Path of the Demonic Villain

Leaning against the unadorned carriage belonging to House Fioravanti was a man in his mid-thirties with brown eyes and sharp, weathered features. He was dressed in a coat, fingerless gray gloves, and a fur trapper hat that kept out the biting cold.

This man, who was also the coachman, had just come out from the building nearby to smoke. He held a toscano cigar in his right hand, which he lit with a satisfying flick of a flip-top lighter before exhaling a thick stream of gray smoke into the frosty air.

For a few seconds after, he absentmindedly flipped the lighter’s casing back and forth between his fingers before turning to look at the obsidian obelisk towering in the distance.

A beat later, he turned away, took another drag, and exhaled.

He had already suspected that the youngest son of House Fioravanti and company would not be coming out of that Labyrinth anytime soon.

However, just then, something caught the corner of his eye, and he turned back toward the structure.

"...?"

Even though it was now almost night and the atmosphere was gloomy and gray, he could still make out the silhouette of a boy dragging what looked like bodies across the ground.

"Signor...?" The man’s eyes widened as he recognized the bloodied figure with black hair, pale skin, and purple eyes. Without hesitation, he tossed his cigar aside and rushed forward to help.

Dante, who had been dragging the bodies, dropped them and straightened up as his coachman, Matteo, jogged to a stop in front of him.

"Goddess..." the man breathed in a cracked voice when he saw that the dead were Lucian and Thalia. However, he quickly composed himself and focused on the survivor.

"Allow me to help you, Signor Dante." Without waiting for an answer, he hauled Dante’s arm over his shoulder to bear his weight.

"I’ll come back for them. Right now, you look like you need urgent care!"

As he spoke, he gestured with his head toward the building that looked like a church not too far from them. This building was called a Center of Respite, and all Labyrinths had these centers near them.

After barely taking a few steps toward the structure, Dante suddenly said in a hoarse voice, "There might be a High Priestess there who goes by the name Clara. No matter what, Matteo, do not let her get near me. Do you understand?"

"Huh? Uh, yes — yes, signore," Matteo stammered, nodding quickly even though the order caught him off guard.

Dante sighed.

Right now, the last thing he needed was to draw any unnecessary attention to himself.

Everyone knew that High Priests were more proficient in healing magic, and if Clara were to be in the center, she might offer to heal him for a fee. But then, Dante figured that if she were to come into contact with him again, she would definitely feel a bit of the divine power flowing through him.

Now, that would not have been a problem, except the first time she came close to him, she probably didn’t feel anything. So it would look questionable if, right after returning from the Labyrinth with two dead people, he suddenly emanated a divine power that was unfamiliar.

"May I ask what happened?" Matteo couldn’t help but ask, especially after he had seen an arrow embedded in Thalia’s corpse.

Dante’s pained expression became even more somber. After a few seconds, he replied, "We were attacked by scavengers..."

***

A moment later, the door swung open to reveal the main hall of the secular guild center. A few scattered tables were arranged near the roar of a central fireplace, and toward the back stood a grand wooden bar, where a bartender was methodically wiping down a brass-rimmed glass.

Nearby, a clerk sat behind a cluttered reception desk, making quick notes in a thick ledger. In front of the desk, a lady in a clerical dress was leaning over the table in a bored manner, idly spinning a silver pendant between her fingers.

When the door opened, the few people in the center turned to see Matteo supporting Dante’s weight as they walked through the entryway.

At that moment, Clara, the lady in the clerical dress, immediately hurried over while asking what happened. Of course, sights like this from people returning from a Labyrinth were common. But she believed that Dante and his company did not journey beyond the third floor, and even within the first three floors, the knight who had been with him had seemed capable of handling whatever threats they encountered.

However, before Clara could reach them, Matteo immediately held up a hand. "Hold on!"

Startled, Clara halted with a frown. But Matteo, who kept moving toward the stairs leading up, quickly added, "There are two corpses lying outside, not far down the path to the Labyrinth. They are the other pair who came with us. Could you please go fetch them before the night fog sets in?"

