The third day in the Dimensional Gap didn't dawn; it simply intruded. The artificial violet sky Ren Ming had tweaked seemed less oppressive today, or perhaps the inhabitants of this conjured pocket dimension had simply grown too powerful to be bothered by atmospheric pressure.
When the Gremory peerage assembled in the clearing, the transformation was undeniable. It wasn't just a physical "glow up," though their skin now possessed a porcelain, jade-like luster that's getting to the level of kingdom-toppling beauties in cultivation worlds.
It was an energetic shift—a fundamental rewriting of their presence. A subtle, humming pressure radiated from them, distorting the air around their bodies like heat haze rising off fresh asphalt.
Ren Ming sat on his usual tree stump, a fresh mug of coffee in hand. He wasn't wearing robes or armor; just a pair of dark jeans and a t-shirt that read "Support Your Local Cryptid" in faded white letters. He looked like he should be scrolling through Reddit on a Sunday morning, not training devils in a void between dimensions.
But as his grey eyes scanned them, the lazy, half-lidded look vanished. The Immortal Soul Bone activated.
To Ren Ming, the world lost its texture and became a blueprint. He peered into their solar plexus, bypassing flesh and bone to look at the energy structures within.
The chaotic swirls of Demonic Power—and the Holy and Dragon energies within the others—had changed. The misty, undefined vapor from yesterday had solidified. He could see the skeletal framework of the Soul Palace.
It was roughly fifty percent complete—a translucent, architectural ghost of a foundation, glowing with the promise of absolute power.
'Not bad,' Ren mused, swirling the dark roast in his mug. 'Actually, that's pretty cracked. In the Nine Worlds, it takes so-called 'geniuses' months to lay a foundation like this. But then again, Devils are born with high specs; they just lack the software to run it properly.'
He shifted his gaze to Issei. The Red Dragon Emperor usually looked like a nervous wreck, jittering with excess energy and teenage hormones. Today, he stood completely still. His eyes were focused, devoid of his usual frantic energy. The Boosted Gear wasn't manifested, but the aura of the Dragon felt tighter, coiled like a spring rather than leaking like a broken faucet.
Ren Ming set his mug down on the stump with a deliberate clack that echoed louder than it should have.
"Morning, squad," Ren Ming said, his voice cutting through the silence. "You guys look different. Less like lost puppies, more like actual wolves. I dig the energy. Big improvement."
Rias Gremory stepped forward. She looked down at her hands, clenching and unclenching them. "We feel different. The energy... it doesn't just sit there anymore. It feels like it has a home. My reserves haven't increased in volume, but the density? It's frightening."
"That's the fifty percent mark," Ren nodded, leaning back comfortably. "Your Soul Palace is halfway done. You've got the framing up, but no roof. Even incomplete, it acts as a compressor. You're moving from dial-up internet to fiber optic. But don't let it go to your head. You're still just barely scratching the surface."
He stood up, dusting off his jeans. The air around him seemed to settle, heavy with unspoken authority.
"Yesterday was mental gym class. We worked on your insecurities. Cute stuff. Basic trauma dumping," Ren Ming said, his smile failing to reach his eyes. "Today? Today is complicated. We're doing a stress test."
Akeno tilted her head, her signature ponytail swaying with the motion. Her violet eyes narrowed slightly. "A stress test? Like the nightmares from yesterday, Ren-san?"
"Worse," Ren Ming replied bluntly. "Yesterday, you sat still and faced your feelings. You had the luxury of focus. Today, you're going to multitask. I want you to circulate the Myriad Origin Scripture—full cycle, no breaks—while undergoing the Second Trial."
Kiba Yuuto, ever the technical fighter, frowned. "Circulate while distracted? That sounds... incredibly risky. If we lose focus during a cycle, the energy backlash could damage our bodies. We could cripple ourselves."
"Bingo." Ren Ming pointed a finger gun at him. "It is dangerous. That's the whole point. In a real fight, or a Rating Game, do you think your opponent is going to call a time-out so you can sit down, cross your legs, and meditate to recharge? No way. Real combat is messy. You need to be able to channel your cultivation while the world is burning down around you."
Ren Ming turned away from them, walking toward a jagged rock formation where Tiamat was perched. The Chaos Karma Dragon was pretending to ignore them, meticulously polishing her nails, though her ears were swiveled toward the conversation.
