Chris's screams and hysterical laughter turned into a physical mental hammer, nearly splitting Ryan's head wide open.
“Hahahahaha!”
“It worked! It actually worked!”
“Hahaha—”
Ryan stood frozen in place. He stared at the pure white gate, dozens of meters tall, straddling the line between reality and illusion. For the first time, a storm of sheer disbelief surged in his always-calm eyes.
“What is happening...”
“How can a dream... invade reality?!”
He had clearly only followed the clues all the way here. Why were those forbidden existences, which should only exist in chaotic, muddled nightmares, actually descending upon the mortal world?
Crack—!
With a crisp snap, the seal shattered. Countless fissures suddenly tore through the frozen earth deep within the port.
A pale, bloodless corpse-like hand with stiff knuckles slowly broke through the ice, gripping the ground.
Then, a tall, gaunt, almost deformed figure crawled out from beneath the snow, inch by inch.
He wore a tattered, grayish-white robe. Unmelting frost crystals clung to his long hair and eyelashes, and a foul stench radiated from his entire body.
As he stood up, massive sheets of pale frost spread wildly across the snow like a plague, causing the air temperature to plummet to freezing once more.
Yet, what was truly spine-chilling was his back.
Squelch.
The flesh beneath the gray robe suddenly squirmed violently. Bright red muscle tissue split open to both sides like a sickening, blooming flower.
Amidst the viscous blood and budding flesh, a pale, bewitching human face slowly emerged.
That face wore a smile of deep, tender affection, yet the wide arc of its grin was filled with a bottomless abyss of greed and longing.
Winter and Grail.
Decay and desire. Two diametrically opposed occult aspects actually shared the same sickening vessel in perfect harmony!
Winter slowly turned his neck, a mocking smile appearing in his frozen, dead eyes. “Splendid... outlander. Thank you. You have turned what should have been an impossible, mad delusion... into reality.”
The Grail face behind his shoulder licked its lips morbidly, letting out a sharp chuckle. “The brains of those cultists in the hospital... did they taste good?”
Ryan took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. He raised his hand and gently pushed up his sliding glasses. “You went to all this trouble just to bring this gate into reality?”
Winter shook his head calmly, his voice as raspy as scraping sand. “Not to bring it, but merely to verify.”
“To verify whether its reflection can truly cover and devour this pale world.”
Grail giggled, viscous saliva dripping from the folds of flesh, sizzling against the snow and releasing a heavy stench of blood. “And looking at it now, the experiment is so perfect it makes me want to gorge myself. Reality and dream... have already begun to overlap.”
Ryan fell into a deathly silence, but inside his mind, Chris had completely lost his sanity to laughter:
“Hahahahaha! This is so interesting! This is the truly great masterpiece!”
Amidst this suffocating confrontation, hurried and anxious footsteps echoed from the snow on the other side.
Simon and Alvin had finally caught up through the wind and snow. But when they clearly saw the scene before them, they froze in place as if struck by lightning.
In the center of the pier, the massive pure white gate towered majestically. A bizarre monster sneered at Ryan, and the ground was littered with the mangled, black-blooded remains of ghouls.
Simon felt as if his heart was about to burst, and he roared, “Ryan! What the hell did you do this time?!”
Alvin stared at the colossal gate, his entire body trembling uncontrollably as his face lost every trace of color. “That's... why is there something that defies all logic in reality...”
Before their shock could even settle, another earth-shattering boom crashed down from the sky!
Boom—!
A violent black afterimage tore through the wind and snow, crashing down at high speed like a meteorite. A heavy, scarred long blade dragged a blinding, snowy white trail behind it as it slammed heavily into the center of the earth, gouging out a crater several meters wide!
It was the Edge-man.
His black trench coat was thoroughly soaked in blood. A hideous, bone-deep gash ran across his chest, and his left shoulder was nearly severed, exposing stark white bone.
Yet, like a war machine entirely devoid of pain receptors, he laughed wildly as he pushed himself up with his long blade, a ferocious grin on his face:
“Hahahahaha! That old bastard from the School of Lantern Principles is fucking troublesome! But... I still made it in time!!”
At the same time, on the other side of the battlefield, the Gentleman of Knock walked toward the gate with steps that were slightly unsteady but still elegant.
His luxurious tailcoat was now torn in several places, and crimson blood dripped steadily from the hem of his clothes.
Yet, he still meticulously adjusted his bow tie, removed his top hat, and bowed slightly to everyone:
“It seems... all the actors have arrived.”
Inside Ryan's mind, Chris's laughter reached a feverish, pathological peak:
“Hahahahaha! They're all here! Every single one!”
“Winter! Grail! Moth! Knock! Edge! Heart! Forge!”
“It's more than enough to smash this old world to pieces! The game... has finally begun!!”
In that exact instant, everyone's eyes were drawn involuntarily to the towering, pure white gate.
Buzz—
There was no earth-shattering roar, nor any soul-stirring tremors.
That sacred and bizarre gate simply, quietly, and slowly parted inward, revealing a barely perceptible crack.
Yet, the moment this crack opened, a terrifying, irresistible spatial suction erupted!
At this moment, the entire East Port seemed to turn into a massive hourglass. All matter collapsed and crumbled frantically toward the crack in the gate!
Shipping containers weighing several tons were ripped from their foundations. Steel railway tracks twisted and snapped in an instant. The swirling snow, the corpses littering the ground, and even the multi-thousand-ton cargo ships anchored on the distant river let out agonizing shrieks of straining steel as they slid madly toward the colossal gate!
“Hold onto something! Find a handhold, quickly!!” Officer Jonathan roared hysterically.
Several patrol officers clung desperately to a cast-iron lamppost. But in the next second, accompanied by a tooth-grating screech, the foundation and concrete ground were violently ripped up by the terrifying suction, sending the men screaming into the air.
“Ryan!!”
Simon's face was deathly pale. He instinctively tried to charge against the storm to grab Ryan, but the moment his feet left the ground, he was swept into the air like a weightless autumn leaf, dragged by the violent gravitational force.
“Hold onto me!!” At the absolute last second, Alvin threw himself onto a steel rail, locking his hand around Simon's wrist in a death grip.
Yet, before such absolute, extraordinary power, human physical strength was as fragile as a sheet of paper.
They held on for barely two seconds before the steel rail snapped. Both of them cried out in terror as they flew toward the white abyss.
Ryan gripped a thick iron railing beside him with all his might. But under the sheer suction, the thigh-thick solid iron instantly stretched and twisted before snapping with a loud crack.
The storm howled, and weightlessness instantly took over.
Ryan could only watch helplessly as he, his companions, and the entire shattered port flew irreversibly toward the opening gate of dreams.
In the final sliver of consciousness before he was completely swallowed by the pure white light, Chris's voice, laced with endless fanaticism and mockery, exploded deep within his mind:
“Welcome—”
“To the true dream, Ryan.”
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