Chapter 221 For All the Alices (6)

A single straight, true blossom of pitch black shattered the pure white night.

The scenery of the isolation room shattered into fragments.

Crash!

The glass walls that had monitored the interior broke apart.

The demons living outside were caught in the blast and vaporized.

"Activate. Thorns."

Shwaaaak!

The boy murmured, and a cluster of spikes bloomed.

A huge bouquet the color of dawn was thrust over the nightmare.

Like thunder and lightning, the flowers split heaven and earth into thousands of pieces.

The dreamed-up world was divided, divided, divided, until it finally exposed even its white flesh.

"Activate. Greatsword."

The boy drew a straight line across that fabric.

He carved a deep wound into the pure white.

Slice!

The white skin split open, and wriggling afterimages poured out like blood.

The torn fragments sharpened into icicles.

Before long, a fierce mix of rain and snow descended between the dream and the boy and girl.

Beyond the shattered ceiling of the isolation room, hundreds, thousands of streaks of rain were drawn across the sky.

Whoosh!

"Haa... This thing is persistent."

As though determined not to let them go, the nightmare closed in while shifting through countless forms.

The boy brushing at his mask casually raised a finger.

Ding!

[Omen of the Apocalypse]

-Category: Activated Skill

-Rank: A

-Attribute: Isolation, Domain

-Description: A skill said to be used by the Four Knights of the Apocalypse, particularly the Red Knight and the Black Knight. When activated, it creates a barrier spanning up to 1 km around the caster. Targets struck by the skill are trapped inside the barrier together with the caster. The greater the caster's magical power, the stronger and longer-lasting the barrier becomes, and the wider its range.

"Open."

A short activation command, bitten off.

Then a pitch-black domain covered the area.

The rushing white melted away like icicles placed over intense heat.

"Even your struggling is cute. It's not like I've been standing here taking this because I couldn't break a little nightmare like this."

Snap.

The boy lightly snapped his fingers.

And just like that, the domain vanished.

"Are you okay, Miss Allie?"

"Uh... Y-Yeah."

The boy glanced back at Unknown behind him.

The girl, who had been stunned for a moment, nodded belatedly.

Her red eyes trembled softly.

'How... can he directly hurt a nightmare like this...?'

Even Father could not do such a thing.

She had never heard of anything like it.

"I think I've broken it all by now. Don't you think it should quietly let us go by now?"

The scenery that had once been the isolation room had vanished without a trace.

The surroundings were filled only with white, like an inverted universe.

Before it stood the boy, merely dusting off his sleeves.

"...Well, it was never going to be that easy."

After his cold murmur, the white space writhed like a massive lump of clay.

Soon, the nightmare hardened as if copying someone's form.

A giant's face appeared before them.

No... perhaps it was more accurate to say it was the stage before a face.

There were no features, only a visage of crudely stitched flesh.

<Where do you think you're running, my test subjects?>

That voice she was already sick of hearing.

Oz stood there, seemingly hundreds of meters tall.

<You will never escape. Never.>

Unknown could not help shrinking back.

The source of her trauma.

<You can't escape.>

"Haa, haa..."

Allie was mentally driven into a corner.

Her eyes squeezed shut without her realizing.

But even then, it was the boy who brought her back to her senses.

Rustle.

A lukewarm hand stroked her head.

The boy's fingers brushed through her tangled white hair a few times.

"Miss Allie."

Slice.

Beyond her blocked vision, she heard something being cut apart.

The boy was still smoothing Unknown's hair.

"You can open your eyes now."

"..."

When she opened her eyes again, Oz's figure was gone.

Something so enormous had disappeared without a trace.

Only remnants split in two could be seen falling into the abyss below.

A pathetic sight.

The boy did not even look that way.

He simply met the girl's gaze and smiled with his eyes, as though reassuring her.

"See? Not scary at all, right?"

"..."

"Something like that wouldn't even be a match for a single punch from me. So please follow me without worrying."

"What... are you?"

"Well, why don't you guess?"

The boy answered playfully.

Amid the snowflake-like dreamscape, he took Unknown's hand.

"Come on. Let's go."

The girl let herself be led as though enchanted.

