The world dissolved. The purple sky of the Dimensional Gap, the conjured forest, the smell of roasting wyvern meat—it all vanished into static, replaced by the heavy, suffocating weight of a gray mist Ren had summoned.
Ren Ming stood in the center of the clearing, watching the Gremory peerage slump over in their meditative positions. Their breathing became ragged instantly, brows furrowing in distress. To an outsider, they looked like they were sleeping.
To Ren Ming, who was monitoring their spiritual fluctuations with the Immortal Soul Bone, they were fighting for air in a room with no doors.
"Sleep tight," Ren Ming whispered, picking up his coffee again. "Don't let the anxiety bugs bite."
Rias Gremory's Mindscape
Rias wasn't in the Dimensional Gap anymore. She was standing in the center of a grand ballroom—the Gremory main estate in the Underworld. But it was twisted. The chandeliers were blindingly bright, casting harsh, interrogation-room light onto the polished marble floor. The ceiling stretched up into infinite darkness.
She was wearing a dress that felt too tight, constricting her chest, squeezing the breath from her lungs. Around her, faceless nobles stood in a circle. They had no eyes, no mouths, just smooth patches of skin where features should be. They whispered behind fans made of razor blades.
Their voices were a dull roar, like the ocean, but specific words cut through the noise like physical knives, slicing at her composure.
"Such a waste of potential."
"She relies on her brother for everything."
"Without the Power of Destruction, what is she? Just a pretty face."
"A decoration. A spoil of war."
Rias tried to speak, to command silence with the authority of the House of Gremory, but her mouth was sealed shut. She looked down at her hands. They were shrinking. The smooth skin of her hands was becoming soft, pudgy. She was becoming a child again. Helpless.
Then, the crowd parted.
Riser Phenex stood there. He wasn't the arrogant, burning man she despised. He looked... bored. He sat on a throne of fire that didn't burn him, looking at a chessboard floating between them.
"Checkmate, my dear," Riser said, his voice echoing from everywhere at once. He reached out and knocked over her King with a lazy flick of his finger. "You never really learned to play, did you? You just moved the pieces where Sirzechs told you to. You're just another piece on the board, Rias. A pawn pretending to be a Queen."
Panic flared in Rias's chest—hot, white, and blinding. It wasn't the fear of marriage; it was the fear of incompetence. The crushing anxiety that she was a fraud, that her entire reputation as a High-Class Devil was a lie built on the foundation of her family name.
The walls of the ballroom began to close in. The whispers grew louder, turning into a cacophony of mocking laughter.
'Stop it,' she thought, her mind racing. 'I am Rias Gremory. I am the next Head.'
"Are you?" the whispers mocked. "Or are you just Sirzechs' little sister?"
Rias fell to her knees. The gravity in the room seemed to increase tenfold. It would be so easy to just nod. To let Riser win. To let the expectations crush her so she didn't have to hold them up anymore. To just be a doll.
No.
A spark of indignation lit up in her gut. Not the demonic Power of Destruction, but simple, devil stubbornness. A refusal to be erased.
Rias stood up. The fabric of the shrinking dress tore as she expanded, returning to her normal size. She looked at the faceless nobles. She looked at the bored Riser.
"I don't care about the game," Rias said, her voice shaking initially, then steadying into a roar. "And I don't give a damn about the board!"
She didn't use a spell. She didn't calculate a strategy. She simply kicked the floating chessboard.
But she didn't just kick the wood. She channeled her intent, her rejection of this reality. Her leg was enveloped in a crimson aura of pure erasure.
BOOM.
The chessboard didn't just break; it disintegrated. The atoms were erased from existence. The shockwave of her refusal slammed into Riser, blowing him away like smoke in a hurricane.
"I am Rias!" she declared, the crimson aura of her hair flaring, not with magic, but with sheer Presence. The Power of Destruction rippled all around her, eating away the floor, the walls, the faceless nobles. "If I fail, I fail as myself! I don't need your applause! I need my own respect!"
The ballroom shattered like glass hit by a sledgehammer.
The shards fell away into nothingness, revealing a white void. Standing there, leaning casually against a conjured vending machine that hummed with a soft electric buzz, was Ren Ming.
"Nice kick," Ren said, a lazy smile on his face. He pressed a button on the machine, and a soda can clattered down. "Solid form. A bit dramatic with the speech—very anime protagonist of you—but hey, you're a theater kid at heart."
Rias panted, her chest heaving, her crimson energy retracting. She looked around, disoriented. "Ren... was that...?"
