Chapter 425 — The Collector and the Geometer
Azrael, cold gaze but still wearing that insufferable smile, watched Eva's arrival as if she had interrupted an imperial nap. The flames surrounding her still crackled, stabilizing space and preventing reality from collapsing under the weight of concepts.
— Another intruder? Azrael drawled. You really want to 2 v 1 me? Seriously… did you sign up for some "promo pack"?
— No, it's a special pack, Clara shot back with a wink.
— Shut up, Eva replied without even looking at her.
— Okay.
Further away, chaos persisted. Cyrus stepped forward, eyes fixed on his brother.
— I'll help you…
— Did you forget I'm your opponent? Alaster interrupted, blocking his path with a massive aura.
Cyrus turned his head slowly, slightly annoyed.
— Oh… you're still here? I almost forgot.
— Would you flee our fight? Alaster provoked.
Cyrus let out a contemptuous laugh:
— Why would I flee? You're no match. Stay if you want, it won't change a thing.
Behind his mask, Mister Mind let out a muffled, almost deranged laugh.
— Don't worry, I'll help, he said to Alaster.
Haya, worried, intervened immediately:
— Are you sure? Don't you want Ariel to handle it?
— No, let me. I feel like having fun.
— Bad sign, Bloodweaver muttered, stepping back.
Mister Mind descended slowly, floating with supernatural grace, ignoring gravity and common sense. He landed between the two groups.
— 2 v 1… Honestly, girls, that's not very loyal. Not very fair play.
Eva fixed him coldly:
— And you're the one lecturing us about loyalty? You're an example of justice, maybe?
— Absolutely not.
— Okay, at least you're honest.
Suddenly, a distortion of shadow tore the air. Nightmare and Mira appeared at Mind's side, emanating palpable bloodlust.
— 3 v 2? Clara protested. That's clearly cheating!
— Cheating? Mind feigned innocence, placing a hand on his chest. That hurts. They're my creations, my familiars. What's the problem?
— You don't have a heart, Clara replied.
— Technical detail.
Eva shrugged, unfazed:
— Don't worry, I have no problem with that. It changes nothing for me.
Vespera, in Clara's mind, vibrated with a new, almost paralyzing anxiety.
— Clara, be careful with this one. He doesn't seem right… he radiates something far worse than mere power.
— Everyone here is weird, Ves.
— No… he's much worse.
Mister Mind turned to Azrael, ignoring the threats.
— Want me to handle Clara for you?
Azrael frowned, a flicker of authority and hesitation in his eyes:
— Are you sure you want her? I really wanted to deal with her myself.
— Leave her to me, I beg you, big brother! Mind insisted with mocking tone. It's your little brother asking…
Brakk muttered in the background:
— Is it just me or is he really creepy?
— Very, Bloodweaver confirmed.
Azrael sighed and turned toward Eva.
— Well… you then, my next opponent.
— Finally, someone polite, Eva replied, igniting further.
Clara, fed up with the provocations, exploded:
— I'VE HAD ENOUGH!
She charged at Mister Mind, pouring all her speed into a direct impact. But the closer she ran, the farther Mind seemed, always at the exact same distance, like a fleeing mirage.
— Huh?!
— Snap out of it! Vespera screamed.
Suddenly, Clara's perception shattered like a mirror. CRACK. In reality, she hadn't moved an inch. She was running in place inside a looped space. Brakk watched, dismayed:
— Okay, that's humiliating.
— Infinite Corridor, Mind roared in mad laughter. Did you feel it? I could've finished you right there.
— Stop being a killjoy, Clara spat, regaining her senses. Who says you'd have managed to hurt me?
— Ah… you don't think the fight is already over? Unfortunately, you've already arrived.
Mind gestured to his familiars.
— Stay back for now, Mira, Nightmare. Papa Mind will handle these two.
— These two? Mira blinked. But only Clara's here.
Mind's smile widened, slow and dangerous. He fixed the void beside Clara, where Vespera resided.
— Oh no… I see you both very clearly. They don't call me The Soul Collector for nothing.
Vespera's heart skipped a beat. Silence fell, heavy as lead. Even Cyrus raised an eyebrow, intrigued:
— Interesting…
Nightmare growled, claws scraping the ground:
— You should've let me handle her…
— Patience, Mind replied without taking his eyes off Clara. Your turn will come.
Clara stood still. For the first time, she wasn't smiling.