"...?"

Clara’s frown shifted to confusion.

"Wouldn’t you like me to heal him first?" she asked.

"Don’t worry," Matteo replied firmly, not breaking his stride. "Just take care of the bodies."

Upon seeing that he was insistent, Clara exhaled and her expression softened as she turned toward a bulky man sitting at one of the tables nearby. "Alright."

She then gave the man a nod, prompting him to stand shortly after.

At the same time, Matteo, who had now begun hauling Dante up the stairs, glanced down at the clerk. "Is there an empty—"

"Second room on the left," the clerk interrupted, grabbing a set of keys to follow after them.

They all headed upstairs, where the clerk opened the door to a small bedroom.

Matteo helped Dante over to the bed. As Dante settled onto the mattress, leaning against the wooden headboard, Matteo asked, "Is there anything I can get you?"

Dante thought for a moment, then replied, "Coffee."

***

Some time later, Dante cradled a thick ceramic mug, taking sips of the Winterberry Blend, an imported coffee so strong it could make a person jittery for an entire day.

His body was still aching, but since the injuries he had were not life-threatening, he preferred to let them be for now.

At the moment, he was alone in the room and had asked Matteo to give him some space. Of course, the man had hesitated because he couldn’t understand why Dante had refused the help of the cleric, but in the end, he relented and stepped outside.

With him gone, Dante stared into the dark liquid in his mug with unfocused eyes, lost in thought as he kept replaying all the events that had happened today.

’I’ve lost a lot today,’ he thought with a grim expression. ’Those bastards. I can’t believe this. They looted me blind of everything. May the Goddess curse them! Curse them! If I’m not mistaken, I think I’ve lost stuff worth over 5,000 gold crowns.’

Despite being rich, Dante was not one to let it get to his head, and he mourned losses just like any other person.

Besides, most of the items he had lost were irreplaceable, like the Ring of Borrowed Fortune.

That item was one of his most valuable possessions and had been given to him as a gift from his mother, at his request. It had cost her a lot of gold to win at an auction. And now, it was gone!

’Curse them!’ Dante sighed.

Having been a pay-to-win player in his past life and even more so in his current one, he knew losing top-tier gear always hurt, but watching his entire inventory get wiped clean was a whole new level of pain.

By the way, speaking of the Ring of Borrowed Fortune, it was probably because of that very item that this disaster had befallen him.

He suspected that the ring had played a hand in nudging fortune his way, allowing him not just to succeed in meeting the Goddess, but also in becoming her Black Apostle. But then, in exchange for that immense stroke of luck, it had thrown him right into the path of scavengers so he would be robbed of everything he carried.

’It’s a pity that one of the things I lost was a friend of mine.’

Dante took another sip of the coffee as he felt his mood grow immensely sour.

After a moment, he raised a hand and caressed the spot near his heart where he had been shot.

’I almost died,’ he thought. ’It’s probably because of the ring that I didn’t.’

Dante also suspected that the arrow had been aimed straight at his heart, but missed by a mere hair’s breadth.

Not just that, those guys were smart, and if they had checked to confirm that he was truly dead, they would have figured he wasn’t because his heart was still beating. So he also suspected that the ring made it so that they didn’t find that out about his heart.

Of course, he could be wrong and everything that had happened might have just been normal coincidences.

But one thing was certain.

’If my heart had been hit, that would have been the end of me.’

After becoming an Apostle, Dante had begun to have some instinctual knowledge about the nature of his power, Blood Demon.

One of the abilities of this Divine Skill was that as long as his heart was not damaged, if he paid the cost to use his power, he could recover from most physical injuries with time.

His life and power were rooted in his heart, and the moment it received any damage, that would be the end.

’I was really close to death.’

The thought made him shudder as he realized just how close he had come to a permanent Game Over.

’This isn’t some novel where the transmigrator or reincarnator doesn’t die. I have to be really careful going forward. In fact, I need to be three times more cautious than I already am.’

While he was still lost in thought, the door suddenly slammed open, causing him to look up.