"Pain. Pain. Pain!" Dante gritted his teeth with wide, teary eyes, grabbing his hair violently, almost tearing it out.
Once again, he had returned to his former position above the blood formation.
He couldn't live peacefully for a few minutes, nor could he truly die if he wanted to.
He was stuck in a cycle of life and death, forced to struggle until either he survived or ended all his lives.
'No time to think about that!' Dante shook his head and decided to waste no time in this life.
He checked his wrist, and as expected, it was 13 marks now. He had no more doubts about the fact it was responsible for his regressions.
Immediately, He forced his trembling body to stop shaking, then ran again faster than any athlete could.
From his new memories, he knew that the corridor was the exit, but there was a damn barbarian woman waiting for him there, thus he had no choice but to try his luck with the gate.
As he passed through the opened gate, finding himself in a long, dark, marble passage, he raised his right hand and began to test what he did before.
There were 3 strange energies inside this body that he knew about.
"Mana, Spiritual Energy and… Demonic Energy?" Following his new memories, he channeled his Mana and Demonic Energy into the knuckles of his right hand.
Instantly, 3 crimson claws burst out of them again before he could even say anything.
'Wait—what the hell?' Dante stared at them in a daze. He was sure that he had to say something first, yet it worked without a word.
'Not now.' Dante inhaled and decided to think about that later as he scanned the claws.
They looked thin, sharp, and durable—but they had been useless against the woman's axe.
He couldn't help but remember the fire that covered it.
That was magic.
This world had real magic!
'I-I need to find a place to test the knowledge I received first. Maybe then I'll find a way to escape that bitch!!' Dante thought while returning his hand to normal.
Click!
Suddenly, his foot pressed down on a strange slab, only for his next step to land on nothing.
'Eh?'
The ground under him disappeared, showing a tunnel that led under the ground.
BAM!
Before he could understand what happened, his head crashed into the wall of the tunnel due to his high speed.
His vision blurred for a moment, then everything turned into darkness.
¢¢¢
"The beer is too cold! Are you trying to kill me?!!"
Slap!
A man in his thirties suddenly slapped a boy who didn't seem older than seven.
The boy fell on the ground, rubbing his swollen cheek and wiping his tears.
"I'm sorry… I'm sorry, uncle…"
He kept apologizing as his uncle grabbed the cold beer and started drinking it while watching the TV, ignoring the crying boy entirely.
As the boy stood up and got ready to walk to his room, someone suddenly opened the door.
A beautiful woman dressed in a red dress ran to the kid's uncle, who just laughed upon seeing her.
"You are finally her, haha! I really missed you, honey."
The woman fell into his embrace before noticing the kid.
"Oh, little Dante, can you go to your room for some time? Auntie wants to discuss something with your uncle privately~"
Dante nodded as he walked to the stairs, already used to seeing that woman 3 times a week, at least. She had been visiting them to speak with his uncle privately since his parents died and his uncle took his inheritance.
Just then, Dante's eyes fell on the money in his uncle's hand.
The uncle handed it to the woman as if it were nothing, then she laughed softly before kissing him.
Entering his room, he collapsed onto the floor and wrapped himself in his old blanket.
'....That was my parents' money.'
Dante covered his eyes with his arm, stopping the tears from falling again.
'It's not fair.'
¢¢¢
Some time later.
"Ouch."
'Am I… alive?'
Opening his eyes, Dante rubbed his head in pain, then he instantly panicked as he glanced at his wrist.
'13 marks, I'm alive! I lost my consciousness and didn't die!!' his lips curled into a smile as he let out a sigh of relief.
He didn't know for how long he was unconscious, but judging by the fact that the barbarian didn't kill him yet, he knew that he was safe for now.
The next moment, he began to scan his surroundings.
He was in a room similar to the one he'd first awakened in, but this time, the only exit was a corridor lit by strange blue torches.
In his back, there was a part of the wall pressed forward, suggesting that the tunnel that led him here was closed.
Dante gazed at it and thought: 'It looks like one of those fantasy traps I heard about. How is that even working?'
'If I didn't leave the tunnel in time… would I have stuck there?'
He shook his head and looked forward with squinted eyes, finally noticing that there was something lying before the entrance of the corridor.
"Ah!" A strange, sharp sound escaped his mouth as he identified the white object in front of the corridor.
'S-skeleton?!'
It was a humanoid skeleton, lying lifeless on the ground with a rusty sword in its hand.
He thought that he was safe here, but what if the lifeless corpse before him thought the same? Was he going to die again?
Slap!
Dante slapped himself and gritted his teeth, forcing himself to stop panicking and think about something useful instead.
Although that was his first time seeing a skeleton, he reminded himself of the lesson he learnt from all the strange situations he encountered in his past world.
Survive first, think later!