"Just your insecurity trying to rent space in your head for free," Ren Ming said, walking over. He cracked the soda open—psshhh—and took a sip. He didn't offer a hand; he just stood in her personal space, his grey eyes warm and grounding. "You spend way too much time worrying about the audience, Rias. The only critic that matters is the one in the mirror. Once you realize that, the noise stops."
Rias looked at him. In this dream space, amidst the wreckage of her fears, he felt like an unmovable object. An anchor in the storm. She took a breath, and the phantom constriction in her chest was gone.
"Thank you," she whispered, her voice trembling with relief.
"Don't thank me," Ren Ming winked, a gesture of easy charm. "You did the heavy lifting. I just provided the venue."
Akeno Himejima's Mindscape
Akeno was kneeling on a tatami mat. The room was traditional, claustrophobic, and silent. The smell of matcha tea was overwhelming, cloying and thick.
She was performing a tea ceremony. Across from her sat a vague, shadowy figure—huge, imposing, radiating a judgmental aura that made her skin crawl. Her hands, usually so steady in battle, were trembling violently.
'Must be perfect,' she told herself, the mantra repeating like a skipping record. 'Elegant. Seductive but restrained. The perfect Queen. If I am perfect, they won't see the dirt.'
She reached for the whisk, but her fingers were slick with cold sweat. They slipped. The expensive ceramic bowl tipped over.
Green tea spilled across the pristine mat. But as it spread, it turned black. It hissed and bubbled, smelling of ozone and sulfur.
Akeno froze. The stain crackled, a mix of dark ink and blinding, painful Holy Lightning—the part of herself she hated. The part she kept buried under layers of sadism and flirtation.
"Clumsy," the shadow whispered. The voice sounded eerily like everyone she respected. "Broken. Tainted. Half-breed."
Panic seized her throat. She scrambled to clean it, wiping frantically with a cloth, but the stain only grew. It covered her hands, burning her skin. It stained her kimono.
'I can't let Rias down,' Akeno panicked, tears welling in her violet eyes. 'I have to be perfect for her. If I'm not useful, I'm nothing. If I'm not perfect, I'm just a mistake.'
She stared at the mess. The perfection was ruined. The mask was slipping, revealing the scared little girl underneath.
Wait.
Akeno stopped wiping. She looked at her stained hands. The panic was making her heart race, thunderous in her ears, but... was the world ending? No. The tea was just tea. The stain was just a stain.
She sat back on her heels, taking a deep, shuddering breath. The lightning on her hands crackled, but it didn't hurt. It was hers.
"It's just a mess," Akeno murmured, her voice trembling but gaining a steely clarity. "I made a mess. So what?"
She looked up at the shadowy figure, her eyes narrowing.
"I'm not a doll," she said softly. "Dolls don't make mistakes. I do."
She picked up the broken shard of the bowl. It was sharp, cutting into her palm. The pain was real. It was grounding.
"I am broken," Akeno admitted, a single tear sliding down her cheek. "But I still work."
The tatami room dissolved into mist.
Ren Ming was sitting cross-legged on the floor where the shadow figure had been. He was holding a bag of potato chips, crunching loudly, completely destroying the solemn atmosphere.
"You know," Ren Ming said, talking with his mouth full, "Japanese tea ceremonies are way too stiff. Too many rules. I prefer a mug and a tea bag. Maybe some honey if I'm feeling fancy. But mostly, I just want the caffeine."
Akeno wiped her eyes, a small, genuine laugh escaping her lips. The sound was musical, free of her usual affected tone. "Ren-san... you have absolutely no refinement."
"Overrated," Ren Ming grinned, dusting crumbs off his jeans. "You were drowning in a teacup, Akeno. Perfection is a scam sold to sell makeup and anxiety medication. You're messy? Good. Messy is interesting. Messy is real."
He leaned in, his face inches from hers. He didn't touch her, but his gaze was intense, stripping away her usual 'Ara Ara' defense mechanism. He looked at her not as a sadist, or a Queen, but as a woman.
"I prefer people who make mistakes," he said, his voice dropping an octave, turning low and intimate. "That makes you much cuter than some fake, porcelain doll."
Akeno's face flushed, a deep crimson that reached her ears. It wasn't embarrassment; it was a sudden, overwhelming sense of being seen. And accepted.
Koneko Toujou's Mindscape
Koneko was in a shop filled with delicate, priceless crystal figurines. The aisles were impossibly narrow.
Every time she moved, her elbows bumped a shelf.
Crash.
A crystal swan shattered into a million diamond-dust pieces. She flinched, taking a step back.
Crunch.
She stepped on a glass flower, grinding it into the floor.
