Dante's Immortality: Beginnings

by Antonio Terzini

  Dante saw movement out of the corner of his eye, a smaller wolf was making a lunge for his exposed neck while he was pinned.

  Gritting his teeth at the mana cost, he Blinked to the furthest wolf away that was still within his teleportation range.

  As soon as he appeared, he stabbed both of his long daggers into its jugular, fatally wounding it. As the creature died, he could feel an itching sensation run across his ribs in the same location that the horse wolf had raked him with its claws. Dante uttered a silent prayer of thanks for his choice in the Rebirth of the Revenant skill.

  He had almost no time to react as a wolf launched itself at him from the left, jaws snapping as it sailed through the air.

  Dante defended with the same method that he used against the horse wolf, one sword lodging itself in the wolf’s mouth to ward off its attack, the other plunging into its chest. He dispatched the wolf rather easily, especially compared to when he tried the same move against the larger wolf. He was just beginning to grow confident from the kill, thinking that he may survive after all, when yet another wolf snuck up on him from behind and bit deeply into his ankle.

  Dante grunted in pain, the wolf’s teeth penetrated to the bone, drastically limiting his mobility.

  Turning to the wolf in rage, he hacked down with all his might, cutting deeply into its neck. The sword connected with its vertebrae to a sickening snapping noise, downing the wolf immediately.

  Dante immediately looked up and took in the scene around him, two wolves were now lunging directly at him while the other three smaller wolves began to circle him, looking for an opportunity to attack his flank. Surprisingly, the horse wolf sat back, eyes watching him wearily. It seemed as though his inaccurate attack on its chest cavity had injured it far more than he had thought.

  Dante grimaced as he tried to pivot on his mangled ankle, the Rebirth of the Revenant passive had only been able to partially heal it in the short time it had to work.

  The two wolves were almost upon him, and unable to fight back due to his crippled leg, Dante Blinked away to the one that was circling behind him, easily dispatching it.

  The new kill healed him enough to put pressure on his leg again. Only four of the smaller wolves were left after using Blink twice. Thanks to the few seconds in between Blinks to regenerate his mana, he had a little over 100 mana left.

  He would likely be able to dispatch three of the smaller wolves with his remaining mana by Blinking three times, but then he would be up against the horse wolf without Blink for almost twenty seconds. Seeing the intelligence in the wolf’s eyes, he felt a chill go down his spine.

  He decided that instead of wasting his mana on the wolves that were easily dispatched, relatively speaking, it would be best to use his remaining Blinks on the larger wolf.

  He went berserk, blinking into the large wolf while simultaneously impaling it with his daggers.

  Its jaw immediately snapped toward him as it tried to pierce him with its massive fangs. Dante Blinked a second time to evade the fangs, he appeared on its left side, sinking his daggers back into its fur. The wolf showed its intelligence, reacting instantly and viciously biting down on his left shoulder.

  Dante gasped in pain, and instead of letting go of him, the wolf began to shake him side to side, tearing apart flesh as it held his shoulder in its mouth.

  His shoulder was completely disfigured, flesh hanging off of the wound and bone could clearly be seen as it reflected off the firelight. His vision blurred from the excruciating pain.

  Dante screamed in agony while he struggled to maintain consciousness. Fueled by pure bloodlust, he Blinked out of the wolf’s mouth and ten feet directly in the air. Using the momentum from his fall, he used his full weight, along with the broad dagger he was still holding in his right hand, to impale the wolf through its neck.

  He could feel the wolf’s life fading as the blood sprayed from the new hole he had created in it.

  He had finally vanquished his enemy, but the feeling bloodlust wasn’t satiated, if anything it only grew stronger.

  Still overwhelmed by the pain in his shoulder, Dante Blinked, dispatching yet another wolf. Rebirth of the Revenant began to kick in from his two fresh kills, and his shoulder was starting to itch as it healed itself.

  Now completely out of mana, Dante prepared himself for the final three wolves, two of which were lunging through the air at him from both his left and right side.

