Clive's eyes opened once more; he was sweating... He had been having a lot of nightmares about how Markus had died lately. Hell, they weren't even able to give him a proper funeral due to the fact he had been literally liquified by Syndrielle. His eyes darted around his bedroom; he was still seeing those damn hallucinations of Sylvia...but now it was different, less friendly and teasing. The hallucination was hung.

Clive quickly grabbed the reforged sword of Sylvia; he had repaired the blade using his own and quickly cut the rope that was hanging the hallucination of his dead wife. But the only thing that fell was the clothes of the hung body, revealing scars. Clive did not understand what his mind was trying to tell him... He quickly put his hands on his head and used his waver to make his mind stop hallucinating, as this was way too weird for him to endure at the moment.

Clive sighed, using the tip of his sword to help himself up before putting on his giant purple coat and the pink scarf of Sylvia before walking up to the door of his bedroom, where he found a sticky note left by the grand general Gabriel Brooks. The sticky note told of a location nearby. The grand general was out hunting for one of Catherina's generals. The sixth. The General of Illusions.

Clive sighed one more time, realizing that the general probably was asking Clive to be his backup, so he immediately went toward the coordinates on the back of the note. As soon as he went out of the headquarters, a woman of the night approached him.

Not wanting to be annoyed, he used the metal arm he had gotten from Markus and punched the woman in the head, killing her instantly.

Clive once more let out a sigh. He kept on walking, not even bothering to look back toward the corpse. It didn't matter in his eyes anymore. He had a single goal. To kill all the remaining generals, especially Astaroth. He despised him for what he had done with Catherina.

He then stopped mid-walk before glancing down at his feet before realizing he had been lifted onto a very tall pillar of dirt, approximately like a kilometer tall? Clive let out a slight groan. Someone had to be shitting him... An infected ambushed him now? Really? Whatever, he will deal with him easily anyways.

Clive quickly leaped down the pillar and unsheathed his sword, aiming it directly at the infected that appeared in his field of view as he was falling. This infected was wearing full body armor that looked similar to Femto from Berserk.

Clive quickly aimed his blade to hit toward the person's neck at full force as soon as he landed on the ground. The infected had vanished? No. That coward ran.

Clive sighed, as he always seemed to be doing lately, before starting to walk once more until he reached a nearby village of infected. A man stopped him at the entrance of the village to ask him if he was human, and Clive smugly asked back if he was infected. A moment of silence passed between them before they both chuckled. They knew each other. Not as friends, but because this man was an informant for the hunter association. Clive glanced at the smoke coming from the village's chief's house and asked him if they were about to have a meal soon; the people of this village all eat at the same time for some ritualistic purpose that Clive did not care to investigate. The man confirmed his question with a simple nod.

Clive followed the man into the local bar and drank his first bottle of alcohol ever. Was it his first bottle ever? Clive was sure he never drank alcohol before? But why was he able to recognize the taste of this bottle?

Clive sighed, standing up and walking past the informant to go into the kitchen at the back of the bar to get himself another slice of pizza, but what he saw in the oven made him freeze. A child skull was in the oven... Were the infected here cannibals?

Without wasting a mere second, Clive unsheathed his sword and walked out of the kitchen, glancing at the villagers standing there and eating their food. Clive's rage was obvious, and his hair—his hair turned black? What happened?

Before any of the infected had the time to even stand up or fight back, Clive unleashed his Dargelionna while targeting the informant so that everyone else nearby would be melted to death by the barrier's heat, just like he had done in the prison.

Clive did not give the informant any time to fight back; he quickly gripped his jaw and used his waver just to copy his technique in case it was a good technique before putting a finger against his ribs and chanting out a repulsion to blow his torso open and paint the walls with his blood before letting go of him and simply walking out of the bar.

Clive then picked the sticky note out of his back pocket and looked upon it to make sure he was going the right direction when suddenly a familiar scream was heard from what appeared to be a lighthouse. That was General Brooks's scream?! Clive quickly ran toward the location of the scream and froze at what he saw before him; once again, he was late.

Gabriel Brooks was beaten to a pulp on the ground; he looked weak. Jeez... was this really who he called "general" all these years? But before him stood the Ruler of Illusions himself. He had a soft smile as he looked at Clive as if he knew him. Huh? Clive had never met this dude before.