— Ves…
— Yes…
— I think we've got a problem.
— A BIG problem.
Brakk, in the back, couldn't help but conclude:
— I agree. That one… I don't like him at all.
Mira, curious, asked:
— Can we eat him?
— NO! everyone shouted in unison.
In a world full of monsters, manipulators, and destroyers…
The most dangerous one isn't the one who kills you.
It's the one who understands you.
Chapter 426 — The Puppeteer's Strings
The air vibrated with a sickly electricity. It wasn't simple magical pressure, but an unpleasant frequency, like someone scratching directly at the soul with fingernails. Behind his immutable porcelain mask, one could sense Mister Mind's predatory smile. His fingers moved with terrifying grace, as if plucking an invisible harp, each motion tightening the puppeteer's strings around Clara's existence.
— "The more you struggle, the tighter the mesh becomes, Clara," he whispered, his voice imprinting directly into her cortex. "In my Infinite Corridor, every effort to escape is just more data I reinject into your prison. You provide the input… and I optimize the cage. You are a system error I am correcting."
Clara stood still for a moment, then sighed.
— You're really the kind of guy who explains his techniques mid-fight, huh?
— "It's educational."
— Yeah… mostly annoying, she cut him off.
In her head, Vespera panicked:
— "Clara… he's recalculating every move! He's reading you like an open book!"
— Good. Then I'll burn the book, Clara replied simply, cracking her knuckles.
A few meters away, the duel between Eva and Azrael began without warning.
— So you're my opponent? The Master of Dreams?
Azrael, with a nonchalant smile, tilted his head:
— "And to whom do I have the honor?"
— Eva, the Empress of Flame.
She instantly summoned a sphere of pure fire, a primordial blaze so intense it could liquefy the very structure of reality. It was an existence that refused to be denied. She hurled the blast at Azrael's back, burning space in its path. But the Sovereign of Mirrors didn't even bother to turn.
— Fragmentation.
CRACK. Eva's attack shattered into thousands of shards. The flames were literally transformed into fragments of mirror that fell to the ground with crystalline chimes. Cling… cling… cling…
Eva narrowed her eyes, analyzing coldly. Azrael then materialized a blade of geometric light and, with a sharp gesture, drove it violently into the middle of his own head. Blood spurted, only to transform into rose petals before touching the ground.
— You're not done being surprised, Azrael said as the blade pierced his skull. You'll regret coming to help Clara.
He withdrew the weapon without flinching. The wound closed instantly, leaving a smooth surface.
— How can you still talk? Eva asked, more irritated by the trick than impressed. You're playing with your own death for show?
— I can make True False and False True. That's the nature of my power: Master of Mirage Realities. The fact I stabbed myself? A simple fictional event I erased from the script. Hahaha!
— I'll just hit you harder until your script runs out of pages, Eva replied, stepping forward.
On Clara's side, the atmosphere shifted.
— Alright, enough talking, she said, raising her hand.
— NO CLARA WAIT! The space is too unstable! Vespera screamed.
— Nah, it's fine.
Clara's mana didn't just rise; it imploded, condensed into a sphere of pure blue between her fingers. Then, the world turned white. It wasn't a normal explosion, but saturation. Clara wasn't trying to escape the corridor—she was trying to overload it with contradictory information until it collapsed. The invisible walls of the system began to glitch.
Mister Mind stopped. His fingers ceased their dance.
— "…interesting."
— You wanted data? Here's a bug, Clara spat.
BOOM. The corridor couldn't contain the anomaly's shockwave. The loops broke, trajectories became incoherent. It was like opening 10,000 tabs on an already overloaded processor. Reality's dust settled. Mind was still there, his strings burning, but he began to applaud slowly.
— "Honestly, bravo. That was clean. You forced an update to my spatial structure."
— Know that you've annoyed me, pretentious. And I'll make you pay, Clara replied with a feral grin.
— "You didn't break my system… you forced it to evolve," Mind continued, his gaze glowing blue behind the mask. "Because now… I understand how you work."
Silence fell, heavy. Clara cracked her neck, her blue aura growing heavier, more aggressive.
— You're not a boss. You're a puzzle. And I hate thinking. So I'll break you.
Mister Mind tilted his head, silent menace radiating from his still figure.
— "That's exactly the answer I was waiting for."
Vespera trembled:
— "Clara… this feels bad."