  Gritting his teeth, he threw his bad arm into the wolf jaw, while stabbing the other through its mouth with his sword.

  The pain that shot through his arm as the wolf bit down and yanked on his bad shoulder was excruciating.

  He yanked the blade free, then slammed it into the last wolf, killing it instantly.

  The final wolf growled at him but made no move to attack. It seemed unsure of itself, but at the same time made no move to retreat. The two of them stared at each other for a few seconds, neither making a move. Then, as soon as he had enough mana, Dante Blinked behind it and finished it off.

  Dante stood above the wolves’ corpses, his silver hair and red eyes barely reflected in the firelight as his wounds healed themselves. He smiled, almost unable to believe that he was still alive. It was strange though, the bloodlust that he had never felt in his life was still there, and it was growing.

  Before he could question it, the weight of the world came down upon him, and he faded into unconsciousness.

  Chapter 5

  Dante’s Immortality – Chapter 5

  Greggory Tibbott

  Despite drowning himself in ale, he was still in a rather foul mood.

  After sending Isaac, and that utter moron Roderick, to burn the cursed demon spawn alive, neither of them had returned.

  The main gate to Alazel had closed hours ago, and he was becoming more than a bit worried. Greggory looked around the inn and frowned. He and the innkeeper were the only people still awake at this hour. If he had been anyone else, he would have been kicked out or sent to his room an hour or two ago, but the innkeeper didn’t dare offend him.

  Greggory’s fingers were tapping on the table in thought.

  Where in the hell did they go?

  At first, he had thought that Isaac had run off with the enchanted stone, but he dismissed the idea. Isaac wasn’t stupid, if he dared flee, he would be hunted down and killed with little effort. No, they must have run into some sort of issue.

  Perhaps they weren’t able to find him and didn’t dare show their faces…

  Yes, that had to be it. That line of thinking done, Greggory visibly calmed. He didn’t care if Isaac died, much less Roderick, but if he lost the enchanted stone his father had gifted him upon receiving his two Classifications, he would be in deep shit.

  “Would you like more ale, my lord?”

  Greggory looked up to see the innkeeper and cursed Isaac for what seemed like the thousandth time that night. He had come to celebrate getting his Classifications at the Black House inn with a few of his friends the previous day. At some point in the night when they were all deep into their drinks, Isaac had forced himself on the inn keeper’s daughter who was serving them drinks. It had seemed like great fun at the time, but now, the bastard had his beautiful daughter hovelled up in some back room while he was stuck drinking alone.

  Bastard.

  He had a lot of steam he needed to blow off from all the worrying he had been doing that day, and wasn’t going to let the prude innkeeper get away with stopping his fun.

  Greggory stood from his chair, and when the innkeeper saw him getting up, a brief look of relief flashed across the man’s face. Which only made him even angrier. “Are you finished for the night, my lord?”

  Greggory stumbled towards the innkeeper and forcefully pushed him to the ground, then smirked when the man didn’t dare stand again. He just laid there, holding his hands over his head as if anticipating another blow.

  Pleased with the reaction he got, Greggory began to stumble toward the door, when one of the
lanterns caught his attention.

  When Greggory saw it, he paused, then smiled. Grabbing the lantern, he ripped off the protective covering, then threw the now open flame to the floor. This time, when the innkeeper saw what had happened, he jumped forward, no longer worrying about offending him.

  But it was too late, and he had no intention of allowing the bastard to put out the fire. As soon as the innkeeper neared him, Greggory punched him, knocking the man unconscious.

  Smiling, Greggory stumbled out of the inn as the inferno flared up behind him.

  * * *

  Dante regained consciousness with a groan. He felt like there was a boulder resting on his body.

  What happened…

  Seeing the scattered bodies of the wolves on the ground around him, the events of the previous night rushed back to him. He didn’t remember anything after killing the last wolf and assumed that he had passed out from exhaustion.