Grayfia stood in the shadows nearby, her maid uniform pristine, observing with a stoic expression that betrayed nothing.
"Hey, Lizard Queen," Ren Ming called out, his tone dripping with casual disrespect.
Tiamat bristled instantly. Her blue eyes flashed with draconian irritation as she snapped her head toward him. "I have a name, human. And I am a Dragon King, not a lizard. Watch your tongue before I rip it out."
"You can try, and you still haven't used my name," Ren Ming countered, waving his hand dismissively. "We can trade insults later."
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a single sheet of paper. It wasn't ordinary stationary; the paper itself hummed with a faint, ancient light, the ink seeming to writhe on the surface. He flicked his wrist, sending the paper gliding through the air like a shuriken.
It was a page he had transcribed from the Myriad Origin Scripture. Specifically, the section on 'Draconic Breath Cycling.'
Tiamat caught it between two fingers, her expression one of disdainful skepticism. "What is this?"
"A cheat sheet," Ren shrugged, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "I noticed you trying to mimic their breathing yesterday. It was cute, but your rhythm was trash. You're wasting energy on the exhale. Read that. It'll help you recycle your waste heat back into your core. Consider it a free sample."
Tiamat looked down at the paper. Her dragon instincts—ancient and honed over millennia—screamed at her immediately. The geometric diagrams and flow charts on the page were profound. It wasn't just a breathing exercise; it was a method to turn her biological furnace into a closed-loop reactor. It was a chaotic, brilliant restructuring of how a dragon processed mana.
"Why give me this?" she asked, her voice dropping, suspicion warring with greed in her eyes. "You defeated me. You owe me nothing."
"Call it an investment," Ren Ming smirked, turning his back to her. "I like strong women. But right now? You're kind of plateauing. Read up. Don't disappoint me."
Tiamat grit her teeth, clutching the paper tight enough to wrinkle the edges. She hated his arrogance. She hated how casual, how utterly unbothered he was by her presence.
But more than that, she hated that he was right.
'I will learn this,' she thought, her pupils narrowing into vertical slits. 'I will master this human's strange magic. And then I will incinerate that smug look off his face.'
Ren Ming returned to the center of the circle. The peerage was waiting, the tension in the air ratcheting up a notch.
"Alright, listen up," Ren Ming commanded, his tone dropping the playfulness entirely. The shift was jarring, like a sudden drop in cabin pressure. "The Second Trial isn't about your feelings. It isn't about your mommy issues or your fear of not being good enough. This is the Death Trial."
The temperature in the clearing seemed to plummet ten degrees.
"I'm going to simulate your death," Ren Ming said calmly. "Not a jump scare. I'm not gonna have a skeleton pop out of a closet. I'm talking about the sensation of absolute, unavoidable mortality. The physiological feeling of your heart stopping. The cold. The fade to black. The total helplessness of knowing it's over and you can't fix it."
Asia gasped, her hands flying to her mouth, clutching her Twilight Healing rings as if they could protect her from the concept of death itself.
"And while you are dying," Ren continued, his voice relentless, "you have to keep the energy moving. If the energy stops, you fail. If you panic, you fail. If you scream, you fail."
"That sounds... impossible," Issei gulped, his face paling.
"It is for normal people," Ren agreed. "But I'm not training normal people. I'm training legends. So, buckle up."
Ren Ming's eyes glowed. The Petrifying Immortal Light surged within his pupils, but he inverted the frequency. Instead of freezing their bodies in stone, he used the profound, esoteric nature of the light to project a mental seal—an illusion of the highest order, backed by the reality-warping weight of the Immortal Soul Bone.
"Nighty night."
The world didn't fade. It snapped.
...
The illusion hit them like a freight train loaded with lead. There was no transition, no dream logic, no swirling colors. Just reality, cold and hard.
In Issei Hyoudou's Mind:
Issei was on the ground. He couldn't move.
His chest felt wet. Warm and wet. He looked down, his movements sluggish, like he was moving through molasses. There was a hole where his heart used to be. Not a scratch, not a wound—a crater.
The Boosted Gear was shattered. The green gems, usually glowing with Ddraig's indomitable will, were crushed into dull dust, scattered across the bloody pavement.
Raynare stood over him.
