In the Medical Bay, the piercing glare of the shadowless lamps cast a pale, cold hue over the room.
Ester and Phyllis paced back and forth, their brows knitted in anxiety.
Each heavy footstep echoed through the silent corridor like a hammer striking their frayed nerves.
The medical manager operated a massive scanner, sending blue laser grids rippling across George's bloodless face.
Soon, the screen flickered with a dense stream of red data.
The manager turned, a cold, mechanical voice cutting through the silence:
"Diagnosis confirmed: The patient's brain has triggered an underlying emergency protection mechanism due to prolonged, extreme cognitive overloading. Currently, the patient has entered a forced 'Hibernate' state."
This proclamation was like an icy needle piercing Phyllis's last shred of hope.
"What do you mean? What do you mean 'Hibernate'?" Phyllis rushed forward, her voice trembling violently.
"Are you saying my brother... won't wake up?!"
"That is one interpretation," the manager replied, devoid of warmth.
"As for how long it will take to regain consciousness, it depends entirely on the patient's own will to survive and the speed of mental repair. It could be tomorrow, or it could be... forever."
Phyllis felt the strength drain from her body.
She sank to the cold floor, knees hitting the tile.
Warm tears fell like broken strings of pearls.
In that moment, a montage of memories flashed through her mind: George's thin but reliable back every time they faced a dead end; the runes overflowing from his eyes every time he chanted a forbidden spell...
She finally understood. Those "miracles" that turned the tide and reduced enemies to ash were never cheap.
Her brother had been using his own nerves, his lifespan, and his future as sacrifices to bargain with Death for a fleeting moment of brilliance.
"Brother... your idiot..." Tears soaked her collar. As his sister, she only now realized the tragic price behind his magnificent magic.
Beside her, Ester bit her lip, her eyes red. She fumbled a tissue out of her pocket, wiped her own eyes, and knelt to offer one to Phyllis.
"I'm sorry... as a guide, I should have noticed his load limit sooner..."
The two girls leaned on each other as they left the Medical Bay, every step feeling like an arduous trek.
George's slumber wasn't just the loss of a comrade; it was the loss of a lighthouse.
However, fate gave them no time for grief.
As they headed toward the workshop to inform Lawson and Katie, Ester habitually checked her tablet to track the evacuation progress of Dodge and the others.
Her pupils suddenly contracted.
"What... what is this?!"
The signals representing Dodge, Victor, Valerie, Luther, and Emma were flickering with an eerie black light.
"Miss Ester, what's happening?" Phyllis wiped her eyes and leaned in.
Ester's fingers flew across the screen, cold sweat dripping from her temple.
"The life signs haven't vanished... but their coordinates have shifted outside of known space! And..."
She played a snippet of an automatic monitor log.
The footage was unstable, taken from the built-in camera of Dodge's helmet. In the video, pitch-black void vines tore through the air like a nest of vipers.
Amidst the piercing shrieks and the screams of the warriors, the screen was swallowed by thick, impenetrable darkness.
"Everyone... missing?" Phyllis's face went pale.
"Brother is unconscious, and everyone else has been dragged into the void... how did it come to this?"
The two girls sprinted toward the workshop—toward their only remaining hope, the ten-year veteran and the base's strongest pillar.
Inside the workshop, the metal clatter of Lawson "crying" and drawing circles on the floor in mock-despair had just ceased, while Katie organized the "looted" materials from Lawson's hoard.
The moment they saw the tear-streaked, panicked faces of the girls, they knew disaster had struck.
As the double nightmare of George's coma and the warriors' disappearance was explained, Ester projected the footage into the air.
Lawson stared intently at the last frame where Dodge's hand reached toward the camera before the darkness took over.
His knuckles cracked as he balled his fists. With ten years of game experience, he knew exactly what those vines were.
"The Gloom Mist Secret Forest ... The Forest Mother: Elder Wood," Lawson muttered, his gaze piercing the screen as if looking at the source code.
"That is a 'Special Transport Mechanism' triggered only when the Wood-Walkers are completely wiped out—a shortcut to the BOSS. The Forest Mother isn't just a Wood-attribute Lord-Class; she is a nightmare of crowd control and psychological torture."
"Randomly inflicts three status ailments?" Katie's fighting spirit dampened.
"Poison, Paralysis, Slow... if we get 'Confusion' or 'Silence,' we're just sitting ducks."
"Brute force won't work," Lawson turned to Phyllis.
"We need the miraculous antidote: {Dawn Break}."
When Phyllis pulled the Dawn Break Armor Blueprint from her bag, the room fell silent.
This "convenient" coincidence felt as if an invisible hand had offered them a lifeline just before they stepped into the abyss.
"Is this 'System's' style?" Lawson gave Ester a sidelong glance.
