With the truce being reestablished, both Orwell and Dream took time to catch-up.

“Okay,” Orwell started. “Where is Ace and Chronicler? I know Chronicler might be busy, but there’s no way you can arrive before Ace.”

Dream knew Orwell referred to Ace’s legendary position as the fastest among the Knights. He also knew there wasn’t a point lying to Orwell, so he told the truth.

“We were separated in Centuria,” Dream answered. “It happened during the Hidden Vault Showdown.”

“I knew you guys have something to do with that clusterfuck,” Orwell gave a satisfied smirk. “You’re the one who convinced Penelope the First to abdicate, aren’t you?”

“No,” Dream answered. “We only enabled it. Penelope and her friends arrived at the decision on their own.”

Orwell gave a small smile. The defenders of free will were adamant in promoting people’s innate right to shape their destiny. Despite their humongous firepower, that organization refused to be arbitrator of fate or ruler of men. It was a major part why Orwell respected them as worthy competitors. The Knights refused to lord over humanity, instead dedicating themselves to protecting freedom.

Which brought one puzzling question to the forefront.

“Who could separate you?” Orwell asked. “I doubt even the likes of Thor could handle all of you together.”

“Hades,” Dream answered.

The simple answer raised more questions. “The Lord of the Spirit Realm?” Orwell asked. “Why?”

“He wants to help us clean his daughter's mess,” the knight wasn’t happy. “The old man would do us a huge favor by butting out and let the mortal sort itself out, but he can’t have that. He meddled with space-time shifts during the Hidden Vault Show, and separated us in an attempt to stop the fairies.”

“The Fae?” Orwell couldn’t believe Dream planned to engage the pixies. “They have been sealed away by the Light Curtain in the Northern part of Tengen since forever.”

“Six-hundred years,” Dream corrected. “And I asked the expert. The seal wouldn’t hold. The prospect of its breakdown had us in a panic. I believe Hades also knew this fact, so he separated us to plug the invasion route. The old fool didn’t even bother asking for corroboration, and he made everything worse.”

Orwell laughed, “I’m sure it will be fine.” He shrugged. “You guys always follow through. I doubt a mythical pixie from a storybook will stop you,”

Dream wasn’t relaxing, “Mehest, the fact that you aren’t hoarding a god-killing weapon to deal with the Fair Folks is the thing which worried me the most.”

Orwell stared. He knew Dream was a paranoid man. As someone who faced that mysterious club and lost, he understood the organization was the band of miracle workers. Each member was at least his equal in either combat, intellect, or both. If they were worried, the situation would be horrendous.

“Get to the point, Dream,” stated Orwell. “Parted the veil and tell me what is behind the six-hundred years of old wives' tales.”

Dream revealed the truth.

Orwell’s indifference soon turned into concern then bafflement at the magnitude of the calamitous disaster incubated by dumb decision-makings, betrayal and megalomania.

“What the hell did I just hear?” Orwell couldn’t believe the travesty. “I know the Divine-races are literally gods, but perfecting lifeforms with that?” The mass-murderer of millions was convinced the Queen of the Fairies went off the sanity cliff. “This is beyond playing creator, and Vivian helped her? How dumb is she to create that kind of thing?” Images of disaster to humanity flashed through Mehest’s brain. “I’m not the one to talk, but this is an extinction-level threat. We can’t allow the Curtain to fail.”

Dream knew that was impossible, “That possibility sailed away a long time ago. It’s a matter of when now, Orwell.”

Orwell buried his face, “Oh shit, so this is what is happening with the White Tower’s Leynode. It finally makes sense.”

“White Tower?” Dream asked.

Orwell found Dream’s confusion boggling, “You don’t know. Your abilities should…”

“Orwell, this is confidential information, but [Clairvoyance] had been weakened,” Dream explained. “Major penetration points to the Imaginary Realm have been clouded, so unless I can connect properly, I’m blind.”

Orwell groaned and explained the recent investigation on White Tower and the abnormal reading.

Dream looked at the ground connecting to the Realm beyond to glimpse the truth a human’s comprehension simply couldn’t. His transcendental vision caught the trail of the blackened Mana and traveled down into the lake that was the Leynode.

“You’re right,” Dream agreed. “Those buggers are polluting the Leyline.” Dream felt another disturbance. “And Shyme is heading right at them.”

“You’ve a plan to stop this?” Orwell said.

“Yes,” Dream parted the murky mystery with his vision. “We need a shortcut.”

…

While the shaky truce was reestablished, Yuri and friend arrived at the final chamber. They burst from the black corridor, fleeing from the clash of titans, in a vain hope to find an escape.

Contrary to their hope, it wasn’t the exit, unless you counted the exit from living.

Sonovia dumbly looked at the vision of the overwhelming horror, “So this was the cause of those reading.”

Yuri’s mind buckled as he registered the grand architecture of darkness. A tower of black fog slithered into the high-rise of curly taint. Hatred spread, creating the song-stage bathe in tragedy. Dark, lightless walls of uncut stone suffocated them in the fog-filled room. The smoldering opaque air was so dense they could hardly made-out their feet.

An Elf the group barely made out as Serenade Asmodella hung, suspended in the air. Her naked body floated atop the caressing grim mist in a crucifix post. Despite seeing the Elf as naked as the day she was born, Yuri was more terrified than aroused. The raw malice in the Mana was a major turn-off for even the worst of boners.

“We need to leave,” Shyme believed her survival instinct. “Now!”

