Johan gently lay Jennifer on a bench.
Suddenly, Jennifer gasped and tried to stand, writhing in evident pain. "Johan, I am fine, I am fine," she insisted, her voice strained. "Listen, Jevier is here. He is trying to drink Anni's blood. We can't let him do that. I can fight now."
"Rest," he said quietly.
Using his mana, Johan cast a sleep spell. Jennifer's eyes closed immediately, and she drifted back into unconsciousness, her body finally surrendering to the exhaustion it desperately needed.
"Your mana has weakened over time due to not using it. You can't even handle the Aurther's mana. You are better off being unconscious," Johan decided.
Suddenly, he remembered the powerful surge of mana from the miniature dimension of Arthur. That overwhelming presence had been coming from Arthur's Timeless Dimension—the dimensional space where the old doctor fought for his life.
Johan laid Jennifer gently on a nearby bench, ensuring she was stable and safe. Then he turned and ran toward the source of the energy, following the pull of Arthur's desperate struggle across the dimensional fabric.
He finally located the dimensional rift—a tear in reality where Arthur's Timeless Dimension bled into the normal world. But the moment he approached it, he felt the barrier's resistance pushing back against him.
"Damn it, I can't enter it," he said, frustration evident in his voice.
Then a thought struck him like lightning.
"Wait, I can use that."
"Trefos Cut Timeless!" he commanded, making a sharp, precise slashing motion with his hand. The air itself seemed to respond, splitting slightly under the pressure of his will.
"Dark Form!" he followed up instantly, his voice cold and commanding. His black glass revolver materialised in his hand, crackling with dark energy.
"Tilespar, enter me to the dimension," he cast the final spell, calling upon his power of dimensional traversal.
He attempted to force his way through the barrier, pushing with every ounce of power he possessed. But the defensive mana fought back viciously, repelling him with blinding light. A massive wind and swirling shadows erupted from the dimensional rift, pushing against him with apocalyptic force, trying to keep him out.
Johan refused to yield.
He pushed his power to the absolute limit, channelling every drop of mana his body could withstand. The force was so intense that his skin began to peel away from the friction and the violent winds. Drops of blood flowed freely, carried away by the tempest that sought to consume him. His body screamed in agony.
Yet his power aura shielded him just enough, providing a fragile barrier that allowed him to inch forward through the impossible resistance.
He was close now. He could see inside the dimension.
Through the distortion of colliding forces, he saw Jevier standing over Arthur, his monstrous gun aimed directly at Arthur's head. Arthur's expression was one of resignation—he had accepted his fate.
Time seemed to slow.
Johan raised his revolver, and with a final roar of effort, he broke through the dimensional barrier entirely. Reality splintered around him as he forced his way in, his body crossing the threshold between worlds.
The moment his feet touched the ground of the Timeless Dimension, Johan pulled the trigger.
The bullet flew straight and true, cutting through the twisted air of Arthur's realm. It struck Jevier directly in the head with devastating force. The monster's body jerked backwards and crumpled to the ground, blood spilling across the red-and-black dimensional surface.
Jevier fell hard.
Arthur looked up, hope sparking in his eyes as he saw Johan. It was not merely hope for his own survival, not just hope for Anni's life—it was hope that they might save the world from the evil races threatening to consume it.
Johan's body was in terrible condition. Blood flowed from various parts of his body in steady streams. The skin on his cheeks and face was slightly cracked, burned by the dimensional barrier. His suit was torn in multiple places, exposing wounds beneath. He was panting heavily, each breath a labour.
"Why are you risking your life, old friend?" Johan asked, a sardonic smile crossing his face despite the pain. "I gave you Freya. Now you want to make her a widow. Shame on yourself."
A faint smile appeared on Arthur's lips—the first genuine expression of warmth in this nightmare. "Saving life is the duty of a doctor," he said to Johan, his voice steady despite his exhaustion.
Johan smiled, truly smiled, at the old friend's unwavering conviction.
"Tell me about the girl in room 024," Arthur asked urgently, his voice desperate with concern. "Her name is Anni. You saved her?"
Anni's face flashed suddenly in Johan's mind—her young features, her desperate eyes, the weight of the world bearing down on her shoulders. He fell silent, unable to speak the truth his heart already knew.
