I still couldn’t believe it. Sonozaki Wakana just single-handedly defeated The Ravenous Hydra through heinous act of trickery and foresight. Looks like he did it again, he saved me just like when we were still in middle school. I can’t believe I kept relying myself over him after all this time.

“Can you stop hugging me now?”

“Oh yeah, sure thing, White. Sorry about that.”

Wakana have told me everything that happened. To which I was kind of got mad because of how he wasn't taking things too seriously especially when that time where he choked the girls. But he did told me that he wasn’t really trying to kill Fitz. He knows his limits he said but I will never know about that.

With all being said and done, we happen to come across a huge hole from the demolished tower which reveals the cell room of those that were captured.

“Awesome. Everyone is here.” Wakana was glad,

Blax finally finished clearing the other monsters arrived and said, “This is good news, I guess. We're missing one person, White.”

“Mei…”

Wakana then told me, “You go on ahead with the others. There are still some of your teammates who is under the staff's illusion over here. Oh and be careful, White. Escher is a smart guy.”

“Not unless I outsmart him. See ya, Wakana. Thanks again.”

I headed on toward Escher’s room together with Airi, Zone, Haz, Lore, Blax and Kirin. We made our way to the room as we cross through a bunch of debris that were blocking our path. It didn’t took too long until we saw the big door that we remembered a few minutes back.

“White.”

Lore stopped me.

“What is it?”

“I was thinking…Will everything turn back to normal if we defeat him?”

He said that with a sad tone. I couldn’t respond to him in time. In fact, Blax barged in said,

“What are you talking about? Of course everything will turn back to normal, right guys?”

Kirin happily agrees but Airi, Zone, Haz and Lore remained silent and shrugged off the circumstance knowing full well of the situation. The same thing goes for me as I looked away from where they were talking and remained stoic.

“What the…what’s going on here? Is there something I don’t know?” Blax was confused. “What are you guys hiding? Tell us now.”

We remained silent and looked at the floor until Kirin opens his mouth.

“You know…there’s a lot of messed up things happening inside this 'wall' but I couldn’t help myself but notice that the people around here was happy and not in despair or whatsoever. Except for a few incident but apart from that…those were just Escher’s men rebelling against him. I mean why the heck would monsters protect humans, right? So I was wondering…”

“Where are you going in this conversation, Kirin?”

Haz interrupted him, knowing full well what he was about to say.

“As I was trying to say…you guys were from outside of the wall if I’m not mistaken. So, it comes to one thing that I could have been concerning the most about. What happened outside for the past 7 months? Why didn't you guys come in knowing full well that we've been under a fake wall for 7 months?"

His question made me forced to swallow my saliva. I tried my best to remain my composure but I couldn’t help myself from keeping it a secret any longer. It was supposed to be a secret that we shouldn’t tell to them at all. But there was no other way to escape from that once they found out about it…

“Well then, guys?”

Blax and Kirin were waiting for one of us to respond.

I finally opened up and said, “Alright then. Are you guys sure about this?”

“Yes. We’re sure, White.”

Blax does not know what he was asking about but of course, he still doesn’t know what’s going on and its my job to explain it to him.

“Listen well. You noticed how we’re not wearing our school uniform, right?”

“Yeah. That’s probably because school was off for you guys.”

“I’m not finished yet, Blax. We’re not even wearing casual clothing…we’re like wearing…to survive ourselves…”

“What?”

I sighed and slowly said the following truth to him and Kirin,

“The outside world…Is also under an illusion…it's a wasteland...”

“Wasteland? What are you talking about, White?”

“I’ll tell you what happened and how do we end up surviving. It was 3 months ago when suddenly a magical spell started to spread throughout the place. Worse yet, the whole world. I didn't know how that would work but apparently it did. Since we just figured about it, everything that's happening outside was all thanks to The Staff of Illusion. It made the whole world turned upside down. Everyone believed that it was hell on earth. Until we found out the truth about the staff that is...”

“Unbelievable…”

“As panic erupts across the world thanks to this false reality. Mei appeared and tried to stop this chaos. But she was just a little girl and no adults wanted to listen to her. She said that this was all an illusion. She could already tell what was going on thanks to her infinite knowledge about magic. That’s probably because she’s the daughter of the person who created the staff…Then the illusion became even worse?”

“What happened?” asked Blax

“A looming chaos. One slight mistake. Escher 'summoned' the demons with his staff. We didn't know that all of this was an illusion but everything was too real for all of us. It ended up being a global scale demon invasion. We survived thanks to Mei. But it’s not over yet…Things started to escalate fast as more and more demons started to appear everywhere. One thing after another, we didn’t know it was related to the Chaos back then. But of course now we know.”

Blax and Kirin remained silent as I continued…

“Escher had a plan…and his plan was a very interesting plan. A select few will be brought to a whole new world with the remains of the current world. It sounds cliche but its true. Monsters started to appear all over the place. We were only able to hide ourselves from them thanks to the Headquarter that we made.”

Lore then opens his mouth and said,

“Our principal was trying to use the Staff of Illusion to create a heaven for us all…he wanted to redeem his sins...”

Haz joined in as well,

“He was only able to make that global magic thanks to his leader for overpowering the Staff. As soon as Escher notices this, he wanted to recreate the global magic without his leader's aid.”

Airi continued for us,

“We actually don’t know if Escher was a good guy or not to be honest. But we decided that perhaps Escher has been planning to erase all of his evil deeds. We only know about his sins when we found a diary about him that was under his own office desk.”

Zone then stopped us,

“Now comes to the final confrontation. And with what White was told by Sonozaki about the final phase of his plan, there must be something important about The Runix Cube and The Staff of Inversion. What can it do together? We’re here today to find out whether this mysterious artifact will do something about our current world…”

And that was what happened outside the 'wall'. It was a barren wasteland. The whole world was barren. Everyone was in peril thanks to the fake demons. Even though it was all just an illusion, it all seemed to real as the demons killed everyone they see. We endured this loneliness for 3 months…But when we think about it…I think its better if we stay inside this new world that Escher was planning than going outside the real world. If we remembering back about the real world, it was always a bad world. But not as bad as the current illusion of course. But what if this new world Escher was planning was something...better. Just how powerful is this artifact. But, this was not how I want my story to be told but this was what I got.

However, deep down inside of me. I still feel that this is not the end. This is not the end that any of us wanted. There must be something that was lost between what was in between us. The only lead we have now is right behind us. Escher was here. Perhaps he will tell us something. Something important. Something that could help us all. Something that’s not going to be well received. Something that was probably going to alter the reality…this whole thing feels like…it needs to be rewritten…

TO BE CONTINUED