She felt huge. Monstrous. Her body felt dense, like a neutron star wrapped in skin. Her strength, usually repressed and bottled up, felt like it was bubbling under her skin, threatening to explode and level the city block.
People were staring through the windows. Shopkeepers were yelling, their faces distorted with fear and disgust.
"Monster!"
"Keep her away!"
"She destroys everything she touches!"
Koneko curled into a ball, trying to make herself small. 'Don't move,' she told herself. 'If I don't move, I won't break anything. If I disappear, everyone is safe.'
The silence stretched. She was safe, but she was paralyzed. She was a statue in her own life, terrified that a single twitch would hurt the people she cared about.
'Is this it?' she thought, staring at the floor. 'Do I stay in a ball forever?'
She remembered Ren Ming's words from the day before. Dominate the pain. The Dao Heart is absolute.
Koneko opened her eyes. They glowed with a feral, golden light. She stood up. As she rose, her shoulder checked a shelf. A vase fell.
She didn't flinch. She caught it.
Her grip was firm, iron-hard, but controlled. The vase didn't crack. It rested safely in her hand.
"I'm strong," Koneko said to the angry shopkeepers. Her voice was quiet, deadpan, but laced with a new weight. "I take up space."
She set the vase down gently.
"I'm not going to shrink anymore," she whispered to the air. "If things break, I'll fix them. But I won't stop moving."
The shop vanished in a swirl of white.
Ren Ming was standing there, holding a crystal cat figurine. He tossed it to her without warning.
Koneko caught it reflexively, her hand snapping out with blinding speed.
"Nice reflexes," Ren said. "You treat yourself like a bomb, Koneko. But you're not a bomb. You're a tank. Tanks don't apologize for being heavy. They just roll."
He walked over and placed a hand on her head, ruffling her white hair. It was a firm, heavy pat. Grounding. He wasn't afraid of her strength.
"Don't hide the strength," Ren Ming said softly. "Own it. Being harmless is boring. Be dangerous."
Koneko clutched the figurine to her chest, a small, rare smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
Asia Argento's Mindscape
Asia was running.
The ground was cracked, dry earth. Ahead of her, Rias, Issei, Kiba, and the others were walking away into a bright light. They were laughing, talking, a perfect unit.
Asia was sprinting, her lungs burning like they were filled with acid, her legs screaming in protest. But she couldn't catch up.
"Wait for me!" she cried, her voice thin and desperate.
They didn't hear her. The distance grew. She tripped, scraping her knee on the jagged rocks. Blood welled up. She tried to use her Twilight Healing, but the green light flickered and died, cold and unresponsive.
'I'm useless,' the thought spiraled, dark and suffocating. 'I can't fight. I can't run fast. I can't even heal myself. I'm just a burden.'
She watched their backs getting smaller. The fear of abandonment, the trauma of the church, the rejection—it all crashed down on her like a tidal wave. She was the spare wheel. The charity case.
Asia sat on the ground, sobbing into her hands.
'Why am I running?'
She looked at her scraped knee. It hurt. It was real.
'I am not them,' Asia realized, the thought coming like a quiet dawn. 'I am Asia.'
She stopped looking at their retreating backs and looked at the ground beneath her. There were flowers here. Small, withered flowers dying in the dry earth.
She placed her hands on them. She focused. Not out of panic, not out of a need to be useful to others, but out of love for the life in front of her.
A faint green light glowed. It wasn't the Holy Light of the System; it was her light. The flowers perked up, blooming in seconds, turning the gray earth vibrant.
"I have my own pace," Asia whispered. She stood up, wiping her tears with a dirty sleeve. "I don't need to run to be worthy. I just need to walk my own path. If they are my family... they will wait."
The road ended.
Ren Ming was walking beside her, matching her slow pace perfectly. He had his hands in his pockets, looking at the sky.
"Exactly," Ren said, his voice calm. "Family isn't a race, Asia. You don't have to earn your spot at the dinner table every night."
Asia looked up at him, her eyes wide and wet, but shining with resilience.
"You have a good heart," Ren said, looking ahead. "But a good heart needs a strong spine. Don't run after people. Make them come to you."
One by one, the Gremory peerage gasped, snapping back to reality.
The gray mist lifted instantly, shredded by the waking consciousness of five powerful wills. They were back in the purple-lit Dimensional Gap. All of them were drenched in sweat, their clothes sticking to their skin, chests heaving as if they had just run a marathon through hell.
But their eyes were clear. The frantic, nervous energy from the morning was gone, incinerated in the fires of their own minds. It was replaced by a settled, heavy calm. A dangerous calm.
