Chapter Four: Huginn and Muninn

Little Big Planet OST - The Appliance of Science

Odin would be first in line to admit that he underestimated Dante.

Dante had completely flipped the table and then some in possibly the best way he could've through sheer luck, insanity, and audacity. And to top it all off, not only had he freed Odin almost immediately, he had pulled off some absolute bullshit like making Aura Constructs through his blood.

Then there were the conditions of their deal that Dante drunkenly stumbled through. Well, in all honesty, Odin made two deals. One with Antoine, then one with Dante.

It was a pact of vengeance. Odin would give them the opportunity to get their revenge on those who had wronged them, and in turn, they would become his ravens, servants of the All Father. Dental, vision, other health plans, 401k, and up to thirty days paid vacation all included, he was a good boss, after all.

And once again, the unexpected happened. Whereas Antoine was supposed to be the dominant personality, Dante took over. Souls from other universes could be such a curious thing, Antoine's more solid soul should've given him proper dominance over the fusion of souls, but perhaps Dante's soul, while liquid, was far more dense or compressed than it initially appeared to be. Like the difference between water at the surface of the ocean compared to the bottom.

Truly, he knew nothing about him other than that he played the Sorakarago games that depicted his universe, and that he had somehow beat every "route" without dying. Now, while it was impressive, it didn't exactly translate real life skills and ability- Dante was just a normal human being, after all. Not to mention one from a world where magic didn't exist. It wasn't the first time something like this had happened in the myriad of timelines and parallel universes connected to the cosmic tree, Yggdrasill, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.

What Odin didn't expect was that Dante was fucking insane.

The All Father had seen some shit in his time. He'd visited countless parallel worlds, stared down the Crawling Chaos and became the first and only being in all of creation to permanently scar him. Hell, he'd even seen that actual heat death of the universe.

But Dante was something different than anything he'd seen in a very long time.

He went beyond having no chill.

If Odin had to accurately describe his brand of insanity, he'd say that Dante was in Waffle House Mode 24/7.

Currently, the former chief god of the Aesir took the form of a raven, and perched himself across the street peering into the window of an unassuming building. The first floor was a quaint little shop for adventurers that sold top quality items and equipment for the few morons that didn't fork over their life savings for brand recognition. The second floor was a well furnished living space with multiple bedrooms. In one of those bedrooms, near a window, Dante could be seen, sleeping like the dead and practically covered in bandages.

What happened in the opera house was not his plan whatsoever.

The plan was to play on Verner's ego and need for control. The Butcher Brothers would've brought him to Ivan and Verner, Verner would've had a vision due to the feedback from the Terminal and outed him as the Player; Ivan would've taken an interest in him and plotted to use Dante to backstab Verner. And so Dante would've worked as an unwitting double agent until he was able to swipe Gungnir out from under Verner's nose. Sure, the plan would put him on the shit list of most of the heroines, but he'd be relatively safe and get to enjoy all of the luxuries of being a big time gangster and get to hang out with his favorite "characters".

Once Gungnir was in Dante's hands, Odin would be able to contact him, give a ritual to break the spear, and then they'd work together to fuck Verner sideways! Hell, Odin would even smooth things over with the heroines and the protagonist just to make sure they knew he was always a good guy. Gotta be a good boss to keep loyalty, and he was one hell of a wing man if he did say so himself.

…And then Dante decided that he sexually identified as a problem, and that his pronouns were Try/Me.

"Heh, perhaps it would be better to go with a more hands off approach…" Odin said to himself and he pondered recent events.

It would be more productive in the long run if he could leave and begin rebuilding his base of power within the Dream Lands. The unknown variables of the situation made him hesitant to take a risk on such a scenario, but Dante had more than proven himself this night.

"Alright, alright, I'll leave things in your hands, Huginn."

Huginn: 'Thought'.

That was Dante's title as Odin's Raven…

Odin wasn't fond of taking gambles, but this time, he had confidence his bet would come out on top.

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When I woke up, my head was pounding.

It felt like the world's second worst hangover.

The first would be the very first time I got shit-faced drunk back in college. Good times.

I opened my eyes slowly, mercifully there was very little sunlight in the room.

My head felt like a horse trampled all over it, and the rest of my body wasn't feeling any better. It felt like a mix between spraining every muscle in my body and the soreness one gets from a really hard workout. Shit was awful.

Also I was really hungry…and my throat was dry…and…

My eyes widened as I realized something. "And this is not my room."

There was a ceiling fan over me, and turning my head, I could see hardwood floors instead of carpet. And I also had a view outside the window, with a perfect view of the giant crystalline, Empire State-sized tower.

The Nightmare Tower from the first Sorakarago…

And like that it all came flooding back. "Ah, yeah, isekai…"

Then I realized something else, I was only seeing with one eye.