'Focus, Dante. Think about the past first.' Dante forced himself to calm down—even though his fingers were still trembling—and let his mind drift to Fafnir's memories.
Focusing deeply on them, he began to see several scenes.
The first thing he saw on his birth was his parents, but there was something special about them.
Each one of them had a pair of horns, a pair of wings, a tail, and shining scales covering some parts of their bodies.
They were dragons! This world had fantasy races, which shocked Dante.
Dante knew about the dragons from some children stories, but knowing that they existed was more shocking than his regressions and transmigration for him.
But why did they look too similar to humans? Weren't they supposed to be born as giant lizards and get human forms later? Why was it the opposite here?
'I'll think about that later.'
Fafnir was living on a floating island called Dragon Palace, where everyone but the children had similar draconian features.
Slowly, the children were obtaining these draconic features when they raised their bloodline percentage, which happened naturally while growing up, but for Fafnir, it was different.
While all the other children around him were growing horns or scales, slowly becoming real dragons, Fafnir never changed. At first, he didn't see anyone caring about that, until his parents began to show strange behaviours.
He had a father, a mother, and a sister five years older than him. Yet, only his parents showed exaggerated concern about that matter. And the strangest part, they forbid Fafnir from seeing his runes.
Soon enough, Fafnir understood why.
One of the dragons' elders noticed Fafnir's condition and tried to help him, but his parents strangely refused, saying he was alright.
The elder ignored that at the start, but when Fafnir reached the age of 9 and still didn't even have a single scale, he took Fafnir secretly and made him use the Truth Runes Orb.
The memories showed the dragon's face turn into pure terror under Fafnir's innocent gaze, then without warning, the elder gritted his teeth in anger before taking Fafnir to the elders council and made an emergency meeting.
They summoned Fafnir's family, all of them bound in chains, then the elder revealed a horrifying truth.
Fafnir wasn't a pure dragon—he had demonic blood. His runes showed him as a demonic dragon!
'Screw my fucking luck!' Dante cursed inwardly, scratching his neck again nervously.
Even though he didn't know a lot of things about the fantasy worlds, he still knew that the word 'Demon' was never a good thing.
Back to the memories, after questioning the parents, the elders understood what happened.
Fafnir's mother was bitten by a magical venomous beast when she was pregnant with Fafnir.
To save her, the father had to inject her with demonic blood that he had found in a dungeon, turning her into a demonic dragon. And because she was pregnant, Fafnir ended up with the demonic blood as well.
The council judged the parents guilty, and executed away from Fafnir and his sister.
After that, one of the elders took Fafnir's sister out and decided to raise her as his daughter, meanwhile Fafnir was brought into a prison because the elders couldn't settle on a judge for him.
Because of that, his education stopped, and he could only train a little by himself in his cell for years.
In the end, at the age of 15, they finally decided his fate.
Instead of killing him, they kicked him out the Dragon Palace, leaving him in a forest covered in snow with a large backbag, some food and water, clothes, a sword, a knife, a black orb and a notebook that contained a basic guide for the rune language.
For months, he survived alone in the forest, enduring the cold and hiding from monsters, until someday, he stumbled upon a strange tomb.
'It was that!' Dante's eyes widened in recognition.
Under that tomb, Fafnir found a body swap ritual. All it needed was sacrificing an aspect called Space—which he obviously had—and using the blood vial beside the ritual to form a magical formation.
He didn't care about that at the beginning, but his mind changed after encountering the barbarian woman.
When he met her, she showed him some kindness and even invited him to her house.
At that time, Fafnir's right eye was slit because of the dragon bloodline, leading to him being noticed by the barbarian.
When she asked about it, he said that he was a dragon, thinking that hiding his demonic identity would fix everything, but he was wrong.
She immediately began to chase him, talking about selling his corpse and becoming rich.
And eventually, she killed him.
Unknown to her, Fafnir was born with a unique ability to regress due to having something called Time Aspect. Unfortunately, he couldn't control the point he would regress to, leading him to always regress to a moment after he already revealed his race.
He tried to fight, to run, to hide, but he was always killed by her.
After dying 15 times, he found the ancient ruins and gave up, finally using the ritual after almost losing his mind. His last word was "Sorry".
He knew he was bringing a stranger into his hell, yet he did it anyway. That was how miserable his mindset became.
After recalling all his new memories, Dante sighed as a question lingered in his head:
'If I was in his place… would I have done the same?'
Even though what Fafnir did was bad, he himself died 15 times before performing the ritual, and his life wasn't good to start with. Dante couldn't be so mad after knowing that.
He still hated Fafnir, but the hate wasn't as intense.
'There is no point in thinking about that.'
Dante could only think about the present now. He had to think about the most important part of the information.
Even though Fafnir wasn't too educated, he still learnt a few things that Dante needed the most now.
'It's time to think about the strange powers in this world.'