Ray closed his eyes and spread his arms out wide, taunting his opponent to come at him with a less than natural grin on his face.

All he was doing was preparing himself to be knocked out, once again accepting his fate…

There was no point in fighting back, with his level of strength and no plans up his sleeve, he was as good as dead. Fighting would have only delayed the inevitable and cause him more pain than if he just went with the whims of fate and where they would eventually lead him.

*Snap*

Ray's ears rang loudly with a snap that shook him to his very core, the smile on his face not fading away yet becoming more jittery as he prepared himself to feel an immense amount of pain, most likely from Jason's signature punch to the stomach which was why he put his arms out wide as to leave that area exposed since if he had blocked, Jason would have both broke his arms and hit his vitals at the same time, leading to more pain in the end.

*Whoosh*

A gust of wind blew right past him with such speed that he was barely even able to stay standing on his two feet. Yet, for some reason, he felt no amount of pain what so ever as he decided to not yet open his eyes and wait a little bit longer as he knew that the pain would eventually come.

…

….

….

'Nothing?' He thought to himself, a mixture of pain, relief, and confusion in his heart.

For the last 5 seconds, all he was able to hear was various footsteps running in a 360-degree circle around him, the sound coming from all directions.

5 seconds was far too long, with Jason's speed, he needed far less than half a second to reach him from that distance… So why was he still standing completely uninjured? Nothing made sense to him… Everything was too obscure…

Eventually, he gave up and succumbed to his curiosity…

When he finally opened his eyes, he witnessed a scene that he never imagined he would ever see in many lifetimes.

Jason, the big, bulky, prideful, meatheaded idiot was frantically running around the entire battlefield like a crackhead experiencing a sugar rush at the same time with what seemed like panic in his eyes.

He seemed to be picking up various body parts that belonged to the students that had just exploded from the impact of that earlier purple ball of energy, which most likely made a few small body parts not get vaporized but blown away from the impact,

'What the hell is going on!?' Ray thought with a dizziness from his brain that began spinning round and round in circles.

Nothing seemed real…

Maybe he had lost his mind so much in the past few days that he now began seeing and hallucinating…

He felt like he was just imagining everything… That it was all in his mind… That he was dreaming… Yes! He was dreaming! He had to be! Despite still being able to feel pain, A dream was the only possible explanation to what was happening in front of him!

Right now, his top priority was to find some way to get out of his dream and inspect what his true body was doing, yet he had no way of knowing how to do that so he had to try various things.

With a crazy glint in his eyes, Ray lifted his arm up high, clenching his palm into a fist before shoving it down towards his body with incredible speed, using as much force as he could muster with 0 regards for his own safety.

*Crack*

The sound of various bones in his rib cage cracking filled his ears, the unimaginable pain ravaging throughout his entire body…

He let out a loud, pain-filled cry that reverberated and rang throughout the entire forest, making various birds fly away from the sudden piercing shriek filling their ears.

Ray bent down on one knee, tightly clenching where he had punched himself with all his might, a hazy look in his eyes as he was barely able to withstand the impact of his own punch. Blood began welling up from around his arm that was clenching the impact of the pain, as it began to trickle out like a dripping faucet, making his hands that still housed his string gloves all bloodied. His breathing became far more unsteady and sporadic as he could feel the lack of oxygen affecting his body, this meant that he had no doubt punctured one of his ribs into his lungs. The pain in his chest only increased as he felt blood going up and down his throat until he began frantically coughing an astounding amount of blood all on his clothes that were now splattered from head to toe.

He had felt similar punches in the past yet this one felt far more painful than the ones before it. The mental and physical strain of causing harm on himself was most likely the cause of this.

Yet, despite all that he had gone through, he was still conscious… It did not at all snap him out of his dream…

'Fuuuccckkk!' Ray inwardly cursed, gritting his now bloody teeth with a face full of determined resolve, trying his best to keep his tired, hazy eyes awake.

If that had not worked, then he had to fall back to his last resort. He needed some way to snap out of his dream and get back into reality to see what was going on, and he was planning on doing whatever it took to get there.

If there was a chance that out of his bizarre nightmare, in the real world it was a separate reality where he still had a chance to help fix things, he was more than willing to take the risk. Even if his current reality was true, he was going to be executed anyways since Jason did not seem like he had come back for him so he felt no fear or hesitation in his actions since the results were going the same either way...

Ray used all his energy to lift his arms up once more, releasing bloody threads of string from his gloves, putting them right next to his neck as he prepared to take his own life as he was fully convinced that what he was witnessing was a dream.

As soon as Jason heard the loud cry coming from Ray's direction, he could not help but instinctively take a glance, but as soon as he did, his eyes almost popped right out of their sockets as he was in disbelief at what he was witnessing, his heart racing wildly as he began seeing his life flashing right before his eyes, his breathing becoming more and more sporadic.

Without a moment of hesitation, Jason snapped his fingers together, immediately appearing in front of Ray, holding his hands that were about to slice his own neck off in order to restrain him.

"Get the fuck away from me! Even in a dream, I can't get a proper release! Let me go or just kill me instead! Can you hear me? Talk you big piece of shit! Talk! AHHH! Fuck this world!" Ray screamed, the craziness in his eyes growing the more and more he spoke, struggling to break free from Jason's grasp only for him to do absolutely nothing, the look of pure worry and relief in Jason's eyes looking more like the eyes of a mocking predator from his perspective.

Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, he felt a light tap on his neck, his already weary eyes turning more and more black as the world began spinning in circles all around him, his hands being released as his body dropped lightly on the smooth, soft grass underneath him.

"Calm down Ray! What the fuck do you think you're doing! This is not a dream! This is real! I understand that you have gone through a lot, my friend… But don't worry… All will be explained in due time... Now, go to sleep… You need and deserve the rest…You have suffered long enough..." An extremely harsh yet warm familiar voice rang in his ears from beyond.

When he looked above him with his blurry vision that had almost gone black, he managed to witness the glowing, friendly, purple gaze of a person looking down towards him before turning around, sucking all the body parts that had been collected in the middle of the battlefield into a vortex created from the palms of his hands, leaving no trace of them behind, giving him no time to think or take in all that just happened as his vision went dark, a peaceful smile on his face as, for the first time in weeks, he was finally able to properly rest...