The salty seawater, mixed with thick black blood and a rotten stench, dripped across the white marble floor of the underground laboratory of No Name Corporation.
The massive steel door slid open.
The four pawns stepped inside in a completely wrecked condition.
Tora walked in first, wringing the end of his soaking wet pants. His gigantic body reeked with an overwhelmingly foul fishy odor.
"Damn it... I need a hundred hot baths to get rid of the smell of that ancient fish's guts," Tora grumbled with an irritated expression.
"That's your own fault for jumping straight into its mouth, muscle-brain," Scyte replied while shaking seawater off his scythe.
Scyte casually walked forward while spinning a crystal hourglass filled with purple mist in his hand.
He flashed a smug grin toward Tora. "But... thanks to you being the bait, we got this weird thing pretty quickly, huh? Otherwise we'd probably still be playing tag with that pale monster."
Rare entered last, dragging Excalibur behind him while seawater still dripped from the blade. He simply smiled, completely unbothered by the disgusting smell covering his body.
At the center of the room, No Name sat silently behind his main console desk.
His black suit remained perfectly neat without a single stain. His ice-cold eyes stared directly at the purple hourglass Scyte had just placed on the desk.
"Mission complete, sir! Your Achronal Miasma arrived safely... though it smells a little fishy," Scyte reported while giving a sloppy salute.
No Name ignored the horrible stench filling the lab. Slowly, his hand reached toward the ancient hourglass.
The moment his skin touched the crystal, the purple mist inside reacted and began spinning faster.
A weak anomalous aura capable of freezing space and time radiated outward, resonating with the energy of the Red Stone and Blue Stone he had already collected.
"Good work," No Name said quietly. His voice sounded heavier than usual.
Tora snorted while resting his axe against the floor. "So what exactly is that junk for? You sent us diving into watery hell just to grab a table decoration?"
No Name placed the hourglass onto the main scanning machine. He raised his head and looked at the four pawns with an unreadable gaze.
It was not the usual look of disdain, but the gaze of a king preparing to enter his final battlefield.
"This is not merely a decoration, Tora," No Name replied coldly. "This is the only anchor that will prevent my existence from being erased."
The room suddenly fell silent. Scyte stopped smirking. Arrow narrowed his eyes sharply.
"Erased?" Arrow repeated, his tone turning serious. "Boss... where exactly are you going?"
The giant holographic screen behind No Name suddenly activated, displaying a visual simulation of absolute emptiness, a rift where stars did not shine and time itself did not move.
The coordinates he had obtained from The Primordial Lightness.
"Void Rift," No Name said. "The place where the third fundamental stone, the Green Stone, exists. A primordial dimension from before the universe was created."
No Name stood up and slipped both hands into his pockets.
His dense and intimidating aura slowly spread throughout the room.
"The laws of physics do not exist there. Time itself is an illusion. The moment I step into that rift, within 0.0000000000001 seconds, reality will reject my existence and erase me completely," No Name explained flatly, as though he were talking about tomorrow's weather instead of his own death.
"The temporal mist inside this hourglass is the only thing that can delay the erasure process."
Scyte swallowed hard. His smug face had turned tense. "Wait... wait a second. If that thing only 'delays' it, then you can still... die in there?"
Rare tightly gripped the handle of his sword. "Boss must not die."
Tora clenched his fists, his eyes blazing sharply beneath his blindfold. "If that place is really that insane, we're coming too. You think we're gonna let you walk into hell alone?!"
No Name stared at the four of them in silence. For a moment, the atmosphere became unbearably heavy.
"You are indeed coming with me," No Name said as a thin, deadly smile formed at the corner of his lips.
"You will hold the gate of the Void Rift open while I retrieve the stone.
If you fail to hold it..." No Name looked at them with an absolute killing aura. "...all of us will vanish into nothingness."
No Name looked at each of his pawns one by one.
The air inside the room grew heavier as a thin layer of dark aura slowly leaked from his body.
"Prepare your weapons and your bodies," No Name ordered, his voice as cold as ice yet carrying absolute authority that could not be denied. "We do not have much time left. We depart soon."
Tora grinned wildly while cracking his neck with loud popping sounds. "Heh... at least I get to take a bath first."
Arrow simply nodded firmly, his hand instinctively checking his quiver.
Scyte rested his beloved scythe on his shoulder with a thin, deadly smile, while Rare tightly gripped Excalibur with an innocent yet determined gaze.
Without saying much more, The Four Pions turned around and walked out of the lab to prepare themselves for a battlefield that made absolutely no sense.
After they left, No Name slowly walked toward the center of the room.
He closed his eyes.
The room instantly became deathly silent. Inside his chest, the Red Stone pulsed violently, pumping limitless physical power and energy into every cell of his body.
Meanwhile, the resonance of the Blue Stone he possessed began manipulating the surrounding space itself, causing the air inside the lab to bend and tremble.
No Name was concentrating all of his absolute power.
Combining the might of the Red Stone with his own pure darkness for one insane purpose: to forcibly tear open the walls of reality and reach absolute void.