Maintaining her radiant smile, Dorothy raised the microphone.
"That is right, my dears. He is an exclusive import, a guest brought from the world of the living personally by me for your delight."
Her confirmation acted like an electric switch.
The crowd's initial terror fractured, giving way to a frenzy of curiosity. Thousands pushed against the security railings and stood on tiptoe, stretching their necks to capture every detail of the flesh.
...
Beelzebub's eyes locked onto the man standing next to Dorothy, invading the space he considered his own.
The corners of his lips curled slowly into a grimace that revealed a row of excessively long and sharp teeth.
"A fly..." he whispered faintly, "Another dirty pest buzzing around my flower."
Crack
Anger invaded him, making him squeeze the thin stem of his glass with a force that made the glass shatter in his hand, allowing the dark wine to spill between his fingers like a thick hemorrhage.
"It seems I will have to crush it."
...
Facing thousands upon thousands of living dead as spectators, Lief, far from feeling fear or panic, felt an electric shock run through him.
It was a massive concert in the heart of Hell!
A better stage was impossible!
With a quick movement, he snatched the microphone from the skeleton presenter's hand, who was too stunned to protest, and turned on his heels, flashing an arrogant smile at Dorothy.
"Since you brought me all the way here for your entertainment, I'm going to make sure it's worth the price of admission."
"Oh, really?" Dorothy arched an eyebrow, "You have the stage, darling. Surprise me. But I warn you... I am a tough audience."
Lief turned toward the waiting audience, and raised the microphone, "This is an old song," he declared, lowering his tone, "Dedicated to the living... and to those who once lived."
While he spoke he turned toward the skeleton band that was awaiting instructions.
"Heavy beat! Let's go!" he shouted then addressed the sound technicians, "Turn the volume up to the max! I want It's My Life to blow out the speakers!"
?
The sound engineers exchanged bewildered glances.
What song is this?
Noticing they had no idea what song it was, Lief sighed.
"Fine, I'll do it myself."
Projecting his will toward the sound equipment, he took control of every fader, every string, and every distortion pedal with the precision of an orchestra conductor.
The amplifiers buzzed with static, charging the air with anticipation.
And soon, the sound exploded.
The iconic intro, that distorted talk box effect that sounded like a synthesized roar, ripped through the silence of the stadium.
"Wah-wah-wah..."
Followed immediately by the sharp and brutal hit of the drums.
They didn't just hear the rhythm, it hit them.
The percussion resonated in the bodies of the thousands of living dead, a physical vibration that shook the dust from their bones.
The audience froze for a second before the sonic aggression, before the rhythm possessed them.
Bringing the microphone to his lips, Lief, with his voice boosted thanks to his new skill, swept the stadium with a power impossible to ignore.
"This ain't a song for the broken-hearted...!"
The lyrics hit with a perfect irony in the world of the dead.
"No silent prayer for the faith-departed…!"
He didn't sing like Bon Jovi. There was no melancholy in his tone. There was pure arrogance, the scream of someone with hot blood in a world of ashes, announcing his existence at full volume.
Satisfied with the chaos she had unleashed, Dorothy took a step back with the intention of withdrawing and leaving him the spotlight.
But Lief was not going to allow that.
Without stopping singing, he reached out his free hand and closed his fingers around her wrist, stopping her dead.
Dorothy turned, her eyes narrowing with a mix of surprise and danger.
But unconcerned by the danger he would run, Lief pulled her toward him with a tug, shortening the distance until their bodies collided, and held her gaze with a wolfish smile.
"Where do you think you are going?" he told her, his voice audible only to her beneath the music, "You started this. Now you are my dance partner."
Dorothy's body tensed for an instant, evaluating his audacity. But upon seeing the fire in Lief's eyes and the wild energy of the crowd, the corner of her lips curved into an amused smile.
"Then don't step on my feet."
Relaxing her posture, she let herself be swept away, melting with him into the rhythm while the music exploded in the chorus.
"It's my life! It's now or never!"
"I ain't gonna live forever!"
"I just want to live while I'm alive!"
...
"They are insane..."
Backstage, hidden away, the Rivera family watched the spectacle with a mix of horror and fascination.
"That living guy... He has the nerve to touch her as if they were equals," murmured Julio Rivera, adjusting his hat with trembling hands, "No one survives that."
Beside him, the twins, Oscar and Felipe, looked at the stage hypnotized, moving their feet involuntarily to the rhythm of the drums.
"It sounds... incredible," admitted Felipe, unable to look away from Lief's charisma.
But Imelda broke their trance.
"Focus!" She grabbed them by the shoulders and shook them violently, forcing them to look her in the eyes.
"That man is not an artist. Look closely. To be up there, dancing with her and not be devoured... means that he is just as dangerous."
Letting go of them, she pointed toward the dark corridors that led to the private dressing rooms.
"Forget the show. We have a mission. We find De la Cruz, recover the photo, and disappear before that pair decides to look over here. Move!"
...
