27 Crious, Euphoric and above all, Anxious.
Dante woke up to find Morgana next to him, completely naked, sleeping like a child. He got up and looked through the enormous glass panel on the top floor of the tower. Below was the city of Avalon, illuminating Dante's entire field of vision.
The Avalon Empire—Dante understood that the city was, in fact, Britannia, the city where King Arthur once ruled.
Morgana hid this information, but Dante knew about "Pendragon," the holder of the legendary Excalibur. Ironically, Excalibur was sealed within his Mental World.
Contrary to what people thought, Dante understood the history of this world well. He was familiar with most legends—from the Knights of the Round Table and the two wolves chasing the sun and the moon to the legendary swordsmen Musashi Miyamoto and Sasaki Kojiro, the Dragon Slayer Siegfried, the Wisest Man Mimir, the Seven Celestial Virtues, the Seven Deadly Sins, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the 72 Keys of Solomon.
Dante flew upward and now was outdoors, hovering above the tower. He looked down with mixed emotions. He wanted to understand why he reincarnated, why he came to this world.
His memories began to return, the traumas he barely remembered resurfaced. Now, about to enter the Academy, traumatic memories of his past life in school began to emerge—the days he contemplated jumping from the school building terrace, the days when his existence seemed erasable.
Dante looked seriously at the city; his vision had improved significantly, allowing him to see people living peacefully. It was curious since he could only see so clearly in Avalon.
Deep in thought, Dante believed that no one his age could match him. Arrogance prevailed after being trained by the Goddess of the Spear and the Supreme Mage, but it slowly dissipated when he watched videos of other candidates' demonstrations of strength.
"Alexander Sucellus, Elizabeth Tapes, Seraphina Nightfall"—these three names quickly came to his mind, individuals nurtured with the best of their clans. Dante was curious, euphoric, and above all, anxious.
To fight them? Dante no longer wanted just to fight.
He wanted to defeat them. A feeling inherited from his mother. "If you consider yourself a genius, you have to be strong enough to uphold that quality," Valentina once said.
However, what worried Dante was not the people he knew but those he didn't. Being a genius doesn't mean having a name or a family to support you. Many geniuses and heroes in history emerged out of nowhere, like King Arthur himself.
Miyamoto Musashi was another who rose from obscurity, building himself on blood and sweat, just like his mother, until he reached the pinnacle of what he believed.
That was the real reflection: being nurtured by your family didn't make you a genius; you were just spoiled. Who were they? Who were the geniuses of this new era? Dante knew that there were at least more than thirty real geniuses in this academy.
He had thought about the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Virtues. Someone born with that entity supporting them surely was a genius. Each family could easily have 2 to 5 geniuses. And, finally, there were people like Dante, who reincarnated.
Dante had no proof of their existence, but he knew that smartphones didn't make sense in a world where architecture hadn't advanced even half of what it should have. Of course, he didn't know the Human Realm, but from what he heard from Morgana, they weren't different from cities in Nighsphere.
To any observer, he would seem like a young king contemplating his empire, but they would be deeply mistaken.
"What a drag," Dante said as he looked down, leaving his thoughts behind when he felt Morgana waking up.
He descended to the tower and saw her in bed looking at him. She was still naked, covered only by a sheet. Dante was always surprised by this scene. He was still trying to digest what happened between them for her to become like this, but he concluded that there would never be an explanation unless she said it herself.
"Go back and sleep, my love," Morgana murmured, and Dante shivered, returning to the side of the helpless maiden who wanted a warm pillow to sleep on.
He lay on the bed, and she used his chest as a pillow. It was so close that Morgana heard the young man's heartbeat, but she ignored it. She was happy, and if she was going to sleep, it would be listening to the heart of the one she loved.