I took a deep breath, braced myself, and groaned in pain and I used my left arm to push myself up. The blankets fell off my torso, revealing that most of my upper body was covered in tight bandages. My arm was wrapped up and had a splint that kept it immobilized, and was in a sling. When I reached up to my right eye, it was covered by a medical eye pad and wrapped securely around my head with some gauze. There was an ache on the right side of my mouth, I moved my hand down to feel stitches go down near the corner of my lip where Verner slashed me.

I took a few moments to process the possible extent of my injuries. "Fuck, I must look like shit." I got my legs over the edge of the bed, and my chest protested against the movement. "Ow, forgot some those fuckers cracked some of my ribs."

I braced myself again.

Alright. One… Two… Three…

I pushed myself off the bed.

"Ow. Ow. Owowowowowowowowow!" I finally made it onto my own two feet. "Yay."

I'd like to say I walked, I'd like to say I did a lot of things honestly, but I waddled over to the door like a fucking penguin. I opened the door and walked into the hallway, the dining room came into view, and I could spy someone sitting in a chair, but from the angle I was at, I couldn't quite make out who they were.

"Uhhh, hello?" I called out as I walked into the dining room. As I did so, I finally got a good look at who was sitting down and…

Bayonetta OST - The Gates of Hell

My eyes widened slightly. "Hot damn…"

The woman sitting down in the chair was an Asian beauty, I was somewhat sure that she was of Chinese descent. Good lord she was insanely hot, and if we take this isekai nonsense into a Xianxia direction, I was half sure some random Young Master was going to pop out of nowhere to fight me to the death for her hand.

That Time I Was Reincarnated In Another World And Immediately Chose To Court With Death ~ Creation of The Sect of Black Air Force Energy ~

I wonder how many thousands of chapters that story would burn through pointlessly meandering through its own bullshit?

She let out a soft laugh, the very sound felt like honey in my ears. "Well, you're certainly a bold one."

She had wild hair, though not wild like a beast, more like the plume of a majestic bird, a deep red color that flowed down her back, looking probably feeling softer than the finest silk human hands could produce. Her face could only be described as immaculate, and those incredible emerald eyes were finer than any jewel. Her body was out of this universe; massive tits that at a glance I could tell were bigger than my head and wonderfully soft and weighty, deliciously plump yet toned thighs that I would not at all mind having my head crushed between, and an ass that I could probably bounce an entire roll of quarters off of.

She wore an outfit probably inspired by traditional Chinese dresses. The top resembled a red robe, the same shade as her hair with gold accents, and detached sleeves garbed her arms. A short but tight black skirt wrapped around her lower half, with a slit to further expose her thigh to an almost indecent degree. She also wore a set of long fingerless gloves that extended all the way to her bicep, bringing attention to her long, perfectly manicured, red-painted nails.

image [https://i.imgur.com/Ywzgmbh.png]

She looked like she walked right out of a hentai.

Technically she was.

There was a knowing smile on her face- she had obviously caught me checking her out, and was preening a little at the attention. She stood up, and walked towards the kettle on the stove. "That aside, I'll get you something to take the edge off?"

I gave a wry smile. "That sounds amazing." Groaning, I waddled over to the table and pulled out a chair, and groaned some more as I sat down. I made an attempt to resist my gaze going lower to get a fantastic view of how her tight skirt hugged her amazing ass and failed almost immediately. "Alright," I took a few deep breaths as the worst of the pain (and horny on main) subsided. "I take it you're the one who patched me up?"

"Guilty as charged." She took out a few fancy Chinese tea cups from the cupboard and began pouring the contents of the kettle into them. "You looked like hell when you were brought in."

"I bet, my stunning performance at the opera house turned more than a few heads, helps that I do my own stunts." The faces of my new adoring fans, and the looks of utter bafflement on Ivan and Verner's resurfaced in my mind. "Heheh…ow it hurts to laugh."

"Hmmm, I did hear rumors about a disturbance in the opera house," Her amazing rack bounced pleasantly with every step and as she sat back down, I didn't even attempt to hide my gaze. Good Lord those mammaries were glorious. "I assume that was you then?"

I rubbed the back of my head with my good hand. "Probably, what did you hear?"

"Only that the opera house and a few blocks around it were rocked by an underground explosion, also that a rather dashing man replaced the acting star mid-performance, and that said dashing man left a lot to be desired from the main cast when they left the stage." She explained while pouring a cup of tea.

She pushed the now full teacup towards me.

"Thank you," I took the cup and took a slow sip of the piping hot tea, it was green tea, really good green tea too. "But you can drop the whole 'dashing' bit. I know I'm about as dashing as a slice of plain, unbuttered toast."

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

She gave a nervous giggle. "Can't blame me for a bit of flattery, can you?"

