Chapter 71….
“…What did you just say?”
Lucia could no longer keep her expression in check.
She looked at Dante with eyes wide, as if she couldn’t believe what she’d just heard.
“Exactly what you heard.”
When the tiger is gone, the fox plays king.
With Marquis Zenon absent, Lucia had been acting like the head of the house.
There was no other way to interpret it.
Lucia’s face hardened cold when she realized that.
“You wandered the battlefield for a while and seem to have forgotten how to show respect to your mother.”
Her voice changed too.
The voice that had always been warm and gentle now felt as chilling as a north wind.
“If you feel that way, I apologize. But as Mother said, having been rolling about on the battlefield for some time, it’s become a bit difficult to always mind formalities. Especially—”
Dante fixed his gaze straight on Lucia’s eyes.
“—toward enemies.”
“How dare you!”
Lucia’s roar exploded the moment she finished speaking.
Everyone was taken aback.
She had never raised her voice that loudly before.
And the target of that shout was Dante!
Faces went from stunned to uneasy; people fidgeted.
“This is a private family matter, so I intended to look on, but Dante’s behavior is truly insolent—”
“Shut up.”
Dante’s sharp voice cut off Yuren, who was about to butt into the conversation after sizing things up.
His timing was so deft that Yuren could only clamp his mouth shut.
But not Lucia.
“I can’t stand watching your arrogance any longer!”
“And what will you do if you won’t stand by and watch?”
Dante answered without even glancing at Yuren.
“As a mother, I will give you the punishment you deserve.”
Dante shook his head with a smile at those words.
No one could make sense of this scene.
Dante and Lucia—both were so different from how they usually were.
Lucia, who had been so kindly gentle, was now vicious.
Dante, who usually seemed meekly docile, was behaving with near-blasphemous insolence.
How was anyone supposed to process such a sudden change?
Through the ears of those people, Dante’s voice rang out.
“Wasn’t that the very reason you called them here?”
Only then did Dante’s gaze land on Yuren and the white-armored knights.
Though his face held a smile, his eyes had sunk darker than an abyss.
The knights’ faces stiffened when they saw that.
“Wh-what do you mean by that?”
Lucia’s voice trembled in panic.
“Playing ignorant, pretending to be concerned, acting benevolent—how far will your act go, Mother?”
He called her “mother” with his mouth, but his meaning was something else entirely.
Lucia could not say anything; she finally pressed her lips together tight.
Yuren stepped forward instead.
Completely different from before.
Formal speech gone, smile erased, replaced only by thick murderous intent.
“They must have noticed, after all.”
He spoke without honorifics, the tone emptied of all warmth.
“The child who inherited the Aquites castle—said to be a heavenly talent. It seems that talent isn’t limited to swords.”
Ssshhh—
Yuren drew his sword.
“My lord!”
“What is this!”
“Summon the soldiers! How dare you draw a blade here, before the heir!”
Those who saw it shouted in horror.
To point a sword at the heir of the Aquites family? That should never—could never—happen.
“How noisy.”
When Yuren frowned, thirty-one knights drew their blades at once.
Chacha—chang!
Unlike the pure white armor, the swords they unsheathed were red.
As if blood had dripped onto a field of snow.
The area filled with a choking, murderous atmosphere.
For a moment Dante’s pupils wavered greatly.
‘…That is—’
Fragments of memory flashed through his mind.
A ruined hometown.
The burning Marquisate of Aquites.
A father fighting the enemy regardless of death.
Mileon who sacrificed his life to protect him.
Eina, seizing an enemy’s leg and shouting to run.
Death.
Death.
Death.
The image of men in pure white armor raising red blades over the corpses of everyone Dante had known.
Enemies.
Symbols of a nightmare who could never live under the same sky.
“…It was you.”
Dante’s face twisted.
Like the shape of a demon.
Blood and tears shed in helpless flight—today, at last, he had found the target on which to avenge that grievance.
“Yes. It was you.”
His hands trembled.
Dante turned his gaze to Lucia.
She flinched when she met his blazing fury.
An absolute hostility she had never seen even once before.
Lucia, apparently unable to understand that look, took a step back.
But whether she understood it or not made no difference to Dante.