Clive quickly unsheathed his sword and cut the guy in half before he had the chance to even move, but... something was off. He felt bigger when he was being cut? Clive quickly turned around and froze when he noticed the Ruler was the one who was beaten up, and...Brooks was cut in half on the ground before him... Did this bastard just use his powers to make him kill his superior? Clive lunged at the Ruler of Illusion with a tremendous amount of speed, and as soon as he went for a slash of his sword directed toward his midsection, the blade just went through him before he went up in a pile of smoke. Another Illusion...

Clive, knowing exactly what the Ruler had in mind, did not even turn around and simply unleashed his Dargelionna but without expending his barrier. He was trying something new. He wanted only the statue of his late wife to appear. He wanted to see if he was able to affect anyone's mind with his waver ability using his Dargelionna without having to trap them.

A tingling-like feeling went through Clive's body just like a spider sensing something on one of its strings; he quickly turned around and sent a right hook directly into the Ruler's jaw, dislocating it. At that exact contact he made, for a split second, he was able to unleash his waver to copy the Ruler's power of illusions as soon as the Ruler sent a hook of his own.

Clive disappeared from the man's sight before reappearing right behind him. The ruler quickly turned around, his eyes widened, as what he saw before him was terrifying. A red orb of compressed gravity. Clive quickly unleashed another repulsion at point-blank range, which tore the Ruler of Illusions' head off his shoulders.

Clive picked up the body of Brooks and walked back toward the headquarters, but something was clearly wrong. Smoke. a lot of it, and then all of a sudden, a massive explosion rang out, which leveled the headquarters completely. Clive dropped the body of Brooks and ran closer to inspect the aftermath. Clive's eyes widened. He was the last of the hunters alive. The headquarters was decimated, and in the middle of the area was...oh no, all of the generals themselves were there, and was that the damn infected he fought at the beginning of the day? He is a new general?

Clive dashed toward the generals just to be stopped by the new additions, who summoned a pillar of dirt to launch him into the sky. He seemed to be buying the generals time to flee the place. Were they afraid? Did they really think of Clive as that much of a threat that they couldn't team up to all beat him together, or were they ordered to come back? The infected quickly followed him up into the sky before unleashing his own Dargelionna, which Clive also did. However, something strange happened, something rare.

When two wills of the same amplitude meet, both of their barriers shall fuse into one before being launched. Such is;

The inelastic collision

In mere seconds, both of them traveled across the island they were currently on and were sent directly toward the crater left by the battle of the stars on Marai Island, which was about 2.5 kilometers away from their previous location.

Their Dargelionna both collapsed due to the sheer force of their crash.

Clive was the first to stand back up; he glanced around and picked up his sword before freezing when the infected stood up with his mask now broken. That scar on his cheek...no, that's impossible... That was... Markus? Did Syndrielle reform his body and then let his sister infect him...? As Markus finally stood up. The rest of his armor fell, revealing a new...purple arm?

Using Clive's stunned time, the reformed Markus lunged at Clive to grab the metal arm. But Clive seemed to vanish for a moment, not from the illusion but from raw speed. In less than the blink of an eye, Clive had gripped his face before unleashing the unknown power he had copied onto him.

Black Death

Markus immediately started to throw up and cry blood everywhere. Black blood was coming out of his orifices. Clive froze. He thought that the power he had gotten would have been way softer. Markus's body stiffened as he collapsed to the ground. Clive took a step back and fell right into the crater by accident.

As he was falling, questions went through his mind.

What was he fighting for?

for the humans? For his dream?

What even was his dream? Hell,

What is a dream? A goal to achieve or a fool's way to cope with the world's harsh truth?

His goal was to kill his...or was it to save her?

What was the truth that she saw back then, as if she would tell him...

He will just have to ask him.

Clive finally hit the ground at the bottom of the crater. Landing with a loud thump. He glanced around and froze at what was before him... Sylvia said the old gods were stars, no...? Then why is there a melting corpse in front of him...

Clive sighed before using his Repulsion to launch himself out of the cratter back up to Markus corpse. Which he then proceeded to bury before mumbling a small prayer for him.