Ren Ming was sitting on a tree stump, finishing the last dregs of his coffee.
"Morning, sunshine," Ren drawled, crushing the empty can with a telekinetic pinch. "How was the nap?"
Rias was the first to move. Usually, she would check on Issei first, or straighten her uniform to maintain appearances. Instead, she stood up and walked straight toward Ren. She sat down on the grass near his feet, not touching him, but close enough to be in his personal gravity. She leaned back, exhaling a long breath.
Akeno followed, practically gliding over to sit on his other side, her posture relaxed, the tension in her shoulders gone. She didn't giggle; she just offered him a tired, genuine smile.
Koneko silently moved to lean against the tree stump Ren was sitting on, closing her eyes as if guarding his flank. Asia settled near Rias, humming a soft tune.
It was instinctive. They had faced the chaos of their own minds, and Ren had been the lighthouse in the storm. He felt safe. He felt like the center of the universe.
Issei and Kiba woke up a moment later, looking equally shaken. Issei looked at his hands, then at Ren. He had faced a nightmare of impotence, of being just a pervert with no power, but he had stood his ground.
"I... I stood up to them," Issei muttered, seemingly recalling his own trial.
Ren Ming gave Issei a sharp nod. "Good. Keep that energy." He looked at Kiba. "And you?"
Kiba exhaled slowly, his hand resting on an imaginary sword hilt. "I stopped looking back."
"Solid," Ren Ming acknowledged. He didn't coddle the boys. Men built camaraderie through shared hardship and brief nods. At least, that was how Ren Ming usually did things.
Tiamat, who had been watching from her rock, narrowed her eyes. She saw the way the girls clustered around Ren Ming. It wasn't the mindless fawning of fans; it was the trust of disciples toward a master... and perhaps something more. It was annoying.
"You play dangerous games with their minds," Tiamat scoffed, flicking her tail. "One slip and you could have shattered them. Devils are fragile."
"High risk, high reward, Dragon Lady," Ren Ming shot back, grinning at her. "Besides, I trust them. They're tougher than they look."
He stood up, stretching his arms above his head. The movement made his shirt ride up slightly, and he caught Akeno taking a not-so-subtle peek at his abs. He winked at her, causing her to giggle behind her hand.
"Alright, listen up," Ren addressed the group. "That was just the appetizer. That was 'Stress 101'. You faced the mundane fears. The fear of failure, of imperfection, of being left behind."
His expression hardened.
"Tomorrow, we turn up the heat. Tomorrow, you face Nightmares. Real ones. And while you're fighting those demons in your head, you're going to be cycling energy through your meridians."
"Wait," Issei stammered. "We have to cultivate while having a nightmare?"
"You've got that right." Ren Ming smirked deviously. "That is the essence of a Dao Heart. Can you keep your energy flow perfect when you're terrified? Can you maintain a complex spell when your instincts are screaming at you to run? That is true control."
Rias looked up at him. Yesterday, she would have argued that it was impossible. Today, she just nodded.
"We will do it," Rias said firmly.
"I know you will," Ren said. "But for now, sit back down. You cleared the mental blockage. Your Will is lighter. Try to condense the Soul Palace again. Right now. While the feeling is fresh."
The peerage immediately fell into formation.
Ren Ming watched them. He could feel it—the difference in their spiritual signatures. Before, their energy was jagged, fueled by anxiety and adrenaline. Now, it was flowing like a river.
A faint hum filled the air.
In Rias's chest, a deep crimson light began to pulse—steady, rhythmic, like a drum. In Akeno's, a brilliant stream of black and very faint yellow swirled into a tight sphere.
'They're doing it,' Ren mused internally. 'They're actually building the foundation.'
He looked at the sky of the dimensional gap. He had come to this world for fun, to mess around with the plot and build a harem. But looking at these guys—these powerful, flawed, interesting beings pushing past their limits—he felt a spark of genuine investment.
'If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it right,' Ren Ming thought. 'I'm not just going to make them winners. I'm going to make them Legends.'
He glanced at Tiamat, who was pretending not to be interested in the cultivation technique, aggressively picking at her nails.
"Hey, Tiamat," Ren called out.
"What?" she snapped, looking up with a scowl.
"You want in? I have a breathing technique that works great for dragons. Helps with the scales. Makes them shinier. Like, mirror-finish shiny."
Tiamat froze. She did care about her scale luster. She cared about it a lot.
"I... I suppose I could listen," she huffed, looking away to hide the intrigue in her eyes. "Since I have nothing better to do. Not because I care about your strange magic."
Ren smirked. Hook, line, and sinker.
The real monster training was about to begin.