The colossal shadow bird ripped through the air, leaving the ruined amusement park far behind them.

Hide stared at the horizon, his jaw locked tight. The sky itself looked like it had been violently stitched together. The artificial boundary of their Three-Star loop gate had completely shattered, and a terrifying, alien mountain range had forcefully merged with their apocalyptic city.

The air was so saturated with wild mana that every breath tasted like copper.

"Evelyn," Hide yelled over the rushing wind, not taking his eyes off the new landscape. "Do you know anything about what’s happening?!"

Evelyn was clutching his waist tightly, her face buried into his back to shield herself from the wind. She peeked out, her eyes wide with absolute panic.

"I...I don’t know!" she yelled back, her voice cracking. "This isn’t supposed to happen! Loop gates are stable and don’t break!"

Hide gritted his teeth. She was panicking, her mind racing too fast to keep her facts straight. He needed her to focus.

He didn’t push her. He let Hooter fly in a wide arc, giving Evelyn a few minutes to calm down as the violent tremors and the deafening grinding of the shifting earth finally stopped.

The dust began to settle.

Below them, the newly formed landscape was a chaotic cluster of small and large mountain ranges that had simply crushed the eastern half of the ruined city. The largest of these mountains towered above the rest.

And sitting at the very top of that colossal mountain was a massive, ancient-looking building that seemed to touch the sky itself.

Evelyn slowly loosened her death grip on Hide’s waist, her breathing leveling out as she stared at the impossible structure.

"Okay..." Evelyn muttered, her voice shaking but much clearer now. "Okay. I’ve read about this. A similar phenomenon occurs when a Spot Dungeon experiences a ’Gate Break’ and tries to forcefully overtake the real world."

"But this isn’t the real world," Hide replied flatly. "We are inside a goddamned Loop gate."

"I know!" Evelyn snapped, rubbing her temples frantically. "That’s why it makes no sense! What the hell is happening?"

Hide stared at the massive building on the peak. His mind was racing too, sifting through the facts he knew.

And at the end of it, he stopped at one thing.

’The Joker...’ Hide thought, his eyes narrowing.

He thought about the way the masked man had simply appeared inside this gate and then vanished without a trace. But most importantly, he remembered what the Joker was capable of. The man could open gates at will. He had done it before.

And for that fact, if he entered the Gate... he shouldn’t be able to leave until the gatekeeper was killed. If they looked though normal logic that is.

In that moment, Hide’s blood ran cold.

"Evelyn," Hide asked, his voice suddenly very quiet and very serious. "Is there a chance... that two gates can collapse into one another?"

Evelyn froze.

Her eyes widened in absolute terror, the color draining completely from her already pale face. She stared at Hide as if he had just suggested the sky was falling.

"I..." Evelyn stammered, her voice barely a whisper in the wind. "I never thought something like that could happen... but... theoretically... that’s possible."

She looked back at the massive mountain range that had invaded their city.

"So you mean to say," Evelyn continued, her voice trembling with disbelief, "that somehow, another gate opened right beside this one... and they both collided to form a new, bigger gate?"

Hide didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The evidence was floating right in front of them.

"Oh my god," Evelyn gasped, grabbing her hair. "That would mean that it’s no longer a Three-Star gate. If the mana densities merged... maybe it’s a Four-Star now... or worse, a Five-Star!"

She frantically patted her empty pockets.

"Dammit! I don’t even have my tablet! My tablet was crushed! I could have checked the exact mana readings!"

Hide listened to her panic, but his focus was already shifting. He gently tugged on Hooter’s shadowy mane, steering the massive phantom bird away from the ruins of the amusement park and directly toward the newly formed mountain range.

"We need to find Elara," Hide said firmly.

Evelyn snapped out of her spiral, her eyes widening again. "Elara! Oh god, she was fighting in the western area. That whole area got swallowed by the mountains!"

Despite her usual cold act, the raw concern in her voice was undeniable. Elara was a prodigy and a Major, but at the end of the day, she was still just a kid.

Just like him.

’Sigh... I am no kid anymore.’

"Hold on," Hide ordered.

He commanded Hooter to accelerate. The shadow bird tucked its wings and shot through the thick, humid air like a dark missile.

They crossed the ruined boundary of the city and entered the airspace of the first jagged mountain.

As they crested the first peak, the landscape opened up into a massive valley.

"There!" Evelyn pointed down. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

Nestled in the center of the rocky valley was the massive, ruined shopping mall Evelyn had identified earlier as the Gatekeeper’s likely location.

But the mall was currently being torn apart.

Rampaging through the massive parking lot was the Gatekeeper. It was a terrifying, reptilian beast that looked like a prehistoric dinosaur, easily as large as a four-story building. Its scales were thick and heavily armored, and its massive tail whipped back and forth, shattering concrete light poles like twigs.

The colossal beast let out a deafening, earth-shaking roar. It lowered its massive head and charged directly toward the side of the mall.

It smashed headfirst into the reinforced concrete, breaking the entire wing of the building into splinters of glass and twisted rebar.

And as the dust cleared from the impact, Hide saw her.

Elara was stumbling out of the rubble, desperately running away from the Gatekeeper.

She looked awful. Her sweater was shredded and soaked in blood. She had lost her glasses, and her usually bright, carefree luster was completely gone.

But the worst part was her left arm. It was mangled, hanging limply at her side.

She looked half-dead, completely running out of mana as the colossal dinosaur turned its massive head, its reptilian eyes locking directly onto her small, fragile frame.