The monster's scream split the base apart. It slammed its fists against the walls, furious, blind in its rage. The underground trembled under its movements—deeper cracks forming on the ceiling above, the faint hum of collapsed energy circuits and broken mana generators whining in the background.
Yara didn't move.
She crouched beside the collapsed transport panel on the far side of the base, barely visible in the smoke. Her expression hadn't changed. Still cold. Still unreadable. But her mind moved like a machine—fast, ruthless, calculating.
She watched the monster closely—every movement, every hit it took, every new inch of bulk it gained.
Analyze the battlefield. No emotion. Just data.
Movement patterns: clumsy but adapting.
Tunnel structure: narrow enough to trap it if forced into section F-12.
Air pressure: distorted near its center—probably how it detects movement.
Footstep weight: minimum 8.2 tons. The base structure couldn't hold much longer.
Void face: absorbs light but doesn't distort it—no true gravitational bend.
She squinted.
"It can nullify abilities. But it can't nullify gravity. It can't nullify mass. So it's still bound by physics."
One blink. A breath. She ejected the empty mag with a click and slammed in a new one.
Behind her, Angus was barely holding himself upright. His sword dug into the ground to support his weight, his body shaking, blood dripping from his mouth.
He wasn't dead. Not yet.
"Oi…" he muttered through clenched teeth. "Still not done… with me…"
The monster ignored him for now. It had become erratic—its instincts thrown off by Yara's interruptions, its tracking confused by multiple heat signatures. It punched the wall blindly, trying to crush the last known movement it registered.
Yara stood.
Walked to Angus.
He blinked in disbelief. She never walked toward anyone.
And then—
She spoke.
Her voice wasn't loud.
Wasn't dramatic.
But it hit him harder than any explosion.
"You wanna be a hero like him?" she asked, her eyes finally meeting his. "Be one. And help me."
Her eyes—
They weren't cold.
Not entirely.
They sparkled.
Only faintly. Like a dying star refusing to go out.
Angus felt something deep in his chest. Something ancient. A fire he thought had long since turned to ash.
He stood straighter.
"Tch… took you long enough to say somethin'," he muttered with a bloodied grin. "Alright, lass. What's the plan?"
Yara didn't waste time.
"There's a maintenance tunnel above the reactor shaft," she said. "It loops around and drops straight into its blind spot. You need to bait it toward sector F-12. Once there, I'll use the gravity sink charges and collapse the tunnel ceiling onto it—trap it. Long enough to fire the anti-void round I've been modifying."
Angus nodded, adjusting the grip on his blade. "And what d'you need me for?"
She looked at him again.
"You're the only one fast enough to land a hit that'll stun it. Even with no magic."
He barked a laugh. "So I am useful, eh?"
"You're essential," she said. "Only because I'm not faster."
Angus smirked, then pointed his sword toward the monster, now sniffing the air with an expressionless void.
"Let's show this bastard what a hero looks like."
He ran—his limp turning into a sprint, every muscle screaming in protest. His body was broken, but his will was sharper than his blade.
The monster turned. It felt the motion.
With a roar of grinding void, it charged after him.
Yara moved in the other direction, scaling the maintenance shaft in silence, each step surgical. The gravity sink charges were already prepped. The anti-void bullet—compressed tungsten with a darksteel core—was loaded into her rifle.
All she needed was the moment.
Angus led it through the corridor, zigzagging, dodging rubble, using his sword to ricochet off walls and redirect his momentum.
Sector F-12.
He reached the end and turned.
"COME ON, YOU BLOODY CURSED WORM!" he screamed.
The monster lunged.
Yara saw it from above.
Now.
She detonated the charges.
BOOM.
The ceiling above the creature caved in. Reinforced steel, stone, and old reactor debris rained down onto its back, crushing it in place. It screamed—a soundless shriek of unbeing. But it couldn't move.
Angus leapt back, exhausted.
Yara lined up her shot.
One breath.
Fire.
The anti-void round flew like a comet—pure death forged from physics alone.
It struck the core of the creature's chest.
CRACK.
The impact pulsed through the base like a shockwave—air distorting, lights flickering, the monster's void form splintering. Cracks of white light formed through its chest, like spiderwebs across glass.
It didn't die. Not yet.
But it stopped moving.
Angus collapsed, laughing.
Yara lowered her rifle.
"Nice shot…" he murmured.
She didn't answer. But as the dust settled and the monster's form twitched its last twitch, Yara's gaze remained cold—but focused.
It wasn't over.
But now… now they had a chance.
But.. The Monsterstirred again.
