The Dreamwalkers were flustered.
The moment they realized Nirva was doing something, they came to their senses only to find themselves trapped inside a photograph.
“Don’t tell me... we ended up inside a picture?”
“What the hell.”
“He caught us all at once?”
Nirva, looking down at the photograph, appeared like a giant.
The situation was completely reversed compared to when he had been peering down from the sky.
“Do not panic. Have you forgotten what we must do here?”
Clara’s remark restored everyone’s composure.
Their confusion at the bizarre situation lasted only a moment; then, as professionals, they immediately began thinking of how to break free.
Though they were trapped inside a photo, it was ultimately just the product of Nirva’s imagination, shaped through dream-sand.
In that case, they only needed to respond in kind.
“I’ll open the way.”
Clara raised her staff, aiming at Nirva who was gazing down at them from beyond the photograph.
“Ohhh.”
Nirva, who had been staring at the photo, grinned.
From the center of the picture in his hand, a streak of green dream-sand thrust outward.
The blade of dream-sand moved downward, slicing the photograph perfectly in half.
The severed picture exploded like light, and the Dreamwalkers came tumbling out.
“We’re alive!”
“You idiot! Don’t relax already!”
The Dreamwalkers, freed from Nirva’s grasp, immediately launched a counterattack.
“Hit him!”
“Don’t give him an opening!”
They scattered, hurling spells.
Nirva bared his teeth as he watched them scatter like gnats.
“Because of you, the Goddess’s awakening has been delayed. You will surely pay with your lives.”
With those words, Nirva stretched out his hand.
Even at a distance that clearly could not be reached, his extended hand seized a Dreamwalker.
The Dreamwalkers, realizing what had just happened, gaped in shock.
“What...? Did he just ignore perspective?”
What Nirva did was simple.
He looked at a target far away, then grabbed them with his hand as if distance did not matter.
Though over 300 meters separated them, he caught his victim with perfect accuracy.
When he opened his clenched fist, the Dreamwalker’s body had shrunk to match the size of his palm.
“Truly the appearance of an insect.”
Nirva sneered and crushed his fist tight.
Crack!
Red blood seeped through the gaps of his fingers.
The Dreamwalkers’ eyes widened at the sight.
Chills raced down their spines, fury boiling up.
“No! Jieben!”
“You bastard!”
Two elders, eyes bloodshot, rushed at Nirva.
Again Nirva stretched out his hand toward them.
That same attack that ignored perspective.
The two Dreamwalkers darted quickly through the air, trying to escape his reach.
But simply dodging was not enough.
One was seized by Nirva’s hand and perished.
Seizing the chance, the other closed in on Nirva, drawing dream-energy from the Siesta gloves.
A green blade formed, and he thrust it at Nirva’s heart.
Or rather, he tried to.
The blade should have pierced Nirva’s heart, but it never touched his body.
“H-how...?”
Did he misjudge the distance?
Grinding his teeth, the Dreamwalker swung at Nirva’s neck.
For a moment he thought the strike true, but again Nirva stood unharmed, confusing him further.
The distance between them was practically nothing—yet his blade never touched.
“Aaagh!”
He formed a crossbow on the back of his hand and fired at Nirva’s forehead.
The bolt halted right before Nirva’s brow.
“Time-stop? No, this is...”
At last the Dreamwalker understood why none of his attacks had landed.
The bolt was still flying.
It was just that Nirva, the target, had not yet been reached.
Though only a single meter separated them to the eye, the true distance was far, far greater.
Like a paradox.
“Y-you...”
At a loss for words, he heard Nirva speak.
“Why are you looking up at me?”
The words were as though whispered directly into his ear.
And yet, he and Nirva were at equal eye level.
But Nirva’s voice tricked him into believing he was looking up.
The Dreamwalker’s eyes flew open.
Damn it.
Without realizing, he had thought of Nirva as towering above.
That negative thought was taboo in Dreamland—something one must never allow.
But Nirva’s voice carried a peculiar power.
Normally, Dreamwalkers could regulate their own imagery. But after losing a comrade, a gap had formed.
Unwittingly, the Dreamwalker tilted his head back.
