Nightmare Mythos

Chapter 112: Final Showdown (6)

Barely holding himself to the clutches of the situation, Cesar found himself being able to control the essence that he had that seemed to be fully back in charge. The essence he wasted throughout the time seemed to have gone back to a hundred percent reserve, assumably thanks to Cedeit managing the essence overload happening inside of him.

Cesar knew he had to force himself to the limits with the ideas inside his head clashing together to produce the ultimate result.

He came up with this, executed it, and now the Keeper of the Void has been imprisoned from the Prison Domain, right at the very cube.

Because the Keeper has been successfully imprisoned, the attacks it unleashed also began to fade away from its existence, similarly being imprisoned the same as he did.

Since Cesar knew the Nightmare had been sealed off from the Prison Domain, whatever that place is, its existence and anything that is related to it had been cut off, it was natural that its attacks were gone.

With all that done, Cesar can consider that he had won the fight against the Keeper of the Void. He wasn't able to kill it but the goal here isn't to decimate every Nightmare he saw. It was to get out of the Mansion.

Anything to stop this goal was just another being he needed to finish off.

All that aside, Cesar found himself in the Cease World, which he likes to call it, yet again. It seemed it wasn't stopping any time soon due to the fact he had given the Book of Contents a lot of essences to devour

Still, to be able to execute it, Cesar knew the book needed a lot of essence to accomplish such a feat.

If before the book took half of the reserve that he and Cedeit shared which only amounted to half a minute from the Cease Word, he calculated that even with that amount of essence given, he only had about two to three minutes left in this world.

As the clock inside the ceased world tickling, Cesar knew he had to decide fast as to how he would take advantage of it.

'Running to that cube and taking it to the other side to imprison the Librarian might not work. The moment I grabbed that cube from that place where the Keeper had been standing, the time was already up and everything would return back to normal,'

Cesar halted his thinking as his gaze fell onto the gap reality, a window that had been destroyed where a hand was peeking outside carrying a blade. This gap reality, however, is placed towards the site where he was convulsing, and a single strike might've ended him right there and then.

'This guy almost assassinated me using a sneaky approach as the Keeper's attack was coming to me?'

Cesar felt annoyed for some reason as if he was even too late to trigger the activation sequence of the incantation for the cease world, he might already be choking to death because his neck was sliced clean.

'I have a score to settle with this guy,'

Cesar slowly walked towards the gap reality before entering inside as the clock in the ceased world continued to tickle down.

As soon as he did, Cesar spotted Caster, his expression frenzied as he peered down at the other side of the reality gap, ready to strike if he were in normal time.

Cesar's gaze then fell upon the corrupted human lying lifelessly on the ground, his neck cleanly sliced and his chest torn open."

Terry had met a cruel fate at Caster's hands, left alone in the spot where Cesar had abandoned him to rush toward the center.

Probably only he witnessed the existence of this guy becoming aware of himself and dying at the same time but on the other's perspective, he was a corrupted human that almost threatened to wreak havoc at the Harden City.

Cesar felt nothing but sorry to Terry who was just a normal civilian that got caught by the unruly twist of fate.

Then he switched his attention back to Caster.

Cesar remembered the time right before he got transferred to the Mansion. If only he had been able to notice the weirdness of the city beforehand, he might've not come to this godforsaken place.

If only he was found after his disappearance a year ago, Terry, Erin, and any soldiers that had died in the Mansion might've been prevented.

Alas, that wasn't happening any time soon nor will it change the result.

That was the thing in the past.

And the thing in the past has gone by.

Seething with rage, Cesar's heavy step dragged towards the front of Caster. His emotions were all over the place but there was one thing in mind that he was almost certain.

He wanted to kill him.

He wanted to kill the very first human, not a corrupted human or a Nightmare, he was about to take with his own hands.

'Conceptualize it,'

Cesar extended his hand towards Caster's head as he began conceptualizing the Artificial Fire, a knowledge imprinted in his thoughts.

Again, he failed.

Another try, and another failure.

'Conceptualize it…'

He kept making the fire until it withered away like it was nothing. In this ceased world where it was the perfect place to execute it, Cesar kept failing.

At that moment, he couldn't help but remember the short mutter Cedeit had whispered to him when he was trying to do it.

-You're doing it all wrong.

Once he contemplated it deeply within his thoughts, Cesar started to reconstruct everything he knew from the Artificial Fire and started to change.

Instead of inventing the 'fire' first, he went on his way to create the 'fuse' that triggers the fire.

It became the shell of the fire he was about to input.

And he was successful. This shell isn't different from a normal fire as it wasn't withering away. Finally, to make this shell or fuse more robust and powerful, he then started creating the fire and was able to keep it contained inside.

The key point of the artificial fire is to be able to contain the fire inside the 'shell' that signifies as the trigger.

The final output of the fire was dogshit but Cesar knew he had a lot of work he had to do to do it flawlessly.

Still, he had done it.

He created the Artificial Fire.

Finally, the Ceased World seemed to lose its value as everything returned back to normal.

Caster whose attention was solely focused on the front to attempt an assassination at Cesar who was about to be engulfed by the purplish emptiness, found himself in a different situation a second later.

He wasn't peeking through the gap reality that he had made for himself nor he was going to assassinate his prey.

Instead, he saw his forehead being touched with someone's palm.

Upon redirecting his attention upward while he was on his knees, Caster found himself staring at Cesar's expressionless eyes.

"Ah…"

He had no idea what had happened or what was currently unfolding, but the last thing he felt was his entire body engulfed in flames.

Whoosh—!

Being incinerated with the harsh artificial fire that Cesar created, Caster began burning as a huge scream emanated from his mouth.

"Ahhhhhhh!"

Cesar watched his opponent with nothing but a deadpan expression as he muttered, "As promised, I killed him for you. If you can hear me there, you can rest in peace,"