Dante walked out, frustrated, his mind caught in a strange impasse. With every step he took through the streets of the Western Empire, his head tried to reformulate every possible scenario. While talking to Beelzebub, he realized that many things were off. At least, thinking about killing a world tree seemed surreal. But he had proof that something was very wrong in this place.
"First: The sector we're in doesn't have any gods," he thought. "Besides Strelitzia and Lilith, I haven't found any sign of a real god. Lilith... She's not really a goddess, she only holds divinity because of the existence of Hell and the power of the Ruler. She's nothing more than a conceptless figure. Unlike Strelitzia, who is a true goddess, full of divine power."
"Second: The sector has serious power balance issues," he continued thinking as he walked, his expression tense. "When I came back, I noticed that something was completely off. Especially when I looked at Valentina. I even pretended not to see it, but now... Now I realize there's something deeply wrong with all of this. Even before I came back to life, there were signs of imbalance... And I... I am the imbalance in person."
The thought that he could be the imbalance, something so natural in him, made him question everything. "Not only am I a strange being, with both negative and positive powers, but I also have titles and legacies that shouldn't exist. This only proves that I'm not the imbalance... It's the sector that lacks protection against it. In fact, this protection doesn't exist. There's no one who represents this negativity, this evil. The sector is unbalanced because of it."
"Good and evil, Ying and Yang, shadow and light, positivity and negativity... None of that exists here. Sure, evil exists, but there's no representative, no one who carries the world's misery on their shoulders to keep the balance stable."
He paused for a moment, the weight of his own words still reverberating in his mind. "They... were testing this sector?" he murmured to himself as he continued walking, now more aware of his surroundings. "A test... Yes, that makes sense. In the end, if this is a test, the conversion to a larger sector makes total sense. They want to integrate the existences of this world into other sectors."
"But now, something else is starting to make sense," he continued, the connection between events taking shape. "The hunger for power of that woman... She was chosen by the Universe to be the Negative God. That's why everything aligns with what she wants. Even I, dying, unable to bring Tiamat back, she managed to find the true body... Something happened in Kryoris... She succeeded."
Dante stopped walking for a moment and took a deep breath. "Even though I stopped the experiments with Tiamat's end energy, she found something else... A woman who, by the way, is a beast of the end." He rubbed his forehead, remembering the pieces that were beginning to fall into place. "And Ethan Smith... He was somehow connected to the demonic cult. At the time, I thought it was a coincidence, but now... It wasn't. It was probably Astaroth. She wanted the Sin of Greed."
He felt more and more isolated in his own conclusions. "Now, I can't trust anyone but my wives..." he murmured with a bitter smile, feeling the solid truth that remained. "Since I killed Asmodeus, demons stopped coming to me. Now, the Virtues are safe. I've already recovered Gluttony, Lust, and Greed. Four more to go..."
The night sky seemed to weigh down on him. Something big was coming, he could feel it. "I feel like something bad is about to happen... Something I won't be able to avoid."
He teleported through the flames and appeared inside Albion. In the highest tower, he sat, looking down as the moon reached its peak in the night sky.
"I need to go to Hell and start descending its cycles... I'll lose all my powers temporarily until I reach the last cycle. Until then, I'll have to trust them to keep everything intact... Am I worrying too much?" he questioned as he sat at the edge of the rooftop.
As he leaned his head against the wall, he began to think about his current wives and the ones he still needed to rescue somewhere...
"Alright, Lord Dragon," she said, smiling playfully, trying to ease the strange tension in the air.
"I found Nyx," he mentioned lightly, then looked at the sky, the night. "She recently awoke, and we talked for a bit..."
"Hm... so it looks like I wasn't the only one who awakened in this Era..." she remarked, giving a shy smile. "And the others?"
"You know, don't you? Valentina is Amaterasu and Morgana is Tsukuyomi, though they no longer have their memories... However... she told me that if I gave this..." Dante murmured, as two strange spheres of power appeared in his hand, "They would regain their memories," he explained.
"I-is that..." she wanted to say something, but... "I assume you already understand where I'm going with this, right?" He asked, smiling.
"You... want to go after the others, don't you?" she asked, her body trembling slightly. She was the only one who survived that day, the only one who carried the will of all of them together... She was...
"I've already started... Nyx said she found almost all of them, in various sectors..." Dante murmured. "Ah~ my head hurt so much thinking about it, but I've made a decision."
"You have my legacy, don't you?" He asked. "That time in the forest... when you completely disappeared... it must be because of the legacy." Dante commented, and she gave a shy smile, doing the same as him... A strange golden and red energy sphere appeared in her hand.
"Although I've already used it... it seems it hasn't run out," Voralith said, and Dante simply smiled. "Let's trade." He said, handing over the two spheres.
"When I disappear from this world and go to Hell, give this to Valentina and Morgana..." He said before standing up, holding his own legacy.
"I'll be back soon, I need to speak with... this guy." He said, squeezing the legacy... Then Dante's body disappeared.
"Ah... so, they're awakening..." Voralith murmured, her voice hoarse and trembling. She sat slowly, bringing her knees up to herself, as if trying to shield herself from what was coming. "Good... good..." Her words disintegrated in the air, sinking into a deep sadness as tears silently began to flow down her face.
She hugged her knees tightly, as if the gesture was the only thing keeping her anchored to the present. Her shoulders trembled slightly, and the pain she was trying to contain erupted in a soft sob, but those tears had been kept for millennia...