Neo tried to use World Energy again, only for it to not respond.
The same was true for Obitus.
His blessings responded, but they were weakened.
He brought his palms close.
A tiny ball of lightning started to condense between them.
He compressed it to the limit.
The amount of Death being forced into the tiny point diistorted space.
Neo ignored the maggots eating him and kept his focus on the task.
He let the ball explode when it reached its maximum limit.
Thousands of large red lightning bolts erupted from the attack.
Everything in his vicinity was wiped out.
Neo used the chance and condensed another ball of Death, this time fusing his Concept into it.
He let it break.
The power of the Concept was much stronger than his normal attacks.
Lightning larger than planets crackled in the space.
It forced the maggots to sleep.
As if to say his attack was a joke, more maggots arrived.
Neo repeated his attacks, only for more maggots to arrive.
It did not matter how many were forced into eternal sleep.
Their numbers were endless.
Neo kept fighting without a break.
Time had long since become a blur to him.
Slowly, doubts started to creep into his mind.
Could he escape this place?
Would he be forced to live his nightmare eternally again?
Neo kept fighting the maggots without a break.
His mind slowly entered a trance.
The maggots, the emptiness.
They were gnawing at his heart.
He was being forced to relive his worst memories.
But.
Neo didn’t run.
He embraced those memories.
“So this is a [Nightmare].”
It felt like he was reaching an epiphany.
He had always known what a nightmare was.
They were dreams that showed one a horrible sight.
Though, living in this world showed him the true meaning of Nightmare.
It was Fear.
Neo’s limbs were trembling.
The nightmare was forcing him to look at his fear.
Age, experience, mental resilience.
Nothing could protect you from your fear.
Neo moved his body on instinct.
A black mist covered his hands.
He grabbed the fabric of the world and tore it.
The tear in the space was the size of a palm.
He could see pitch-black emptiness beyond.
There, no maggot existed.
Before Neo could enter that world, the torn space was stitched back.
The world of nightmare had healed on its own.
Neo looked at his hands.
He ignored the maggots attacking him and heightened his focus.
The power of Nightmares.
He was now capable of wielding it.
However, his mastery was too low to use and brute force his way out of this world.
He needed time to master the Nightmare Element.
Time he didn’t have.
There was only one other way.
Neo needed Fear, and use it to learn the Nightmare Element.
“I have the perfect place to take fear from.”
He looked around at the maggots.
He was afraid of them, but the true reason for his fear was something else.
His memories of Eternity.
The seal on the memories made by his mother could be broken by a single thought of his.
Perhaps, she made it this way, predicting Neo would need the memories one day.
He dived into his mind.
His soul trembled at the thought of breaking the seal on his memories.
He grabbed it with a thought and crushed it.
Fear, desperation, and agony flooded in.
But there was something worse that the memories brought.
The loneliness.
The Emptiness.
His mind was being torn apart.
The terror of the eternity made him shake like a leaf, and the emptiness he learned from it consumed everything.
Emptiness was another name for Void.
There was no beginning or end.
Just Nothingness.
His goals, passions, emotions, memories, personality, body, will to live—everything was becoming one with Void(Emptiness).
He was losing it all.
“No… No….”
Neo desperately searched for something.
A goal.
A fixation.
Something that could overpower the Emptiness that was growing within him.
He forced his mind, frozen from fear, to move.
“Think…”
“Something…”
“I need…”
He needed a goal so dear to him that nothing could take it from him.
‘PowerIsYourGoal’
Neo snapped his head towards the voices of Darkness within his mind.
They spoke to him as Neo lost them to Emptiness.
‘YouWantedToBeStrong’
‘ThatIsWhyYouNeverGaveUp’
The voices disappeared as Emptiness took over half of him.
The thought remained.
Power.
His dream was to be the strongest.
Christian and Leonora died because he was not strong enough.
He manipulated Elizabeth into defeating the Temple of Void since he couldn’t do it with his own strength.
Kane was forced to sleep because he lacked the strength to kill Anomaly #79.
He was weak and had to force his responsibilities on young Daniel in order to protect Athena, Kronos, Gaia, Zeus, Apollo, and others.
