Sora closed her eyes, bracing for the inevitable end...
"Huh...?"
She snapped her eyes open. She was suspended mid-air, but she wasn't falling. Her body hung completely motionless, as if gravity itself had forgotten her in this desolate void.
Suddenly, she felt hands gripping her. Ruka and Alexandra had soared upward through the chaos, catching her firmly by the back to support her.
Alexandra, bleeding heavily from her head, flashed a defiant, blood-stained grin. "We're still standing!" she barked.
With a massive surge of willpower, they pushed Sora upward, securing her broken, melting body to prevent her from slipping into the dark abyss below.
Ruka, whose vision was completely lost behind a mask of thick, dripping crimson, screamed into her own darkness: "It's time for our freedom! Let's go!"
Tears welled in Sora's eyes, her chest aching with overwhelming emotion. But Ruka roared, her voice cracking under the immense strain of their weight: "Don't cry! We are still alive!"
Sora turned her gaze back toward the core. The rupture in the heart of the pyramid was turning increasingly violent, tearing wider by the second as it fractured.
At that exact moment, dozens of devils swarmed from the shadows, rushing them like starved beasts in a desperate bid to stop them at the final second.
Sora gritted her teeth, fueled by the warmth of her friends' hands. She pressed the purple crystal deeper into the core, putting everything she had into destroying the pyramid barrier of the Fake World.
"Ahhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhh!"
With one final, desperate breath, she let out a primal shriek that shattered the shifting dimension: "FREEDOM!"
A colossal wave of energy surged outward. The massive barrier began to shudder violently, spider-webbing with fractures as raw, unstable power bled from the widening cracks.
Then, abruptly, an eerie silence fell. The energy ceased.
Every shred of light in the chamber was violently sucked toward the barrier. The surrounding landscape plunged into pitch-black darkness, as if a solar eclipse had choked out the sun in a single heartbeat. Searing arcs of black and crimson lightning erupted from thin air, tearing through the earth right at her feet. Suddenly, gravity failed. The massive boulders around her began to float, breaking apart into thousands of jagged fragments suspended in midair.
In an instant, the entire world flashed a blinding, sterile white. A terrifying, deep, sub-bass thrum vibrated through the very fabric of reality—a frequency so primordial she felt the violent jolt deep inside her chest.
Out erupted a colossal torrent of black and crimson energy. This was no mere laser beam; it was a raging river of electrified lava, tearing through space at the speed of light. Whatever the energy touched did not merely shatter—it was instantly vaporized. Boulders dissolved into nothingness, reducing the solid ground beneath into a molten, glowing strip of white-hot magma.
Thrown violently to the ground, she felt the world go dead. For half a second, all sound was severed like a knife. Absolute, suffocating silence.
And then, the silence shattered.
A biblical explosion tore through the atmosphere—a colossal, grinding roar like an entire mountain collapsing in on itself, before dissolving into a high-pitched, deafening hiss of white noise as the raw energy bled into the air. A monstrous, hemispherical dome of fire erupted skyward, a chaotic tempest of crimson, cobalt, violet, and emerald flames wreathed in thick, choking black smoke. The shockwave struck with apocalyptic force, blasting away the clouds for miles in every direction, leaving nothing behind but a colossal, perfectly circular, smoldering crater.
TOKYO
A heavy, absolute silence fell over the entire city. From miles away, the masses could only stare in awe at the colossal, world-shattering explosion.
"They did it... I can't believe it," Jin muttered.
Ronika gasped, struggling desperately to catch her breath. "I don't... I can't hear anything."
Clara, Roe, and Marios stood completely frozen, paralyzed by the shock of the blast.
"Did you guys... see that?" Clara whispered, her voice trembling. "It erased the sky. Did you see it?"
Marios simply pulled out a cigarette and lit it in the eerie quiet. "No more games," he said calmly. "Now, get ready."
ELSEWHERE
Keal and Zanryū hadn't moved an inch, entirely locked in shock. There was a literal "lag" in their perception. Because of the absolute, deafening silence the blast had created, their brains simply refused to process the sheer scale of the destruction.
"What the fuck was that...?" they both whispered at the exact same time.
ON ANOTHER STREET
Cairo and Luno had been walking down a crowded pavement among normal humans when they witnessed the eruption.
"Impossible," Cairo breathed out. "That thing is..."
"The Fake World," Luno finished for him.
Suddenly, without a single warning, an overwhelmingly powerful light struck the entirety of Japan. For one terrifying second, the streetlights, the moon, and the stars—everything across the entire country went pitch black.
The streets of Tokyo were overflowing with massive crowds. The police had locked down multiple districts under strict government orders.
Panic and anxiety consumed the citizens. They had no idea what was happening. What was that gigantic explosion? What was that massive barrier? What was going on across Japan?