It wasn't the Raynare he remembered—the girl he had taken on a date. It was the Fallen Angel who had killed him. But this time, the sky was empty. There was no magic circle. There was no Rias Gremory coming to save him.
"Ddraig?" Issei thought, his mind screaming into the void. "Partner?"
Silence.
Not the silence of sleep, but the silence of an empty room. The connection was severed. Ddraig was dead.
'I'm dying,' Issei realized. The thought wasn't frantic. It was slow. Biological. His vision was tunneling, black vignettes creeping in from the edges.
Circulate, a voice in the back of his mind screamed. It was Ren Ming's voice. Move the energy. Don't stop.
Issei tried. He tried to pull on the red demonic power, to spin the turbine in his gut. But his body felt incredibly cold. His brain was flooding with chemicals—DMT, cortisol, the final cocktail the brain serves before the lights go out. His instincts screamed that nothing mattered anymore. Why circulate energy in a corpse?
'It hurts. It's so cold. I don't want to go. Not like this.'
The terror wasn't active; it was a heavy, suffocating blanket. It was the absolute certainty that Issei Hyoudou ceased to exist in ten seconds.
Nine.
Eight...
The darkness wasn't just an absence of light. It was an absence of him.
In Rias Gremory's Mind:
Rias was kneeling. The stone beneath her knees was cold and rough.
She was on an execution block in the center of the Underworld's capital. The sky was the color of bruised iron, oppressive and low. Thousands of devils watched from the stands, but they were silent.
Sirzechs was there. Her brother. The Lucifer.
He wasn't looking at her with love. He wasn't looking at her with pity. He was looking at the ground, his face a mask of absolute indifference.
"Rias Gremory," a faceless judge announced, his voice booming like thunder. "For the crime of weakness, and for disgracing the bloodline of the Great King, your existence is revoked."
Rias tried to speak, to beg, to scream. She tried to summon her Power of Destruction. She tried to blast the block, the judge, anything to prove she was strong.
Nothing happened.
Her magic was gone. Her Connection to the Gremory line was severed. She was just a girl. A powerless, human girl kneeling in the dirt.
A blade of pure holy light descended from a guillotine above.
Move the energy, she told herself. Cycle the Myriad Origin Scripture. Ren said to cycle it.
But how could she?
Her mind was paralyzed by the biological imperative of fear. Not the social anxiety of a Rating Game, but the primal, reptilian fear of extinction. Her breath hitched. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird, erratic and painful.
She looked at Sirzechs one last time. He turned his back.
Thud.
The blade hit. She felt the separation. The darkness. The nothingness.
...
In Akeno Himejima's Mind:
Akeno stood in a thunderstorm. But it wasn't her Holy Lightning. It wasn't the yellow crackle of the Himejima clan or the dark thunder of the Fallen.
It was silent lightning.
A bolt of white light struck her shoulder.
It didn't burn. It didn't shock. It simply... deleted.
Akeno looked down. Her left arm was gone. There was no blood. Just a smooth, cauterized stump.
"What is..." She tried to say, her voice trembling.
Another bolt. Her right leg dissolved into ash.
She fell, hitting the mud. She tried to summon her magic, to lash out, to enjoy the sensation, to do something. But she couldn't feel anything. No pleasure. No pain. Just the terrifying realization of loss.
She was being subtracted. Piece by piece.
She looked up at the sky, pleading. "Please... punish me. Hurt me. But don't... don't make me nothing."
The sky didn't answer. It just fired again.
Akeno screamed, not from pain, but from the sheer, absolute helplessness of being dismantled like a faulty toy. She couldn't seduce the lightning. She couldn't fight it. She just had to watch herself disappear, unable to lift a finger to stop it.
In Kiba Yuuto's Mind:
Kiba stood in a hallway made of razor blades.
He wasn't fast here. His legs felt like lead. He tried to summon a Sword Birth, but his hands remained empty. The walls were closing in.
He didn't scream like Issei. He analyzed. He tried to find a weak point, a structural flaw. But there was none. The walls pressed into his skin. The blades cut into his flesh, slicing through muscle and tendon. He couldn't dodge. He couldn't parry.
He was dismantled, inch by inch. He died watching his own blood pool on the floor, unable to lift a finger to stop it. The circulation of energy? Forgotten. The only thing that existed was the crushing weight of the steel.