He had to force Jack to leave Shadow World and ended up causing him mental scars since he was not strong enough to fight Velkaria while protecting Jack.
He could not meet his parents, tell them that he missed them. He was too weak to remove the bloodline curse.
Even now, when Elizabeth’s time was at the end, he was here, in a world made from his nightmares, unable to escape due to his lack of strength.
Every time his problems always had a simple solution.
Every time he lacked that one thing.
Power.
He needed more of it.
To be the strongest.
To achieve his dreams.
To cut down anything that stood in his way.
Growing stronger had always been his obsession.
When Neo came to his senses, he realized the power of Void consuming him had lessened.
He looked at his arms.
His body was there. So was his soul and mind.
He hadn’t fallen to Emptiness.
“So the only reason I couldn’t stand Eternity was because I lacked the obsession to overcome it.”
He was ready to live for Eternity if that was what it took to be the strongest.
Looking at his hand, Neo could see faint bubbles with purple suns within them and black mist floating around.
Void and Nightmare.
His memories being unsealed allowed him to feel the fear that had once shaken him to the deepest part of his soul.
It allowed him to increase his mastery of Nightmare at an unprecedented speed.
He tried to suppress the tremor in his limbs and used Nightmare Element again.
Black mist covered his hands.
He used Nightmare Element to grab the fabric of the world made from nightmares.
Then, he pulled.
Unlike before, a large tear appeared in the sky.
The rate at which the tear was being stitched was too slow, and Neo entered it with ease.
He felt as if he was falling—
Neo’s eyes shot open as he felt the force of the crash.
He gasped and looked around.
The ground beneath him was made from some unknown material.
Neo scanned the area.
His blessings were back to full power, he could generate World Energy, and Obitus was with him.
Neo, you are awake.
“Yeah,” he replied. “Do you know where we are or anything about the others? Since this place is the Abyss of Nightmares, they should’ve teleported to one of the random zones.”
For some odd reason, the sky and the boundaries of this world were too far.
Neo could not see them with his Intent Vision.
Such a large world would be at least Stage-3.
A Zone—made from a World eaten by Tartarus—shouldn’t be that big, since Tartarus was itself Stage-3, and there was no way it could defeat multiple Worlds at the same Stage as it without the inhabitants’ help.
“Something is wrong about this place.”
It felt dead? Inverted? Lifeless?
Neo couldn’t point a finger at the thoughts in his mind.
Your friends….
Obitus suddenly spoke to him.
They are above….
“What? Above?” Neo stared at the sky. Intent Vision was like a sphere. He could see everything within the sphere.
As for objects farther than that, he could not see them.
“The range of my Intent Vision should be the radius of a Stage-2 Planet. How high are they in the sky that I can’t see them?”
Neo started to circulate his World Energy in large amounts.
He trusted Obitus’ words and decided to jump as high as he could, trying to see where the others were.
Funnily enough, Obitus didn’t react like she used to.
It made him feel as if she had gotten used to his praise.
Reading his thoughts, she harrumphed and became silent.
“Are you still angry about the last time? I didn’t mean it the wrong way when I called you easy.”
Neo was exasperated.
This pattern…
He remembered it.
Beelezebub had gone through a similar puberty.
I’m not going through puberty!
It was the fastest and the clearest reply he heard from Obitus.
Stop analyzing my words! I just wanted to hear a sorry, and… and….
She was embarrassed to say the next words.
Neo could sense her emotions and understand what she wanted.
“My apologies, my lady. I said those words back then only to tease you. And yes, I do love you very much.”
Neo laughed.
He could feel Obitus being happy, embarrassed, and a little angry at how he was poking fun at her.
“Okay, okay, I’ll stop now.”
He shifted his focus back to the task at hand.
He directed the World Energy towards his legs.
His muscles exploded with power beyond limits, and he jumped.
The space around him was torn open from the shockwaves created by his jump’s residual energy.
His body shot upwards like a bullet, rapidly climbing the altitude.
He suddenly noticed objects hung from the sky and held by thick threads connected to their tops.
The ‘objects’ were familiar to him.
They were the people who entered the Abyss of Nightmares with him. The Grand Expedition.