Nirva now loomed above, tall enough to reach the heavens.
“N-no.”
He knew he must not think negatively, yet fear of Nirva consumed him more and more.
Like when someone tells you not to picture an elephant, and the image only grows stronger.
The giant Nirva lowered his head, gazing down at the Dreamwalker.
“Thank you.”
Then he raised his foot and stomped down.
With a boom, red blood burst across the desert like a popped balloon, then soaked into the sand and vanished.
The onlookers shuddered in horror.
Clara, Zantman, Julia—none were exceptions.
Nirva, now a giant, burst into laughter.
“Ku-hu-hu. Hahahaha!”
His laughter was like thunder. The world itself trembled from the sound.
Even the Dreamwalkers flying in the air were pushed back by the shockwave of his voice.
“Dear god.”
Elisa, having just blocked another tidal wave of sand, was struck speechless at the sight of Nirva’s gigantic form clearly visible even from afar.
What happens when one transcends physical law and freely manipulates a world built upon imagination?
The answer lay plain before their eyes.
Nirva shaped his thumb and forefinger into a ring and blew.
Through the circle of his fingers, immense dream-sand poured out, carried by his breath.
In an instant, a tornado wrapped in golden sand rose up.
At this rate, they would all be swallowed and torn apart.
Then Clara Cowen stepped forward.
“Demon. You look very small to me.”
It was {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} no empty bluff—she truly gazed at him as though he were small.
And just like that, the body of the giant Nirva deflated like a balloon, returning to its original size.
The sandstorm he had exhaled weakened as well, reduced to nothing more than a dust-laden breeze.
The Dreamwalkers thought they were saved, but Clara’s expression was grim.
Originally, she had intended to shrink him to the point of crushing him underfoot.
But returning him to his normal size was the best she could do.
No matter how much they fueled their dream-sand with imagination, Nirva’s power was simply too great to be fully checked.
‘In that case.’
Clara wrapped her body in dream-sand.
Nirva immediately guessed what she intended.
“Since direct attacks on me fail, you choose instead to strengthen yourself.”
Her choice shocked even the Dreamwalkers.
Zantman’s face twisted with anguish.
“Y-you damned old hag!”
Normally, the others would have scolded him for speaking so to their master.
But no one could chide him now.
For Clara Cowen’s transformation was unsettling to all of them.
Her bent back straightened.
Wrinkles melted from her face, sagging skin firming tight.
Her snow-white hair turned pale green under the flow of dream-sand.
Lines still lingered around her eyes, but Clara Cowen had clearly grown younger.
From the form of an eighty-year-old crone to a woman in her mid-forties.
And her rejuvenation was not only skin-deep.
The aura flowing from Clara grew far stronger.
If before she had been a candle flame, now she blazed like a torch.
The School’s Dreamwalkers were astonished at her rejuvenated form, but not a single one of them rejoiced.
“W-why are they acting like that?”
Sedina, cradled in Julia’s arms, asked the question.
Julia’s face, like the others, was grim.
“...Master is burning her own life.”
“Burning her life?”
“She’s recalling her strongest self of the past. In Dreamland, if you imagine it, it can be made real.”
But Julia’s expression did not ease.
“That doesn’t mean she’s truly gone back in time. It’s just a recreation of her peak, consuming her power to force it into being. Like a candle.”
It was power she should never have been allowed to wield—conjured by brute force through imagination and experience.
And the brighter the flame of a candle burns, the faster the wax melts away.
Clara Cowen’s situation was exactly that.
Manifestation of her prime.
Clara stared at her palm.
A young hand, smooth and unlined, unlike her usual wrinkled one.
Of course, this too carried some age, but compared to her fully withered form, it was like true rejuvenation.
For the aged, youth was the most coveted wish.
And yet that very power was a double-edged sword.
“A fine sight. In your youth, you must have been a tremendous beauty.”
Nirva spoke in sincere admiration.
Now in her forties, Clara possessed the allure of a mature woman in full bloom.
“How pitiful that even such beauty must bow before the flow of time. What a waste. In Dreamland, you could remain fair forever.”