"It's like he watches our every struggle and then hands out salvation like charity."
Ester blinked her large, sincere eyes, her cheeks flushing.
"I really don't know! System Master's voice is so masculine and powerful... I can't imagine him as some evil mastermind smiling in the dark! Besides, I've only heard his voice, never seen his face..."
Doubts aside, it was their only way forward.
"Don't worry about whether the system is playing chess or saving lives. We don't have time to hesitate." Lawson's eyes sharpened.
He snatched the blueprint and materials. His blood as an Armor Smith began to boil.
"Phyllis, take off the {Saint Silver} armor for a second. You're off-duty as a Lightning Knight; you are the {Dawn Break}—the bearer of life and the dispeller of darkness."
With Lawson's SSS-grade polishing, the {Dawn Break} armor emerged from the forge, shimmering with iridescent light.
"Phyllis, take it! We're moving!" Lawson shouted.
Through Ester's teleportation, the three arrived at the Gloom Mist Secret Forest.
The air was thick with a viscous, purple-black demonic mist that made breathing feel like drowning.
"This mist is toxic! Phyllis, activate the armor!"
"Armor Link!!"
The five-colored feather-woven skirt of the {Dawn Break} unfurled.
It was a masterpiece blending ancient Shinto aesthetics with peak future technology.
Purple, blue, pink, red, and yellow shimmered like a rainbow after a storm.
As the purification system engaged, the demon mist vanished upon contact.
"[FEATHER DANCE: WIND OF EXORCISM]!"
Phyllis swept her five-colored metal fans, clearing the mist and revealing the forest's silhouette.
However, the path was blocked by Mutant Steel Wood-Walkers, A-Rank elite monsters with millisecond-speed regeneration.
"Super-regeneration?" Katie felt a cold sweat.
"Then they're unkillable!"
"Hmph, for others, maybe. But for an SSS-rank Armor Smith, dismantling them is child's play."
Lawson's golden energy compressed under his feet.
"Watch! Amplified by the {Mercy Hammer}—Triple Output: [Zero Armor Zone of the Armor God]!"
Golden light eclipsed the sun.
Lawson stepped down, and an energy ripple expanded, forcibly stripping the structural integrity of the monsters.
They disintegrated into fertilizer before they could even shriek.
"Clear," Lawson said as a rift opened in the void.
"Time to meet the BOSS."
In the heart of the forest, the greenery was gone, replaced by a sickly, jaundiced yellow.
Huge, dark purple buds pulsated like veins, clustered around a gargantuan mutant tree.
At the top of the tree, the wood split open with a sickening crack.
"Cackle... cackle..."
A withered, mummified female head emerged from the treetop.
Her eyes were hollow, and her "hair" consisted of thousands of barbed, thorny vines.
This was the A-Rank Domain Lord— The Forest Mother: Elder Wood.
Inside the translucent purple buds, the missing warriors were visible.
They were trapped in "Nightmare Greenhouses," with mutant flower hearts siphoning their life force by forcing them to relive their deepest fears.
Victor stood frozen as the crowd's derision washed over him, their laughter piercing the air as they mocked his mangled feet. The very stage that once brought him glory had become a theatre of cruelty.
Valerie knelt on the bitterly cold asphalt, submerged in the echoes of past humiliations. Her best friend hadn't just stolen her boyfriend; she had systematically supplanted her, wielding her wealth and pedigree like a weapon.
Emma felt stifled by the 'elegant' silk ribbons of her family's frigid expectations. Inside that gilded cage, she wasn't living a life of luxury—she was spiraling through a waking nightmare.
A raw, guttural cry escaped Luther's throat as he watched his father commit his martial arts manuals to the flames. With every page that curled into blackened ash, a piece of Luther's identity withered away.
In the largest bud, Dodge was reliving his past as a "sissy" boy. He saw the brown-haired boy who had fallen from the roof to protect him—the tragedy that drove him to become a muscular giant to fill the hole in his soul.
"No..."
Dodge's eyes flickered under his lids.
In the nightmare, the face of the falling boy blurred and merged with a certain someone—a guy with a smug "ten-year veteran" smile, a trash-talking mouth, and an incredibly reliable back.
"That guy... isn't dead! That jerk is living better than anyone right now, complaining about my thick skull while becoming an SSS-Rank Armor Smith!"
The bond of friendship acted like a violent current, shattering the logic of the nightmare.
"GET—OUT OF MY HEAD!!"
Dodge snapped his eyes open. The Forest Mother, sensing the rebellion, screeched in rage.
"Bad boy... disobedient boy... must be eaten!"
Her thorny vines lashed out with a sonic boom, aiming to pierce Dodge's greenhouse and erase his soul!