Chapter 76: Please Forgive me

Elena spat a mouthful of blood onto the black sand, her hands trembling violently as she tried to crawl backward. Even with her leather chest piece caved inward from Dante’s fist, a desperate, hysterical arrogance flared in her bloodshot eyes. She looked up at the blade hovering inches from her neck and let out a ragged, trembling laugh.

"You... you think you can just erase me, Dante?" Elena gasped, her voice cracking with a mix of terror and spite. "You’re a ghost who crawled out of a trash pit! Marcus and I have the backing of the high-floor entities! The corporate lords of the upper sectors will erase your entire mainframe if you touch a single thread of my—"

Dante didn’t let her finish. his left hand shot forward like a solid vice, violently clamping around her throat. He lifted her entire frame off the ground with a single arm, cutting off her breath instantly.

His face turning more serious, and his eyes carried a freezing, suffocating density that made her words die in her throat.

"Do you think you can die this easily?" Dante whispered,"You should feel the exact same pain you inflicted. You should pay for what you did to Yenna. Don’t you want to feel her pain?"

Dante’s eyes slid down her body, locking onto her legs and moving slightly upward toward her thighs.

Elena’s face instantly lost every single drop of its remaining color. Realizing exactly what he was looking at and what his words implied, a sudden, overwhelming wave of pure survival terror violently shattered her arrogance. Her long red nails clawed frantically at his grip around her neck.

"No... no! You can’t do that to me!" Elena shrieked, her voice turning high-pitched and frantic. "I’m a girl, Dante! You can’t do that! Please!"

Dante didn’t answer. He slowly brought the invisible edge of the Seven-Sins Asura Blade down, the cold air rippling right against the fabric of her thigh armor.

Looking at the unseen death resting against her skin, Elena completely broke. The frantic, crazy grin she had worn vanished, replaced by desperate, sobbing tears as she began to beg for her life, throwing away every single ounce of her pride.

"Please! Dante, please remember me!" she sobbed hysterically, her body shaking violently in his grip. "Remember how I cared about you in the past! Remember the old squad! I’ll do anything! Anything you want! You can make me your bitch! You can keep me as your slave forever! I’ll sign any system contract you want, I swear! Just please... please don’t do that to me! Don’t do it! I know you love me back then and want me , so please i will do anything i will suck your d**k , i will do anything for you, but please don’t do that to me, please forgive me"

Dante didn’t listen to a single word. His expression didn’t flicker for a microsecond. With a smooth, ruthless movement of his arm, he thrust the invisible edge straight into her right thigh.

"ARGHHHHHHH!!!"

A bloodcurdling, deafening scream of absolute agony ripped from Elena’s throat, echoing across the open crater under the clear sky.

Dante didn’t stop. Moving with systematic, icy precision, he began to cut more and more, slicing through the iron plates and the muscle structure, moving up and up to her *********** and replicate the exact permanent crippling marks she had carved into Yenna. The invisible blade cut through bone and magic channels with zero resistance.

"Ahhhh, nooo, ughhhh, ahhhhh, stopppp, pleaseee, nooooo, i – i am beginning– ahhhhh, stopppppp" she was crying and screaming in terror and pain. But Dante was not stopping.

Across the crater, Marcus and the surviving few soldiers watched the display in absolute, frozen horror. Their bodies trembled violently, their weapons slipping from their fingers as the sheer, unhinged brutality of the man they had betrayed completely caved their spirits inward.

Ten paces behind him, Esabella stood firmly in front of the stone pillar. The moment Dante’s blade began to cut, she reached out her long claws, her massive wings snapping wide to completely cover Yenna’s face and eyes. She didn’t want the small girl to see this dark, monstrous side of him. But Esabella herself kept her eyes open, watching his cold, blood-soaked movements with a mixture of awe and fanatical, protective intensity.

"Dante! You bastard! Stop!" Marcus roared in a sudden, suicidal burst of panic. He gripped his broken broadsword with his remaining strength and lunged across the sand to stop the execution.

Esabella didn’t even look back. Her tail snapped forward like a switchblade, the spikes catching Marcus mid-air and violently throwing him sideways into the obsidian rubble, crushing his ribs instantly. "Don’t you dare interrupt my King,"

she snarled.

Dante didn’t even look at Marcus. The invisible sword pulled Elena’s screaming soul matrix into the hilt, but he wasn’t finished venting the baseline rage of his past life’s betrayal. He pulled the blade out, shoved it back into his interface, and began to use his bare hands.

...

Then after He delivered a brutal slap that split her lip, followed by a full-power punch straight into her chest, then another into her stomach. Elena’s face was completely covered in blood, her vision blurring as she began to lose consciousness, her voice reduced to a faint, pathetic gurgle as she kept begging into the dirt. "Ahh.. ughhh!!, Stop... please... stop...i am sorry please–i will do anything–i am sor–"

Dante raised his fist again, his fist humming with a lethal aura, completely deaf to her whimpers. His mind was fully locked in the dark loop of the Yenna suffering and 55th-floor raid betrayal.

"Please.... just–just kill me please ughhhh! Someone–someone please...ahhhhh please someone saveeeee meeeeeee"

Then A broken, sobbing cry suddenly drifted out from behind the wing scales. Esabella glided forward, her wings opening up as she carried Yenna’s body tightly in her arms. Yenna was weeping hysterically, the tears pouring down her cheeks as she reached her small, trembling hand out toward hum.

"I don’t want to see you like this, Dante!" Yenna screamed through her tears, her voice cracking with pure emotional pain. "Please, look at me! It’s over! I don’t want you to become a monster for my sake! Please... just stop!"

Hearing her desperate, sobbing voice, the muscles in Dante’s raised arm suddenly froze mid-air.

The aura surrounding his fist slowly receded. Dante stood perfectly still over Elena’s bleeding, unconscious body for three long breaths, his head lowered as his hair shadowed his eyes. He slowly opened his fist, his breathing stabilizing as he forced the fury back down.

He willed his system to quiet down, turned his body slowly, and looked at Yenna’s crying face with his usual, expressionless stare. His face full of blood.