Its body cracked and reformed in strange, jagged shapes—shifting like a reflection in broken glass. The anti-void shot had fractured it, yes, but not destroyed it. Something unnatural held it together. Its face—if it could be called that—remained a black, empty void. But now it twitched, flinched. Not in pain… but in awareness.
It knew she was there.
Yara narrowed her eyes from the rafters above, crouched in a support beam near the collapsed tunnel. She stayed motionless, watching.
Observation: Despite having no face, the monster reacts to her presence. Its nullification isn't omniscient—it's triggered by perception.
She reached into her belt—pulled out a small capsule.
Smoke grenade.
Weakness: It can't nullify what it doesn't perceive.
"It isn't really absolute nullification if it has a weakness."
The pin came off without a sound. She rolled it along the beam and let it drop.
It hissed mid-air before shattering into a thick, cloaking fog—choking, dense, thermal-insulated.
The monster lunged blindly, roaring at a shadow.
Decoys. Insulation. Sound dampening. She wrapped her boots earlier with muffled cloth—no steps would echo. She used the steam bursts from broken generators as cover. She timed each movement to coincide with the crash of falling rubble, the hiss of sparking conduits, the rumble of structural collapse.
Yara moved like a ghost.
The monster flailed, confused—its perception severed. It swiped at mirages. One of its massive fists hit the far wall with such force it sent a shockwave through the ground.
Yara dropped behind it, slipping into the blind zone just as it twisted.
She planted a timed charge—small, powerful, designed not to kill but disorient.
Backed off. Another step. No sound.
The explosion was instantaneous. The charge went off within its shoulder blade, detonating in a ripple of concussive force.
The creature screeched, staggered.
Now.
Yara dashed forward again, pulling a length of cord with razor-thread laced with tungsten. She spun it around the monster's limbs—entangling its motion—and used its stagger to leap from the wall and onto its back. She fired two more shots into its side at point-blank range. Smoke billowed from the wounds, but no blood. Just void-stuff. Shifting, twitching darkness.
And then—
Everything stopped.
The monster… disappeared.
Vanished—no death scream, no collapse. Just gone.
The base glitched.
The ceiling flickered—textures tearing like corrupted files. The walls pixelated, colors bleeding into static.
Then—
Darkness.
Pure, oppressive. Even for Yara, who had seen the most nightmarish creations across everywhere, it felt… different. This wasn't just void. It was a memory. A place she'd once been.
She stood slowly. Her hands clenched her rifle on instinct, though she doubted it would help here.
The place around her rebuilt itself slowly—walls fading into familiarity.
The first place.
Where it all began.
Where the world fractured—where manga and manhwa, donghua and game dimensions collided in twisted fusion. Where protagonists and villains were ripped from their homes and thrown into a broken universe of unfulfilled stories.
And she remembered…
This was also where her old comrades had stood. Alive.
Where they'd believed they could change the chaos.
Where they'd diedone by one.
Yara took a step forward.
Laughter echoed. High-pitched. Distorted.
Mocking.
The Narrator.
"Back again, are we?"the voice slithered in from every direction. No source. No body.
Just presence.
"You looked so brave back then. You all did. Standing tall. Hoping. Like fools. And now look at you—little Nightmare Zero. All.. Alone."
Yara said nothing.
The laughter intensified. A twisted blend of male, female, synthetic. Voices overlapping. An entity now, not a person.
"You tried to understand it all. You thought you could win by learning the rules. There are no rules anymore, darling. I broke them. I rewrote the pages. And now you're stuck in the margin."
Footsteps.
Delicate.
Someone appeared in the distance—emerging from the smoke like a painting stepping off its canvas.
Zephyra.
White hair. Jet-black bangs that framed her pale face. Eyes shimmering with unnatural red. Wearing her combat coat, half-burned, yet still composed. Silent. Her expression unreadable. Just like Yara once was.
But her eyes… those eyes smiled.
"...You," Yara whispered.
Zephyra tilted her head slightly, like a cat studying prey.
The ground beneath them cracked—symbols carved in alien languages flickered underfoot. Everything rippled. Reality pulsed like a dying heartbeat.
And above them…
A giant screen flickered on.
And on it—
The Narrator, or what was left of them. A shifting blur of glitching text, scribbled lines, and half-rendered faces. Watching. Laughing. Studying.
"Round two, Nightmare Zero. Let's see what breaks first—your gun, your will, or your mind."
Zephyra raised her hand.
The ground shattered.
And everything fell into static..
....
...
.....
---
"22 9 13 11."