“Oh my. So it was you?”
Nirva sneered at Franz.
The ambush had come from someone he hadn’t expected, but he wasn’t flustered in the least.
Franz’s strike of conviction was blocked by Nirva raising his arm.
“A shame. You must have been aiming for the heart.”
The dagger that seized the chance struck into Nirva’s forearm.
Yet Franz’s expression did not change.
It was the Dreamwalkers who were startled instead, realizing who it was.
“Franz?”
“Why are you here!”
Sedina was shocked in a different way.
‘That man...!’
Once a member of the Black Dawn Society, she knew at least fragments about Franz.
Directly under Zero Order existed the First Orders, but they were not the closest to him.
Only two people.
Zero Order always had two close attendants beside him.
And one of them was the blond handsome man, Franz.
For Sedina, she had only heard of his appearance. She had never known that his name was Franz, nor that he was a Dreamwalker.
“I’ve heard of him.”
Julia too had heard news about Franz.
“The Master once adopted a foster son. His skill was so outstanding that people thought he would surely be the next Master of the Dream School, second only to her.”
“There was someone like that?”
“But I heard that due to some incident he turned against the Master and left the Dream School. So why is he here...?”
Too many things didn’t make sense.
How could someone who had abandoned the school manage to enter the Depths?
And Clara Cowen had adopted Franz long ago.
Even if he had been a young boy then, by now his age should have well exceeded forty.
‘And yet that face.’
Franz’s appearance was that of someone barely past adolescence, looking no older than his late teens.
He could have passed as Julia’s peer, that youthful was his face.
It wasn’t something that could be brushed off as merely having a “baby face.” His appearance was unnaturally alien.
Clara too stared at Franz with a complicated expression.
She couldn’t deny that seeing his face again, even on the brink of death, was a joy.
But Clara had never wished for Franz to come here.
She had even made a deal with Ludger to prevent it.
“In the end, you came.”
“......”
Franz did not answer Clara’s words.
It wasn’t that he failed to recognize her in her younger form. In fact, this appearance of Clara was even more clearly etched into him.
But that wasn’t the important thing right now.
What he had considered a surprise strike had been blocked.
Nirva, aware of this, displayed sheer composure.
“That little brat grew this much. Remember? Of course I remember. How could I forget the greenhorn who suddenly fell into the Depths.”
“Yes. I remember as well. Thanks to you, I ended up with a nightmare I can never erase.”
Franz’s voice was calm, but the hatred inside could not be hidden.
The burning emotion was palpable, and Nirva chuckled.
“Still regret it, do you? Because of yourself, your foster father died?”
“I do regret it. But it wasn’t because of me that he died. You killed him.”
“Trace it back, and isn’t it your fault in the first place?”
At Nirva’s mocking words, Franz had no immediate rebuttal.
“What?”
Hearing their conversation, Zantman doubted his ears.
“There was another reason why Brother Nathanael lost his mind that day?”
Zantman was the oldest Dreamwalker in the school.
Naturally, he knew about Nathanael’s descent into the Depths and his madness leading to death.
“Oh my, don’t tell me you never spoke of it? That mistake you committed that day?”
Nirva wasn’t speaking in ignorance.
From the moment Franz appeared, and from Zantman’s reaction, Nirva had already pieced together what had happened between them.
And yet he asked like this—because he wanted to mock.
“To think your father, even your foster father Nathanael, went mad all because of you.”
Hahaha.
Nirva’s cruel laughter and truth left the Dreamwalkers speechless.
Clara Cowen’s lover and one of the greatest Dreamwalkers—Nathanael.
All had heard of him.
Even those who had never met him knew his reputation.
His fall into the Depths of Dreamland at a young age, and going mad there, had plunged many into sorrow.
The world believed he had gone out of reckless curiosity.
But the truth was otherwise.
“You had greater talent than anyone as a Dreamwalker. And so, with your arrogance and childish mind, you insisted on going to the Depths. Your father and mother opposed it, but you wouldn’t listen. That foolish brat wanted to prove himself.”
To prove he could do it.
Among Dreamwalkers, descending into the Depths was nearly taboo.
How many had died just trying to reach the Middle Layers?
These present survived only because of the sacrifices of their predecessors.
But the Depths were far more dangerous.
Even Nathanael himself had sternly warned against it.
That not even his power could set foot there.
But Franz was different.
He was the designated heir to the Master.
And what kind of foster parents had raised him?
Nathanael and Clara Cowen.
Two Dreamwalkers of a kind that history could barely parallel.
Raised directly by them, Franz was fated to be not only the next Master but perhaps the greatest Dream Master of all time.
If only for that one mistake.
“Such a tragedy. If only you had been content, you could have lived a peaceful life, risen to Master at a young age, basked in your parents’ love, and left your mark in history as a great mage.”
It wasn’t as though his relationship with his foster parents had been cold.
