A Marvelous Devil.
Chapter 32: Forty-Three Lessons.
The Underworld.
Tandy Bowen.
It didn't hurt as much as I expected. But despite the pain and agony not being there anymore, I couldn't help but remember the moment vividly.
I woke up in a strange place, a white void filled with a power a lot like the Light Force, but it wasn't. This felt a lot more like Dante's Cosmic Power.
It felt… nice, but I couldn't focus on the peacefulness of this place for long because I was pulled out of it into the underworld.
And that brought the feelings back.
That… cold sensation that enveloped my whole body. So unlike Dante's own Dark Force.
It was… horrible, and I honestly had no way to name what I was truly feeling.
Scared? Obviously. In pain? Without a doubt. Disgust? You bet I was. I could see through my damn stomach, BECAUSE I HAD A FUCKING HOLE THROUGH IT.
"How do you feel?" The calm voice of Dante reached my ears, "Is there anything wrong with your body? Your power? Anything at all?"
"Dante? What the fuck, I just died, and this is what you say first?" I gaped in his direction, feeling as normal as usual.
The fact that I was already checking everything he mentioned and anything I could imagine was beyond me. Why was I listening to him when he just let me die?!
"Ah," he nodded unconcernedly, "I should have considered that you were a normal mortal not that long ago."
"Exactly!" I nodded angrily, standing up and reaching his place.
God, why did he have to be so damn tall?
"You should have eased me into it, Dante!"
"But you didn't die," he tilted his head, acting like my anger didn't mean anything, "and you learned something, no? This is the price of growing stronger, Tandy. In fact, you barely have to pay it, because you. Can't. Die."
"I had a hole through my stomach, Dante!" I screamed at him.
"And now you don't," he shrugged.
That's not the point. It wasn't the damn point. I could feel my gaze going misty as tears pooled behind my closed lids. I took a deep breath.
Then another one.
Dante waited in silence, and I almost smiled when I felt his hands grab mine.
It wasn't supposed to go this way! I had to stay angry because he was being an asshole.
I wanted to scream at him even more. It also made me feel stupidly safe in his arms.
I was a mess.
"I felt it," I said quietly against his chest, "I felt everything, Dante. I felt that monster go through me. I felt…"
I stopped, swallowing thickly, "It wasn't fast. At least not fast enough."
Dante sighed, and his hands caressed mine for a moment, making me hug him even tighter.
"It was fast, Tandy. Believe me, there are many worse ways to go," he said darkly, and his eyes showed the experience he had. Those eyes showed they had seen things I couldn't even imagine, and even with my supposed eternal life now, I wouldn't even match them at any point. "You'll probably learn some of them during this training."
"But you came back," he continued softly, "and you'll always do. You need to grow, and this is what you have to do if that's what you truly desire. Has your opinion changed at all?"
I shivered at the memory, but I also felt… anger, an unbelievable anger I had never felt before.
"I hate you right now," I told him seriously. "And you'll have to earn my forgiveness after the training is done."
"Noted," his lips quirked in amusement, "I'll be sure to pamper you when you earn it. Sounds good, baby?"
Ugh. This absolute bastard.
"I always deserve it, bitch," I giggled, smacking his chest and looking around.
"Where's the fucker that got me? Did you kill him for killing me?" I asked softly, feeling warmth on my chest.
A warmth that disappeared when Dante chuckled.
"Nah, I let him go," he snorted, "you can have your revenge yourself, love. Think of it like practice."
"Fine," I snorted in disbelief before feeling something dark course through my body at the thought of burning it alive from the inside out. "Gerald has one point."
Dante stopped what he was doing, glancing at me in morbid amusement.
"Did you seriously name it? And Gerald of all things? My word, Tandy." He shook his head and snapped his fingers, creating a campfire, and took a seat.
I felt a blush rising through my cheeks, "It looked like a Gerald."
Dante picked up the dossier Nyra had given us and threw it my way.
"Read, focus, and then go back outside. You still have a long way to go. As soon as you leave the campfire, the monsters will come back."
"Why are you acting like you won't be here?" I asked nervously.
"Because I won't," he smirked, and before I could say anything, the Dark Force consumed him whole.
Slumping against the fire, I sighed.
Damn him. And damn me for getting myself into this.
Dante Andromalius.
