But now, right in front of her eyes, she witnessed Dante smashing Balrog with his icy, evil chains.
“Why don’t you die!?” roared the Balrog, but his flame was already extinguished.
Dante sighed in disappointment and charged the demon with all his might. The recoil from the
blow came out strong. It had forced Dante to land awkward. “Shit!”
The Balrog staggered, barely recovering from the blow, and sent a flaming fist after Dante.
“Took you long enough,” Dante said, twisting the diabolical chains of Cerberus and rushing
forward. Without hesitation, he quilted the demon’s fist.
There was an explosion. Balrog’s fist had been crushed, but so had Cerberus: little pieces of both
flew across the field. But Dante smiled confidently, as if he knew ahead of time that it would be so.
“It’s even hard for me to smash this thing. I had to go for a draw.”
Lucia didn’t understand what he meant—not immediately. But she inspected Balrog’s fist, seeing
something shine. “What is it?”
But in the next moment, the little shiny sliver tightly held in Balrog’s fist scattered. The fragments
of the little thing, and the defeated Cerberus, shone in unison and turned to dust, melting away—as if to
say, we have fulfilled our mission.
“How is this so?” Balrog peered incredulously into his empty fist.