Deep within Penacony's Dreamscape—within another Dreamscape known as 'Dreamflux Reef' and the 'Primordial Dreamscape'—when Mikhail was ostracized and targeted by The Family in the original story, he escaped to this place, thus ending the tragic latter half of his life here.
Dreamflux Reef was a place where the light always stayed dim and hazy, as if the world itself could never quite wake from its sleep.
Micah, the gravekeeper of the monument for the three Nameless, stood beside a wheelchair and placed a small bouquet at his feet.
An old man sat in that wheelchair, but sadly, he was already dead, completely motionless.
"Mikhail..." Micah murmured to himself, or perhaps to the dead old man beside him. "Next year, the Charmony Festival will be held. Gallagher should be ready by now and will send out the invitations according to your plan. Let's see if that so-called Astral Express you spoke of will really save Penacony."
In truth, Dreamflux Reef was the very first Dreamscape of Penacony, which was why it was also known as the Primordial Dreamscape.
Later, however, its existence was altered by The Family, who used the power of the Stellaron to build the so-called 'sweet dreams' known as the 'Twelve Hours.'
And the countless people who came to Penacony preferred the dazzling, sweet dreams above—the neon-lit dream worlds that were divided into twelve main, discrete dream worlds, each corresponding to a 'moment' on the clock.
Yet that dream above was, in fact, built upon the decay of spirits, with a toxic elixir called 'pleasure' flowing through the Dreamscape to tempt people to indulge endlessly in the dream.
Gradually, their minds would succumb, becoming nourishment for the sweet dreams, a process that completely betrayed Mikhail's original intention in creating Penacony.
Micah himself had spent more years than he could count in Dreamflux Reef, studying under Mikhail, Razalina, and Tiernan since childhood, so his body had long since deteriorated, leaving behind only a shell of what once was.
Currently, as the gravekeeper, he had become something of a representative of Dreamflux Reef.
*Cough!* *Cough!*
As Micah reminisced about the past, a dry, rasping cough suddenly came from his side, which nearly made him jump out of his skin.
"What the hell... a ghost?"
Micah quickly looked left and right, wondering where that cough had come from.
"Micah, what're you mumbling about?"
As if responding to him, the dead old man in the wheelchair suddenly reached out and grabbed Micah's wrist.
Micah almost threw a left hook on reflex—until he got a good look at the old man's face.
It was Mikhail's old face—his hair was still white, his wrinkles so deep they could crush a mosquito, but his eyes were now open, looking alive.
"Old man...? Are you dead or alive right now?" Micah asked, his eyes widened so much they nearly popped out. "Y-You've been dead for ages, and now you're breathing again? Am I hallucinating?"
He felt like he was either losing his mind or the air in Dreamflux Reef had gone toxic, making him hallucinate.
He couldn't help it.
Mikhail had died right here—he had witnessed it with his own eyes.
"I... should be dead... but after I had that dream..." Mikhail said slowly, standing up with movements as stiff as a rusted machine and brushing the dust off his clothes. "I woke up alive again... It was a beautiful dream..."
"A beautiful dream?" Micah asked with a frown, his mind buzzing hard as he tried to process it. "What nonsense are you spouting now?"
"Beautiful means beautiful..." Mikhail said with a sigh. "In that dream, Penacony looked the way I once hoped it would—unlike the mess it is now—a nightmare... In that dream, I was just someone's worker, exhausted like a dog—worse than Gallagher... yet, I'm happy..."
As he spoke, he rubbed his old, wrinkled face, realizing that it still carried the same aged look, which made him a little sad.
He had hoped to be young and handsome again, like in that dream.
"What the hell happened?" Micah asked nervously. "What power brought you back? Are you really coming back to life?"
"I can't explain it..." Mikhail sighed and shook his head. "In short, I dreamt of a great man named Lucian. He saved Penacony, resurrected Razalina, and even rescued Tiernan..."
"Hah, as I thought—it's just a dream..." Micah said with disappointment, then pointed to two gravestones nearby. "Neither of them even has a body. I put their stone monument there myself."
However, just as he finished speaking—
"Micah? Legwork?!"
Another voice called out from behind, sounding full of disbelief.
Micah, still shaken by Mikhail's sudden resurrection, froze again.
He couldn't help it.
Because the voice he heard was way too familiar.
He turned around sharply and saw Razalina standing behind him, with no idea of when she had appeared there.
"Ra-Razalina?! No fucking way!" Micah exclaimed, feeling like he must've stepped out on the wrong day entirely. "Y-You came back too? HOW?!"
"I... I think so..." Razalina said uncertainly, awkwardly scratching the back of her head. "If you two aren't dead, then I guess I'm alive too?"
Her gaze shifted between Mikhail and Micah several times, her face even more bewildered than Micah had been.
On one hand, she remembered clearly that she had died when she lost in the Memory Zone, consumed and assimilated by it, becoming a Memory Zone Meme eternally.
On the other hand, she also remembered that she had been rescued, then worked in a lab in Penacony, studying memoria and working for someone else.