Tandy had a lot to live up to. And no, it wasn't just because she was part of my peerage or some other asinine expectation. Not exactly.
She simply had too much potential for me to tolerate it being wasted. Her past as a human held her back.
She had suffered. I knew that, and I understood it. But she was still so… mortal when she could be more. No, when she was already more.
From experience, I knew mortality was not something that disappeared easily. And I wasn't speaking of the body. That was the simplest part. Going past normal mortal longevity was as easy as breathing, and by so many different means that one would waste hours, if not days, just listing them.
No. It was the mindset of mortals that clung stubbornly to the soul.
That was what I intended to destroy so thoroughly that it could never return.
She needed to understand what she truly was, and she would. I would make sure of that.
I returned an hour or so later, and to my surprise, Tandy had not died while I was gone.
A small part of me expected to see her still in the safety of the campfire, studying before launching herself into the fight once more.
I expected to have to push her for a bit, so color me surprised when she was fighting.
And doing surprisingly well at that.
But despite feeling a bit proud of my bishop, I couldn't help but facepalming.
Oh, she must think herself bright because she was using the campfire lit by real hellfire on her back.
The monsters here, despite not having much intelligence, could recognize the fire as something they should not poke at, and Tandy must have realized that because she kept her back against it, ensuring that all her enemies would come from the front and sides.
Damn if I wasn't proud.
But… that wouldn't help in any other situation.
My wings flapped as I took to the air, watching from a distance.
Only Tandy noticed, and that was her undoing. She peeked in my direction, ignoring one of the scavengers at her side, and got clipped by its claw.
Tandy winced in pain, but I nodded proudly when her light bled out of the cut, healing it and burning the beast in a single move.
"This one was your fault!" She shouted, but this time she didn't take her attention away from the group of scavengers.
She did flip me the bird, though.
Heh. She was adorable.
Slowly, Tandy began to get everyone, using most of her area attacks to make space whenever they got too close for comfort.
I snorted, diminishing from the distance the potency of the hellfire and changing it into normal fire.
It took her five minutes more to kill the beasts attacking her, but as Nyra said, they were relentless, and more groups appeared in the distance.
Funnily, Tandy didn't notice that the fire was no longer protecting her pert, little ass.
Tandy shouted in frustration as another hyena-like beast clipped her wings.
My eyes widened when she burnt it from the inside out. And no, it wasn't because of the vicious attack. No, it was something else.
While she killed it and smirked at the pool of sludge that remained, she didn't pay attention to… was that the same stalker that got her the first time?!
I snorted loudly, enough that she even heard it.
She ignored me, and the way her eyes went wide when she felt the displaced air behind her was hilarious, just for Gerald to open another hole through Tandy's chest.
The light of her eyes bled out slowly, craning her head and glaring at me before she was pulled into the Cosmic power dimension to heal.
"I'm starting to feel bad for what she'll do to you, little dude," I teleported next to where her body used to be and petted the frozen stalker, "Twice in a row? She'll be pissed."
The stalker whimpered in fear as the dark force enveloped his body, and I had to keep a tight leash on the fog, which wanted to devour what had harmed our light.
Instead, I just teleported it away once more.
It was way too funny to let it end like that. Especially for what I had just thought of.
Tandy Bowen.
I was going to kill him. And I wasn't talking about fucking Dante as much as a small part of me whispered that he would find the attempt endearing and praise me after that.
No, I was planning on killing that blasted hell-loving beast, and I was going to make it stick.
I was this close to begging Dante to put one of those pieces in Gerald just so he could revive over and over again as I gutted him for his repeated attempts on my life.
Gerald got me twice.
TWICE.
The void disappeared once more before I was thrown unceremoniously to the ground, with Dante cooking some meat in a fire.
I ignored my rumbling stomach, glaring at the clearing and finally at Dante.
"Where is he?" I said through gritted teeth, "Where is that blasted son of a whore?"
Dante laughed softly, sprinkling some salt into the meat. Then the bastard shrugged.
"Dante, tell me right the fuck now."
"I sent him away," he snorted, "think of it as your loving king fueling the flames of your vengeance. Now, come. Eat."
I sent a beam of condensed light at him. One that disappeared as the Dark Force ate it lovingly.
God, I needed to learn normal magic to get him.
"Is he close?" I asked neutrally.
Dante looked at me with a look of pure innocence. How a devil managed something like that was beyond me, and the only reason I wasn't fooled was because of our connection.
