"W-What on earth is this?"
The Dream Walkers couldn't keep up with the sudden situation.
That went for Clara Cowen, Julia Plumhart, and Zantman.
It was the same for everyone.
Not only did Franz suddenly appear, but he also wounded Nirva, who seemed impossible to defeat.
Additionally, the unidentifiable allies wearing masks joined the fight.
Though Nirva had let his guard down, they pinned him to the ground in an instant and cut off his head.
That skill was certainly not that of ordinary people.
Only Sedina recognized the masked people.
'Seniors!'She barely held back the joyful voice that was about to burst out.
She had suspected it since Hans and Seridan arrived, but it seemed that all the other members of Owens had also come to Dreamland.
"Well, it seems we arrived at the best moment."
Alex looked around at the surroundings from behind his mask.
Perhaps due to the fight with Nirva, the Dream Walkers were in terrible shape.
The surroundings were a complete mess.
If they had been a little later, it might have been irreversible.
"This, we can win this, right?"
Alex's gaze finally fixed on Nirva.
With his head and both arms severed, his body fixed to a harpoon, he looked no different from a corpse.
But he wasn't dead; he was still alive.
"These days, greetings are rough. I don't understand why everyone I meet tries to cut off my head. Is my head that desirable?"
Nirva's voice could be heard.
Even though his head had been severed, his voice seemed to echo in one's mind.
Sand flew from the air and attached to Nirva's neck.
His severed head regenerated, and his left arm that Alex had cut off was restored to normal.
Nirva grabbed the harpoon that had pierced his body with his left hand and the harpoon turned to sand and easily disintegrated.
The hole that had been punched through his solar plexus was filled in, and clothing covered it.
The only thing he couldn't regenerate was his right arm, which had been cut off by Franz.
Nirva returned to his clean appearance once again, but his expression wasn't very good.
If it had been just the Dream Walkers, it would have been one thing, but strong opponents like Franz had suddenly arrived one after another.
'And it seems that the annoying Chancellor lady is also planning to join the battle.'
Moreover, the teachers from Theon, who had been buying time with a sandstorm from afar, were regrouping and coming this way.
Nirva let out a small sigh.
"Yes. This too must be a trial."
After murmuring quietly his eyes changed.
What bloomed over his face, which was distorted with many wrinkles, was a kind of will.
A determination as if he had made some kind of pledge.
"Something's coming!"
"We need to stop it!"
It was the moment when everyone simultaneously tried to rush to stop Nirva.
-Kuguguung!
A huge earthquake struck the entire deep layer of Dreamland.
The gazes of the people who were about to attack Nirva turned toward the epicenter.
This wasn't Nirva's doing.
"What's that now?"
A huge obelisk soared in the distance.
Beneath it, something black and massive embedded there was seen moving like a heat haze.
What is that? A shadow? Or darkness?
Its wriggling movement looked somewhat like tar, flushed out with wastewater from a factory.
Something that hadn't been visible until now suddenly appeared.
That meant that this unidentified being had grown large enough to be visible.
For now, it was just slightly shaking its body while pinned under that huge stake, but what would happen if it properly rose?
Just its slight movement made the entire Dreamland shake.
The moment it fully awakens, it wouldn't be strange if the world turned upside down.
Everyone simultaneously had the same thought, and that slight fear restricted their actions.
The only one who could carry out his task in that place was Nirva.
"Ohhh! My Goddess!"
Nirva was purely delighted.
The fact that an earthquake had occurred at this moment, giving him an opportunity, appeared to him like the mercy of the goddess.
"Please wait just a little longer! After I eliminate all these insects, I will offer sacrifices to you!"
Nirva praised the goddess with a face full of joy.
As he clenched his left hand, the desert moved.
-Puhwak!
Huge sand pillars rose from all around.
The sand shook and surged violently, like the sea in a typhoon.
"Everyone be careful!"
"Don't get swept away!"
Nirva slowly raised his tightly clenched fist.
-Dududu.
The roughly vibrating sand began to rise into the sky.
All the dream sand that Nirva had spread around responded to his will.
The desert that had engulfed the surrounding area rose into the sky.
That desert swallowed everything within its range.
Franz, Clara Cowen, Sedina and Julia, Owens, the Theon teachers who had come to support from afar, and Hans and Seridan who were observing the situation with Rudger.
-Kwaching!
The sky of the deep layer of Dreamland cracked like glass, and fragments fell to the ground one by one.
The expression "the sky is falling" happened literally.
Beyond the broken sky was pitch-black darkness.
From that darkness, black shadows fell in droves.
They were people left in the middle layer waiting for rescue.
Nirva had used his remaining strength to break the boundary between the deep and middle layers, and through that gap, he made people fall.
The desert simply devoured and swallowed these people.
-Kuguguung.
The desert, which had greedily swallowed people, gradually began to take shape as it formed a massive wall from the outside.
"Welcome."
The dream sand, which had absorbed everything, formed a huge sphere.
A massive sand sphere, comparable in size to the obelisk where the Dream Goddess was sealed, floated in the void of the deep layer.
"Into the infinite prison that never ends."
* * *
-Drip. Drip.
Julia opened her eyes to the sensation of water droplets tickling her face.
The first thing she saw was Sedina's face looking down at her with a worried expression.
"Sedina?"
"Julia! You've regained consciousness!"
"Yeah. But, where are we?"
Julia, supported by Sedina, raised her upper body to survey the surroundings and her pupils dilated.
The scenery she saw was a strange place no matter how you looked at it.
It was like looking at a prison made in three dimensions.
There were stairs everywhere, and those stairs were even attached to the walls and ceiling.
The same went for doors, railings, and handles.
Everything was mixed up in all directions, like puzzle pieces scattered in space and fitted together randomly.
