Wolf quickly made his way back to the hideout, giving orders to the other members of the Fourth to evacuate. After all, Ten was still an enigma and he wasn’t prepared to take any unnecessary risks. He needed to simplify the situation first.

“If my assumptions are correct, Dreya should already be at the hideout.” Wolf thought to himself.

***

Q had finally woken up on the cold hard floor of the NGF training room. The cabinets had been rummaged through, and many containers laid strewn across the ground. They were the key ingredients of the NGF. His eyes widened with a fearful realization as he recalled what had happened.

He had been outside of the interrogation room with Mag, when Ten gained consciousness and started to lose control. He was shell shocked from the recent flow of events due to their resemblance with what happened two years ago.

The incident with Daphne.

She had entered into stage 4 of addiction, a point of no return. Her shadowy, demon-like ego which made her almost unrecognizable. Immense neural potential that was difficult even for him to manage. Q shivered at the thought.

“That’s right…” He muttered.

But that shadowy figure was not unique to those suffering from withdrawal. It could also bleed into those with weakened and traumatised minds as well. He had been possessed by a similar dark entity that was sucking away at his very resolve. Then he remembered.

***

While Ten was shouting, Mag had run off to the kitchen in hopes of preparing some kind of food that could calm him down. It was then that Q was possessed by some force, causing him to help Ten get into the NGF room, where he consumed massive amounts of stimulant drugs.

When he had finally come to his senses, he tried to confront Ten but was quickly overwhelmed by his NGF high.

“I… I…” Q was stuttering trying to find some kind of atonement for what he had just done. But no words came to his mind. He had fallen into a state of hopelessness and self blame.

***

After an intense back and forth confrontation, Ten had finally managed to push through and defeat the thunder dragon, saving Kal in the process.

“I… I thought I was done for…” Kal sighed in relief.

It had almost felt like Ten had received a surge of extra power from somewhere, allowing him to vanquish the dragon’s beam with his firepower. He looked at his hands in awe.

Zena ran over and started to heal the two of them with her blooming plant magic. She was quivering in fear.

“I’m glad you two are safe…” she said as she weeped.

Kal flashed a smile at the two of them.

“You saved my life Ten… just as expected… everytime we get into some trouble, you’re always the one to pull us out… thank you…” Kal spoke with an emotional gratitude.

Ten blushed. “Y-you're welco-”

“But just know…” Kal smirked as he pointed a finger directly at Ten.

“If you’re ever in trouble, I’ll be the one to save the day!” He proclaimed.

Ten bursted out into a laugh which sent Kal into a cackle as well.

“W-what are you two laughing about?! You almost got yourselves killed!” Zena bursted into more tears, scolding them as she healed their wounds away.

“Are you done laughing?” The angry voice of a woman boomed through the dungeon.

From the shadows of labyrinthe emerged a blue-ish figure carrying a sharp dragonsword covered in legendary dragonscale armor.

***

Ten had been laughing maniacally after recovering from Dreya’s previous attack on his leg. She began walking forward slowly, unsheathing her light sword menacingly.

Ten suddenly stopped his laughter, his eyes still looking up towards the heavens.

In that split instant Dreya had lunged forward with her sword, ready to take off one of his limbs. Ten launches his claws forward trying to catch her by surprise, but it appears to completely miss as Dreya vanishes out of thin air. This time there was no glowing distortion of space that appeared. If she activated her portal, surely there would have been some kind of visual cue.

“Gotcha!” Ten growled as he jolted his head around anticipating Dreya’s attack from behind.

But nothing happened. All of a sudden a portal appears from his blind spot and Dreya leaps forward slicing off a portion of his right arm. Giggling from the pure delight of her anger being released as a geyser of blood red erupted and Ten screamed in agony. Dreya retreated into a portal and appeared in front of Mag and Naomi.

“STOP DREYA! YOU’RE GONNA KILL HIM!!” Mag screamed as he covered Naomi’s small ears. She had closed her eyes shut and was whimpering softly.

She turned to look at Naomi, unable to take her eyes off of her. Memories of Naomi began flooding into her mind as she struggled to fight back against the powerful effects of the Red Veil and her rage consumed brain. Was this the right course of action?

That small moment of hesitation gave Ten the opportunity to counterattack. In that narrow window, he threads a claw straight towards her heart. She manages to move just in time, causing it to pierce a side of her chest. Growling in anger as her bloodshot eyes beamed directly back to Ten.

***

Ten had gotten his right arm ripped clean off from the blue dragon lady’s formidable sword techniques. But through his sheer willpower he was able to finally land a counter hit with his piercing flame attack near the side of her chest. 

Seeing her anger begin to reignite, Ten calms his senses and takes a deep breath. When he exhaled, his eyes caught on fire and his entire body became engulfed in dancing flames. The two of them lunged at each other trading and parrying a flurry of bows. Both sides were putting on an offensive spectacle as they waltzed around the dungeon, exchanging bits and pieces of dialogue. 

“WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT GIRL?!” The dragon lady screamed.

“I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT!”

“THE ONE WITH THE PINK HAIR!”

“YOU MEAN ZENA?”

“YES HER!”

“W-WHAT DO YOU MEAN? DO YOU TWO KNOW EACH OTHER?!”

***

The fight only continued to escalate as Mag watched helplessly. Ten had formed a sword out of his dark shadows as he and Dreya were now carving away at each other, getting drenched in blood and wounds. They had been screaming about a girl Mag had never met.

Eventually, the exchange would slowly die down. The two of them becoming exhausted from all the back and forth. They both knew that this next attack would settle things once and for all.

***

Ten put the handle of his sword close to his heart as he ushered a prayer. The dancing flames around him began to change into pure white. It was Ten’s ultimate trump card. His legendary and undefeated ability to control white purifying flames. A fire that takes the very color out of anything it touches, completely obscuring its opponent from their sense of reality. Not to mention the insane heat control from such a state allowed Ten to manipulate the very temperature and intensity of the flames with pinpoint accuracy. Allowing him to coat Kal and Zena in a cool breeze of enchanting fire while simultaneously seering his opponent into particles of ash.

An insanely overpowered cheat skill that Ten didn’t like to use, unless he really needed to. And this was the rare occasion where it was needed.

***

Dreya had opened up a portal next to her left hand, reaching in to pull out a sleek high-tech light sword. Mag’s eyes widened. This was his first time seeing it. All he knew was that it looked way stronger than the right handed sword she had been using. It was a deadly dual wield technique that Dreya had been experimenting with ever since Ikara died.

**

Somewhere in Ten’s mind was an unsettling feeling he could quite describe. It almost felt as if two worlds had begun to slowly merge. But then again, what words could even begin to describe what that would hypothetically feel like.

The two of them prepared their stances, ready to launch the deciding attack. A miniscule spark of white fire blasted from Ten’s sword. Dreya had barely managed to catch a glimpse of it, immediately reversing the attack towards his blind spot, where a dungeon wide explosion of pure flames engulfed him in a dazzling fury. He was unfazed.

**

“That first attack you got me with was a mere fluke… you simply caught me by surprise, that’s all…”

He lunged forward with an unbelievable burst of speed. Dreya did the same as her new weapon began to glow brighter and brighter.

Mag’s eyes widened even further.

All of a sudden, the two of them found themselves forcefully being crushed to the ground with an immense force. It was Wolf’s Barrier inscription. He had made it just in the nick of time.

*

The dungeon had completely collapsed from the sheer destructive power these two had put out. Both of them found their bodies crushed under piles of rubble, unable to move. They stared at each other for a while, accepting that their fight had ended in a draw.

“I haven’t had an opponent as tough as you in ages…” The dragon lady spoke.

“You too… you were unbelievably strong…” Ten replied.

“Unfortunate we were enemies in this life… perhaps in the next one… we’ll be allies…”

The two had come to a mutual understanding of respect and chivalry, reserved for only the strongest of the strong.

Kal and Zena began calling out his name as they ran towards him. But his vision began to blur and the world around him slowly faded away. He now found himself staring at Q who was activating his inscription on him. Ten slowly felt his body warm up as his tense mind began to ease. 

The shadowy figure that had taken over his body had gone into hiding. It was then that he had realized it. His fight against the blue dragon lady was merely a hallucination from all the NGF. But for a moment, he had been genuinely convinced he had returned to his old world again.

He snapped out of the fuzzy feeling and bursted into outrage. Demanding that he return to the world of Elysion, where he could get a conclusion to the amazing sequence of events that had just unfolded.

“WHERE’S THE NGF?! I NEED M-”

“LET ME GO WOLF! I’M STILL NOT DONE WITH HIM!” Dreya’s shouting had interrupted Ten’s.

Wolf injected her with something and she slowly began to calm down into a daze.

Q’s eyes intensified and the wave of fuzziness Ten had been fighting against became irresistible. He too began to calm down as he fell under the effects of Q’s powerful inscription. An ability that made people slowly fall in love with him.

“Calm down Ten… You’ve had enough NGF for today…”

Somewhere deep down, Ten wanted to challenge Q. But he couldn’t control himself. His heart rate had picked up drastically and he couldn’t bring himself to say the words.

Mag gave out a huge sigh of relief. Naomi had finally opened her eyes to see what had happened.

“Wolf… and another person…” Her eyes glimmered with admiration.

These were the Captain’s of the Fourth in their truest form. When things became hectic, they were the ones who stepped up to the plate to save their comrades.

Q had finally returned to his former self after having a breakdown in the NGF room over his actions and indecisiveness.

His eyes were sharp, and his voice was serious.