The group spun back, but it was too late.

The armor beast that delivered them into this hell emerged from the shadow, blocking their path of return. A long serpentine licked the air hungrily, observing its new prey.

Sonovia and Shyme felt a shiver in Mana, while Yuri, still holding the unconscious Charon, dropped to his knees. The powerless boy felt akin to an ant suffocating inside a drop of water. With his level of power, standing In the place was a lethal risk.

The grotesque porcelain babies with sharp, serrated teeth and bulbous eyes to accompany its round head emerged from the monument to suffocating fog. Black wings flickered too fast for any eyes to see. The monsters gleefully chattered like a swarm of celebrating insects evaluating its new catch.

If Yuri was honest, he believed he would taste like chicken. Sonovia probably had liver flavors, and Shyme would be a high-quality Mignon. He realized his line of thinking was morbid, but that was slightly less morbid than how he would die.

The fight began when Sonovia gathered her strength, equipped her gigantic claymore from the Quick-Equip, and dropped the blade backed by her entire body-weight and gold, glittering energy. However, the armored beast was a speed-type, allowing it to easily disappear before Sonovia’s hit ever landed. With herself barely recovered from her brief battle with Orwell, Sonovia was an easy picking.

The Reverse Beast flickered into existence, uppercutting her.

Sonovia found herself hitting the rocky ceiling, buried into the suffocating rock with the force to shake the room. Rocks fell from the ceiling from the momentum of her collision. Before she could reorient herself, the monster blinked into reality in front of her and continued its pounding. Sonovia’s head registered the monster’s digit grasping her head, and slamming her craniums into the cavern behind her. The dazed Sonovia never had a chance to talk, as the monster charged its hand with energy and blasted her face at point-blank. The girl’s unbreakable body simply prolonged her death.

“That thing must be using some kind of spatial-shifting,” Shyme concluded, raising the wall of wind to defend herself, but after using [Divine Raiment] against Orwell she was on fumes. “We must try to—”

It was then Yuri heard the chorus of the damned.

Countless grotesque babies jeering them burst into choir. It was a disruptive song, which immediately turned Yuri’s brain upside down. He felled to his kneel behind Shyme. Charon, the unconscious girl he had been carrying, fell beside him, squirming in agony. The boy felt his eyes turn bloodshot and blood trickled down his nose.

“A Mana disrupting screams?” Shyme faltered in agony, and the countless baby-like abominations struck. The Wolf-girl barely held her wall of wind. Her Divine might was rapidly being depleted by the swarms of beastly carnivores crawling on the wall, squirming like flesh-eating maggots and jeering at them all the while. “No…”

Shyme wanted to voice more resistance, but the reality was crushing.

On the ceiling, Sonovia hung from her wrecked armor after the ordeal of being repeatedly pounded by an armored RB. Her eyes were hazy. Her impenetrable skin bruised. The monster grabbed her in the head, preparing a final blast, even [Continuation] could bring her back from having her brain smashed open.

On the ground, Shyme watched the pale thin arm finally squeezed its way through the barrier, crawling at her face. Her barrier was a second from failing.

In the distance, the pink-hair Elf opened her eyes. The once green gaze was filled with an inky hue.

Yuri knew it was over. He was going to die here. Buried in the deep, beneath the scream and jeered of the beast birthed from the grudge of the multiverse. An unimportant piece in the global machine, with no one to mourn for him.

…

“We are drilling through the spatial wall and the bedrock!”

“Dungeon bypass? Is this the secret of your ridiculous timing?”

“Enough, we’re going in.”

…

Yuri was convinced the world enjoyed him being wrong.

For the second time of the day, he prepared to die a brutal and painful death when all hope seemed to be snuffed out, only for the hero to make it in time.

As the cavern ceiling shattered in the wave of almighty power, dispersing the darkness blanketing the room and ushering the light, Yuri witnessed that man arrived once again. That man was a constant. He was the monument who stood against the coming tide of despair when no one could.

It seemed like hope itself disliked his realistic brain — the skepticism and cynicism — then beat it up like it was this was WrestleMania. You believed there were no heroes? That was a body slam. Doom was all that remained? That one got Mr. Cynic a German Suplex. Yuri, the boy witnessing the darkness of the world for most of his life, woke in the world where optimism stood in ovation as it laughed at the odds, and defied every doubter.

And it all originated from one man.

Dream — the man who brings miracle

His existence defied the stereotypical nativity of good. Here, all that is right in the world wasn’t represented by an angelic woman singing a hymn but a buff cartoon trolling the eldritch horror.

In an instant, Dream attacked. He kicked the arm which held Sonovia by the joint with the force amplified by his telekinetic armor. The critical blow forced the ghastly RB to let the hostage go, and his following kick booted the monster into the far wall like a cannonball.

Meanwhile, Orwell Mehest made his appearance as an ally. He entered with a chilling cold. The supreme freezing Skill activated in all its impressive might, trapping everything that could be considered a threat in ice. The black inky pool froze despite the blatant contradiction against the physical law. The beastly child-size hellspawns were flash frozen, dropping on the group in a cascade of shattering song.

Orwell couldn’t help but comment on the trio's tendency to court death. “For someone so high up on the ladder, you sure couldn’t save yourself,” Orwell looked at Shyme with distaste and detected hostility. “Relax. I’m not here to continue the fight. This Leyline anomaly take priority over our difference.”

With that, the stage was set for the final battle.