After carefully scanning his friend Zac from up close, the warlock looked back at Turner, who seemed to be trying to combat his own fear of Dante.
"If your friend had simply followed my orders, he wouldn't have gotten himself in this predicament—Why are you interfering with my shit!?" the bully said.
"Your orders, huh?" the warlock muttered, taking one step and appearing right in front of Turner, startling him.
The bully took one step back from the shock and tried punching Dante in the face, and while Dante could have easily avoided it, he decided to take the hit.
Nevertheless, the warlock didn't even budge an inch, as Turner felt like he was hitting a wall when his fist connected with his cheek.
"Pathetic," Dante muttered, grabbing Turner's arm and squeezing it, not entirely breaking his bones yet.
"Arrghh!" the bully grunted, forcibly kneeling on the ground from the pain.
"You said you gave an order? Tell me about it, then…" said the warlock, his voice cold and his gaze sharp.
"I just told him to get away from Victoria—she's my bitch!" Turner exclaimed, but Dante knew he was lying.
"Is that so? Then why did he avoid me? —In fact, all the other students have also been pretty distant from me. You wouldn't happen to have something to do with that, right?" Dante asked, his eyes looking even more intimidating to the bully.
Still, Turner stayed true to his ego and spoke up while trembling and sweating. "So what if I did-..." *crush* — His sentence was cut short by the sound of his arm's bones snapping.
Dante followed it up by punching Turner three times in the face—in a quick succession that didn't last over one second, breaking his front teeth and nose.
As the bully fell on his rear and grabbed his bloodied face with his healthy hand, the warlock stepped on his chest and slammed him against the ground.
"This is my order to you. Don't ever show your face around me or my friends…" Dante said, looking down at the beaten-up Turner with a condescending gaze.
"There won't be a second warning," he continued, finishing his sentence and applying more pressure on his leg, depriving Turner of oxygen and knocking him out.
With haste, Dante looked around to make sure that the bullies and Zac were still unconscious, stretching his hand forward and making the area around him shake momentarily.
From the ground, an obsidian altar with skull adornments that reached up to his waist came up, making him hold his hand above the bowl atop the pillar.
Just like he did the night he first arrived, he poured some of his blood into the altar until the skulls' eyes on the side lit up with a green hue, producing a small healthstone.
After snapping his fingers, the small altar turned to ash, and Dante quickly approached his friend to treat him before anyone else could find them.
He gently placed the healthstone in Zac's palm and helped him tighten his grip around it, making the stone generate a green mist that mended all of Zac's wound in a few seconds.
"Wh-what happened here?" said Sophia, who had finally caught up with the warlock but reached him just in time to see all of the bullies beaten up on the ground.
"A bit of an altercation. I'll tell you about it later…" replied Dante, gazing back at the shattered BeamDeck beside him.
He knew that Zac had to work two jobs for months to afford the console, and he did it while also taking care of his mother at the hospital.
When Sophia approached him to help treat Zac, Dante asked Sophia to maintain his grip on the stone for a moment while he checked something.
The blonde did as requested, but feeling curious about what Dante was doing, she turned around and saw him ruffling through the bullies' pockets, taking out their wallets.
"I'm not stealing…" Dante commented, but Sophia kept staring at him with suspicion.
"No, seriously. I'm just getting the money they owe Zac," he continued, trying to explain his actions.
The three lackeys had 250 kepi between them, which annoyed Dante, as it wasn't even half of the price for the console. Still, when he checked Turner's pockets, he got an extra 500 kepi from him.
Right as he collected the money, Zac opened his eyes and let out a soft grunt, prompting the blonde to quickly grab the healthstone from his hand.
"Ngh… Wh-what the hell!?" the redhead exclaimed, seeing all of the bullies that were tormenting him a few minutes prior all bloodied and beaten on the ground.
"Dante, Miss Sophia?" he asked, still perplexed at the scene.
Zac quickly checked his head, thinking that he was still bleeding from it, but realized that he wasn't feeling any pain and there were no signs of being wounded.
"I think it's better we all talk somewhere else. How about you come over for dinner?" Sophia said, wanting to leave the scene before other students saw them there.
The three left the alley after helping Zac pick up all his broken stuff, which seemed to depress him as he knew he had no money to replace them.
"Well, I did get some compensation, but I don't think it's enough to replace all of your stuff…" said Dante while they walked to the apartments.
"Huh? There is no way those guys gave you money," Zac replied.
"Ehh, you know. Maybe I took it, maybe they gave it to me—does it really matter when it's the money they owe you?" the warlock said, trying to excuse his actions.
Nevertheless, Zac had been getting used to Dante's strange logic, so he decided to go with the flow and agree with his friend's words.
When the trio got to the building, they went up to Dante's apartment on the fourth floor, but Sophia took a detour to go to her apartment to grab the food she was going to cook.
"Dude, you got robbed!" Zac exclaimed as he entered Dante's empty apartment.
All the warlock had were piles of books, a couch, a flatscreen TV, and his trophy for winning the squatting tournament—so, naturally, Zac thought that his house had been broken into.