He knew who had truly taken everything from him in his former life.
“Lucia.”
She no longer deserved to be called his mother.
No—she didn’t even deserve to be treated as a human being.
She had stolen Dante’s life whole, destroyed his house, and driven those he loved to death.
For that alone, Lucia was no longer a mother; she was garbage fit to die.
“You must be completely out of your mind.”
Yuren said, watching the scene with a chilling laugh.
“Daring to disgrace the Marchioness—there is nothing you can say to excuse that. From now on I will punish you in her stead—”
“Akrasion.”
“…Hm?”
Yuren paused.
Dante continued speaking.
“Everyone stand down.”
Pfuooooaaak—!
Blood spurted out.
An arm holding a red sword shot up into the air, along with a spray of red blood.
The sudden carnage left even Lucia and Yuren, the ones involved, unable to immediately understand what had happened.
Thunk.
The severed arm fell to the ground.
“Gg—guuuuaaaagh—!”
Yuren finally reacted.
His scream served as a signal.
Pabababababat—!
The ten swords Dante drew began slaughtering the white-armored knights and their red blades.
When had he appeared? Where had he hidden?
No one noticed Akrasion’s presence until half the enemy knights had already been cut down.
“What is this!”
Lucia, pale, backed away in terror, leaving their screams behind.
Dante looked straight at her and advanced slowly.
Closing in with measured steps as she retreated.
“It was you.”
“What are you babbling about!”
This Dante was not the Dante she knew.
He was someone else.
What else could she think?
A being wrapped in deadly intent, ready to slaughter anything that stood in the way.
That was not the Dante she knew.
“There must be some misunderstanding. Will you stop for a moment? Tell your subordinates to sheath their swords—”
“Sheathe.”
She tried to put on a façade of calm and manage the situation, but it was useless.
“Sheathe,” Dante said again, his voice sharper than any blade.
Lucia swallowed dryly and opened her mouth.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sheathe? What on earth are you—”
Dante’s gaze grew heavier, to the point that if someone didn’t know him, he looked like an unfilial brute oppressing his mother.
Yet Dante didn’t care.
“Enough. I’ll ask these questions after I take you into custody.”
Ssssshhhhh—
At last Arpheon revealed himself.
Dante glanced to the side.
One man had his right arm severed and bleeding profusely.
“Was your name Yuren?”
In truth, Dante didn’t care about his name—at least not until the red sword was drawn.
But now it was different.
‘They aren’t exactly the ones I remember.’
Even as his fury boiled, Dante kept a cold rationality.
They were far too weak to be the real beasts that had destroyed his house.
Of course, they would still be strong compared with Silver Obscura, but compared to the true danger, they were nothing.
Which was why Lucia had brought them herself.
But their strength was being cut down, all at the blades of Akrasion, before they could truly show it.
‘But the connection is certain.’
Pure white armor and red swords.
And the distinctly alien magic he could feel.
Even if Yuren and those knights weren’t the exact same people from that time, they were very likely part of the same organization.
No—he was sure.
And Lucia was part of that organization too.
“You…!”
Yuren, having managed to staunch the bleeding in his arm, ground his teeth and glared at Dante.
“How can you be called knights! To ambush while hiding your faces!”
He bellowed loudly, veins bulging in his neck.
“If Sir Zenon—the Empire’s Sword—saw this, he would weep in lamentation!”
He seemed to be trying to claim some moral high ground by slandering Dante and Akrasion.
But sadly for him, the time for arguing virtue had long passed.
They had no intention of sparing them alive.
But they also wouldn’t kill them outright.
These were enemies so deeply buried even the Empire might never uncover them.
Having revealed themselves, Dante intended to keep their lives to squeeze as much information out of them as possible.
“You talk too much.”
Thinking that was at least fortunate, he swung Arpheon.
Kitt—kigirigit—!
A metallic sound sharp enough to burst eardrums.
If even that had gone unheard, no one would have noticed Dante’s sword move.
Even Yuren was slow to realize that his body had been cut by the blade.
At the same time—
Sluuurrrrk—
Red blood streamed from the bodies, staining the white armor red.
As if their own swords had painted them so.