Yet when she opened her eyes again, she was suddenly standing in this dim, lifeless place.
Truthfully, she didn't know whether the latter was reality or a dream—she felt like it was a dream, yet it was so realistic that she couldn't help but believe it to be reality.
Unlike Mikhail, however, she still looked young, exactly as she had before she died.
It was hard to believe—an old man and a young woman, both who should be around the same age, now looking so contrastingly different, with such a glaring age gap.
"No doubt that dream is important. It's probably connected to our return..." Mikhail said thoughtfully. "It feels like Penacony has been influenced by some unknown power—something beyond our understanding..."
Being a wielder of the power of Enigmata himself, he could easily accept such strangeness.
"So..." Razalina asked, glancing at Mikhail, then at Micah. "Is there really someone named Lucian in this world?"
"Lucian?" Micah raised his brows, thinking silently for a while, then shook his head. "No. Never heard of him."
"In that case, to solve Penacony's trouble, we need to first confirm whether he truly exists." Mikhail said with a serious expression. "We have to find him no matter what."
"What about Tiernan?" Razalina asked with a hopeful expression. "Should we call him back, too? If the two of us came back, he might've returned as well."
"Yeah... Tiernan, that guy..." Mikhail's cloudy eyes stared into the abyss ahead. "I wonder how he's doing—where did he die... and where did he wake up?"
===
In a distant star system, two figures were walking along the shore of a black sea known as the Death Sea, with black rain drizzling steadily down from the sky.
At the front, a tall, pale-skinned woman walked quietly beneath a red umbrella, her sword's sheath occasionally striking nearby shadowy humanoid figures known as 'Sin Thirsters' with dull, hollow thuds.
If one were to describe her, she was the very epitome of a beautiful and heroic woman—especially her long, dark purple hair, the fringe that covered her left eye, and her bright violet eyes with diamond-shaped pupils—Lucian would definitely rank her appearance as S-tier.
Her body was clad in a revealing black-white-purple outfit, with a cropped top linked directly to a choker and paired with high-waisted shorts fastened by a spine-shaped buckle, along with a backless white jacket featuring a single ornate furisode sleeve and multicolored coattails.
Her overall appearance was further accented by asymmetrical boots, black gloves, a snake-like ear cuff, a right shoulder guard, and a red and purple flame tattoo etched across her left thigh.
Acheron was her name, and she was an Emanator of Nihility, and a being known as a 'Self-Annihilator.'
A short distance behind her, a faint, shadowy humanoid figure formed from dense crimson energy trudged after her with visible effort.
It was another Sin Thirster.
Sin Thirsters were the lingering obsessions of Pathstriders who had emerged from the depths of IX the Nihility, seeing themselves as masters of their own destiny while unknowingly repeating the actions of their past lives.
And the Sin Thirster following after Acheron was none other than Tiernan's Sin Thirster.
"There are still many... many comrades left... I'll send them off..."
From behind Acheron, Tiernan's hoarse, weathered voice resounded.
"Almost there... You've nearly finished..."
Acheron responded softly, then calmly turned around and gazed at him.
Even though her tone was soft and gentle, her expression remained emotionless and detached.
In ordinary people's eyes, the world they were in was merely dark and cloudy, while the Sin Thirster before her was just an old man clad in a cloak. But in her eyes, the world was glowing crimson, and the Sin Thirster before her was nothing more than a figure made of dense crimson energy, reeking of death.
Tiernan himself still had no idea that he was already dead, merely an obsession known as a Sin Thirster, obsessing over freeing the souls of his fallen comrades, just as he once did in life.
Amid the black rain, countless hazy, shifting shadow-hands reached up from the sea, stretching toward the sky—and they were none other than the comrades Tiernan sought to free, his fellow Galaxy Rangers.
Acheron herself had been here for many years, guiding countless Sin Thirsters like Tiernan's Sin Thirster.
"Funny thing..."
Tiernan chuckled in a raspy voice.
"You probably won't believe me, but I just had a dream. In it, I was still a Galaxy Ranger... and I met a great man... who told me that I'd one day have to face a Lord Ravager. When that happened, he said I could call on him for help..."
"In that dream, I did call him out, and he indeed came, just as promised... He ultimately defeated the Lord Ravager in just a few breaths and became the hero of our Galaxy Rangers..."
"If only it wasn't a dream... that would've been great..."
Acheron listened to Tiernan's words patiently, her face unchanged.
A dream?
Could a Sin Thirster even dream?
Of course not.
"Dream... so, the man you saw—what was his name?"
Acheron mumbled to herself, then asked Tiernan quietly.
Tiernan paused, thinking for a long time before finally recalling it.
"I think... it was Lucian..."
"Lucian... Mm, a fine name..." Acheron nodded softly. "A man worth remembering—just like you, a true her—"
Before she could finish her words, however, something unexpected suddenly happened, causing her to pause mid-sentence as her gaze fixed sharply on the Sin Thirster before her.
===
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