Nathanael and Clara had loved him as if he were their real child.
And Franz had worked diligently to answer their expectations.
They were mentor and disciple, and they were loving family.
That peace was broken when Franz aimed for the Depths of Dreamland.
Overconfident in his ability, he ignored Nathanael’s warning and ventured too deep.
Falling into the Depths itself was perilous enough.
But that wasn’t all.
At that time, deep in the Depths, Nirva stirred awake for a moment.
Nirva had no tolerance for a pitiful human intruding into the Goddess’s domain.
Even if it was just a child, there was no mercy.
A bug crawling into the house isn’t spared because it’s a hatchling.
It is trampled more cruelly.
The young Franz was overwhelmed by Nirva’s presence and froze helpless.
And Nathanael appeared to save him.
Franz still remembers.
The terrifying monster about to devour him—and then the warm embrace from behind, that steady warmth.
Even now, closing his eyes, that memory resurfaces vividly.
His foolish, stupid self.
The moment he had given up everything in despair.
And the miraculous saving hand.
“Ah, Nathanael. Such a pitiful human. He gave up his life to save the child he had adopted. At such a young age too.”
The Dreamwalkers looked at Clara, searching for confirmation.
She nodded with a heavy face.
She understood they didn’t want to believe a demon’s words.
But at least this much was true.
“To have kept your hatred burning all these years, I commend you. But if even that trump card of yours was blocked so easily, then all your years of honing that hatred were wasted.”
“Was it truly blocked?”
Despite his failed strike, Franz’s expression hadn’t changed.
“Hm?”
That look gave Nirva an odd unease.
Not the expression of one hiding despair, but of someone who had expected this outcome all along.
Nirva quickly realized why.
Throb!
Pain radiated from the forearm pierced by Franz’s dagger.
The searing agony was unlike any ordinary wound.
The pain spread through his arm like crackling electricity.
“......!”
Nirva hastily unleashed his power.
Franz was flung away, but landed lightly on the sand.
Nirva inspected his arm.
He had pulled the dagger out, but the wound would not heal.
Instead, cracks spread from the wound, as if his flesh were fractured glass.
“You bastard. What did you do!”
Golden sand leaked out from the fissures.
Nirva gritted his teeth and tried to regenerate, but it wasn’t working.
Crack. Splinter.
The cracks spread like a spiderweb, crawling past his elbow toward his shoulder.
Tsssht!
Desperate, Nirva tore off his right arm at the shoulder.
He was too frantic to think of cutting cleanly.
The pain was indescribable, but he didn’t hesitate.
Had he not severed it, the cracks would have spread to his heart and ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) head.
He tossed the arm aside, and it shattered like porcelain, crumbling into dust.
Golden blood gushed from the rough stump, and Nirva sealed it with sand.
Yet his eyes never left Franz.
“How....”
“You said it yourself. Hatred tempered for a very long time.”
Franz lifted the dagger half-buried in the sand.
Its edge curved like a crescent moon, with a pale green hilt that radiated an uncanny aura.
“You don’t know how many long years it took to forge this one thing.”
“...So this is the dagger Suruna spoke of.”
Nirva belatedly realized his mistake.
What Zero Order had declared so boldly hadn’t been a mere metaphor.
A bitter laugh escaped Nirva.
“I thought you had only grown sly, but you’ve become far more cunning than I imagined.”
All that talk of a hidden dagger, of declarations of war—every word had been psychological warfare.
He had baited Nirva to focus his guard in the wrong direction.
Suruna wasn’t just sly. He had turned Nirva’s own vigilance against him.
‘To incite suspicion so I’d look away from the plain truth....’
He had overthought, and missed the simple path.
But Nirva also felt it unfair.
Then what of Ludger Cherish?
He had thought Ludger was Suruna’s hidden dagger, only to find he was simply a natural disaster in human form.
‘No... Suruna must have leaked that on purpose too.’
Layer after layer of smoke screens, so the true threat remained unseen.
And now Nirva was paying the price for that carelessness.
“A blunder.”
He had thought himself bold, but realized even that had been foreseen.
“But you should have killed me here.”
One arm gone.
No regeneration possible. Power consumed in severing his body.
Still—he lived.
“That was your last chance. Whelp.”
You should have killed me when you had the chance.
That failure will be your death.
The dreadful killing intent boiling off Nirva made Franz grin.
“You smile?”
“You seem to be under a delusion. Do you think I came here alone?”
Before Nirva could react, a torrent of attacks struck.
Boom!
A giant harpoon, like one for hunting whales, smashed through his back and pinned him to the ground.
Its size was such that his body was nailed down by the handle itself.
He tried to pull it out with his remaining arm—only for that arm too to fall away, severed.
“What is this....”
His voice trailed downward.
Because the head speaking had already been severed.
And then—
Five masked men and women drifted down from the sky on the wind.