Her steps were light and calm.

Crash!

Yet that alone reduced the dreamscape to dust.

Disillusionment, resentment, malice. All of it fell silent, layer upon layer.

The prison that had detained her life was now a columbarium holding the ashes of nightmares.

At dawn, as day and night traded places.

The dream lost its color, stained entirely by the boy's black.

Her trauma could no longer try to harm the girl.

'...Maybe.'

A possibility sprouted in one corner of her heart.

At the same time, anxiety came crashing in.

'Am I... am I really escaping?'

With every step, the girl moved farther from the nightmare.

She was saying goodbye to the traces Father had left on her life.

Unknown found it hard to breathe under a strange pressure.

'Is it okay for me to leave like this? But I...'

The source of her anxiety was fear of stepping into the unknown.

The girl's breathing gradually began to shake.

'I don't know. Can I do this? Even free of Father, can I keep living this monstrous life?'

Perhaps because she had spent her whole life falling into unhappiness.

The path away from it did not feel happy. Fear and unfamiliarity came first.

Unknown unconsciously clenched her hand.

Her churning stomach muttered a cursed thought.

'...Is it really okay for me to be happy?'

The words sank into gloom.

Then a firm voice woke her from her melancholy.

"Of course it is."

"..."

"There's no one in this world who has to be unhappy. Miss Allie, you can definitely be happy too."

"..."

Even as he destroyed the nightmare, he did not let go of Unknown's hand.

The boy spoke shamelessly.

"Let's just decide to be happy. Miss Alice and I will do our best to help you by your side."

"..."

"I'll make you happy somehow. So please, live."

"..."

Just decide to be happy.

Why did those words soothe the anxiety inside her so much?

"...Okay."

Unknown lowered her head.

Warm trails ran down her cheeks.

Perhaps the words about happiness she had heard for the first time were enough to make the girl who had despaired of life cry.

"Let's go. Everyone is waiting."

"..."

A wooden door stood alone against the black background.

The boy smiled as he grasped its handle.

Unknown nodded even as tears escaped her.

"...Take me there too."

"Heh, gladly."

Click.

He turned the handle.

Then bright dawn light poured through the gap in the door.

Ding!

[Phenomenon 'Memories, Recollections, Imagination (S-)' has been cleared.]

[The trauma and nightmares of the designated target, 'Project-Unknown,' will be resolved.]

And then,

the girl opened her eyes in reality.

* * *

Meanwhile, on the seventh basement floor of the laboratory.

Team B, tasked with eliminating the remaining forces, was there.

"Looks like things are wrapping up."

"Yeah."

The two spoke calmly.

Beside the silver-haired and blue-haired girls, Chimera corpses were piled up like mountains.

The laboratory was a wreck, shattered by Bloodcraft and coated white in frost.

"Phew..."

"Princess, are you tired?"

"I'm fine. I'm only a little motion sick..."

"Let's get back quickly. Team A contacted us too. They said it's over."

The announcement ending the battle against Oz had gone out.

Rin and Carmilla walked down the corridor.

They intended to join the others.

Then Rin's steps stopped absentmindedly in front of a room.

"What's wrong?"

"..."

The room was filled with all kinds of supplies.

Rin blankly stared through the broken glass window.

"This is strange... It feels familiar somehow..."

"Familiar? Do you sense an enemy?"

"No, not that..."

As though she needed to check, the girl stepped into the storage room.

It was an enormous space, as vast as the quantity of supplies stacked within it.

Rin walked toward one section.

She pulled back a thick curtain and opened one of the stacked boxes.

Clack.

"..."

Rin silently looked down into the box.

It was packed full of magic scrolls.

"These are explosive scrolls. The Allied Forces did say they were preparing for war..."

"..."

"I can't believe they stockpiled this many. Where did they get them? Scrolls with workmanship this clean are hard to find."

"...These."

Rin murmured blankly, as though answering the question.

Her eyes remained fixed on the scrolls.

She noticed the distinctive arrangement of characters.

Something designed so that only members of her family could recognize it.

Looking beyond the box at the supplies piled in thousands of layers, Rin murmured.

"...These were made by our Glacia Family."

Her voice trembled slightly.