The real world is withering.
No one can see this, because everyone who could see it is already dreaming.
In the Romania wilderness, the color of the grass is visibly fading.
As if something had drained its life force from its roots, the leaves turned grayish-white and brittle, crumbling into powder at the slightest touch.
The soil is cracking.
The river is getting shallower.
An indescribable oppressive atmosphere filled the air, as if the entire planet were emitting faint, painful groans.
Greater Grail.
That is the life force that fills the earth and atmosphere, belonging to the planet itself.
Although it has diminished significantly since the Age of Gods, it remains the fundamental energy that sustains the planet's operation.
This energy is now being extracted at an alarming rate.
The short, round demon floating above Trifas, Belphegor, remained in its sleeping form with its eyes tightly closed.
The magical power required to maintain a dream world that draws in seven billion intelligent beings is an astronomical figure that surpasses any common sense.
Every dreamer needs to expend magic to maintain their existence in the dream world.
Every food, building, weather, sunlight, and wind in a dream requires magic to construct and operate.
Every villain who is transferred to a blank slate world for a personality reset needs additional magic to complete the rewriting of their soul.
Belphegor didn't care at all.
It simply opened its mouth, like a giant black hole, and began to devour the magic power within the Greater Grail.
Magic was drawn from the depths of the earth and converged into Belphegor's body through invisible channels.
Romania's land was the first to be affected.
Then there are the neighboring countries.
Then came the whole of Europe.
The earth is parched.
The forest is dying.
The ocean temperature is dropping.
But that's not enough.
Although the Greater Grail's magical reserves were enormous, they had diminished considerably after the end of the Age of Gods.
To maintain a global, eternal dream with the remaining Greater Grail in the modern world is like filling a swimming pool with a cup of water.
Belphegor needs more.
Its consciousness probed deeper into the planet.
The Inner Sea of the Planet.
Earth is the Reality Marble of this planet, the place where the planet's soul and brain reside.
That place is Gaia's dream, a habitat for planetary souls.
After the Age of Gods ended, the gods, fairies, and Phantasmal Species that disappeared from the earth's surface eventually returned to that place.
The concentration of magic there far exceeds that of the surface world.
Belphe does not need to enter the Inner Sea of the Planet.
All it takes is to open a passage and extract the magic from it.
The ends of Belphegor's chains began to glow green.
Hellfire.
The flames from the abyss that once clung to the claws of the Rage Mode now overflowed from the chains of the slumbering form.
Green flames extended downwards from Belphegor's body, like a red-hot iron needle piercing into the depths of the earth.
Hellfire possesses the ability to destroy space itself.
It used the most primitive and violent method to burn through the space itself.
It's like burning a hole in paper with a soldering iron.
And this hole will never heal itself.
A crack was forcibly torn open between the Earth's surface and its inner side.
Through the crack, one can vaguely see the view on the other side.
A land of perpetual spring. A land of youth.
The Inner Sea of the Planet.
If anyone could stand beside the crevice and look inside, they would see an endless expanse of emerald green fields.
The aurora borealis, which seems to belong to no season, hangs in the sky, and the air is filled with a liquid, almost visible, thick magic.
But Belphegor didn't care what was inside.
It simply brought its mouth to the edge of the crack and began to suck.
The magic in the Inner Sea of the Planet surged into the surface world along the cracks, like groundwater being sucked up by a pump, and was then completely swallowed by Belphegor.
The dream world has become more stable.
It's even more perfect now.
In dreams, the sunlight is warmer, the food is more delicious, and the air is fresher.
People who dream are happier.
They didn't know what the price of this happiness would be.
They don't need to know.
What if even the magic of the Inner Sea of the Planet isn't enough?
Belphegor will continue to expand outwards.
Green Hellfire burned in the weakest points of space, tearing open cracks that connected other parallel worlds.
From those cracks, one can vaguely sense the existence of other world lines.
Other versions of Earth. Other possible Human History.
Belphegor began to draw magic from those worlds.
If there exists in some parallel universe that is capable of detecting this extraction behavior.
Magecraft, Servant, and even the Counter Force all attempted to resist.
Then Belphegor will pull them into the dream as well.
Then continue drawing.
Nightmare World.
Karna was killed for the seventeenth time.
It's the same process every time.
Standing in the wilderness, I looked around in confusion, then a black silhouette a hundred meters high appeared on the horizon, then I fought, then I died.
The same applies to Heracles and Jeanne d'Arc.
Jeanne d'Arc drew her banner, preparing to charge at the enormous monster with the other two.
Then she stopped.
Her body suddenly became uncontrollable.
Jeanne d'Arc Arc looked down at her hands.
Something was gushing out from deep within her body.
A power that doesn't belong to her.
Karna and Heracles stopped in their tracks and turned to look at Jeanne d'Arc.
Jeanne d'Arc's body floated up.
Her Spiritron Dress peeled away in the light, like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, revealing a completely different outfit underneath.
The white and blue saintess outfit disappeared.
Instead, they wore extremely glamorous angel suits.
Its entire body is covered in sacred gold decorations, with intricate and delicate patterns that look as if they were woven from starlight.
Two pairs of wings unfolded behind her.