And it was still a close thing.
I glared at him instead, picking the meat on a stick and biting into it.
And moaning. Damn, that was good.
"I found out about this restaurant when I went out with Sona," he smirked, "they had this meat from Ultimate Class Beasts. A delicacy, they say. And expensive, but it's not like that will be an issue for much longer."
"Your mother mentioned her during dinner. Who is she to you, Dante?" I asked, feeling an uncomfortable tightness inside my chest. "Is she also your… woman? Like me?"
"Hm, that's a difficult question, my dear," he answered uncaringly.
Celestine had mentioned that harems were the norm here, and honestly, I didn't care much as long as he had a place for me with him. Despite my current anger at him, I knew our relationship was not something … casual.
I was going to be with him for eternity, and I loved that. So what if there were other women? I was his light. And he was my darkness.
But it still felt a bit strange. Must be my human brain thinking.
"Then explain," I shrugged, biting into the meat once more.
"She's the little sister of the current Leviathan. And the heir of one of the strongest families in the underworld. She's the one who got Hadrian the suite in her family's hospital."
And so he went, explaining absolutely everything about his relationship with the devil. He even went so far as to show me a photo of her.
She was cute, but surprisingly, the jealousy I expected didn't appear.
In fact, I felt a tiny bit bad about her. Because Dante didn't bother to hide what their 'relationship' entailed, and I already knew that she would be on the losing side forever.
He could be a bastard. No, he was a bastard most of the time.
Maybe with her and a couple of dozen more, we could tame this beast.
At least I was his first one. And no one would take that away from me.
The rest of the meal flew surprisingly fast, and it helped me go through my deaths. He was also sweet, pulling my head into his lap and caressing my hair as he went through the good things I did and where I fucked up.
He cared, and I loved that. The fluttering of my eyes grew heavy as I heard him point out everything he said.
Gerald was a lesson, and Dante was making sure that I would remember it for eternity.
And I couldn't say that it didn't light a fire in my behind.
I wasn't a mortal girl anymore. I wouldn't freeze. I wouldn't stop paying attention to my surroundings.
I was Tandy Bowen, the first bishop of Dante Andromalius and his light.
And I would scar my name into Gerald's body, making him regret he was ever born.
I rolled my shoulders in Dante's lap before sitting up in a hurry.
"I will get that bastard," I said. No, I declared.
"If he's still here, dear," Dante chuckled darkly, and I observed him distrustfully. "Maybe he learned the lesson and ran away."
That… he was hiding something again.
Ugh.
Later.
I was feeling good about this attempt.
Standing in the middle of the forest, I felt my chest rise and fall as my light fueled every inch of my body.
I learned by now that I could strengthen my muscles just by filling them with light. It wasn't otherworldly; I couldn't match what Captain America used to do back during World War II, but it was by far much better than normal.
Light fueled me… no, I was light.
A scavenger lunged at me from a distance.
I wondered why they were attacking differently now. I noticed before my last death that they were scared to approach me once I understood how to fight them, but it was as if they had forgotten about it already. They were also like... angrier?
Dante had done something… maybe, it could be either.
My hand moved before it even finished the leap.
And the legs dropped onto the floor as they burned into nothingness.
My palm flashed brightly as light exploded out of it in the other direction, fending off two more scavengers trying to get me from behind.
Heh. This would show Dante.
Then I dropped to the ground, lowering my head as a fucking stalker tried to get me.
It wasn't Gerald.
My wings flapped behind my back as I took the air, and tens of daggers made of light began floating in front of me. The scavengers couldn't get me this high, and the Stalkers made a lot of noise whenever they jumped, giving me more than enough time to react.
The daggers circled my body for a moment before I let them go, controlling them mentally as they sought the very demonic power fueling the beasts.
None of my daggers missed their targets as they began howling and screeching in pain.
I loved that purifying these monsters gave them so much pain.
A stalker jumped at me, and my wings flapped twice to move out of the way.
"Too slow, you bastard," I smirked darkly, extending my hands and creating two whips out of light.
Then I brought my hands down, encasing the monster… Then I opened my arms wide.
The unholy sound that came out of its mouth was music to my ears, and I could only imagine Gerald's face on my victim as it was torn to shreds.