On top of it all, there was zero cell phone reception.
Amidst the chaotic crowd, a man suddenly stopped dead in the middle of the street.
A car almost ran him over, the tires screeching loudly as the driver slammed on the brakes at the absolute last second.
The driver leaned out, furiously cursing at him: "What the hell are you doing, you dumbass?! Get out of the damn road!"
The angry driver yelled for a nearby police officer to do something, but the officer didn't move an inch. He just stood there, frozen.
The guy in the middle of the road slowly lifted his head and locked eyes with the police officer. His face went pale with shock.
"ROZZO?!" he yelled.
The police officer snapped back, shouting, "KAJO?! What happened... why are we here?!"
[NARRATOR'S LINES] << OFFICIALLY, TWO SORCERERS HAVE EMERGED FROM THE FAKE WORLD: KAJO AND ROZZO OF THE SILVER GRADE. THERE ARE EXACTLY 31 SORCERERS REMAINING IN ALL OF TOKYO. >>
In a dimly lit building tucked away in a quiet neighborhood, a group of Yakuza held several women captive, preparing to brutalize them and harvest their organs.
Among them was a brown-haired woman, lying unconscious on the cold floor.
One of the thugs walked over and slapped her hard across the face.
"Wake up," he spat. "Your time is up."
The woman groaned, "Ah..."
Suddenly, without warning, the thug's head was violently torn from his shoulders.
Blood erupted in a horrific spray, painting the walls crimson.
Mireya Kurozane stepped forward, casually wiping the fresh blood from her clothes.
Seeing their chance, the other captive women scrambled to their feet and fled the building in panic, running for their lives.
Mireya Kurozane—a Grade Master—quietly turned and vanished into the night, leaving the bloody scene behind.
In another part of Tokyo, a woman stood frozen in sheer shock. Behind her huddled terrified young children, trembling as several devils lunged straight toward her.
She whispered to herself, her vision blurring as she felt on the verge of fainting for no apparent reason. But instantly, she snapped awake—suspended mid-air. Gasping heavily for air, she stammered, "Wh-What... What am I doing here?"
She looked ahead and saw the devils closing in.
"What the hell? Where am I? Why am I in Tokyo?!"
With blinding speed, she summoned a violent, crackling bolt of lightning and fired it straight at the devils, completely vaporizing them in a flash of light.
[NARRATOR'S LINES] << NARAMI IS ONE OF THE STRONGEST SORCERERS OF THIS ERA, RANKED AS THE 5TH GRADE CONQUEROR. WITH HER AWAKENING, ONLY 6 OUT OF THE 35 SORCERERS IN TOKYO HAVE FINALLY BEEN FREED. >>
Narami turned to the children, speaking with biting irony. "Go to sleep," she muttered.
She looked around, her eyes narrowing. "What am I even doing here? Why am I in an elementary school? What kind of a fucked-up life is this?"
Suddenly, another devil rushed to attack her. Without even turning, she effortlessly erased it with a crackling, electric slash.
"Get lost, asshole," she spat.
She paused, looking down at herself. "Why is my hair like this?"
She shook her hair loose, letting the strands drift and float freely in the air as if defying gravity. Slowly, she stepped out of the elementary school building.
"Seriously, what is going on here? What the hell is happening to Tokyo... and where is everyone else? Ah... my god."
Elsewhere in Tokyo, a man sprinted down the street, his face contorted in absolute panic. He ran with everything he had, a terrifying devil wolf hot on his heels.
Suddenly, a blue-haired woman rushed out and tackled him to the pavement. "What the hell are you doing, you idiot? Why are you running like a madman?" she barked.
The man lay there, completely paralyzed by shock, unable to utter a single word.
The blue-haired woman turned her gaze toward the approaching monster. Pressing a hand to her mouth, she used her saliva to manifest a fluid sphere and slammed it onto the ground. The liquid instantly spread across the asphalt, turning it into a treacherous slick. The devil wolf lost its footing, slipping violently.
Right on cue, another woman dropped from above, bringing a heavy iron bar crashing down directly onto the beast's skull.
The blue-haired woman snapped at the shivering man, "Cut the act, Kehito Mugenkai!"
"Listen to me!" Kehito stammered, scrambling backward. "I have no idea what's going on! I just woke up under a bridge with stray cats literally gnawing on my body! I'm not joking! I don't know what I'm doing here... and Nana, Lulu, what the hell are you two doing here?!"
Lulu swung her iron bar into another approaching devil, killing it instantly before stepping off the dead wolf's carcass. "Don't ask us," she said coldly. "We don't know what's happening either. We just woke up and found ourselves stranded in Tokyo. The last thing I remember is Farzo bringing us sweets. That's