“To be born, to grow, to age—such are the processes of mankind. It’s precisely because of that that this moment shines brighter.”
Clara’s voice was cold.
Her grandmotherly kindness was gone—youth had restored charisma and force to her tone.
Clara raised her hand.
At the lightest of gestures, black clouds gathered, and green lightning crashed down upon Nirva.
Even Nirva seemed to deem it dangerous, for he shaped dream-sand into a pointed lightning rod.
Crack-crack-CRASH!
The bolt struck, and the sand-rod melted into glass, shattering into powder.
In that fleeting moment, Clara had grown younger still—from her mid-forties to her late thirties.
In actual magic, youth did not equal strength—maturity brought its own refinement.
But in Dreamland, her younger years carried symbolic weight: a body quick of mind, robust, and tireless.
That symbolism manifested here, and the more power Clara unleashed, the younger she became.
It was a sign of life burning to its end.
The last desperate struggle, wringing out every drop of energy and spirit.
“Master! Stop! Any further and you’ll die!”
Julia cried out in anguish, but Clara did not stop.
Other Dreamwalkers moved to restrain her.
“You damned hag! Why are you recklessly pushing yourself alone!”
“Can’t even call her a hag anymore!”
They forced laughter as they unleashed attacks at Nirva.
“You...”
Clara stared at her pupils in shock.
“Stand back! He’s not an opponent you can face!”
“Since when have we ever fought only foes we were equal to?”
“You should know us by now, shouldn’t you?”
Their cackling figures struck Clara’s heart with bittersweet weight.
“A touching scene indeed.”
Nirva stirred up a storm of sand.
The Dreamwalkers scattered, but one was caught in the gale.
“Aunt Jenny!”
Julia’s eyes widened as she watched a woman’s body shredded by sand and vanish.
A stouthearted woman who had always taken Julia’s side when the seniors teased her.
Another sacrifice.
Evans—half-elderly, in his sixties. A Dreamwalker of the School of Dreams.
“Senior Evans!”
The man who had always smiled and slipped her candy fell lifeless onto the desert sand.
His corpse was hungrily devoured by the dream-sand.
One by one.
Precious people were dying.
“No.”
Julia’s lips trembled.
These were people she had bickered with endlessly.
She had often been angry at being treated like a child left by the water’s edge.
But she had never truly hated them.
Even when scolding them sharply, she had been glad inside for their warmth.
“No.”
And now, those people were dying.
For Julia, who had never lost anyone dear before, the shock was overwhelming.
Even with the Siesta equipped, her mind wavered violently.
“Julia!”
Sedina checked her condition.
Julia’s pupils shook in emptiness. Sedina recognized that look.
The very same gaze she herself had worn after her mother’s death.
Yet there was nothing Sedina could do for Julia now.
She knew from experience that no words of comfort would reach her.
“Will you continue to neglect your comrades’ deaths, Dream Master?”
Nirva mocked Clara, who was pausing for breath.
By now, Clara had grown into her early thirties.
“That look brings back memories. Yes, when you lost someone you loved in Dreamland, you came to this world again and again. His name was Nathanael, was it not?”
At the mention of Nathanael, Clara’s expression sharpened into fury.
“Oh my. Judging by that face, I seem to have struck home. Ah, yes, I remember. Back when I had not fully awoken, a human came even here.”
Nirva recalled the decades-old past.
“That man. He was truly brave. His eyes were so upright. His will was so strong he endured much of my torment. Though in the end, he went mad.”
“You...!”
“And come to think of it, Nathanael was not alone then, was he?”
Yes.
It had indeed been Nathanael who entered Dreamland’s depths.
But he had not come alone.
At his side had been a very small, very young boy.
“A blond brat. That’s right. What was his name again?”
“Franz.”
Yes. That was it.
But Nirva did not rejoice at having his curiosity answered.
For the voice that had spoken the name belonged neither to Clara nor to the Dreamwalkers.
It belonged to a third party.
When Nirva turned his head, he saw the figure of a young blond man.
And in that same instant—
—he saw him drive a dagger straight into his heart.
Thud!
“Do you remember me?”