Countless white wings unfurled from her back, spreading out layer upon layer under the night sky, their wingspan even obscuring half the moon.
Joan of Jeanne d'Arc's face remains, but her eyes are no longer Jeanne d'Arc of Arc's eyes.
Those were eyes that saw through everything, eyes belonging to a higher being.
Calm, indifferent, devoid of any human emotion.
Metatron.
Attendant at the Throne. An archangel with seventy-two titles.
Using Jeanne d'Arc of Arc's body as a medium, she descended into this dream world.
Karna's hand unconsciously tightened its grip on the spear.
He didn't recognize the being before him, but his fighting instincts were screaming for help.
This thing is dangerous.
After Metatron's arrival, Jeanne d'Arc, or rather Metatron in the form of Jeanne d'Arc of Arc, slowly turned her head, her gaze piercing through the false sky of the nightmare world and looking directly at the core of the dream world.
He looked at the girl who was curled up and sleeping in outer space.
"[ Beauty ]."
Metatron spoke.
The sound wasn't loud, but the vibration of that word penetrated the very foundation of the dream world.
You've strayed from your proper place.
"It's time to go back."
At the same moment that Metatron arrived.
The real world.
Over Romania.
Three beams of light descended from the sky, piercing through the gray clouds.
Spiritron Transfer.
After the beam of light dissipated, three figures landed on the wilderness outside Trifas.
The first one to stand firm was a black-haired boy in a white uniform.
He wasn't very tall, nor was he particularly strong; he was just an ordinary boy.
Ritsuka Fujimaru.
He looked around and saw a desolate wasteland: withered grass, cracked soil, and a gray sky.
"The situation at this Singularity doesn't look good."
The second person landed beside him.
A girl with short, light pink hair, purple eyes, and lightweight paladin plate armor in silver and navy blue.
He holds a huge Round Table -shaped shield in his left hand.
Mash Kyrielight.
She quickly assessed the safety of her surroundings and then held the shield horizontally in front of her.
"Senior, Spiritron Transfer complete. No direct enemy response detected so far."
She glanced down at her feet.
The grass was grayish-white. I stepped on it with my boots, and the whole blade of grass crumbled into powder.
"The concentration of the Greater Grail in this land is abnormally low; almost no magical reaction can be detected."
The third person.
Her long, pure white hair fluttered in the wind, and her rose-red eyes held a languid, dreamlike haze.
She wore a white tulle dress, held a Magecraft wand in her right hand, and held her signature white lace parasol in her left.
Although she was standing on a desolate wasteland, she looked as if she were taking a walk in a garden.
Lady Avalon.
Merlin.
"Ah."
Merlin tilted her head, and her white hair slipped down her shoulder.
"What a desolate world. Greater Grail has been drained almost to its limit; even the air has become parched."
Ritsuka Fujimaru: " Merlin, can you sense the direction of the source of the anomaly?"
Merlin raised her parasol to block out the non-existent sunlight and hummed in agreement.
"Probably in that direction."
Her finger pointed in the direction of Trifas.
Then she stopped talking.
Ritsuka Fujimaru's consciousness wavered for a moment.
Then everything returned to normal.
The sun is coming out.
The sky changed from a hazy gray to a clear blue, with fluffy white clouds and a gentle breeze.
The wasteland beneath our feet has vanished, replaced by a neatly trimmed lawn.
In the distance, there are houses, streets, and pedestrians.
The town of Trifas has been restored to its peaceful and beautiful state.
It is even more beautiful than the real Trifas.
The streets are cleaner, the buildings are more colorful, and the air is filled with the aroma of bread and flowers.
Pedestrians on the street smiled and greeted each other.
Everything was so perfect.
It's too perfect for reality.
Ritsuka Fujimaru blinked and looked around in confusion.
"Huh? Weren't we just in the wasteland? How did we suddenly become..."
Mash was also a little confused, but she quickly adjusted her posture, keeping her shield held horizontally in front of her.
"Senior, the surrounding environment has suddenly changed. But I haven't detected any spatial teleportation. Our coordinates haven't changed."
"Because this is no longer the real world."
Merlin's voice came from behind them.
She was still holding that white lace parasol, but her expression was different now.
The languor and the hazy atmosphere vanished.
Instead, a kind of vigilance, belonging to the nightmare's instinct, takes its place.
"We've been dragged into this."
"This is a dream."
Merlin turned around and looked at Ritsuka Fujimaru and Mash.
"A dream that draws the whole world in."
Ritsuka Fujimaru and Mash exchanged a glance.
"The whole world?"
"Um."
Merlin pointed with her parasol to the smiling pedestrians on the street in the distance.
They're all dreaming. And they have no idea it.
"In their view, today is probably the same as yesterday, and yesterday is the same as the day before yesterday."
The sun rises as usual, and the world keeps turning.
"The only difference is that everything is a little bit better now."
"I have money to spend without working, I don't have to worry about getting sick, and annoying people will disappear on their own."
"A perfect, eternal, and Sloth paradise."
Mash gripped the edge of the shield tightly.
"To be able to accomplish something of this scale..."
"You probably couldn't find many like them even if you searched the entirety of Human History," Merlin added.