  Dante looked down at himself. His shirt was completely sliced down the front with 3 jagged lines where the larger wolf raked its claws against his ribs. His trousers were also torn down by the ankle where one of the smaller wolves had surprised him. His entire body was coated with dry blood, thankfully not all of it was his.

  Curious, Dante forced his right hand up so that he could examine his combatant’s glove, still dry.

  Steeling himself, Dante began to crawl toward the stream so that clean himself off, while doing his best to ignore the pain shooting through his body. He couldn’t believe how stiff his he was from such a short fight. Even if he had almost died, it didn’t warrant the level of exhaustion he was enduring. He assumed it was some adverse effect from his abuse of the Rebirth of the Revenant passive.

  It took him a full hour to make it to the small stream, only a few feet away from where he had woken up. Moving his limbs at all was a challenge, but dragging himself over the stony bank was a tribulation. He couldn’t even use his Blink skill, as soon as he channeled the mana, a sharp pain would shoot through his body and break his concentration.

  After cleaning the blood off of himself, Dante examined the now visible wounds from the night before, and was pleasantly surprised by what he saw. The three claw marks that had raked his ribs were now smooth, silver scars. Both his ankle and arm were fully healed, and if he weren’t looking closely, he would have missed the small scars that had come from the wolves’ teeth. The largest injury on his shoulder wasn’t completely healed yet, but he was more than pleased with its progress.

  His shoulder was a mass of scabs, a marked improvement from when he could see the bone reflected in firelight the night before. Testing the shoulder, Dante found that he hadn’t lost any mobility in it. Even the muscles in his shoulder seemed relatively fine. If he wasn’t covered in scabs that could reopen his wound, or he hadn’t been so incredibly stiff and sore, he could be considered to be in peak fighting condition.

  After cleaning himself off, Dante began to crawl through the stone banks of the stream, looking for scattered dry driftwood. It took him several hours, but he felt that it was completely worth it as he rested his tired body in the comfort of a roaring fire.

  The only time he had gotten up after that was when he went to relieve himself, and get food. He didn’t have the energy, or desire, to go hunt some creature in the woods or find plants that may be edible; fortunately, he didn’t need to. He just made his way over to the horse sized wolf and gouged out large chunks of meat from its corpse.

  He had chosen that wolf specifically, he knew that you could attain world essence from eating the meat of rare or powerful creatures, and was unwilling to pass up the opportunity to receive more world essence.

  After cooking the chunks over the fire, and eating until he was full, Dante pulled up his Classification tab.

  Total level: 5

  World Essence waiting to be assigned: 185

  Chronomancer lvl 1/10 (0/100 world essence)

  Blademancer lvl 1/10 (0/100 world essence)

  Blader lvl 1/10 (0/100 world essence)

  Revenant lvl 2/10 (0/200 world essence)

  Recent World Essence gain:

  88 World Essence for killing: Dire Wolf

  67 World Essence for killing: Wolf x 8

  3 World Essence for eating: Dire Wolf Meat

  The amount of world essence he had gained from killing the smaller wolves was interesting. He had assumed that killing any creatures of the same type would give him identical world essence, at least as long as they were from the same region. That didn’t seem to be the case though. After looking it over, and doing the simple math in his head, it seemed that the wolves had given him between eight and nine world essence a piece.

  The second thing that drew his attention was that the other creature he killed, the horse wolf, was actually another species of wolf altogether. That didn’t really surprise him, but the amount of world essence it had given him did. It seemed like entirely too much, even more than Isaac and Roderick, which was strange.

  To the best of his knowledge, killing humans with Classification’s, especially uncommon ones like Isaac’s ranger Classification, should have yielded far more world essence than a single creature. The smaller wolves giving him around eight world essence a piece was enough to prove that point.

  The last thing Dante examined, and the thing that made him happiest by far, was the amount of world essence that the dire wolfs meat had given him. That was a ridiculous amount of world essence for just eating a meal. Dante couldn’t help but glance back at the dire wolf’s body, already making plans to overeat in the coming days.

  Dante closed his Status and allowed himself to fall asleep, he could always assign his world essence later.

