Regression of the Tower's Final Survivor-Chapter 55: Unchecked Aggression

The distance between Dante and the shield wall closed in a heartbeat.

To the soldiers of the Iron Domain, it must have looked like suicide, a single swordsman charging a formation designed to stop cavalry charges with nothing but steel and arrogance. They braced themselves, planting their boots in the crystal dust with spears leveled through the gaps in their tower shields.

"Hold!" Garrett screamed from the center of the line. "Skew him!"

Dante didn’t slow down and didn’t swerve, just kept running straight at them like he had a death wish. At the last possible second, just as the spear tips threatened to turn him into a pin cushion, he poured the Ancient Core’s energy into his legs.

He didn’t jump over them. He jumped onto them.

His boot slammed into the center of Garrett’s shield with the force of a hydraulic press, and steel groaned while wood splintered as the Lieutenant of the Iron Domain buckled under the impact like someone had dropped an anvil on his head. The formation shattered instantly as Garrett was driven to his knees with his shield arm numb from the shock.

Dante rode the momentum, vaulting off Garrett’s shield to land in the center of the enemy formation where he was completely surrounded by men who wanted him dead.

It was perfect.

"Primal Strike."

He spun with his sword wreathed in a blinding green-gold aura that extended the blade’s range by five feet, and the energy wave wasn’t a clean cut but a bludgeon of pure force that tore through armor like it was made of paper. Three soldiers launched backward with their breastplates carved open to reveal broken ribs, and they didn’t even have time to scream before they hit the crystal walls with bone-shattering force.

"Get him off me!" Garrett scrambled back with his helmet askew. "Mages! Blast the zone!"

"We’ll hit our own men!" one of the mages yelled, hesitating as he tried to track the blur of motion destroying his squad.

"Do it!"

The mages began to chant, weaving a circle of fire that would incinerate everything in the clearing, but Dante was already moving. He was faster than thought, faster than casting times, weaving through the chaotic melee and using the confused soldiers as living shields. A sword swung at his head and he ducked, letting the blade take off a friendly soldier’s pauldron instead and sending sparks flying.

This wasn’t a duel. It was a massacre.

Dante didn’t kill them because killing them would be easy, and easy wasn’t the point. Instead, he systematically dismantled them with the precision of a surgeon and the brutality of a butcher.

He caught a spear thrust with his bare hand, the Core energy hardening his skin to diamond-toughness, and with a sharp twist he snapped the ash-wood shaft. In the same motion, he drove the jagged end of the broken wood into the attacker’s knee, and the man dropped with a howl while clutching the ruin of his leg.

A rogue tried to flank him with daggers flashing for Dante’s kidneys, but Dante didn’t even turn. He lashed out with a back-kick that connected with the man’s solar plexus and folded him in half, then grabbed his hair before he could fall and slammed his face into his own knee. The sound of cartilage collapsing was wet and loud.

He kicked a shield-bearer in the elbow, shattering the joint so he could never hold a weapon again without high-tier magic healing. He dislocated shoulders, broke fingers, cracked ribs, all of it calculated to cause maximum pain and minimum death.

It was brutal, efficient, and terrifying.

Astrid lowered her axe from where she was watching at the edge of the clearing. "He’s... playing with them."

"He’s breaking them," Ravenna corrected, her eyes wide as she traced the flow of Dante’s movements. "He’s not aiming for vitals, he’s aiming for their will. He wants them to remember this pain every time they pick up a weapon."

In less than two minutes, twelve men were on the ground. They weren’t dead because Tower climbers were resilient, but they were writhing in agony and clutching shattered limbs while the ground turned slick with blood and the air filled with the groans of broken men.

Only Garrett and the two mages remained standing.

The mages had stopped casting, and the fire in their hands flickered and died as they stared at the carnage. Their eyes darted between their fallen comrades and the monster standing in the center of it all, untouched.

Dante turned to them. Not a drop of blood on his clothes, not a scratch on his armor. He swiped his sword through the air to clear the gore from the blade in a motion that was sharp and dismissive.

"Run," Dante whispered, the urgency in his voice cutting through her shock.

It was barely a sound, but it hit the mages like a thunderclap. They dropped their staffs and fled, abandoning their squad, scrambling over the crystal rocks in a desperate bid to escape.

Dante didn’t chase them. He turned his attention to Garrett.

The lieutenant was backing away with his sword held up in a guard that shook uncontrollably. "You... who are you? No regular feels like this. You’re... you’re an anomaly."

"I’m the guy who told you no," Dante said, walking toward him while the crunch of his boots on the crystal floor was the only sound in the clearing.

"Stay back!" Garrett swung wildly, a sloppy, desperate strike fueled by panic.

Dante caught the blade.

He didn’t parry it. He caught the actual steel blade in his left hand, and sparks flew as the enchanted edge bit into his Core-hardened skin, but it didn’t cut. The Core energy flared, turning his grip into a vice.

The enchanted steel snapped like a dry twig with a sharp crack that echoed off the crystal walls.

Garrett stared at the broken hilt in his hand, his mind unable to process what had just happened. Before he could recover, Dante kicked his legs out from under him.

Garrett hit the ground hard with the wind knocked out of him, and he tried to scramble away, crab-walking backward, but a boot landed on his chest and pinned him to the dirt.

Dante leaned over him with the green glow in his eyes burning with cold intensity.

"Please," Garrett wheezed, all his arrogance gone, replaced by the naked terror of a prey animal. "I... I was just following orders. Vane... he told me to—"

"I don’t care." Dante pressed down harder, feeling the ribs beneath the breastplate creak under the pressure. "Tell Vane something for me."

"Anything. I’ll tell him anything."

"Tell him the Iron Slayer doesn’t pay taxes." Dante repeated the words from the night before, but this time they carried the weight of fifteen broken bodies. "He collects them."

He stepped off Garrett and turned to his team.

"Strip them," Dante ordered.

"What?" Astrid blinked, startled out of her daze.

"The armor. The weapons. The potions. Everything." Dante pointed to the groaning soldiers scattered across the clearing. "Leave them in their underwear. If they want to be the Iron Domain, they can crawl back to the city and explain why they lost their iron."

"That’s..." Ren looked at the pile of high-quality gear glittering in the dust. "That’s humiliating."

"That," Dante said, sheathing his sword with a final click, "is the point."

While his team hesitated, then moved to obey, Astrid with glee and Ren with reluctance and Ravenna with quiet efficiency, Dante crouched down next to Garrett, who was sobbing quietly in relief that he was still alive.

"And Garrett?" Dante whispered.

The man flinched, curling into a ball.

"If I see you again," Dante said, his voice dropping to a register that vibrated in Garrett’s bones, "I won’t use the flat of the blade."

He stood up and looked at the sky where the artificial sun of Floor 11 was reaching its zenith, the light reflecting off the crystal trees in blinding, brilliant patterns.

Arc 2 had truly begun. And he had just fired the first shot.