Dante furrowed his eyebrows upon hearing the chime out of nowhere. He looked around with a vigilant expression and prepared himself for another encounter with a monster. After a short while of searching through the dark forest, Dante couldn't see anything from every direction.
'What was that?'
He wondered to himself as he was confused as to why a ring sounded in his head. Was the chime nothing more but hallucinations from his head? Or was it something different? Questioning thoughts dwelled within his head, making him gather his cognition.
'The chime sounded after killing the monster.'
'So maybe it is connected to the monster I had killed.'
With this in mind, Dante turned his gaze toward the bloodied corpse of a giant. He walked towards it and investigated the corpse. He pondered whether the monster had something he could salvage. But the salvaging session ended after nothing was found.
Though after the salvaging session, a deep bass echoed within his head.
*BRRNNNGGG…*
Dante raised an eyebrow and looked around to discover where the deep bass came from. There was no direction where the deep bass sounded. It was as if the deep bass was from his head.
'Where is this sound coming from?'
'And why does it sound as if it's charging?'
He had a bad feeling with the deep bass getting stronger. Many unnatural things kept happening to him after his reincarnation. So Dante was wary since the possibility of something improbable occurring to him kept getting higher.
Dozens of seconds later, the deep bass disappeared, and silence shrouded his head. The noise in his faded almost in its entirety as if it didn't exist. Dante, hearing the silence, sighed to himself and crouched behind a giant tree.
He was nothing more than a fat young man. If he wouldn't die by the mouths of the monsters, then a stroke or heart attack would probably crawl to him. Dante was simply tired and wanted to take a deep slumber.
"I must not fall into slumber."
Dante muttered as he determined to not get sleepy. But no matter how much he tried to make himself awake, the deep slumber became even more and more comforting.
Then, his eyelids closed themselves, and Dante peacefully fell deep into his consciousness.
At that moment, a bright silver light flashed before his closed perception. It was a familiar light, and he immediately took notice of it.
'This- This is the light that brought me into the ha-'
Before he could continue his thought, his eyelids opened, finding himself in the hallway of memories. It was the same as always, a long and seemingly endless hallway with ceiling lights strapped onto the void from above.
Dante was lying on the cold and dark floor when he opened his eyelids. He slowly stood up and started looking around the hallway. He was at the end of the hallway, meaning that he must tread the remaining hall to reach his body.
"I can't believe that I'm back in this place."
"I thought that was a once in a lifetime experience."
He mumbled while stretching his body.
He thought of the hallway of memories as something rare and unique. He was sure that it would never hit him again but from the looks of it. He was wrong.
The phenomena regarding the hallway of memories seemed to be targeted toward him. There must be something special in this body that he didn't account for. What that was would be a simple question with a complex answer.
"Well, I guess this isn't a bad thing."
"I gained a lot of useful things from the last journey within this hall."
"Entering more rooms will give me more information regarding the bastard."
Dante yawned after uttering such words.
He wasn't perplexed when entering the hallway of memories. He didn't have any hatred towards it and was also not ignorant about it. He knows of the advantages it could bring him. And with the advantages it could bring, he knows no hesitation.
Dante began walking through the hallway, and the only thing he could say with his observation was one thing.
"Locked."
"All of the doors are locked."
He squinted his eyes since something like this had never happened before. He didn't know the implications the doors being locked meant. Were these the hidden and deep memories of the current body? Or was it something else? Secrets, maybe?
"Hmm… This is an unexpected problem."
"Is there a way to opened the locked doors?"
Dante questioned himself as the locks seemed to require keys. Maybe there were keys hidden within the hallway of memories? The only thing he had to do was find them. But finding them in such a massive area spells impossible.
It would be beyond picking a needle in a haystack.
"Let's just continue."
He sighed and kept treading through the hallway of memories. He passed through numerous locked doors, with none of them unlocked. This made him realize if he was stranded in the hallway of memories.
Though this judgment was the last resort on the explanation of the locked doors.
As Dante walked through the same view over and over again, he noticed a shadowy figure in the distance away from him. His brows knitted upon noticing the shadow as he swiftly shook his head.
'This is just my head playing tricks with me.'
Dante thought to himself as he continued walking through the hallway, dwelling inside his head. He wanted to ignore the shadow and be indifferent to it. But no matter what he did, it was still noticeably standing in the distance.
The shadow wasn't disappearing, and he was getting nearer to it with each step he took.
He then felt a breeze of wind on his neck which made him instantly turn his head to look at who was behind him. Turning back, he couldn't see anything other than the hall he had passed through.
'Damn, this is bad.'
He shook his head as he returned to walking through the hallway. It was then he noticed the disappearance of the shadow. He lifted as a result of the shadowy figure's disappearance and wondered where the hell it went.
"Maybe it really was nothing more but my head."
Dante tried motivating himself and discouraging the reality of the shadowy figure.
It didn't take time for him to arrive at the spot where the shadow stood. And above this spot was a ceiling light that wasn't opened. This gave Dante a bit of chill, but it was interrupted after he noticed the door had no lock.
A smile emerged on his face, and his eyes glistened as if hope had arrived.
'It's not locked.'
He thought while standing before the door.
Dante held the doorknob in front of him and slowly turned it. This was the path to the exit, and he might gain important information from it.
As he opened the door, what emerged behind it was a big bedroom.
And upon looking at it, Dante's perception blacked out in nearly an instant.
It made him somewhat confused, wondering what had happened. But his confusion stopped when his senses returned. What he saw after the return of his perception was a bit spine-chilling.
Dante was looking at the bedroom while being tucked into the bed.
He was smaller than before, becoming a young child residing on a soft bed while being entirely shrouded in pitch-darkness.
'Ah, sh*t.'