"Don't get me wrong, I'm incredibly flattered, Huang Zhihao, former scion of the Skyflame sect, Empyrea of The Jade Phoenix, but I figured you'd want answers sooner rather than later."

The teasing, flirty glint in her eyes was gone, replaced by the utmost seriousness. She was reassessing the kind of threat I was.

Huang Zhihao was an unknown existence in this era to all but a select few. She was one of the greatest Aura Masters to ever live, an Ascendant, and one of the protagonists of the prequel game that took place during the Downfall of Magic Era in the 1300s. She was also one of the most deadly people in the setting and could kill me before I could blink if she wanted to. And considering that I'd have to mention Verner, it would no doubt put her in a foul mood due to their shared history.

"I suppose that's fair," Huang's tone was measured, "Let's start with my first question: Why is your soul so messed up?"

I took a deep breath. "So, it involves that asshole of an ex-boyfriend of yours, Verner Von Bluecher."

And I ripped that bandaid off as callously as I could.

Almost immediately her shoulders slumped down and she let out a loud groan. "Of course it involves him! Can't go ten years without that bastard doing something unfathomably stupid!"

While I normally would question her taste in men, this was actually before Verner became an irredeemable piece of shit, and was still a half-decent excuse for a human being, so I'll let it slide. Though they never actually got together unless it was the Good Ending of the prequel game. Unfortunately, the Bad Ending is canon to this timeline, and while what Verner did in the Hidden Bad End was god awful… the Bad End of the prequel game was on par if not worse cause Verner pulled a Griffith. The Yellow King fed on his ego and insecurities throughout the game and slowly corrupted him until he broke and made a the fateful deal that resulted in all of Huang's friends, family, loved ones being killed or worse, and then the bastard sealed her away for centuries until she was released around the same time magic came back into the world in 1914.

Yeah, her puppy crush on Verner died a horrible, horrible death.

She leveled a glare at me, and I felt the pressure in the room rise from her Aura just faintly leaking out. "What the hell did Verner do this time?"

I paused, thinking about the pros and cons of spilling the beans right off the bat then immediately shut that train of thought down because I'd rather be transparent with one of my favorite characters in this verse despite the fact that I might come off as insane. Hell, I'll be as transparent as I can with everyone if the topic comes up, I'd rather not have any 'Gasp! How could you not tell us?!' moments if I can help it.

"Uh, well, it involves six timelines, seven counting this one, parallel universes, a supposedly dead Norse deity that can see beyond the Veil, and an eldritch god." I charted off. "Also one of probably many apocalypses."

Huang looked at me, she really looked at me. Dead in the eyes.

Her eyes glazed over for a second before she let out another groan and rubbed the side of her head.

I blinked in confusion. "Are… are you alright?"

She looked at me somewhat confused, and narrowed her eyes before coming to some unspoken conclusion.

Huang let out a long sigh. "You are going to explain everything to me, but right now I am too sober for this shit." She sent a look my way. "You drink?"

I smirked. "Like a fish."

"Then we are going to get along just fine."

"Like a house on fire!"

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One Week Later…

Within the eighth arrondissement of Paris was a high rise hotel, named Trône des Rois (Throne of Kings). It was an extravagant, luxury five-star hotel twenty-two floors high. It was built in 1919 after the Greek God Ares had tried and failed to challenge King Arthur's rule over Europe. Though short, the war had devastated a good portion of France, and Paris would've been naught but ruins without the King's power.

The Trône des Rois was one of France's new symbols of strength after that fateful war.

Now, however, the hotel was a symbol of Paris's Five Great Crime families, a monument, caked in glittering silver and gold, to everything wrong with the city. It was the favored meeting place for the city's crime bosses aside from the Opera House, a den of excess, sin, and corruption.

But whoever owned the Trône des Rois could be said to be the one who owned Paris's underworld. And the man who owned it was Yegor Sabalenka, the man known as Ivan The Terrible… Though he knew all too well that he owned nothing, he was but a figurehead. Instead, it was the man before him that truly ruled Paris's underworld with an iron fist.

He was a decently tall man, finely combed brown hair, and handsome facial features that made him look aristocratic. He was a simple black waistcoat over a white dress-shirt and black tie, black dress pants and shoes. He looked like a proper gentleman, someone you could find tending the bar at a high-class establishment.

But one look into his yellow, near reptilian eyes, and one would understand that this was no mere man.

This was the Devil in human skin: Verner Von Bluecher.

It had been a week since the incident in the opera house, and both of them had been working overtime to pull wool over everyone's eyes and cover things up as much as possible. The opera house had been closed for the time being for repairs, and the official story was that there was a gas leak in the basement and an enthusiastic member of the audience took to the stage in the chaos.

