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Threatened by Tartarus’s sudden appearance, Assassin and Berserker were forced to work together, dodging her claws and slicing through her body with their blades.

SLASH! SLASH! SLASH! SLASH!

"Like hell I’ll let a demon eat me!" Cain roared. "Begone from this world, beast!"

"Gaia! Is that you?! What happened to you?!" Yasuke cried.

"Hmm... Fufufu! How incredible!"

To their disbelief, the woman Yasuke called "Gaia" quickly regenerated, her body expanding endlessly into a colossal tree of darkness and demons.

"But that’s definitely not enough, fools."

From her branches, crimson fruits swelled into spheres of blood—Blood Novas—that bombarded them without end. Her limbs stretched infinitely, aiming to impale their bodies. Giant fists surged forth, charged with abyssal ki, and smashed into them with devastating force. Beams of dark sunlight rained down, detonating across the battlefield.

BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM!

Amid the chaos, Elena desperately tried to wake her friends. Yasuke had already cut open their cage and freed them, but they remained unconscious in the heart of the battle.

"Teacher! Teacher, please wake up!"

Slowly, Olivia opened her eyes, took in the nightmare unfolding around them, and rose swiftly. She summoned her Heroic Spirit, Rider. "We have to get out of here—now! This is no longer a place we should be!"

Elena quickly opened her storage ring, retrieved all the elixirs her mother had prepared, drank one herself, handed another to her teacher, and fed the rest to her friends. One by one, they began to stir.

"W-What’s happening...? Ah, my head..." Erika groaned, yawning. "Ahhh! What?!" she gasped, eyes widening at the surrounding carnage.

"We need to get out of here, ASAP!" Matsuo urged. "Hey Frank, can you teleport us outside with your Space Magic?"

"I think I overexerted myself... my magic isn’t responding properly," Frank muttered weakly. "I’m sorry... Ugh... and thank you all for saving me. I really screwed up. Wait, where’s the dinosaur guy?"

"I don’t know," Erika replied. "He vanished when that giant meteor crashed down and destroyed Moguro Sky Garden! Then this giant tentacled monster straight out of an Lovecraft story appeared, tried to devour our souls, and then Elena’s mom showed up—but she looked like a goth mommy now. She punched that eldritch horror, and... I don’t know, I lost consciousness after that."

"But what are those monsters everyone’s fighting?!" Harumi asked, looking around in confusion.

"I’m wondering the same thing," Elisa groaned. "And we’re too weak to fight— Aahhh! There’s something coming this way!"

A giant spider made of fused human bodies crawled toward them, the space around it warping to reveal an endless slaughterhouse of corpses.

"Calm down, children. It’s alright," Olivia said, stepping forward. Rider materialized before her, the Ancient King of Uruk laughing as his Divinity surged at full power after his long rest. This was one of his unique abilities: prolonged absence allowed him to "rest" and accumulate extra divinity, making him far stronger upon resummoning. "Rider, do you know what that thing is?!"

"Nightmare!" Rider growled through clenched teeth. "Don’t you remember?! When that Foreigner bastard sent us to the Nightmare Plane?! That thing... isn’t a normal inhabitant. It’s a human permanently mutated into this abhorrent creature...!"

"Yeah, that’s right."

SLAAASH!

"...?!"

Before Rider could react, a distortion tore open in the sky. Several figures dropped down, led by a girl with sharp red eyes and long white hair. She cleaved the Nightmare apart with a long sword forged of bones and swirling phantasmal energy.

"GYYAAAAHHH!"

The Nightmare shrieked, its body splitting open. It tried to regenerate while summoning grotesque chimeras and golems of human flesh. But three other girls stepped forward and unleashed their powers.

A chubby pink-haired girl with bright eyes summoned a scepter, unleashing torrents of highly pressurized seawater that swept away dozens of Nightmare monsters at once.

A tanned, short-haired blonde tomboy charged forward, clad in crackling thunderous armor. Electricity surged around her fists as she delivered devastating blows that blasted the horrors apart.

Finally, the smallest of the group—a woman with metallic silver hair and piercing golden eyes—leaped down. A colossal angelic automata emerged behind her, spreading its metallic wings and firing hundreds of razor-sharp feathers. In an instant, the entire Nightmare and its army disintegrated into pieces before exploding into black fog, leaving only a dark stone behind.

"It was part of our mission today to clear a Dungeon near here that had been infected by the Nightmare Curse," said the girl leading the group of four. "Looks like you’re in luck—we were just passing by."

"Huh?! Wait, Maria!" Elena exclaimed. The others quickly recognized her and her companions. "Alma, Emily, and Sofia too...! You’re here!"

"Are you all okay? Let me heal you." Alma stepped forward and cast a soothing healing spell with her staff. A wave of refreshment washed over everyone, as if they had just enjoyed a long, peaceful bath. The lingering pain from their injuries finally faded, replaced by the comfort of hours of rest. "Better now?"

"Yeah, thank you so much!" Matsuo said with a nod.

"Tch! I was going to shine, and then you stole my prey!" Rider grumbled, stomping the ground in frustration and startling the newly arrived girls.

"Ah, sorry. I just thought it would’ve been cool if I did that," Maria replied plainly. "Um, are you a Heroic Spirit? Wow... an ugly bearded old man. Huh? Olivia-sensei, you really got the short end of the stick."

"Yeah, you’re right! I wanted his son!" Olivia sighed. "A handsome young king with blonde hair and red eyes... so dreamy! Why did I end up with this old man? No clue! Well, at least his wife is beautiful..."

"Gah?! W-Why are girls in this age so cruel?!" Rider cried, barely holding back tears. "I am not ugly!" 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

"Don’t listen to them, dear. You’re handsome and very manly," his wife’s gentle voice whispered. Rider nodded happily.

"Are you guys even taking this seriously?!" Erika barked. "We have to get out of here!!!"

"I never imagined Erika would be the voice of reason in this situation," Harumi sighed. "It really makes you realize how crazy things have gotten..."

"Harumi too?!" Erika screamed, mouth agape.

"Alright! We have to get out of here quickly," Matsuo declared. Everyone nodded in agreement.

"That’s what I said!!!" Erika screamed, realizing no one had taken her seriously until Matsuo spoke.

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