Dante sat back in the oversized chair, exhaling deeply as his muscles finally relaxed. The sound of his sigh echoed softly through the lavish chamber, a small island of silence after the storm that had been the qualifying matches.
He'd been escorted here—personally—by a Bael clan representative.
Which, in reality, was a butler.
A butler.
Dante still had trouble wrapping his head around that. Not long ago, his life had been an endless loop of washing dishes, scrubbing floors, and trying to find five minutes of peace before being roped into someone else's problem. Now, he had people—actual people—who did things for him. Dress him. Feed him. Lead him around like some honored guest. If someone offered to bathe him next, he might just jump out the window.
Hell no to that.
And the butler had been the stereotypical full-package deal too: mustache, bald head, pristine uniform. The moment Dante saw him, he half-expected the man to offer him tea and ancient life advice.
Now he sat in a room so luxurious it might as well have been ripped from a dream. White linen draped the walls with golden embroidery that shimmered in the torchlight. Purple flames danced in braziers carved from obsidian, casting a warm yet regal hue across the Romanesque chamber. It was the kind of room you'd expect royalty to plan a war in—not a break room.
Dante, ever the fish out of water, squinted around. "Do the Baels just live like this?"
Every family seemed to have a color scheme, and Bael's was clearly royalty-core: white, gold, and deep regal purple. Gremory's colors felt more militaristic—black, crimson, and gold, like some old Prussian battle standard. He hadn't been told the Sitri family palette, but he was willing to bet good money that it involved blue. Maybe some pink? That felt... vaguely correct.
Anyway.
The chair beneath him was more like a throne. It loomed tall and wide, large enough that even his considerable height felt dwarfed by its dimensions. It made him self-conscious just sitting in it. As if the seat itself was trying to tell him he wasn't ready for the role it implied.
At his side, a goblet sat waiting. Bael's finest spirit, they had told him. The word spirit was doing a lot of heavy lifting here—it was apparently their term for alcohol, though when he asked earlier what passed for strong drink in Hell, he'd been told something about a Pepto-Bismol equivalent that sounded more medicinal than festive.
This, though… this was the real deal.
Still, Dante hesitated. Even if his physiology had changed—his body now operating on some blend of demonic and supernatural energy—he wasn't eager to test how hard devils partied when they said something was "strong."
Then came the guilt.
He stared at the untouched drink. Just sitting there. Given freely, in excess. His mind wandered to the lower-class devils—scraping to survive, fighting for every drop, every meal. And here he was, wasting.
He grumbled under his breath, then picked up the goblet and downed the contents in a single smooth gulp.
"To hell with that," he muttered. "No way I'm letting a good drink go to waste."
The burn hit almost instantly. Smooth, but potent. A wave of warmth spread from his chest, comforting, like cinnamon whiskey wrapped in velvet fire.
His eyes closed for a second, a small, almost blissful sigh escaping his lips. "Holy shit... it's been so long since I had something like that."
His chest radiated with pleasant heat. It wasn't just the alcohol—it was the moment. The solitude. The weight of everything he'd just done finally catching up to him.
"Now if I wake up in the Marbas territory wearing glow paint and someone else's pants, I'm blaming Sirzechs. He did say those guys were party animals."
Just to be safe, he stood up, stretching slowly and testing his balance. Still steady. Good sign.
That's when his eyes drifted to the strange device in the center of the room.
It had been there the entire time. He'd noticed it when he walked in—a disk-like contraption set into the marble flooring, pulsing softly with arcane energy—but he'd been too awkward, too tired, and too sober to mess with it.
Now? Now he had no such inhibitions.
"Screw it."
He walked over, gave it a light kick with the tip of his boot.
The result nearly sent him flying.
The room lit up in a burst of iridescent light, every hue imaginable casting prism-like waves across the walls. Dante stumbled back slightly, shielding his eyes.
When the glow dimmed, he opened one eye.
A hologram had appeared.
A full-scale, 360-degree projection hovered in the air above the disk—alive with motion and color. It showed the stadium, the crowd, the matches—his matches—playing out like some celestial broadcast. He circled the display slowly, marveling at the detail, and noticed something peculiar: no matter where he stood, the large, elegantly etched "B" for Bael always faced him.
"They've got TV... devil TV."
He chuckled, shaking his head in disbelief.
He wasn't sure what he expected—scrolls? Magic mirrors? A guy with a trumpet shouting sports updates from a balcony?
But this… this was next-level.
He stood there, hands on hips, watching himself duel with Valeria from the omnidirectional view. The moment when she slumped into his arms played out in slow motion, backlit by the torchlight. He felt something shift in his chest.
Maybe this place wasn't just about bloodlines and power.
Maybe—just maybe—there was still something here worth changing.
He turned back to the chair and smirked.
"Alright, Bael. You've got the aesthetics... and now you've got television."
He walked back to his throne-like seat, sat down with a renewed sense of purpose, and muttered to himself:
"Let's see what the next round brings."