"Hah, you see that, Gerald?!" I screamed excitedly in the air, "This is nothing compared to what I'll do to you!"
I glanced at Dante, who was shaking his head amusedly, sitting as if nothing mattered by the campfire.
God, I was so jealous.
The remaining scavengers ran with their tales tucked behind them when they saw the stalker dropping from the sky, and I began lowering myself.
It was over, but I still kept my senses sharp, sending a bit of light in the form of orbs in every direction.
I wouldn't be surprised once more.
Sensing no feedback out of the orbs, I reached the ground.
"I suppose it's done," I sighed, walking toward the campfire. Wondering if Dante would let me sleep or if he expected me to continue fighting without sleep.
The closer I got, the more I sensed the faint amusement coming out of Dante.
Literally a meter away from the safe zone, the ground suddenly shifted.
And it opened wide as soon as my feet sank into the ground.
"What the…?" I flailed wildly, preparing my light in advance as the hole grew until my whole body was inside.
The air left my lungs, but honestly, that was the least of my problems.
Because I wasn't the only one inside.
Because I could see some yellow eyes that glowed in the darkness.
The Yellow eyes that I recognized from before.
Fucking Gerald.
Pain exploded in my chest as something once more pierced through it.
My hands twitched uselessly at my side as I tried to gather my light. Light that flickered before snuffing out.
My vision blurred.
And the last thing I heard before darkness swallowed me whole was Dante's laughter echoing from above.
I didn't know how long it had passed until I dropped into the dirt in front of Dante. And honestly, I didn't care anymore.
He was munching on something, looking at me in amusement before snorting once more.
I glared at him.
"The environment here can be quite dangerous, right?" he said dryly, "Who knew the ground would soften like that?"
I looked at him before glaring at the forest. The completely normal dirt, with only one spot soft.
Then I looked back at Dante.
And he just took another bite of whatever that was.
I stayed silent, glaring. Filing away what the bastard had done to repay once I grew stronger.
Then I turned around and headed toward the tent he had so graciously created for us.
Behind me, I was almost certain I heard him laugh to himself.
Another thing added to the list.
Dante Andromalius.
Two weeks later.
Was I allowing my mortal mind to feel just a tiny bit bad, a bad thing? Maybe, but seeing how much Tandy changed in a single week made me feel a bit conscious of what I allowed to happen.
Forty-three deaths in a single week. She was… different after all that.
But it was for her own good, and she learned from every single one of them. It was not for nothing, and even less for my own enjoyment. I wasn't cruel like that, and I would never force her to do something like this if it wasn't what she truly desired.
Tandy herself loved the change. I could see the deepest part of her soul and how much stronger and more confident she had gotten.
And honestly, she needed to deal with all the bottled anger that she had from D'Spayre's machinations.
This was perhaps a bit more ruthless than what she hoped. A lot, truthfully, but it served a goal.
She didn't keep count of her deaths after the first fifteen, but I made sure to keep a list because someone had to.
She was sharper now, her attacks held some weight, and her ability to control the light force increased by leaps and bounds. And she was turning into a complete monster on her own.
By death thirty, I no longer needed to explain every single detail of why it happened; her mind gave them to her. She turned a bit more silent after each battle, revising her own memories to see how she could improve.
I always helped; I always kept her company whenever she needed. Every time it turned into too much, or if a death was especially gory, I was there, pampering my princess with all the care my rotten heart knew of.
Because seeing her try this hard to be someone useful to me was… touching, to say the least.
Being the reason she tried so hard, and seeing her give her all at every waking moment, made me realize how much I enjoyed her company. Not only because of our connection, but because I genuinely wanted her next to me.
Gerald got her nine times during the first week, and after the fifth one, I had to help the little dude escape her wrath, because it reached a point where Tandy knowingly overloaded her system with pure light, intending to get it after I pushed him to figure out how to deal with the increasingly stronger Tandy.
She didn't care about herself when she saw the little bastard.
Hell, the stalker reached the pinnacle of mid-class just by how hard Tandy was hunting the fucker at one point.
And it was hilarious to see Tandy literally fume after he got her one more time.
Tandy also forgot about her hesitancy; she turned more direct, willing to do whatever was needed to win. It was beautiful seeing the progress, in truth.
'Magical' gusts of wind got her six times. By the third time, she clued herself in that I was responsible for the winds that pushed her around whenever she dropped her guard, and despite glaring at me and trying to smother me in my sleep by day five, she never complained.