"Sometimes doctors can't save lives," he finally said, his voice heavy with sorrow and acceptance.
Arthur nodded slowly, understanding the full weight of those words. "Sometimes situations are not in our hands," he said sadly.
Suddenly, Jevier's body moved.
"Also, your fate," Jevier hissed, his voice now something inhuman and twisted. He formed a mana sphere in his hand and squeezed it viciously. A blue aura spread from it like poison gas.
Arthur clutched his head in agony, screaming as the mana attacked his mind. But Johan stood still and silent, merely watching with visible upset—unmoved by the psychic assault.
Jevier started to float in mid-air, his body hovering above the dimensional surface. "Proper amount of pain in her blood," he snarled. "This will be mine."
His wound healed with supernatural speed, the bullet hole sealing as if it had never existed.
He threw a mana sphere directly at Arthur, attempting to possess him completely and use his body as a puppet. Another mana sphere shot toward Johan with equal force.
"Stop—aaaaaah!" Arthur screamed, his eyes turning white as the possession took hold.
He made a mana sphere with shaking hands and squeezed it, using his own power in a desperate act of self-defence to stop the possession before it consumed him entirely. The effort was agonising, a battle against an enemy that existed within his own mind.
But the attack did not work on Johan at all.
Johan's eyes blazed with righteous fury. "Jevier, the Order restricted Oneirons from harming any human by mana!" Johan shouted at him, his voice filled with anger and accusation. "This law exists for a reason!"
"The Order can't stop me," Jevier retorted, his voice dripping with contempt. "We are superior to humans. This world's rule is simple: the strong become rulers, and the weak become slaves. Face your reality. Face your death."
Jevier shot at Johan with his gun.
Johan used Tilespar instantly, his form blinking from location to location, dodging every bullet with fluid grace. Each shot passed through empty air where he had been mere fractions of a second before.
Jevier grew frustrated, watching his bullets fail to find their target. Suddenly, he shifted tactics and shot a bullet directly at Arthur.
Johan appeared in front of the trajectory instantaneously and shot exactly at the incoming bullet, deflecting it with perfect precision. The two shots collided mid-air in a brilliant flash.
Jevier fired multiple bullets in rapid succession, his frustration mounting with each failed shot.
But Johan blocked them all—one bullet after another, meeting each of Jevier's shots with his own in a deadly dance of precision and power.
Then Johan changed tactics.
He changed the direction of his gun and fired a single, carefully aimed bullet at Jevier. It struck the monster's chest with devastating force. Johan knew what he was doing—Jevier couldn't use his powers while healing from a deadly attack. That was the window.
Johan formed a mana sphere and threw it at Jevier with all his remaining strength. The sphere exploded on impact, detonating across Jevier's entire body. He fell to the dimensional surface, his form looking dead and broken.
Johan's breathing was ragged. "Is he dead?" he thought, his mind desperate for the nightmare to end.
But he knew better. The true power was only now beginning to emerge.
Jevier's body swelled grotesquely.
Tentacles erupted from his back—writhing, obscene appendages that defied natural biology. His entire body transformed, the skin turning a sickly, pulsing red. Four additional eyes appeared on his forehead, grotesque and misaligned. All of them turned white as milk.
He was transforming into a monster—his true form, the vessel of something far darker than human consciousness.
Johan ran toward him and shot multiple bullets. Nothing worked. The monster's regeneration was too strong, its body reforming faster than Johan could damage it.
Jevier attacked with his tentacles, swinging them with murderous intent.
Johan dodged the first strike. A tentacle crashed into the dimensional surface behind him, leaving a crater in the red-and-black terrain. He teleported to the side. He fired again. The bullets hit, piercing the monster's body, but it didn't stop—it barely slowed.
Jevier swung another tentacle with bone-breaking force.
Johan blocked with a mana shield, but the raw power of the strike pushed him back several meters, his feet sliding across the ground. His arms ached from the impact. He was running out of time, running out of options.
He needed to end this now.
Johan made a mana sphere in his hand. Light began to emanate from his form, brilliant and terrible. "Dark Form Destruction," he cast his final spell, his voice echoing with absolute conviction.
The sphere blazed with power beyond measure.
