above their heads, suggesting that they were angels.

There were also people who were shorter than young humans despite having beards. There were frost elves with normal skin instead of blue. There were people with fish features, with some of them even having half the body of a fish.

There were even spirits and people who looked like birds. Others had features of land beasts like wolves, cats, or even bears.

’What is this place…’

The most surprising part was the beasts. There were beasts with terrifying appearances and tiny or towering sizes among the people, yet they didn’t attack each other.

They were all working together, farming in some dark fields that had strange-looking fruits and vegetables, fishing in some lakes that were made of black liquid, and mining black minerals in some caves.

Some of them had clothes, some didn’t. They worked relentlessly like slaves without emotions, yet none of them was skinny or looked tired from work.

Just then, he finally felt the strange weight of his lap. Looking down, his lips trembled as he struggled to mutter a word.

“R-Ruby…”

Ruby was unconscious on his lap, but her condition didn’t look bad at all.

She looked healthier and stronger, and her beauty alone was significantly surpassing her former appearance.

That wasn’t normal, and Dante had a guess about what gave her that.

“Demon of Temptation…?”

Wasn’t that the ability of his trait? Didn’t Greed say that she might get a trait from him if she was lucky?

Dante could feel that his trait existed, which meant that it was like only a copy.

But what made Dante’s heart really sink were Ruby’s forehead and chest.

There was one complex sigil on each of them. They were crimson-red and were made of hundreds, if not thousands of tiny runes despite the sigils’ small size.

When Dante saw them, he felt a headache and his stomach twitched.

“No, no, no… what am I supposed to do? What am I… there should be something. I just…”

Dante’s mind was filled with many different thoughts, but none of them continued for so long. His conclusion was always that whatever he did was destined to fail.

Even normal slavery marks were so hard to remove. How was he supposed to remove a sigil that was made by one of the seven deadly sins?!

“You finally woke up, huh? What do you think about my collection of pets? I love how hard working they are.”

Dante suddenly heard a familiar, chilling voice, causing him to slowly turn around with wide eyes.

“Haha…”

Once he saw the familiar figure that he hadn’t seen for so long, Dante smiled, letting out a hollow laugh that held only despair.

There was a man sitting on a throne.

He wore a dark robe that hid all his features and had a crown of darkness floating above his head.

That was the strongest being Dante had ever seen.

The being that had an army of darkness monsters, the being that could easily destroy an entire town.

He was the dark entity, whome Greed confirmed to be higher than Rank 4.

“Keke, kid, you missed me that much?”

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