Yegor was sitting on one of the barstools of the private bar within the Trône des Rois's penthouse. The penthouse was an extravagant two story suite, owned exclusively by Yegor. For the past ten years, ever since he had slain his previous family in cold blood and taken his rightful place as the head of the Sabalenka crime family, he had resided there.

He knew he could be so much more though, if only he wasn't subservient to Verner…

"Verner, be honest with me- what the hell are we dealing with here?" he asked.

Verner, acting as a bartender because he liked being dramatic and setting the mood, poured him a drink. A fancy and expertly prepared vodka martini.

"Dante Alighieri, an extra-dimensional being from a parallel Earth," Verner explained as he pulled out another glass and bottle of brandy. "I looked into it, and the body he now inhabits belongs to Antoine Tombe de Rouge, a D-Rank Adventurer of the Nightmare Dungeons."

Yegor took a sip of his martini; as usual, Verner's work was outstanding, though it no doubt came with the territory of being around seven-hundred years old. A man could pick up a lot of hobbies and skills in that time.

"That kind of power is anything but D-Rank, around A-Rank, and if he was able to battle you head to head for that long, he's probably around S-Rank." His thoughts brought him back to how Dante blocked two shots from Befreiung. "And that Grimoire of his is an incredibly powerful defensive tool."

"That was no Grimoire," Verner looked him dead in the eyes. "That was an Aura Construct."

Yegor nearly spat out his drink in shock. "What?! He's an Aura Master?!"

While the usage of Aura in general was far more common in the day and age compared to how it was centuries ago, Aura Masters were few and far between. Absolute monsters given flesh, forces of nature, just the man before Yegor now.

"Not a true Aura Master, no, but close." Verner now had an inquisitive look on his face. "He was able to shortcut the process but using his own blood as a medium, weaponizing it in a form of hemomancy."

"He turned his own blood into Aura Constructs…" Yegor let out a breath. "I thought that was impossible."

"Oh, it is, for everyone else except for him." Verner explained. "I observed his soul during our battle. It was in a pure liquid state, yet more dense than any soul I'd ever seen. It was like looking at mercury." He took a sip of his brandy. "Fascinating truly, if he had accepted my deal, I would've been much more inclined to keep him alive so I could study such an interesting phenomenon."

Yegor resisted the urge to roll his eyes, the old man got like this whenever he found something interesting.

"That's nice and all, but how are we going to deal with him?" Yegor cut to the chase.

Despite his seemingly calm demeanor, Yegor was absolutely fucking furious. First some no-name back alley beggar rags had the audacity to hold him at knife point and even draw his blood. Then the rotten trash didn't even have the decency to die like the mut he was, nearly brought down his opera house, humiliated him in front of an entire theater of people, and robbed him of the Befreiung.

If Verner hadn't stopped him, he'd have called upon every connection he had to find the bastard and make him beg for death.

"When he saw Gram, he showed obvious distress upon the fate of the Brandt family heir." He finished off the rest of the brandy in his glass. "It goes without saying that his next move is going to be the rescue of Astrid Von Brandt, something we can use to our advantage."

Verner reached into thin air, the space around his arm rippled like water, and then pulled out a dark blade, Gram.

"This is the bait," Verner placed the Grimoire of the Brandt family across the bar counter. "He won't be able to find Astrid without it."

Yegor raised an eyebrow. "Wouldn't that be too obvious of a trap?"

"Of course, but it's one he has no choice but to walk into." Verner pointed out. "The mouse might be clever, but with the right cheese, it'll always tempt the trap."

Yegor nodded, the logic was sound. "Alright, I'll prepare the opera house for-"

He was cut off as the phone on the bar counter rang.

Verner and Yoger shared a look.

Verner's brows scrunched together. "I thought you told the staff that we weren't to be disturbed."

Yegor narrowed his eyes. "I did too…"

Something was off here, in the ten years Yegor had owned Trône des Rois, not once had the staff disobeyed an order. They had more than enough muscle, and fire power, if necessary, to handle any unruly guests. None of the other crime bosses were scheduled to come over for a meeting so…

Yegor pressed a button on the telephone, transferring the call to the CV (Crystal Vision) mounted to the wall right above the bottles in the bar.

The feed from the lobby began playing, and a familiar face appeared on the screen.

Messy jet black hair, a medical patch over his right eye, stitches on the right side of his lip, and bandages wrapped around his neck and down further into his new two piece suit. Behind him they could see many of the staff knocked out on the floor, and they could also see proof that he had not been dragging his feet this past week.

The fox maids that served Astrid Von Brandt stood behind him, as did Maruyama Ichiro and his little sidekick Tennyo Sakuya. But more importantly Huang Zhihao… and Yegor's own little sister Tatsiana Sabalenka.

Dante's single uncovered eye widened, and his lips spread into a malicious grin.

"Surprise, motherfucker."

Chapter End