Chapter 427 — The Puppeteer's Game
The atmosphere, already saturated by the previous corridor's explosion, suddenly became suffocating. Clara, standing at the center of the chaos, pointed a confident, almost insulting finger at the Worker of Silence. A feral smile stretched across her lips.
— "Seriously… you really thought your cheap labyrinth would trap me? Sorry, but your little tricks… they don't work on me."
Mister Mind tilted his head slightly, like a teacher disappointed in a noisy student, though amusement glimmered behind his porcelain mask.
— "That was only a diagnostic, Clara. A simple test. Don't overestimate a miscalculation."
— "Yeah, yeah… let's see how long you last without your illusions," she shot back, cracking her knuckles, her blue aura crackling like an electric storm.
Mind slowly spread his arms, a theatrical gesture that seemed to embrace the void.
— "And who said I planned to restrain you alone?"
From a tear in reality, two silhouettes emerged: Nightmare and Mira. They stood before their master like ebony ramparts, radiating palpable bloodlust. Clara stared for a second, then sighed.
— "Oh great… three against one. No shame at all, huh? Ugly."
— "Three against two, more precisely," Mind corrected softly. "Don't forget your little mental roommate, your invisible friend."
— "…Ves, you're counted now. Congratulations," Clara grimaced.
— "I'd rather stay discreet," Vespera replied dryly in her mind. "This guy is really creepy."
Nightmare stepped forward, cracking his neck. His colossal mace materialized in his hand, and the space around him began to bend and twist under a density beyond comprehension.
— "I'll make her pay… for what she did earlier…" the monster growled.
— "Calm down, Nightmare," Mind sighed. "Don't be too impulsive. Try not to die too quickly, that would bore me."
Clara shrugged, ignoring the warnings.
— "Honestly, you could come at me ten at a time… your numbers don't matter. I'll smash you all to pieces."
BOOM.
She expelled mana beneath her feet. The ground—or what was left of it—literally exploded. She propelled herself, tearing reality like paper in a trail of electric blue light, charging straight at Mister Mind.
— "Your turn, Nightmare," Mind ordered.
Clara hurled her fist, loaded with unstable mana. Nightmare reacted instantly with absurd speed, increasing the mass of his own fist for the collision.
IMPACT.
The shock was titanic. A sharp crack resounded as reality fragmented into hundreds of shards between their knuckles, radiating shockwaves that pulverized the surrounding debris. The world seemed to forget how to stay whole.
— "Interesting…" Mind murmured.
Then, he vanished. Clara barely had time to turn her head before his voice echoed:
— "Behind you. Try to keep up."
A wailing soul materialized in Mind's hand, instantly transmuted into a grotesque warhammer, charged with dark conceptual force.
BAM.
The blow slammed between Clara's shoulder blades, hurling her violently forward. She tore through several layers of space before crashing into the ground in a storm of reality dust.
— "Hahaha! You're done!" Nightmare roared.
— "Nightmare, with me!" Mind commanded.
The monster activated his amplification. His speed exploded, rendering him invisible. He vanished, reappearing instantly before Clara, mace already raised.
— "Small detail," Mind added casually, as if commenting on a match. "One might think he lacks experience… so I simply injected him with Martial Mastery and Weapon Mastery. A perfect fusion of technique and brutality."
— "…You basically cheated your own character," Clara muttered as she rose.
The mace, whose mass Nightmare instantly increased to 100,000 tons, came crashing down. Clara, pure reflex, raised her left hand and caught it head-on. The ground beneath her feet exploded, she sank into reality itself, but she didn't budge an inch.
— "Seriously? You increased the mass? Not enough," she taunted.
But that was the moment Mind had chosen.
— "Bad timing. Combo."
He appeared right in front of her, his black hammer saturated with dark mana already in motion.
IMPACT.
The blow struck Clara's stomach violently. The force was so immense she was launched like a cannonball. Yet at the last moment, Vespera reacted. Arms of pure mana surged and crossed before Clara, absorbing most of the kinetic impact.
Clara skidded across several meters, leaving a luminous trail before stopping. Mind landed elegantly, running a hand through his hair, his mask gleaming with mocking light.
— "Looks like you're starting to suffer."
Vespera, her voice taut with rage and worry, warned:
— "Clara… be careful. This guy is worse than Azrael. He's sly, calculating… He doesn't fight with honor, he fights with variables."
