Chapter: The Touch that Shivers the Soul
Author: Eternal_Jokr
A/N: This fanfic is open to criticism and opinions, tell us what you think in the comments section and leave your support. Thank you
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Dawn on the third day in Orario did not bring the singing of birds, but rather the familiar sound of the wind whistling through the cracks in the broken ceiling of the abandoned church.
Dante opened his deep purple eyes exactly at five in the morning. He did not stretch, his body, rigid and dense from constant activity, awoke on high alert, like a machine that had just been plugged into a socket.
He tried to get up from the old sofa but felt an unusual, excessively warm weight pressing against his chest.
Looking down, he was met with a tangle of black hair and blue ribbons.
Hestia was completely sprawled across his torso.
Her short legs were thrown over Dante's thighs, and her chubby hands tightly gripped his waist as if the young man were a giant teddy bear.
She drooled lightly, letting out a satisfied snore while subtly rubbing against the rigid muscles of his chest.
"Hestia" Dante called, his voice hoarse from sleep echoing through the empty hall.
The goddess didn't even blink.,instead, she muttered something incomprehensible, tightening her embrace even more and burying her face in his neck, enjoying the heat his body generated.
"Hestia. Get off. I need to go to the Dungeon."
"Mm... just five more minutes, Dante..." she grumbled through her teeth, her eyes still closed.
Suddenly, her divine mind registered the texture of what she was touching.
Hestia opened one eye, realizing she was literally mounted on top of her sole dependent's bare torso.
A mischievous, completely perverted smile formed on her lips. She opened both eyes, which gleamed with a wicked intensity.
"Good morning, my handsome and strong adventurer" she exclaimed, shifting her body upward so she was sitting directly on his abdomen.
She puffed out her chest, stretching the famous blue ribbon around her breasts perilously. "What a wonderful way to wake up, don't you think? Cozy, intimate...divine."
Dante remained with his arms extended on the sofa, looking at her with the expression of someone observing a stone statue.
"You are heavy. And you are blocking my legs"
"Heavy?! How rude to a goddess who spent the entire night watching over your sleep" Hestia puffed out her cheeks, leaning forward until her face was just a few centimeters from his.
Her sweet perfume invaded Dante's senses, but he didn't even blink. "And what is wrong with holding onto my own dependent? I mean, gods and their children should share this level of physical affection"
"Look at these muscles, you spent yesterday smashing Goblins and don't even have a scratch for mommy Hestia to kiss?~"
To prove her point, she reached out and began to squeeze Dante's biceps with visible admiration, her eyes practically turning into hearts.
"So firm... It's like hugging a statue from the blacksmith district. You know, Dante, if you're cold, I can take off this blue ribbon and..."
Before the goddess could proceed with her comically perverted insinuations, Dante simply placed both his wrapped hands around Hestia's waist.
With the ease of someone lifting a cushion, he hoisted her into the air, ignoring her protests and little shrieks of surprise and deposited her gently on the floor next to the sofa.
He sat up, his back popping loudly in the silence, and began to tie the leather straps that secured the Demon Slayer to his chest.
"Hey! Don't ignore me when I'm being seductive" Hestia stomped her foot, her fists clenched and her face red with embarrassment and comic frustration. "I am your goddess! I should be the center of your attention before you go into that hole full of monsters"
Dante stood up, throwing the dark fabric of his black cloak over his shoulders and pulling the hood down to cover his purple eyes.
He walked to the wooden table where yesterday's bag of Valis rested, took a few coins for the day's food, and turned to the goddess, who was still sporting a massive pout.
"I left the rest of the Valis in the box. Buy ingredients for dinner. Today I intend to go deeper"
Hearing that he was going deeper, Hestia instantly shifted from a whiny goddess to a protective one. She ran to the door, flinging her arms wide to block the exit with her diminutive size.
"Deeper?! Dante, the Guild receptionist almost swallowed me alive yesterday when you said you went to the 4th floor alone! Promise me... promise that you won't do anything crazy and that you will return whole to my arms!"
Dante stopped a step away from her. The shadow of his hood almost swallowed the goddess completely.
Hestia's outstretched arms remained firm, blocking the exit with a determination that tried to hide her real fear of losing him to the abyss of Orario.
He looked at her in silence for two heartbeats. The icy expression on his face gave way to something subtly softer.
Instead of giving his usual flick, Dante took a step forward, closing the distance.
He held Hestia's shoulders with his large, bandage-calloused hands, immobilizing her gently, and leaned down.
He pressed his lips firmly against the goddess's forehead.
The touch lasted only a second, but for Hestia, it was as if time in Orario had frozen.
The warmth of his mouth contrasted with the cold skin of her forehead, and his proximity was such that she could smell the iron and worn fabric of his cloak.
Dante pulled away, releasing her shoulders with his usual calmness.
"I always come back, Hestia. Have a good day"
He stepped aside, pushed the wooden door open, and stepped into the sunny streets of Orario, leaving the sound of the latch to echo through the abandoned church.
Hestia remained in exactly the same position, arms still wide open, blinking at nothing.