In the exclusive gloom of the VIP room, a sound similar to dead leaves being crushed was heard.
Beelzebub's pale hand, which rested on the small table, didn't even seem to move.
However, under his fingertips, the solid wood began to creak and in a matter of seconds, entropy accelerated in an unnatural way: the table aged centuries in a blink, the wood turned gray, cracked, and finally collapsed on itself, turned into a pile of dust that stained the carpet.
He stood up.
His face showed no disturbance; on the contrary, it became terrifyingly blank.
The temperature in the room dropped, and a low hum, almost imperceptible but painful to the ear, began to vibrate in the walls.
"A sack of meat..." he whispered with a distorted voice, "An ephemeral and dirty piece of expired biology."
He fixed his inhuman gaze on Lief's hands that held Dorothy's waist, and the shadows in the corners of the room seemed to twist toward him.
"How dare he contaminate her with his touch?" Taking a step closer to the window, the glass began to fog up with a black frost, "To put his hands on what belongs to me…"
Beside him, the servant didn't even have the strength to beg. The pressure emanating from him was so intense that he flattened himself against the floor, covering his head and holding his breath.
Center stage, the performance ceased to be a simple dance and became a duel of forces.
Lief spun Dorothy with violent intensity, and the moment he pulled her back against his chest for a final dip, tactile reality shifted.
His hands, holding her waist and back, stopped registering the softness of her skin or the silk of her dress.
Suddenly, a neural connection fired in his brain.
He stopped feeling a woman in his arms.
He felt weight, balance, ergonomics...
He could feel the energy flow in Dorothy's body, not like heartbeats, but like a charge ready to fire.
He perceived a strange sensation... as if Dorothy had become an extension of his body, as if she had transformed into a... weapon that he could use at will.
And with this sensation, the name of his new skill came to mind: Arsenal Mastery, rewriting his perception in a split second.
"What...?"
A gasp of genuine surprise escaped Dorothy's lips, and her eyes widened as she felt her own physical form lose solidity under Lief's grip.
She didn't feel pain, only a dizzying fluidity.
Seizing the momentum of his thoughts, Lief slid his left hand from her waist upward.
!
Under the astonished gaze of thousands, Dorothy's figure transformed. Her body turned into shadows and violet light, collapsing and reconfiguring in mid-air.
Her legs fused, her torso became stylized and hardened, and her arms curved.
In a blink, the woman disappeared.
In her place, Lief's hands closed around an electric guitar.
The body of the instrument was a deep obsidian black, run through by veins of violet light that pulsed as if it had blood of its own.
The neck resembled the spine of an elegant creature, and the strings glowed red.
Without hesitation, Lief's fingers shredded the strings with force.
"SCREECH!"
A distorted and brutal chord, sounding suspiciously like a banshee's scream of ecstasy, exploded from the instrument, blowing out the stage monitors.
The stadium fell into a silence of absolute shock for a microsecond.
"What...?!"
"He turned her into a guitar?!"
Lief clearly felt how the guitar vibrated with an electric intensity in his hands.
It wasn't just the amplifier feedback; it was a pricking, numbing sensation that traveled up his fingertips, ran through his arm, and spread across his chest.
And from inside the guitar, he perceived a series of faint pulses: irrefutable proof that Dorothy remained conscious.
His hands sped up, transforming into a blur of motion. Harmonics, tapping, shredding, the whammy bar forced to the limit of tension—all the most intricate rock techniques were executed with precision and without apparent effort.
The sound emanating from the guitar grew increasingly prolonged and wild.
It was no longer a simple melody.
The music mixed with a wail, a sob, but charged with an indescribable excitement.
The last note exploded in a final, catastrophic chord that reverberated in the rib cage of every skeleton.
Lief finished with an abrupt mute.
The silence that followed was more oppressive than any noise. It lasted three endless seconds during which the entire stadium held its breath.
Then, hell broke loose.
Countless skeletons, stripped of all composure, ripped off their own tibias and femurs and threw them onto the stage as offerings.
Right in the center of that chaotic rain of bones, the electric guitar took center stage, bursting into a violet glow that bathed the stadium with a blinding intensity.
The sleek black structure of the guitar began to liquefy, the wood softened until dissolving into the texture of pale flesh, while the blood strings thickened and intertwined to form slender arms, reassembling the gothic silhouette until restoring Dorothy's unmistakable form.
Her materialization was so sudden that gravity claimed her instantly, but Lief caught her firmly before her knees could give way.
She collapsed against him, surrendering herself to the support of his arms with a body that lacked all tension, completely drained, and Lief immediately noticed an unusual detail: a feverish blush, something totally unknown on her immaculate skin, now dyed her cheeks with violence.
And between ragged gasps that shook her chest, Dorothy looked up laboriously and her eyes, clouded and shining with moisture sought Lief's gaze with an absolute need..
"..."
The audience, which had been cheering, perceiving the intimacy of the moment, fell silent.
But immediately after, they erupted in a clamor even more violent, and erotic than any previous ovation.
________
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