Dante was always a fairly run of the mill guy, living a very standard life. By 17 years old, things were going pretty well for him, and as his luck would have it, he would be chatting one day with his crush who he has liked for some time. The conversation was going very well and he was feeling quite confident in himself. In an attempt to impress her, Dante would wager that he could escape The Great Below were he suddenly cast down into the pits of the green colored hellscape. In any other situation, this would have perhaps just been a hyperbolic boast from a teenager. But unfortunately for Dante, his wager didn't fall on deaf ears. At that moment, a large rift broke the ground beside them, and a hand reached out and touched Dante, instantly reforming his entire being into a square mass of flesh. Where he was then collected by the hand and the rift closed.

From Dante's perspective, he could not see, he could not hear, but he could still feel, and he was completely conscious the entire time. He was completely unable to tell how much time had passed. Unknown to Dante, it took this disembodied hand nearly five hundred years to reach its destination. Where he was placed before a large individual sitting upon a throne. Dante was picked up once more, as they spoke to him. "Wager accepted." Despite not being able to hear, Dante still somehow understood what was being said. "The higher you ascend, the more of your original form will be restored to you. The game begins now." Dante was then cast aside, and sent falling down an even deeper chasm. Where he would fall aimlessly for another several hundred years.

Upon finally landing at the bottom of the deepest pit in the realm. Dante was completely unable to understand how he was supposed to move. Let alone do anything without being able to see or hear or articulate basically anything. So after a few more decades of sitting in the same spot collecting dust. Dante's completely destroyed mind and spirit reached its lowest point, and upon trying to just emotionally release it all into one huge scream, nothing happened, for he had no mouth to do so. What did happen however, was him moving ever so slightly in one direction, the force of the silent scream just enough to slightly push Dante forward. However, he wasn't even aware this was happening. All Dante could do was attempt to scream, over and over.

Eventually Dante's anguish would result in him winding up just ever so slightly higher up than he was at the start of it all so many years ago, and in doing so, Dante could suddenly feel one of his hands again for the first time in hundreds of years. Just a small portion of it stuck out of the mass of flesh, but Dante spent little time trying to wonder how it happened. He immediately moved his hand as much as he could, getting it in a position where he could use his fingers to inch along forward. To the outside observer this looked much like a morbid fleshy snail of sorts. The longer he kept scraping forward however, the more damage it would do to his hand, as the stress of carrying the entry of himself compacting into this shape on one hand was a lot to handle, and at a point he could begin to feel his fingers start to give and nearly break. He would stop his efforts after having been moving non stop for almost five years. When not long after, he would feel himself once more being picked up, only this time, it wasn't by hands, but by the mouth of some kind of large beast. Dante was only able to tell based on the pain he felt of several large jagged teeth impaling him.

This beast would carry Dante just far enough to the point that he found one of his eyes just barely sticking out from the surface of his flesh. Where he would see himself in the den of some horrific looking creature he could not describe. This location is where Dante would remain for another several hundred years as the beast used Dante as a daily chewing toy of sorts. With Dante being thrown about and bitten into on a daily basis with very little breaks in between. Each day Dante would hope for something to come and release him from this torment, yet each day nothing changed.

Eventually the beast would leave the den at one point, when two individuals who resided in the area would stumble upon the cave, and look down upon the one eyed one handed square shaped mass of flesh. They could see in the look of the eye that whoever this thing was was quite desperate. So the two picked him up and carried him away, and after some time of traveling, Dante would begin to regain his form slowly. Finally once they reached a certain point, Dante was fully formed back to his original self. It was almost a completely foreign sensation to Dante, not being in the form he was for so long prior to this. He would turn to thank the two for helping him get to the end so he could finally leave, to which they laughed and said this was less than one percent of the total way up.

This would horrify Dante and he would take a step back, as his mind raced at the thought of only being one percent of the way to freedom. When suddenly his foot slipped from under him and he fell down the cliffside they were standing on. It just so happened this exact spot he was falling at had an uninterrupted fall down to the same spot he started in. As he fell, he could feel his body contorting and shrinking down once more. The next thing he knew, he could not see, he could not hear, and it was once again silence at the bottom of it all.

Dante would then spend the next several thousand years ultimately working his way back up, and finally at the end of it all, Dante would emerge near the peak of the realm, now a completely changed person, and as he would ascend the final steps towards freedom. Just as he could sense the end of his ceaseless torture. He felt a burning sensation across his back, and an equally burning sensation over his eye as he became marked by the realm. Imbuing within Dante a constantly burning ring of fire that never stops inflicting pain upon him. Dante then felt a huge force of energy blast him away as he was knocked just perfectly to fall all the way back down to the very bottom after he just spent several thousand years climbing back up, and not only was he back to being an unrecognizable mass, he now was constantly burning on the inside and in even greater pain than before. It would then take another few thousand years as Dante would once again make his way to the end of the road. The force of energy that blew him away last time attempted to do so again, but Dante was ready for it and resisted. His anger reached a boiling point as he summoned forth his ring of fire and launched himself upward as fast as he could, breaking past the barrier between realms. Blasting through prehistoric rock and stone and dirt. As Dante flew upwards towards the surface, he could feel a stinging sensation at the same time in his back temporarily, before no longer feeling it as he reached the surface.

Dante looked around as he saw standing next to him, a tall, slender looking person holding an umbrella in the pouring rain. The flames within Dante began to die down, and he stumbled before falling forward into them. This person was Umbra, and as Dante fell towards him, Umbra carefully and gently caught him and had him lay down in the grass. For the first time in centuries, Dante felt calm. Little was he aware however that he wasn't the only one who was now there with Umbra, as an ancient looking person holding a rock and spear was just beginning to thaw on the ground nearby the hole that was left from Dante's ascent. Umbra inferred that as Dante came up from below, the fire following him must have melted away the ice that contained them and their spear must have got lodged in Dante as he flew upward to the surface. Eventually the rock and spear holding person began to speak to Umbra. "Where Plok is?" At that point, Umbra knew exactly what to do with this situation and took the two others to the registration desk of the Arena to become the Boss Gauntlet team, Rings, Rain and Rock.

Dante would later come to and not agree to help whatsoever. Ignoring the pleas of Umbra, he ran back as fast as he could to his home. When he arrived in his town, he found a newspaper and noticed the date reading just three years since the day he was taken. This created a sense of joy in Dante knowing that those he cared about still would be around. Though he continued looking at the paper and saw in the recently deceased section, was his crush who recently perished in an accident just days prior. The very same crush who was the reason he made the worst wager of his life. Destroyed, Dante would finally return home, to find out that not only had his sister also died in his absence, his family actively seemed to not even recognize him at all after the experience. This sense of his world crumbling around him produced another emotional outburst from Dante, and in doing so his flames would increase in size and power significantly, emerging from within him in a giant burst. The next thing Dante knew, he looked around to see the home completely leveled like it was hit by an explosion. With little to nothing remaining besides Dante himself. Somehow at that moment, standing just behind him was Umbra once more, who reached a gentle hand forward offering to accompany him back to the Arena.