The silence in the church was absolute, slowly, a wave of heat rushed up from her neck, hitting her cheeks, which puffed up and took on a crimson tone so intense it rivaled the most expensive rubies in the commercial district.
Her hands came down slowly, her chubby fingers touching the exact spot on her forehead where his lips had made contact.
"W-What...what was that?!" she stammered loudly to the empty hall, her heart racing against her chest in a way she had never felt before.
She covered her face with both hands, letting out a sharp, muffled squeak of pure embarrassment. "That brute... that insensitive idiot! How can he simply do that and leave to walk into a labyrinth?! That's... that's a low blow"
She began to pace in circles around the altar, kicking the air and trying to fan her face with her hands, completely discombobulated.
All her perverted posturing and morning jokes had been obliterated by a single genuine gesture.
Still red to the tips of her ears, Hestia looked at the bag of coins on top of the table and let out a surrendered sigh, a silly, deeply-in-love smile appearing on her lips.
"You better come back very hungry, Dante... because I am going to cook the best thing you've ever eaten in your life".
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The morning sun began to warm the stone streets of Orario, but beneath Dante's hood, his mind remained focused.
With ten thousand Valis in his pocket, he knew that his priority before facing the deeper floors was not extravagant food, but protection.
The bandages on his arms were useful for containing his own energy, but his body needed something that could resist the sharper claws and teeth that lay ahead.
He walked toward Blacksmith Street, the commercial heart where smoke from the forges of Familias like Hephaestus's continuously rose to the skies.
The sound of hammers striking anvils created an industrial symphony that pleased Dante's direct senses.
He ignored the large, gleaming shops. He knew that, with his current budget, high-quality light metal armor was out of reach. Dante sought something rustic, durable, and unobtrusive to his agility.
He entered a smaller workshop located in a side alley.
The place smelled of whale oil, coal, and tanned leather.
On the walls hung various pieces of protective gear for beginners.
"Welcome, lad" grumbled a dwarf blacksmith with a thick beard, without raising his eyes from the bracer he was polishing. "If you're looking for magic swords, you've got the wrong door. Here we only work with the basics that save lives."
"I want high-density leather armor" Dante said, his hoarse voice cutting through the sound of polishing. "Something that can take cuts from Kobolds and punctures from Elite Goblins. And it shouldn't weigh on my shoulders."
The dwarf stopped his work and looked Dante up and down, assessing the width of his shoulders and the immense black iron sword on the young man's back.
A smile of approval appeared on the old blacksmith's face.
"A fellow who knows what he wants. I have exactly what you need".
The blacksmith walked to the back and brought out a robust piece.
It was a vest made of Young Wyvern leather, reinforced with double leather plates in the chest and stomach area.
The color was a matte black, devoid of flashy adornments. The side ties were made of braided monster tendon, ensuring brutal flexibility.
"Wyvern leather, even from a young one, is three times more resistant than surface bull leather" the dwarf explained, tapping his knuckles against the chest of the armor, producing a dry, solid sound "Absorbs impact and distributes force. It won't break if a Kobold decides to bite your sternum. Costs 4,500 Valis".
Dante approached and touched the material with his wrapped left hand.
The moment his fingers brushed the leather, his skill's passive analyzed the structure, it was without magic, without injected mysticism. It was perfect.
The absence of magical properties meant that his own void aura would not destroy the integrity of the equipment.
"I'll take it" Dante said.
He pulled the leather bag from under his cloak and counted out the shiny gold coins, depositing them on the dwarf's wooden table.
Dante put on the vest right there. He adjusted the side ties tightly, feeling the firm leather mold to his muscular torso over the bandages.
The weight was ideal, the armor felt like an extension of his own skin, protecting his vital organs without diminishing his mobility.
He threw his black cloak over it again, hiding the new equipment beneath the worn fabric, and fastened the straps of the Demon Slayer over everything.
"Looks perfect, boy" said the dwarf, putting away the coins. "Now go, and don't let those monsters tear my work apart on your first day".
Dante gave a brief nod and left the shop. Now armored and with money still in his pocket, his purple eyes locked onto the colossal silhouette of the Babel tower in the distance.
Dante walked with firm steps along the busy Avenue, the main route connecting the commercial district to the central plaza of Babel.
The new Wyvern leather adjusted perfectly to his torso with every movement, giving him a sense of readiness.
Beneath his worn hood, his purple eyes mapped the flow of people, ignoring the noisy merchants and chatterbox adventurers.
Suddenly, the sweet aroma of stew and fresh bread cut through the smell of dust on the street.
Before Dante turned the corner, a light, agile figure appeared in his field of vision, nearly colliding with his massive shoulder.
"Ah! Wait, please" a soft, melodious voice loaded with naive vivacity echoed right beside him.
Dante stopped instantly, his body adopting a defensive posture out of pure reflex. He looked down.
Before him stood a young woman with gray-blue hair arranged in a rounded bob cut, tied back in a small ponytail with a bun.
She wore the classic waitress uniform, a long olive-green dress with an immaculate white apron over it. Her bright gray eyes transmitted an almost magnetic sweetness.
She displayed a radiant smile, arching her body forward while holding something between her delicate fingers.