In Asia Argento's Mind:
Asia was drowning. She was in a vast, dark ocean. She tried to heal herself as the pressure crushed her eardrums, but her Twilight Healing wouldn't activate. She wasn't being hunted; she was simply being extinguished by the indifference of the ocean. The water filled her lungs, burning and cold. She died gasping for air that didn't exist, her prayers bubbling up to a surface she would never reach.
In Koneko Toujou's Mind:
Koneko was falling. She was falling from the stratosphere. She was a cat who couldn't land on her feet because there was no ground, only an endless plummet through freezing winds that stripped the heat from her body until her heart stopped from hypothermia. She was frozen solid, a statue of helplessness, shattering upon impact with the void.
...
In the Clearing:
One by one, they broke.
"No!" Issei screamed, his eyes snapping open. He scrambled backward, his heels digging into the dirt, clawing frantically at his chest. His fingers tore at his shirt, checking for a hole that wasn't there. He retched, dry heaving bile onto the pristine grass.
Rias gasped, her body arching off the ground as if she'd been electrocuted. She collapsed, shivering violently, her skin as pale as a sheet. She clutched her neck, her eyes wide and unseeing, staring at a guillotine that didn't exist.
Akeno and Asia were crying—silent, horrifying tears streaming down their faces. Their hands gripped the grass so hard their knuckles were white, ripping the earth apart in sheer desperation.
Koneko was curled in a tight ball, her cat ears flattened against her skull, hissing at nothing, her tails bristled in pure, feral terror.
Even Kiba, usually the most composed, the most accepting of death, was trembling. He was on his knees, his hands shaking as if holding a broken sword, his eyes wide and hollow.
They had all failed.
The energy circulation in their bodies had shattered the moment the "death" became real in their minds. The Myriad Origin Scripture had ground to a halt, choked by the survival instinct.
The silence in the clearing was heavy, broken only by their ragged breathing and Issei's coughing.
Tiamat watched from her rock, her own breathing hitched. Even from a distance, she had felt the ripple of Ren Ming's mental pressure. It tasted like the Void.
He made them face the Abyss, she realized with a shudder, the cheat sheet forgotten in her hand. That's... barbaric. That isn't training. That's torture.
Ren Ming didn't move for a full minute. He sat on the stump, watching them with a clinical detachment that bordered on coldness. He let them breathe. He let them check their pulses. He let the reality of their survival wash over them.
Was this cruel of him?
Indeed.
But without this step, their room for growth would always be limited.
In all cultivation worlds, the experts that stood at the top of everything, that could look down upon the entire universe, possessed a Dao Heart that was absolutely unbreakable. Without that indomitable will, no being can ever grow beyond their limits. In fact, the life-or-death experience of cultivators is thousands upon thousands of times worse.
Some cultivators merely get an unwilling death, filled with everlasting regret. But those that can survive, that can stare death in the face and keep moving, are the ones that shine brighter than the Heavens.
For everyone here to step on that road, this hurdle was crucial to overcome.
After a few more moments, Ren Ming clapped his hands.
CLAP.
The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet clearing.
"Okay," Ren said, his voice surprisingly gentle, lacking his usual sarcasm. "Breathe. You're not dead. You're in the purple room. Smell the ozone? Feel the grass? You're here."
Rias looked up at him. Her eyes were red-rimmed, haunted shadows under them. "I... I died. Ren, I felt it. I felt the blade. I couldn't stop it."
"I know," Ren said softly. He stood up and walked over, crouching down in front of them so he was at eye level. "You all failed the objective. The energy stopped moving the second your brain registered 'Game Over'. Your survival instinct hijacked the system."
Issei wiped his mouth, looking ashamed, tears stinging his eyes. "We couldn't do it. It was too real, Ren! How the hell are we supposed to focus on cultivation when we're... gone? When Ddraig was gone?"
Ren smiled. It wasn't a mocking smile. It was a proud one.
"You failed the technique," Ren admitted. "But look at you."
He gestured to them, his grey eyes warm.
"You're awake. You're talking. You aren't insane."
He stood up, his silhouette framed against the artificial light of the dimension.
"If I had put you through this yesterday? Your minds would have shattered. You would be catatonic right now, drooling on the floor. But today? You're shaken, you're pale, and you're terrified... but you are holding it together. Your Will remained intact even when your life didn't."
Ren extended a hand toward Rias.
"That is progress. That is the Dao Heart forming."