Because she was improving.
The wind turned useless only after two days, with Tandy showing how much better she was getting at keeping an eye on my demonic power.
My direct interference surprised her eleven times, launching attacks at her blind spots, and by the end of the eighth day she never got distracted a single time, no matter how hard I hit.
Then I became more creative, using a mix of the Dark Force, Cosmic Power, and even magic to create environmental hazards to mess with her fights, freezing the ground, increasing gravity at different intervals and strengths, and flipping her left to right.
By the end, I was having fun trying to find ways to confuse her. I got her like that eight times.
And her genuine losses on the outer layer of the territory? Only nine, which was surprising to say the least.
She learned how to read her opponents, how to test them before attacking for real. She used her light even more creatively and even started using demonic power for magic.
But it was the end of our training in the outer layer, because nothing here made her try at this point.
There was just one tiny pressing thing left to do. And I grinned expectantly at the scene unraveling in front of me.
Tandy had a deep frown on her cute face. Her dirt-covered face, her whole body on display because there was something genuinely wrong with Red's reality, and almost every attack seemed to focus on her clothes.
To the point that I planned to ask the Dragon, because it was literally over ninety percent of the attacks that somehow destroyed her shirt.
It reached a point where she no longer cared to hide or coat her body with light.
The stalker in her sight… Gerald hit a tree in the distance hard enough to crack it, and like four trees behind it. Its six limbs scrabbled to grab something, anything, as it bled copiously on the ground.
The black blood coming out of it felt disgusting to the extreme, but Tandy didn't bat an eye as it splashed against her.
Fuck, the little bastard looked in my direction, hoping that I would save it.
Shame he already served his purpose and was no longer needed.
"You ran away forty-three times," Tandy said flatly.
Her light flared between her fingers brightly enough to burn some leaves that fell from the impact. "I didn't fail to see how Dante helped you every single damn time. How he laughed while I choked on my own blood, or when you motherfucker opened a hole through my stomach. Every single fucking time."
I hid a wince, because that glare that came my way promised pain.
If only I could hide the proud grin growing at the same time.
Gerald hissed, his teeth clenching together. She smiled darkly as she caressed its cheek.
"You're just out of luck."
She flicked her wrist. The first dagger she made wasn't thrown, nor was it flying under her control.
She was gripping that thing like she wanted to crush it under her hands. Light fell like molten gold into the ground, and she pushed it inside the stalker's thorax.
Hand and all.
Damn. I whistled.
The dagger increased in size, growing into a foot-long blade of pure white that punched through the soft meat like it wasn't even there, then it turned into a…
A fucking backward hook as it went past its head all the way to his mouth.
The creature shrieked in pain as the light began to cook it inside out, but I didn't fail to notice how she wasn't using the purifying aspect of her power.
She wanted this to last.
The flesh and blood bubbled from the head, and steam began coming out of Gerald's pores.
Tandy twisted the blade and yanked with all her might.
And Gerald stopped bleeding, because Tandy cauterized his wounds and healed so that he wouldn't die.
What did I create? By the one above all, I was starting to love this woman.
Gerald convulsed on the floor, but Tandy just walked toward the poor sod.
A second dagger, then a third, then a fourth. She rained them into his body like a machine gun. Each one manifesting inside his body, popping through everything vital.
"All those other stalkers I killed didn't matter, Gerald, not like you," she whispered gently, "They only served to learn how much damage your kind could take without dying."
She stepped on its leg, one that looked like a pincushion.
Gerald could only gurgle on his own blood.
"Dante owes me over three times as much as you, but at least he didn't eat me," Tandy sent a look my way.
This time I did wince. In my defense, I was buying food and learned about it only after it happened.
She drove both hands inside its chest and pinned Gerald onto the floor as the poor bastard finally left the mortal plane.
Then she turned toward me, with a dead look in her eyes.
Tandy smiled, but it felt wrong.
"One name on my list is gone. Now there's only one remaining."
Then her wings flapped behind her back, and I felt a soft gust of wind on my neck, and it wasn't until then that the sound of her arrival reached my ears.
"Ready to sleep, babe?" she asked in a sweet tone. "We still need to go to the middle ring tomorrow."
And I was demon enough to admit that I felt a shiver go down my spine at that moment.
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