He hurled it directly into Jevier's body. The moment it made contact, the mana sphere detonated—a cataclysmic explosion that erupted from within the monster's form. The blast stopped Jevier's transformation mid-change, the power overloading his regenerative abilities.
Jevier's body began to break apart.
His form leaked like a punctured bag of blood, viscera and dark matter spilling across the dimensional surface. Everything melted down, dissolving into nothingness. Only a black skeleton remained—perfectly preserved, utterly drained.
A symbol appeared on the skeleton's forehead, burning with impossible heat.
The mark of the Dark Lord.
Johan came to Arthur and released him from his own mana, severing the threads of power that had bound him. Arthur took a huge, gasping breath, his lungs desperate for air.
"Johan, what happened? Are you okay?" Arthur asked, his voice thick with concern.
"Rest now," Johan said gently. "Rest now."
Suddenly, Arthur saw the black skeleton. His eyes widened in horrified realisation. "Johan, did you kill him? Is he a vessel of the Dark Lord?"
"Yes," Johan replied, his voice hollow. "He was addicted to human blood when they were in pain. That addiction... it means he is one of the vessels of the Dark Lord. Satrin."
Suddenly, the symbol of the Dark Lord turned red—a brilliant, burning crimson that pulsed with malevolent energy.
The dimensional surface beneath them turned black.
Many souls came out of Jevier's skeleton body—a torrent of spectres, each one a victim who had died under his hand. The black surface swallowed them, and reality shifted around the two men. They found themselves in a dimension within the dimension, a space where they could see the memories of Jevier's victims.
The visions came like a flood.
They saw Jevier killing so many people—men, women, some of them politicians, others ordinary citizens. They saw him controlling them with his mana, making them suffer in ways that transcended physical pain. They watched as he killed them in multiple cruel ways, savouring their agony, drinking their blood while they screamed.
The weight of his sins was laid bare before them.
"Johan, are they all the victims that he killed?" Arthur asked, his voice small and broken.
"I think all of them who are dead," Johan replied. "I guess."
Arthur looked through the souls carefully, searching, desperately hoping. "There are no memories of Anni. That means she is still alive. Can we heal her with Jennifer's powers?"
Hope sparked in his eyes for the first time since this nightmare began.
The dimension dissolved around them, the visions fading. They came back to the real world, to the hospital corridor where Jennifer still slept.
At the time, a demonic hand came from a little portal and took that skeleton. In that hand, there was a bangle with the same Dark Lord. Arthur and Johan didn't notice it.
After some time, Jennifer woke up. Johan called her name gently, "Jennifer, Jennifer."
Jennifer's eyes snapped open, consciousness flooding back into her mind. Without warning, she punched Johan directly in the face with surprising force, all the rage and frustration of her helplessness channelled into a single, devastating blow. His head snapped back from the impact.
"Let me fight, you idiot!" she shouted, her fury evident in every word. "I told you I could still—"
"The fight is over," Arthur said quietly, his voice cutting through her anger.
His tone stopped her mid-tirade. She looked at him, then at Johan, who was touching his jaw with a grimace.
"It's over," Arthur repeated, his weathered face heavy with exhaustion and something else—relief mixed with dread. "Jevier is dead. But Jennifer... we need to get to Anni. Now."
The three of them rushed to room 024, moving with desperate urgency. They burst through the door to find Anni lying on the hospital bed, her small frame barely visible under the thin blanket.
Jennifer looked at Anni with infinite sadness. She gently grasped Anni's head with both hands, her touch as soft as falling rain.
"Rizas Cure," Jennifer whispered, calling upon her deepest healing power.
Dark roots emerged from her hands like tendrils of living shadow. They wrapped around Anni's body, covering her scars, knitting together torn flesh and broken bone. The roots glowed with Jennifer's life force, pouring healing energy into the girl's broken form.
But Anni did not wake up.
Her eyes remained closed. Her chest still rose and fell with breath, but she did not return to consciousness.
"Why would the healing spell fail on a girl who was still alive?" Johan whispered in his mind.
Arthur looked at the heart rate in the monitor. It pointed at zero.
"She is alive... so why isn't it working?" Tears fell from Jennifer's eyes onto Anni's face, each one a prayer, each one a cry of anguish.
The question hung in the air, unanswered and terrible.