"You dropped this, you know? It would be a waste to leave it behind" she said, extending her hand to show a small, glittering magic stone the size of a chestnut, shining timidly under the sunlight.
Dante looked at the crystal in the girl's hand and then fixed his gaze on her eyes.
His expression remained an unyielding mask of ice.
"That stone is not mine" Dante replied, his hoarse, deep voice coming from beneath his hood.
Syr blinked, slightly surprised by the coldness and tone of the young man's voice, but she did not back down.
Instead, she tilted her head to the side, the mischievous smile returning to her lips.
"Really? But I saw it fall right near your black cloak. Are you sure it wasn't in your pocket, mister mysterious adventurer?"
"Absolutely" Dante took a step forward, the dense aura of his anti-magic operating silently beneath the bandages. "My body absorbs and digests magic stones the moment I touch them. It is impossible for me to drop an intact stone magic along the way".
Before she could withdraw her hand or tuck the crystal into her apron, Dante extended his wrapped left arm.
With a swift, precise movement, he grabbed Syr's hand, closing his calloused fingers around hers, pressing the magic stone between their palms.
In the second contact was established, Syr's smile froze.
The passive [Ápeiron Khaos] did not just activated, it roared. Dante's anti-magic aura began to violently digest the mysticism contained within the stone.
Through direct touch, Syr felt the compressed formula of the magic's energy being shattered.
The stone in her hand did not break, it simply dissolved into gray smoke and pure static, sucked directly into Dante's bandages.
But the effect did not stop there.
Syr was no ordinary girl, and the hidden presence within her, linked to the deepest, divine layers of Orario, reacted overwhelmingly to Dante's conceptual void.
A current of purple static leaped from his skin and traveled up the waitress's arm, rising like a high-voltage shock straight to her chest.
It was an electric, cutting, and absolutely unprecedented sensation. The anti-divine energy of the [Eclipse of the Gods] scratched the periphery of her soul, not to harm, but colliding with the dormant divinity within her.
Syr let out a gasping, audible sigh, parting her lips as her legs faltered for a fraction of a second.
Her gray eyes dilated to the extreme, hit by a sudden wave of heat and a slight, but undeniable, excitement.
It was the shiver of finding something that the Arcanum could not control, an absolute danger that seemed to pull everything around it into a pleasurable abyss.
Dante released her hand just as quickly as he had grabbed it.
He opened his own palm, showing that the stone had completely vanished without leaving a single fragment behind.
"I told you. My body absorbs them" Dante broke her trance, his hoarse voice hitting Syr's flushed face.
Syr took a trembling step back, bringing her free hand to her chest, feeling her heart beating frantically against her ribs.
Her cheeks took on a vivid blush, and the look she directed at Dante changed completely, her cold calculation and innocent farce had been obliterated, replaced by a burning fascination and an almost obsessive curiosity.
"You... you are truly dangerous..." she whispered, her voice coming out lower and more unstable than usual as she tried to regain her composure and breath.
"My... what a complicated and serious answer" The waitress joined her hands behind her back, looking him up and down with renewed interest, forcing a smile that now carried a genuinely predatory intensity.
"So you really are an adventurer, aren't you? Which Familia are you from? I've never seen this giant sword or this black cloak around here before. Are you new to town?"
"Hestia Familia" Dante limited himself to saying, about to bypass her to follow his path to Babel.
"Wait, don't be in such a hurry!" Syr took a quick side step, blocking his path with surprising agility for a civilian.
She extended her hands, holding a square bundle wrapped in a neat plaid fabric "You're going to the Dungeon right now, right? Going on an empty stomach is dangerous. Take this. It's a lunch box that I made myself."
Dante looked at the bundle. The smell was good, but his pragmatism spoke louder.
"I don't have Valis to spend on street food right now. I saved the rest for dinner."
"Who said I'm charging? It's a gift!" Syr took a step forward, getting close enough for the top of her head to almost touch his armored chest. She forced the bundle against Dante's wrapped hands, laughing at his rigidity. "Consider it a good luck investment for your day in the Dungeon. But... on one condition"
Dante held the package, feeling the warmth of the food through the fabric.
"What condition?"
"By the way, I am Syr. Syr Flova" she said, pointing with her index finger toward a tavern down the street, displaying a welcoming smile full of friendly ulterior motives.
"When you come back alive and victorious from down there, with your pockets full of Valis, you have to come have dinner at my workplace. The place is called The Hostess of Fertility. I'll be waiting for you there to find out if the food was tasty.
" Dante Ashborn"
"Dante~Deal...Dante of the Hestia Familia? Don't you dare stand me up."
Dante looked at the lunch box in his hands and then at the silhouette of the girl who was already starting to walk away, waving from behind with contagious vivacity.
She knew the name of his Familia, and now he had an informal commitment at one of the most famous taverns in Orario. He tucked the plaid fabric package under his black cloak, on top of his new leather armor.
"Thank you" he limited himself to saying.
With a swift spin of his heel, the dark mantle of his cloak billowed in the wind as he marched toward the entrance of Babel, leaving behind a gray-haired waitress who was still massaging her own fingers, feeling the warmth of the void echo throughout her entire body.
---END---
To be continued....