  It was several days before his stiff and sore body was fully recovered, and he had been eating the dire wolf at every opportunity, bringing him to a total of 206 world essence. It was unfortunate that the meat’s effectiveness had slowly decreased as time passed. It had gone from three world essence per meal, to two, then one, and now, he got absolutely no benefit from consuming the meat.

  Well almost no benefit, his excessive eating had put a little bit of weight on his gaunt frame.

  It was a natural process, creature’s meat lost its effectiveness as the world essence left its body after death, one of the reasons that they needed to be consumed almost immediately.

  After a few days of consideration, he decided to level his Chronomancer and Blademancer Classifications. The increased Intelligence and Wisdom would have made his fight with the wolves far easier. Opening up his Classifications tab, Dante fed world essence into the two Classifications until they leveled.

  That done, he examined the new text that appeared.

  Chronomancer has reached level 2

  Attributes have been added:

  +1 Intelligence

  +1 Wisdom

  Skill description for Blink has been updated

  Blademancer has reached level 2

  Attributes have been added:

  +1 Dexterity

  +1 Wisdom

  Skill description for Create Blade has been updated

  World Essence waiting to be assigned: 6

  Chronomancer lvl 2/10 (0/200 world essence)

  Blademancer lvl 2/10 (0/200 world essence)

  Blader lvl 1/10 (0/100 world essence)

  Revenant lvl 2/10 (0/200 world essence)

  Satisfied with the text on the panel in front of him, he then opened the Skills tab to look at the changes there.

  Blink: Manipulate the power of space to teleport yourself or an object a short distance away.

  Cost: 30 Mana

  Range: up to 11 Feet

  Create Blade: Create a permanent bladed weapon of choice with an average quality.

  Cost: up to 55 Mana

  He was more than happy with the skills upgrades. There was no downside to Blinks, and although the cost of Create Blade increased, from his previous testing he could assume that the weapon created would now be superior.

 
; Dante closed out of the Skills tab and checked his Attributes tab.

  Name: Dante

  HP: 112/120

  Mana: 160/160 (+1.6/sec)

  Strength: 10

  Constitution: 12

  Dexterity: 14 (+1.4)

  Agility: 10 (+1)

  Intelligence: 16

  Wisdom: 16

  Charisma: 4

  Other than his HP, which was still slightly down from his injured shoulder, he was quite pleased with his attributes. It was also nice to easily see the ten percent bonus from his Blade Dancer passive next to his Dexterity and Agility attributes.

  After checking his attributes, Dante closed the panel in front of him and began testing the Create Blade skill. He did so by creating two of his favorite larger daggers, one with 50 mana and one with 55 Mana. Physically there was no difference, but when he began testing the two weapons on different objects around him, he noticed the one he created with 55 Mana cut slightly easier than the one that only cost him 50.

  Testing finished, Dante headed out to find something to kill in order to fully repair his still injured shoulder. He had been resting for several days, waiting for his fatigue to pass, and was eager to finally be moving again.

  While searching through the forest, he managed to kill a few small creatures. A rabbit, a squirrel, and a relatively large mouse, but none of them triggered his Rebirth of the Revenant passive. It made a decent amount of sense that his passive wasn’t triggered, after all, he hadn’t gotten any world essence from them either, but he couldn’t help but be disappointed. It definitely limited his skills usability, even if only slightly.

  After that, he felt bad for the tiny creatures and began looking for larger prey.

  Dante traversed the forest for a few hours before he came upon a large cat that was feeding on the carcass of a deer. He didn’t hesitate, taking it by surprise, he ran until he was within range. Then, as he Blinked next to it, he plunged his daggers into its jugular.

  His Rebirth of the Revenant skill was finally activated, and he watched it as it healed his shoulder. He had been too busy to watch it during the fight with the wolves. The process was interesting, it worked from on outside of the wound the slowly moved inward. Finally finishing as the scab flaked off, revealing a silvery scar underneath. The process only lasted around two minutes before it fully stopped.