If Rudger had been awake to see this scene, he would have been reminded of an artist's work.
Maurits Cornelis Escher work called [Relativity] was very similar to the current sand prison.
Julia touched the floor with her hand.
The feeling of touching the floor was surprisingly smooth.
Although everything was made of sand, it was almost like marble.
"It seems like we're trapped here."
"By trapped, you mean, what about the others?"
"I don't know. I only regained consciousness recently."
"Ah."
Julia recalled the memory before losing consciousness.
Before the sand swallowed them, Julia had embraced Sedina with all her might.
Perhaps thanks to that, they weren't scattered after falling into this infinite prison.
"By the way, where did you get the water?"
"Oh, the water? This."
Sedina showed her the tree root she was holding, laughing sheepishly.
"It's called a Kuroonga root, a plant that stores a lot of moisture. I squeezed water from it."
"That plant..."
"I made it."
Julia was quite surprised by such a confident statement.
It meant that Sedina knew how to properly utilize her imagination in Dreamland.
In fact, if she had seen her summon the World Tree when fighting against Nirva, Julia would probably have fainted from shock.
"Now's not the time for this. We need to move quickly."
The fact that they had fallen here meant that others were also swept into this prison.
If so, they needed to reunite with their seniors as quickly as possible and make a plan to escape.
"We don't know what that demon might do at any moment."
"But I think we'll be okay for now."
Julia asked curiously at Sedina's response, which was calmer than expected.
"Why?"
"That demon trapped us here, but we're still alive, not dead. I think that might be the best he could do."
"Now that you mention it, that's true."
Julia nodded unconsciously, convinced after hearing Sedina's opinion.
If he could trap people in such a bizarre labyrinth, it would have been easier to just kill them.
But Nirva didn't do that.
More precisely, it would be correct to say that he couldn't do that.
"Clearly, the wound Nirva received then was the decisive blow."
Sedina recalled the dagger that Franz had stabbed him with.
Julia thought the same.
At the same time, she recalled Franz and had a complicated expression.
"Why did that person come here?"
Sedina also knew that the statement was about Franz but didn't have a proper answer to give either.
Franz, as a direct subordinate of Zero Order, moved individually unlike the First Orders.
What his identity was, what he did, and what his purpose was, were kept secret even within the Black Dawn Society.
The only thing that could be known from this incident was that he had an intense desire for revenge against Nirva.
And that he had prepared to actually carry it out.
'But I wonder if the seniors are okay.'
She had just managed to meet them, but they parted ways before she could even ask how they were doing.
Sedina was worried about them.
* * *
"This is driving me crazy."
Alex raised his head.
What was visible were stairs, walls, and doors mixed in a bizarre place.
He couldn't distinguish whether that was the ceiling, or if the place he was standing was the ceiling.
It wasn't just the shape that was like that.
In fact, Bellaruna was standing on the inverted stairs above his head.
"This is a strange space."
Pantos, standing horizontally on one wall, said with his arms crossed.
Violetta, sitting on the stairs on the ceiling, answered.
"The space is jumbled. It seems like wherever we go, it's all the same. This is clearly a trap to confine us."
"The fact that we're confined but not killed means that he's probably trying to buy time!"
Arpa, admiring the scene that completely disregarded perspective and spatial sense, offered his opinion.
So this is what it feels like to actually see something that could only be seen in a picture.
Pure curiosity showed more interest in the mystery before his eyes than despair about the current situation.
"W-We shouldn't be doing this. Shouldn't we hurry to stop that sealed goddess from awakening?"
Bellaruna, unlike Arpa, trembled due to terrible anxiety.
No one disagreed with her statement.
"Seems like that Franz fellow is separated. For now, it's not good to just stay here, we should look for a way to escape."
Alex asked with a hollow laugh.
"So, how do we regroup?"
First of all, it seemed that they needed to do something about this distorted space.
* * *
Hans rubbed his forehead with a gloomy face.
He thought he had barely escaped to a safe place, but immediately fell into an infinite prison.
'If I had known this would happen, I should have fled farther.'
In fact, he knows that he couldn't escape from Nirva even if he had fled. He knew, but couldn't help it.
The human heart tended to have small regrets.
What made Hans even more desperate wasn't the fact that he was trapped in this distorted space, but another reason.
-Burr.
Hans looked down at his right hand.
His fingertips were trembling slightly.
A sensation beyond his will was felt, and the shape of his hand began to change slightly more deformedly.
The fingers lengthened, and the nails at the fingertips became sharp like blades.
Black hair sprouted on the back of his hand and then subsided again, repeatedly.
"Stop. Stop!"
Hans clenched his teeth and put strength into his hand.
The hand that had been changing as if having a seizure barely returned to its original state.
"..."
But Hans couldn't be relieved because this was just very temporary.
Hans's gaze turned to Rudger, who was lying down as if dead next to him.
He's not the Sleeping Beauty, but looking at him with his eyes closed peacefully, one can't help but admire how a person remains intact even in this situation.
But such a comfortable appreciation is a luxury at this point.
'If it continues like this...'
At some point, the monster of Gevaudan that had been suppressed might burst out.
It's worrying even if Rudger is fine, but if he loses his reason in a defenseless state like now.
'Then...I will once again kill someone precious with my own hands.'
Hans slowly got up from his seat.
Although unconscious, Seridan was also there, so he would take good care of the sleeping Rudger.
"It seems that this is as far as I go."
Though they wouldn't hear, he wanted to say goodbye like this.
"Thank you for everything until now. Brother."
Hans left those words and walked somewhere with slow steps.
Where those steps were headed, even Hans himself didn't know.
Only, before the beast's wildness devoured his brain, the only thought he obsessively recalled was: to get as far away from Rudger as possible.