Clara wiped a trickle of blood from her mouth. She lifted her head, and this time, her smile wasn't amused or provocative. It was dangerous.
— "Yeah… I noticed."
She straightened her shoulders, her blue aura rising again, heavier, more unstable, more aggressive. A crack ran through the space around her.
— "But don't worry… now that I understand how you play… I'll stop playing too."
Chapter 428 — The Symphony of Chaos
The air at the center of the battlefield was nothing but a mix of reality dust and blue mana residue. Mister Mind, perfectly calm and unbothered amid the chaos, adjusted his gloves, arms crossed with insulting nonchalance.
— "It's mathematical, Clara. No matter what variable you introduce, the outcome remains the same: you have no chance here," he declared in a voice devoid of emotion.
At his side, Nightmare smirked, a heavy, malicious sound as dry as the sand covering his body, glowing under his opponent's aura.
— "You felt it earlier, didn't you? The sensation of reality collapsing under your weight…"
Clara rose slowly, wiping blood with the back of her hand. Her eyes gleamed with a wild light. She turned her head toward him. Silence.
— "You… I didn't call on you," she cut sharply. "Did you already forget what I did to you back in Chapter 414, or do you just have a goldfish memory? I still remember your bones cracking in my hand. Want me to refresh your memory?"
Nightmare shrugged, feigning indifference despite the vein throbbing at his temple.
— "A simple lapse of attention. I was… distracted. Nothing more."
— "Don't worry," Clara continued with a feral grin that made Vespera shiver inside her mind. "I'll make you pay for your insolence—with interest."
Behind his porcelain mask, Mind let out a muffled laugh.
— "Worry? Don't delude yourself, girl."
Without another word, Clara drew. Her hand closed on the hilt of X-Destruction. In a flash, two electric-blue slashes tore through space. Not cutting, not slicing: they erased reality itself in their path, rushing toward Nightmare like tidal blades ready to saw existence apart.
In the same motion, Clara vanished, leaving only a trail of azure sparks. She reappeared instantly above Mister Mind, her sword saturated with so much mana the blade seemed immaterial.
— "Surprise."
She struck downward, a vertical blow meant to split the puppeteer in two. Mind reacted in a microsecond, materializing his warhammer to parry.
CLANG.
The shockwave vibrated through the entire Sanctuary, hurling them apart violently. Mind slowed his slide by clawing at space with his strings, his smile intact. He tossed his hammer into the air, spun it with macabre grace, caught it, and charged.
Clara, anticipating, expelled a jet of pure mana beneath her feet to cancel inertia and launch herself forward.
BOOM. The collision was cataclysmic. An explosion of raw destruction, without fire or light, warped space. Nightmare, meanwhile, was still holding back the twin slashes of X-Destruction with his mace, his arms trembling under the constant pressure.
Seizing an opening, Clara pointed a finger at Mind.
— "Azure Collapse."
A sphere of electric blue condensed at her fingertip, a singularity so dense it began to swallow surrounding light. The orb shot forth, devouring everything—debris, strings, even air—in its path. Mind, his body faintly smoking after the previous clash, froze beside Nightmare to analyze its trajectory.
— "This attack… dangerous, I must admit," he murmured.
— "Okay… I don't like that one," Nightmare added.
Nightmare finally repelled the X-Destruction slashes and charged. Clara too. Their clash—mace against sword—produced an unbearable screech.
— "BILLIONS OF TONS!" the sand warrior roared.
The impact radically shifted the chromatic spectrum of reality: red turned black, blue turned white. The scenery shattered like a mirror struck by a hammer. Space collapsed under the absurd weight of the mace, but Clara didn't move an inch.
— "That's it?"
Then Mind appeared in her blind spot. Silent. Always there. His black hammer instantly transformed into a sphere of absolute darkness, condensed and unstable. Behind his mask, his gaze gleamed with already-assumed victory.
— "Disappear."
The sphere expanded exponentially, too fast, too close to dodge. But Clara still smiled.
— "Seriously… you still don't get it. You keep making the same mistake."
Her aura exploded—not outward, but inward. Condensed. Controlled. Violent.
— "Your attacks… they're too slow."
Mind vanished, leaving the sphere to detonate on direct contact with Clara in a blinding flash. But amid the blaze of darkness, his voice echoed, calm and icy. Reappearing a little further away, Mind exhaled one last mocking breath:
— "That's what you think…"